Ice
Teh Sexy Monkey Queen
The series is credited with Cullen Bunn, Matt Fraction, and Christopher Yost, but Yost wrote #6's script.
Avengers movie discussion (news/etc.)
- Thread starter Hellsbuttmonkey
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spidey
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E said:
?????? Making these movies "comic book y" is exactly what seperates it from the garbage out there!!
Captain Canuck
The poster formerly known as captaincanuck65
well, depending on how you define comic book-y.
I'd say a norse god stealing a cosmic cube to open a portal into another realm so than an army of aliens can invade earth is pretty comic book-y.
So is a secret group of mutated teenagers stoping a Nazi scientist from escalating the cold war into nuclear armageddon.
Or a super soldier fighting a Nazi super soldier whose face burned off and turned into a red skull because he is trying to take over the world with the same aforementioned cosmic cube.
Iron Man is probably the only one of those movies that I think could be classified as "not comic book-y," but even in that one there are aspects.
Nolan's Batman movies fit the "not comic book-y" category the best.
But if by comic book-y you mean they don't try to make the film believable or serious and it comes off goofy, then I see what you're saying; I would just define comic book-y differently.
There are certain comic book tropes that, in my mind, shape whether something is "comic book-y." Some of those tropes can work in movies if they're done right ("the secret history of fill in the blank" in X-Men: First Class, "the villain and the hero are essentially the same, but with different values" in Cap, "nameless cosmic threat of the week bringing together an unlikely group of heroes" in the avengers, etc). But one tropes that would make a movie TOO comic book-y is "No one stays dead." That would cross a line and break the suspension of disbelief (which is stretched pretty thin in the Avengers, but done so well that you barely notice).
By the way, I made up the names of all those comic book tropes - in case you couldn't tell.
Except no one stays dead. I'm pretty sure that's a real one.
I'd say a norse god stealing a cosmic cube to open a portal into another realm so than an army of aliens can invade earth is pretty comic book-y.
So is a secret group of mutated teenagers stoping a Nazi scientist from escalating the cold war into nuclear armageddon.
Or a super soldier fighting a Nazi super soldier whose face burned off and turned into a red skull because he is trying to take over the world with the same aforementioned cosmic cube.
Iron Man is probably the only one of those movies that I think could be classified as "not comic book-y," but even in that one there are aspects.
Nolan's Batman movies fit the "not comic book-y" category the best.
But if by comic book-y you mean they don't try to make the film believable or serious and it comes off goofy, then I see what you're saying; I would just define comic book-y differently.
There are certain comic book tropes that, in my mind, shape whether something is "comic book-y." Some of those tropes can work in movies if they're done right ("the secret history of fill in the blank" in X-Men: First Class, "the villain and the hero are essentially the same, but with different values" in Cap, "nameless cosmic threat of the week bringing together an unlikely group of heroes" in the avengers, etc). But one tropes that would make a movie TOO comic book-y is "No one stays dead." That would cross a line and break the suspension of disbelief (which is stretched pretty thin in the Avengers, but done so well that you barely notice).
By the way, I made up the names of all those comic book tropes - in case you couldn't tell.
Except no one stays dead. I'm pretty sure that's a real one.
Zombipanda
My Boom-Boom's mostly gay
The way it should be handled is this.
Make a movie. Take the tropes that match the style and tone of the movie. But don't try to make a "comic book movie". Look at the character and try to translate it into the language of film.
It might be tautly shot crime thriller (The Dark Knight or Heat with Batman) or Indiana Jones serial action-adventure (Captain America, uh, more or less) but there's a dangerous trend of treating "superheroes" as a genre, and frankly, it became boring a long time ago. Embrace the aspects of the genre that match up to a movie rather than trying to shoehorn a script into the "comic book" category. I thought the first Iron Man was very ingrained as a cookie-cutter comic book movie, it just happened to have clever actors.
Make a movie. Take the tropes that match the style and tone of the movie. But don't try to make a "comic book movie". Look at the character and try to translate it into the language of film.
It might be tautly shot crime thriller (The Dark Knight or Heat with Batman) or Indiana Jones serial action-adventure (Captain America, uh, more or less) but there's a dangerous trend of treating "superheroes" as a genre, and frankly, it became boring a long time ago. Embrace the aspects of the genre that match up to a movie rather than trying to shoehorn a script into the "comic book" category. I thought the first Iron Man was very ingrained as a cookie-cutter comic book movie, it just happened to have clever actors.
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Captain Canuck said:
That's what I mean. Stuff like Magneto's magnet machine in X-Men; its just dumb comic book science. I can accept a guy getting bitten by a spider and getting spider powers because it's not dumb science. Of course it is impossible but it's not poorly done and there's a certain mystery about it that makes it believable in that setting.
DARKKNIGHT
Well-Known Member
I disagree. It's all dumb comic book science. By that I don't mean that it's stupid, only that the 'science' of comic books almost always has very little basis in reality. Radioactive spiders, gamma rays, kryptonite, etc, etc. The difference between your two examples is that the radioactive spiders have been a part of the character for decades. If Magneto making a magnet machine was a huge, well-known story in the history of X-Men comics, I don't think you would have as hard a time accepting it.
But, it all depends on how someone defines "comic booky". It's such a broad term that different people could conceptualize it very differently.
The thing about the Avengers, is that while it does embrace many "comic booky" elements, there are other things it changes because they would look silly on screen. This is true of the entire Marvel Films. After all you don't see Captain America running around with red pirate books and white wings coming off his helmet. I think there's a fine line between staying true to the source material and adapting it for the consumption by the general public. Some things found in comic books would seem ridiculous on a live action screen ... after all they are too different mediums. But whatever.
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Look, I don't have any grand thesis on this. It's just an opinion. The machine was hokey. You turn it on and it blankets the area with a magnetic field. It's cheap.
ProjectX2
Don't expect me to take you with me when I go to s
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I think whether something is "comic booky" or not depends more on the execution rather than the idea. I agree with E that the first X-Men is hokey and comic booky, but not as a result of Magneto's machine: the dialogue and acting are pretty bad and the whole thing feels very simplistic. But look at X-Men 2: it is a vast improvement over the first, especially in these two areas, and it feels like the source material has been treated more seriously (even though the same people are involved) and has resulted in a much better film.
A lot of ideas can be hokey (Zombipanda has pointed out how silly most of Batman Begins is) but it's how they're executed that really matters.
A lot of ideas can be hokey (Zombipanda has pointed out how silly most of Batman Begins is) but it's how they're executed that really matters.
Zombipanda
My Boom-Boom's mostly gay
I think by and large the second movie in a superhero franchise is generally better than the first. I'd attribute it to the feeling (be it among the writers or the producers or the director) that the character and universe really needs to be "explained" and it ends up coming across as belabored.
ProjectX2 said:
Have I?
ProjectX2
Don't expect me to take you with me when I go to s
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Didn't you? Someone was rambling about the vaporising machine.
Friday
Well-Known Member
I don't know if i've done it here but i've let off a couple of rants about how each of nolans Batman movies have an incedibly stupid machine at the end of them that, at least in my eyes, weaken the movie by hurting the ... not the realism but the reality of the film. They don't fit to me.
Captain Canuck
The poster formerly known as captaincanuck65
yeah, this. It's all about making a fun/serious movie that we can get into and care about so we can suspend our disbelief.
Well keep in mind that, with the exception of Blade, X-Men was the very first of the new super hero movies. When it came out it was awesome (at least I thought so), but the genre has matured a lot since then. But yeah, I agree the magneto machine was silly.
what machine in Dark Knight? The boat bombs?
DARKKNIGHT
Well-Known Member
huh?
I've never had a problem with any of the machines at the end of the Nolan Batman films, but I can understand why some people might. I think it has less to do with them being dumb ideas as it is that they are movies very much based in the real world. The machines (water vaporizer, cell phone sonar thing) are a half-step removed from reality, so they feel a bit out of place and jarring. Even though they haven't bothered me before, the earthquake machine in TDKR has me a bit worried...mainly because the CGI looks off.
You said "dumb science". By this I assumed you meant unrealistic science.
Zombipanda
My Boom-Boom's mostly gay
Oh yeah. I probably was. I know I've criticized the subtext of The Dark Knight. The attempts at philosophy and ethics at the heart of it are asinine, but damned if it isn't just a greatly paced succession of brilliant action sequences.
Captain Canuck
The poster formerly known as captaincanuck65
Captain Canuck said:
DARKKNIGHT said:
Oh right, the cell phone sonar. I forgot about that.
By the way, a mod should probably merge the recent posts from this thread with the other avengers thread and close this thread.
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Zombipanda
My Boom-Boom's mostly gay
More precisely, they undermine any attempts at embedding serious themes in the film by turning the conflict into ham-fisted threats.
In Begins, it's ostensibly a question of whether vigilante justice can be justified and where the ethical line stands. It's hard to take that argument seriously when the moral event horizon is a vaporizer that makes everyone trip on bad acid.
In TDK, it's an extension of the same thing: where the balance lies between public security and personal freedoms. And the echo-surveillance device suggests a conclusion of "It's okay to violate personal rights just as long as the situation is totes srs."
Honestly, I didn't find the tech all that implausible. It was more that the technology was used as heavy handed devices to turn the intrinsic arguments into pulp-fisted, black and white conflicts. It's the same problem I have with the X-Men, to be honest. The whole civil rights comparison really doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny, so the solution is to make anyone who thinks the presence of walking, talking WMD's might require some form of oversight into a murderous, straw man bigot.
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