RugbyRebels

Mikey Brown wrote:I’m so sick of all the comic book garbage in general but it did look like it might be entertaining. He’s usually fantastic in everything he’s in too.

The whole “love letter to future mass-shooter vibe” discussion has got me a bit unsure though.

cashead wrote:

Mikey Brown wrote:I’m so sick of all the comic book garbage in general but it did look like it might be entertaining. He’s usually fantastic in everything he’s in too.

The whole “love letter to future mass-shooter vibe” discussion has got me a bit unsure though.

Blaming popular entertainment for violent crime is lazy as fuck.

cashead wrote:

Mikey Brown wrote:I’m so sick of all the comic book garbage in general but it did look like it might be entertaining. He’s usually fantastic in everything he’s in too.

The whole “love letter to future mass-shooter vibe” discussion has got me a bit unsure though.

Blaming popular entertainment for violent crime is lazy as fuck.

cashead wrote:

Mikey Brown wrote:

cashead wrote: Blaming popular entertainment for violent crime is lazy as fuck.

and this is all based on a trailer so far, but it’s quite reasonable to consider it.

And this is precisely my issue - it's largely sight unseen other than a selection of short clips edited together, often out of sequence for a film that is clearly heavily influenced by New York-era Scorsese (specifically Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy). It would be nice if the chin-stroking thinkpieces could wait until after the film has actually been released.

Mikey Brown wrote:This guy gets it.

cashead wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

Mikey Brown wrote:This guy gets it.

I don't really agree. You really can make a film about a bad guy as long as you make it clear that he is NOT heroic (this is where series like Dexter and The Sopranos are problematic).

The far bigger problem is when the "good guy" heroically kills a lot of "bad guys" but on deeper examination is only "good" because of his nationality or skin colour - eg Rambo, cowboys and indians etc.

I'm not sure The Sopranos is a good example for your argument. The show made no bones about the fact that Tony Soprano is, deep down, a piece of shit and product of the world he inhabits. This is made fairly explicit in the Davey Scatino plotline, where Tony recognises Scatino's compulsive gambling addiction, and exploits it knowing he's ruining a man's life for his own personal gain. Ultimately, his reward for rising up to become the king of the mountain against all other pieces of shit, is that he's doomed either way - he has three pathways open to him: spend the rest of his days anxious about someone coming to finish him off (like the man in the Members Only jacket that keeps glancing at him at the diner), with that cloud of fear hanging over him indefinitely; spend the rest of his days under surveillance from law enforcement to either end up in prison like Johnny Sack, or become an informant like Big Pussy; if he's lucky enough that neither eventuates, he has a life like what Junior is suffering through to look forward to.

And yeah, the "what if hero isn't good guy?" shit is also overdone as all hell.

cashead wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

And yeah, the "what if hero isn't good guy?" shit is also overdone as all hell.

Which films or series are you thinking of there?

Where should I start?

Since 2008, we've had Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Dredd, Hellboy II and Brightburn, all of which tackle this idea to varying degrees. Hell, it's the central conceit of Watchmen (Ozymandias prevents a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR, but ends up leaving a long trail of bodies along the way. The Comedian, who worked out what was happening, sees right through this, and knows that Ozymandias is full of shit, and dies for it. While Nightowl, Silk Spectre and Doctor Manhattan end up agreeing to keep quiet about what they've learned. Rorschach refuses, and makes Doctor Manhattan splatter him because what's another corpse among the foundations of the peace that Ozymandias has built? The irony is that we know that as readers, Ozymandias is full of shit, because the Cold War didn't end with a nuclear apocalypse), one of the major themes of The Dark Knight is interrogating the "idea" of The Batman and whether he is actually a force of good, Dredd acknowledges and confronts the fact that the Judges are what maintains a brutal and exploitative status quo, Hellboy II outright questions the value of the BPRD's mission statement, and Brightburn is basically "what if Superman were an evil little bastard?"

If we're going further, Captain America: The Winter Soldier has a frank discussion about the morality of drone warfare, and in this case, the US government and SHIELD itself becomes the villains as they're infiltrated by literal nazis.
Captain Marvel also examines this idea the "good guys" and "bad guys" being delineated by skin colour or, in this case species, as the Kree are initially portrayed as a "race of noble heroes" to quote the eponymous character, while the Skrulls, who are green-skinned shapeshifters, are the nominal villains - only for it to turn out that the Kree are a bunch of fascistic fucks that have gone around throwing their weight around, demanding surrounding planets submit to their rule, or face destruction. The Skrulls refused, and have ended up refugees who were acting out of desperation and hostility because of how they were treated by Kree-aligned planets.

There's also the controversial Identity Crisis storyline from DC, where it turns out that the Justice League had been systematically erasing the memories of the villains that had worked out their identities, and Doctor Light had been given a lobotomy of sorts by Zatanna after he was caught sneaking into the JLA Watchtower, where he encountered and raped the Elongated Man's wife, Sue Dibney. When Batman happens to catch them in the act, Zatanna freezes him in a panic, and she ends up erasing the memories of what he'd witnessed as well.

And then we have The Boys, which is about a team of artificial superhumans who are employed by the US government to keep tabs on superheroes and "correct" their behaviour if they step out of line - by any means necessary.

Numbers wrote:Eventually got around to watching John Wick, hilariously bad.

kk67 wrote:Just watched table 19..
Craig Robinson is a quality actor.

Numbers wrote:

kk67 wrote:Just watched table 19..
Craig Robinson is a quality actor.

I love Craig Robinson, I'm yet to see him anything bad (perhaps Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is the weakest thing I've seen him in).

paddy no 11 wrote:Really liked the Irishman but major flaw in Deniro's character they really needed to use a younger actor for the early scenes (a la godfather) pesci and Pacino are excellent. Its about 15 minutes too long

Gog wrote:

paddy no 11 wrote:Really liked the Irishman but major flaw in Deniro's character they really needed to use a younger actor for the early scenes (a la godfather) pesci and Pacino are excellent. Its about 15 minutes too long

I thought it was an excellent film, personally I didn’t have an issue with the characters ageing. Would 15 minutes less have made much difference in a 220 minute film?