Superheroes!

[Cutlass]

She isn't even doing a full chinup

 

[Timsup2nothin]

She isn't even doing a full chinup

I don't think that would be possible. She's extending her arms at the point of maximum upwards velocity. At the top of the chinup she would be moving too slowly.

Not like I can speak with any authority of experience here, but from a physics standpoint that looks like the only way for her to do it. The only way for me to do it would be standing on a chair.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Sorry, did you guys say something? I was staring at Lotz's abs.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Entertainment Weekly has published a photo of Jesse Eisenberg "in character" as Lex Luthor. Which is to say, bald.

Eh. I dunno. I've been proven wrong before - Heath Ledger and Michelle Pfieffer and maybe some others - but I remain skeptical. Right now the DC movie slate is more exciting to me than going to the dentist, but not as much as cleaning up my living room.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Entertainment Weekly has published a photo of Jesse Eisenberg "in character" as Lex Luthor. Which is to say, bald.

Eh. I dunno. I've been proven wrong before - Heath Ledger and Michelle Pfieffer and maybe some others - but I remain skeptical. Right now the DC movie slate is more exciting to me than going to the dentist, but not as much as cleaning up my living room.

I'm biased, as I always preferred Marvel comics. That said, I have enjoyed the Marvel movies and TV, in a 'good stuff doesn't have to live up to the even better source material to still be good' sort of way...but The Flash TV series is IMO better than any DC comic ever deserved.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm biased, as I always preferred Marvel comics. That said, I have enjoyed the Marvel movies and TV, in a 'good stuff doesn't have to live up to the even better source material to still be good' sort of way...but The Flash TV series is IMO better than any DC comic ever deserved.

I liked DC Comics, but I've been pleasantly shocked at how The CW has handled those properties.

 

[Cutlass]

Why does the DC comics universe have such dumb city names?

 

[EgonSpengler]

Yeah, it kind of became part of their schtick, didn't it? Back before they inhabited the same universe, I think the creators of Superman and Batman each had their own reasons for setting their stories in a fictional city. Siegel & Shuster wanted every reader to be able to imagine Superman in their nearest, er, metropolis. I think that was partly a business decision, so their strip could be carried by any newspaper, nationwide. Gotham was a nickname for New York long before Finger & Kane created Batman, and I think they wanted to be able to write Batman's version of New York without feeling beholden to real-world geography, history, or politics. I know they were inspired by Prohibition-era Chicago of gangsters running the city, for instance.

Not all Golden Age characters inhabited fictional cities, but I think it was just more common to set these fantastical stories in fantastical settings, even if those settings were supposed to be analogues of real places. Stan Lee didn't start to make superhero stories more deliberately believable until 1961, and even DC's Silver Age revivals - Barry Allen as The Flash, Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, Katar Hol as Hawkman, the Justice League of America - predated The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man.

 

[Glassfan]

If you want to post images, it's best to use a hosting site. You could also post it as an attachment. Keep in mind the rules regarding NSFW content and the 1-click rule.

I've just returned after a year off. I noticed there are no Avatars, few pics or gifs and links are difficult. What are these new rules?

 

[Glassfan]

Crickets chirping.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Crickets chirping.

I noticed that some folks don't have avs, but I assumed that was deliberate. I don't seem to have any problem posting jpgs or gifs. The only new rule I'm aware of was a restriction on "Babe and Hunk" threads, due to Google's strict definition of "mature content" as outlined in a Site Feedback thread. My gifs on the previous page are still there, so either they were overlooked or Caity Lotz's abs aren't deemed sufficiently sexy, which would be an outrage.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Trailer for the Russian film Zaschitniki, which translates variously as defenders, guardians, protectors, and advocates.


Link to video.

 

[Glassfan]

I noticed that some folks don't have avs...

OK, thanks. Went back to preferences and now it's fixed.

 

[Cutlass]

I've only seen a little bit of Supergirl so far. Not really enjoying it.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've only seen a little bit of Supergirl so far. Not really enjoying it.

It's got some things going for it, but it definitely has first-season growing pains. I think they're treating Supergirl too much like a version of Superman so far. James Olsen. Lois Lane's little sister. A female General Zod. A Lex Luthor. Soon we'll see Bizarro. I don't think Supergirl has many of her own supervillains, which is both a burden and an opportunity for the writers, and so far they're kind of blowing it.

otoh, I think Benoist is a good "#1 draft pick." She's not a star yet, but I like her so far. I don't want to post a spoiler if you haven't seen recent episodes, but Cat Grant could also become a cool character. Other than Grant, the supporting cast haven't established themselves yet, but they're not aggravating me, either, so there's room for growth there.

On the whole, I wouldn't recommend the show to anyone with only a few hours a week for television, but I hope it's given a chance to find itself. The 2nd season could be one of the shows I'd be looking forward to next Fall, if I were going to look that far ahead, and if it gets a 2nd season.

 

[Cutlass]

I've seen a little of the Flash as well, rather than all of it. Don't really care for that much either.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've seen a little of the Flash as well, rather than all of it. Don't really care for that much either.

Yeah, those shows are run by two of the three same people. Ali Adler is, iirc, the show runner for Supergirl, but Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg are the movers and shakers behind the entire CBS/CW group of shows, The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tommorrow. As with many shows, each episode is written and directed by different people, but the show runners provide the overall vision and try to maintain continuity, and probably have working relationships with a lot of the same technical and creative people. So if the tone or style or overall writing of one show turns you off, I'm not surprised that you wouldn't like the rest.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I don't want to post a spoiler if you haven't seen recent episodes, but Cat Grant could also become a cool character.

Heh. Moments after I wrote this, Charlie Jane Anders, who's a bigger fan of the show than I am, wrote a post for io9 on this topic:

The Cat-Kara Relationship Is the Best Love Story on Supergirl

When we caught our first glimpse of Supergirl last spring, Calista Flockhart’s Devil Wears Prada-influenced take on Kara’s boss, Cat Grant, seemed like the biggest potential liability. But nine episodes in, she’s clearly the best part of the show.

In fact, we’re fully Cat-Kara shippers at this point. All attempts to get us to care about Kara’s “love triangle” with James Olsen and Winn Schott are pointless, but this episode’s... [spoiler for last night's episode]

Spoiler :

threat that Cat might dump Kara (because Cat has figured out that Kara is Supergirl and thinks she should be spending her time saving people instead of fetching coffee)

...carries real emotional weight.

 

[Dachs]

So Wonder Woman footage is starting to come out, and part of the film is apparently set in the First World War.

I...I'm not sure exactly how that works. It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. If she's up against the Bad Guys, the closest thing to Bad Guys in that war was Tsarist Russia, and somehow I doubt that that's what is in the film. She's probably fighting Germans. And that means that the Germans have to be the Bad Guys, and the British, French, and Americans have to be the Good Guys.

The Second World War is the closest thing human history has to a war where one side is clearly morally repugnant on a scale that dwarfs the worst of what the other side did. Wonder Woman fighting Nazis is the sort of thing that makes sense for a superhero, because Nazism was evil in a way that nothing else of the time was. Superheroes, as usually constructed, are supposedly beacons of morality; when they go into the lists on one side or another, they're basically saying that one side is morally wrong in a way that the other one isn't. That doesn't work in the First World War at all.

Ideally, this can be done well. Maybe the sort of Wonder Woman that they're going for is one that spends most of human history fighting. That's the sort of thing that the avatar of battle kind of does. But it also means fighting for scumbags, against scumbags. It's mythologically coherent but morally bankrupt. And by the end of the film, she reaches for something better, a superhero that turns centuries of military experience to the task of saving humanity rather than encouraging it to tear itself apart.

It's not the sort of thing I would normally envision DC's comic book movie people being able to pull off. Then again, I have a much higher regard for Patty Jenkins than I do for Zack Snyder. (I have a higher regard for virtually every director than I do for Zack Snyder.) Perhaps she can pull that sort of thing off.

I haven't got high hopes, though, and I'm already resigning myself to steadfast Tommies valiantly struggling against the hated Boche.

 

[EgonSpengler]

So Wonder Woman footage is starting to come out, and part of the film is apparently set in the First World War.

I...I'm not sure exactly how that works. It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. If she's up against the Bad Guys, the closest thing to Bad Guys in that war was Tsarist Russia, and somehow I doubt that that's what is in the film. She's probably fighting Germans. And that means that the Germans have to be the Bad Guys, and the British, French, and Americans have to be the Good Guys.

The Second World War is the closest thing human history has to a war where one side is clearly morally repugnant on a scale that dwarfs the worst of what the other side did. Wonder Woman fighting Nazis is the sort of thing that makes sense for a superhero, because Nazism was evil in a way that nothing else of the time was. Superheroes, as usually constructed, are supposedly beacons of morality; when they go into the lists on one side or another, they're basically saying that one side is morally wrong in a way that the other one isn't. That doesn't work in the First World War at all.

Ideally, this can be done well. Maybe the sort of Wonder Woman that they're going for is one that spends most of human history fighting. That's the sort of thing that the avatar of battle kind of does. But it also means fighting for scumbags, against scumbags. It's mythologically coherent but morally bankrupt. And by the end of the film, she reaches for something better, a superhero that turns centuries of military experience to the task of saving humanity rather than encouraging it to tear itself apart.

It's not the sort of thing I would normally envision DC's comic book movie people being able to pull off. Then again, I have a much higher regard for Patty Jenkins than I do for Zack Snyder. (I have a higher regard for virtually every director than I do for Zack Snyder.) Perhaps she can pull that sort of thing off.

I haven't got high hopes, though, and I'm already resigning myself to steadfast Tommies valiantly struggling against the hated Boche.

My guess is that this version of the character will not be bound to real-world politics, and instead will take the character & viewer into a superhero version of Greek mythology. I think several people besides myself have written that she may be "the DC movies' Thor." In George Perez's 1987 reboot, Wonder Woman's adversary was Ares. In the more recent "New 52" reboot, Diana was a student of Ares and the villain was Eris, goddess of discord and strife. Either version would fit World War I quite well, where everyone is being kind of irrational and war seems to spring up without anyone really wanting it. In a world of magic and actual gods, the meddling of a god of war or a trickster god(dess) may be a more sensible explanation for WWI than what actually happened.

It also appears as though they're going back to Diana falling in love with Steve Trevor and going to visit the mortal world.


p.s. I agree about Snyder. I liked his Dawn of the Dead reboot, and Watchman was alright, but 300 and Man of Steel were disappointing, in different ways.