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Post by the light works on Dec 13, 2015 16:43:36 GMT
saw it last night. it isn't a character I followed, so I came in without any expectations.
the storyline was clear and understandable. despite the obvious impossibility of the shrinking, the details were internally consistent.
overall a good superhero movie.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 13, 2015 21:55:51 GMT
I remember a bit of confusion over the fact that they started with Scott instead of Hank.
However, I understand that this was a conscious decision on the part of the studio in order to avoid the controversy surrounding the Hank character.
(Nutshell: an infamous story arc from a decade or so back had Hank become mentally unstable due to overexposure to the Pym Particles. As part of it, he assaulted Janet. Although this was a one-off incident and it ultimately spurred him to go seek help, to this day some people regard Hank as nothing more than a wife-beater.)
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Post by the light works on Dec 13, 2015 22:11:30 GMT
I remember a bit of confusion over the fact that they started with Scott instead of Hank. However, I understand that this was a conscious decision on the part of the studio in order to avoid the controversy surrounding the Hank character. (Nutshell: an infamous story arc from a decade or so back had Hank become mentally unstable due to overexposure to the Pym Particles. As part of it, he assaulted Janet. Although this was a one-off incident and it ultimately spurred him to go seek help, to this day some people regard Hank as nothing more than a wife-beater.) yes. I remember reading that in the leadup coverage. |
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Ant Man
Dec 19, 2015 2:18:50 GMT
via mobile
Post by oscardeuce on Dec 19, 2015 2:18:50 GMT
I remember a bit of confusion over the fact that they started with Scott instead of Hank. However, I understand that this was a conscious decision on the part of the studio in order to avoid the controversy surrounding the Hank character. (Nutshell: an infamous story arc from a decade or so back had Hank become mentally unstable due to overexposure to the Pym Particles. As part of it, he assaulted Janet. Although this was a one-off incident and it ultimately spurred him to go seek help, to this day some people regard Hank as nothing more than a wife-beater.) yes. I remember reading that in the leadup coverage. The bigger problem was in the overall marvel movie world. Avengers 2 had Stark invent Ultron when it was actually Pym in the comic canon. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 19, 2015 8:06:21 GMT
It made far more sense that the mcu would have Stark create ultron and Vision, as he was an established character. Having Pym invent ultron would have involved introducing someone we'd never heard of or seen, putting then center stage and expecting the audience to care about that character.
The mcu doesn't owe it's success to comic book readers, but to a far wider audience most of whom will never have bought a comic in their life. To give some idea consider that more people saw the last fantastic 4 film, which was a disaster of a film in every regard, than bought the top selling comic of that month.
In other words while the mcu may tip the hat at comic book fans, they can and do change things to better suit a story intended for an audience that doesn't know or care about the source material.
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Post by the light works on Dec 19, 2015 14:19:05 GMT
It made far more sense that the mcu would have Stark create ultron and Vision, as he was an established character. Having Pym invent ultron would have involved introducing someone we'd never heard of or seen, putting then center stage and expecting the audience to care about that character. The mcu doesn't owe it's success to comic book readers, but to a far wider audience most of whom will never have bought a comic in their life. To give some idea consider that more people saw the last fantastic 4 film, which was a disaster of a film in every regard, than bought the top selling comic of that month. In other words while the mcu may tip the hat at comic book fans, they can and do change things to better suit a story intended for an audience that doesn't know or care about the source material. and to be blunt, there are WAY more hours of material in the marvel comics universe than in the marvel cinema universe. |
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Post by silverdragon on Dec 20, 2015 11:39:17 GMT
Not all of it is "Good cinema", "Watchmen", went down as a dud in my books.
"Too adult" ....
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 20, 2015 12:38:02 GMT
Watchmen isn't a marvel property, but is a good example as to why you shouldn't always just copy the source material. The film's plot differed from the comics towards the end, but that ending was much more logical and smoother than the original.
If you look a little more closely at comics you'll realise that there are not actually that many unique plots overall. Take a look at the early fantastic 4 or Spider-Man and you'll realise they ran out of ideas rather quickly, you just don't realise this when going through the comics first time around since there is usually a year or more between what is in essence the exact same story. And of course they do have unique stories cropping up that everyone remembers.
For the FF the most common, and heavily overused, plot involved Reed trying to turn Ben Grimm human again which usually resulted in turning him evil. For Spider-Man it was spidey being badly defeated, getting an inspirational speech from someone (ranging from another hero, to flash Thompson or just flashing back to uncle Ben), then going out and winning next time around.
We forget that 80% of comic stories are the same on some level because we remember those that were not the same. Thus we remember the Iron Man story Daemon in a bottle, Spider-Man's original clone saga, Civil War and the original secret wars because they were new stories. Likewise we remember comics like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and League of extraordinarily gentlemen not because they are automatically good stories but because they were not something we'd seen before. The die hard comic book readers just ignore this, just as they ignore that a lot of what you see in the comics doesn't actually make sense or is just bizarre. Galactus, for example, was originally defeated by the FF threatening him with a McGuffin...the item in question having never been mentioned before and looking as if Reed was holding a cigarette lighter in front of the bad guy.
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Post by silverdragon on Dec 20, 2015 12:48:30 GMT
Problem is, in the past, NEW superhero's were introduced, and that was "Normal".
Now its all preservation, you cant invent new superhero's, because, well, you just cant is all?...
Why not?.
Ironman was new, so was Spidey at some point, so was all of them to be honest.
On TV, we now have a series of the Arrow, and The Flash, and Super-girl.... wait, who?.. who is she?..
And then who are we to decide which Hero deserves better story coverage this year?.
Ant Man as a film... well, its not a major superhero we are used to?.. will it carry?...
Was it too early to go not-quite-super-hero?..
Did Age of Ultron do enough to peek interest?..
I am not Marvel of DC comics, who am I to decide?...
Or should we the viewers even have any vote.
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 20, 2015 14:01:06 GMT
It is not easy to create new superheroes without making them too much like existing characters, not just characters in your world but also from other companies. (Marvel and DC are actually rather forgiving it seems in this regards, at least with each other. Marvel introduced a character called the sentry, who is basically superman).
Even if you do come up with a new character they rarely work, or become popular enough to warrant keeping around that much. So for every squirrelgirl (yes, that is a real marvel character) or punisher you get a motormouth, killpower, spoiler, or razorback. (Also real marvel character's)
Supergirl is a long standing DC character, as most of them are, but like most DC characters isn't that well known outside the comic book fraternity in the US. Let alone known world-wide. She is actually somewhat newer than green arrow and the flash, and did have her own film in the early 80s...which is well worth never seeing.
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Post by the light works on Dec 20, 2015 14:12:23 GMT
it wasn't that bad, but not necessarily good enough to go out of your way to see.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 20, 2015 17:13:39 GMT
Watchmen isn't a marvel property, but is a good example as to why you shouldn't always just copy the source material. The film's plot differed from the comics towards the end, but that ending was much more logical and smoother than the original. Watchmen was originally intended as a deconstruction of the superhero genre by showing what would *really* happen if superheroes existed. Things get even darker when you get the original comics and read the supplementary material that was included in the back of each issue. ...especially when you read about the fate of Dollar Bill (his sponsors insisted upon a cape, which led to his death when it got caught in a revolving door) and the suspected fate of Hooded Justice (it is believed that he killed himself in response to the Red Scare as he was of East German origin). In that sense, it's not entirely fair to compare Watchmen to anything else that's going on. According to a certain parody website (whose name is a violation of the ROC), at one point in time DC policy literally was to re-run stories after a year or two; they honestly believed that the turnover rate among the audience was so high that no one would notice. Problem is, in the past, NEW superhero's were introduced, and that was "Normal". Now its all preservation, you cant invent new superhero's, because, well, you just cant is all?... Why not?. Cast bloat. Past a certain point, so many characters can be introduced into a franchise that there's no way to make effective use of everyone. This was a serious problem during the 1980s and 1990s for Hasbro-based properties, as the "merchandise-driven" nature of lines like Transformers and G. I. Joe meant that a good dozen-plus characters could be added in a given year. And as the history of the Joe and TF fiction from that period shows, the response to this cast bloat was all too often "kill anyone who we think we won't be using for a while, especially if Hasbro doesn't plan to keep shipping the figure to stores." Not only did this generate absurd amounts of fan outrage, it also forced the creative teams into a corner on occasion when a "dead" character proved so popular that they had to figure out how to bring them back to life. One would think that everyone would learn from this, but it hasn't happened. It's still all-too-popular among the industry to wantonly butcher any character(s) deemed "excess", often in mass slaughters. Hasbro, meanwhile, has infamously gone the other way with its merchandise-driven lines, releasing the same [censored] characters again and again, leaving little room for new characters to appear on shelves that are increasingly being clogged with overstock. |
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Post by the light works on Dec 20, 2015 22:26:08 GMT
Watchmen isn't a marvel property, but is a good example as to why you shouldn't always just copy the source material. The film's plot differed from the comics towards the end, but that ending was much more logical and smoother than the original. Watchmen was originally intended as a deconstruction of the superhero genre by showing what would *really* happen if superheroes existed. Things get even darker when you get the original comics and read the supplementary material that was included in the back of each issue. ...especially when you read about the fate of Dollar Bill (his sponsors insisted upon a cape, which led to his death when it got caught in a revolving door) and the suspected fate of Hooded Justice (it is believed that he killed himself in response to the Red Scare as he was of East German origin). In that sense, it's not entirely fair to compare Watchmen to anything else that's going on. According to a certain parody website (whose name is a violation of the ROC), at one point in time DC policy literally was to re-run stories after a year or two; they honestly believed that the turnover rate among the audience was so high that no one would notice. Problem is, in the past, NEW superhero's were introduced, and that was "Normal". Now its all preservation, you cant invent new superhero's, because, well, you just cant is all?... Why not?. Cast bloat. Past a certain point, so many characters can be introduced into a franchise that there's no way to make effective use of everyone. This was a serious problem during the 1980s and 1990s for Hasbro-based properties, as the "merchandise-driven" nature of lines like Transformers and G. I. Joe meant that a good dozen-plus characters could be added in a given year. And as the history of the Joe and TF fiction from that period shows, the response to this cast bloat was all too often "kill anyone who we think we won't be using for a while, especially if Hasbro doesn't plan to keep shipping the figure to stores." Not only did this generate absurd amounts of fan outrage, it also forced the creative teams into a corner on occasion when a "dead" character proved so popular that they had to figure out how to bring them back to life. One would think that everyone would learn from this, but it hasn't happened. It's still all-too-popular among the industry to wantonly butcher any character(s) deemed "excess", often in mass slaughters. Hasbro, meanwhile, has infamously gone the other way with its merchandise-driven lines, releasing the same [censored] characters again and again, leaving little room for new characters to appear on shelves that are increasingly being clogged with overstock. the marvel comics universe really didn't have a lot of problem with cast bloat, as they could simply bounce heroes around in alternate storylines and have them simply go off the radar for periods of time if people seemed to be getting bored with them, and then either reboot them or return them. I think at the peak of his popularity, Spiderman alone had 6 comics titles publishing monthly. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 22, 2015 12:01:40 GMT
A correction in regards watchmen; Hooded Justice was hinted at as being gay and holding some Nazi sympathies or ideals. Both in themselves would be more than enough reason for him to want to avoid investigations into his life - keeping in mind that the red scare expanded to include homophobia, most notably in regards comics.
There are two thoughts about his fate. One, which comes from dialogue and the expanded material in the comic, seems to indicate he was killed by the comedian in retaliation for being beaten up. There is another theory that he actually faked his own death so he could live with another (male) member of the watchmen. This latter theory comes from a single panel, which has two men in the foreground who look like older versions of those two characters.
Cast bloat is a serious problem in comics, and can turn otherwise interesting stories into a confusing mess. Marvel managed to largely avoid this for a long time simply because they were a newer publisher with fewer characters. They were also helped by many of their characters either being solo acts who lacked a sidekick, such as Spider-Man. Or in smaller fixed groups who worked with other characters on rare occasions, or had cameos of other heroes in a panel or two.
Things started to change for marvel in the mid 80s onwards, especially for the avengers and X-Men. In the latter case we ended up with two main X-Men groups, at least three spin off groups and wolverine appearing in so many comics you had to wonder how the guy found time to go to the toilet, let alone sleep. When they tried to do a crossover story with the X-Men, New mutants, avengers and Spider-Man the result was confusing, even though they concentrated on the kid's stories. The original secret wars only worked by keeping the groups small, and by separating the X-Men from the rest of the heroes early on.
Marvels way of dealing with this, when there were so many supers running around it appeared that it was more exceptional not to have powers than have them, was to depower a large number of them in the house of m storyline or just outright kill them off. Most of which has since been undone now.
DC has a much larger roster, and one that is much more established, and for them killing of characters entirely isn't really an option. Thus when the character of the Question died his place was taken over by someone else before his body had time to cool.
You see the same problems with other stories outside comics. One of the reasons why the star trek the next generation films didn't quite work was because there were too many main characters they wanted to fit in. The original series films a lot better since that show had always been more focused on only three characters. Game of Thrones is often found incomprehensible to people due to the frankly absurd number of named characters. (One might also suspect this huge cast is one of the main reasons it takes so long to write the books).
Stories in any medium have to find a balance between having enough characters to allow interesting interactions. But no so many they start to clutter things up. The ideal size for a group seems to be between four and six, beyond that things get a little to complex and you end up having to ignore characters, split the group up (which can be confusing in itself) or start killing people off. The Dragon Lance series (the original books, the rest are not worth considering) both split up the initial group when it grew in size as well as killing off a character and more or less dropping a couple of characters as quickly as possible.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 29, 2015 0:47:58 GMT
I'm with SD on the need for new superheroes if there's ever going to be a chance that I'll get interested in anyone but Batman and Ironman again. And I'm losing interest in Ironman since the whole Avengers thing, because now they've paired him up with the likes of Thor, a "superhero" that fully makes a mockery of Norse mythology. Try pulling a stunt like that with Jesus and see how popular that gets...
Anyway, back to new superheroes.
The ones we know are 40+ years old and still running around with their underpants on the outside. Yes, there have been attempts at updating their costumes ever so slightly, but Superman is still Superman and I've always found the entire premise of his character silly. There have been so many explanations for ups and downs in his superpowers over the years that it's pretty much impossible to figure out an origin story that properly explains what he can and can't do and why, not to mention that not a single one of those explanations make any scientific sense at all with the knowledge we have now (not that it did when he was created, but the general public didn't have as good an understanding of science as they do today).
General concensus now is that Superman has the strength he has and the ability to fly because he comes from the planet Krypton that is many times more massive than Earth and thus has much stronger gravity, making his movements akin to a human walking on a planet with about half the mass of the Moon. If that's the explanation, then how can he move around like the rest of us when he feels like it? No astronaut that's been to the Moon has ever been able to mimic Earth movements while out there, because we're not built for that lower amount of gravity. We can't just tell our muscles to adjust and "walk normally". That's not how reality works, yet "Clark Kent" does it all the time.
And if he did come from a planet with that much mass, why isn't he built like a rhino on steroids? It makes no sense that a being on a planet like that would evolve to look exactly like us, because it's just not the most practical form to have when gravity is X times stronger where you come from. A more reasonable representation of what a creature from a planet like that might look like would probably be the skitters from "Falling Skies". At least they have 6 legs to distribute their weight more evenly.
I might be able to buy the whole being able to see incredibly small things or stuff that's really far away with the naked eye thing, but being able to see through rocks and metals like they're not even there and being able to turn that ability on and off at will? Being able to shoot lasers out of his eyes? Come on! People might have found that stuff interesting in the 1930's, but we're coming up on 2016! The average comic book reader and movie goer knows a lot more about how the world works today than they did 85 years ago!
Ironman and Batman are at least somewhat believable for the simple reason that they use technology and intelligence to be "supers". They weren't turned into supers by accident the same way as the Hulk, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. No aliens or magic was involved either. To me at least, it's much more interesting that these are human beings with flaws and all than magic aliens who are completely invulnerable. Except wait, no, they're not! Because there's this special thing we just had to conjure up to make it all a little more interesting, seeing as having this invulnerable hero fight regular street thugs is getting dull, so now Green Lantern's shields will protect him against everything from knife attacks to nuclear blasts, but bring a herring dipped in chocolate syrup and he's in real trouble!
I'm sorry, but it just seems like some of this crap was written by 9-year olds during a sleepover.
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 29, 2015 2:46:56 GMT
You are wrong about the explanations as to where supermans powers come from.
The explanation that dates back to at least the mid 1970s is that he absorbs sunlight and that is what provides his powers and abilities. The more sunlight he absorbs the more powerful he becomes. This is also used to explain why his power levels can fluctuate.
Go on YouTube and search for deathbattle, Goku vs Superman. They explain the source of his powers when comparing and giving background on the combatants.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 29, 2015 11:50:02 GMT
You are wrong about the explanations as to where supermans powers come from. The explanation that dates back to at least the mid 1970s is that he absorbs sunlight and that is what provides his powers and abilities. The more sunlight he absorbs the more powerful he becomes. This is also used to explain why his power levels can fluctuate. Go on YouTube and search for deathbattle, Goku vs Superman. They explain the source of his powers when comparing and giving background on the combatants. You're partly wrong about me being wrong  superman.wikia.com/wiki/Superman's_Powers_and_Abilities Quote: "As presented in the original 1930's comic strip, Superman's powers were indigenous to those of all Kryptonians. In the origin stories of the comic books and comic strip, Kryptonians were shown using the same powers that Superman would have on Earth. Later, Krypton's larger size and gravity was given as an explanation for the character's powers..." "...Superman's powers were enhanced and added to from the 1940s until the mid-eighties. His powers were explained as a result of two factors: the comparatively weaker gravity of Earth, and the intensity of Earth's yellow sun. As such, Superman's powers were negated if he entered an environment similar to that of Krypton, such as the bottle city of Kandor, or if he was exposed to the solar energy of a red sun..." "...When the Superman character was revised by John Byrne shortly after Crisis on Infinite Earths, it was decided to place restrictions on his abilities. This was designed to make it easier for writers to come up with suitable challenges for the hero, and to eliminate or reduce those powers that had become too sensational or unbelievable for modern audiences. Emphasis was placed on yellow sun energy as a source for the character's powers. Superman's origin story was altered so that his powers developed gradually as his body absorbed yellow sunlight, and stories such as the Final Night series depicted the character gradually losing his powers when deprived of the sun's energy. When Superman's reserves of solar energy were depleted, as in Infinite Crisis or the Death of Superman story arcs, he required an extended period of time under a yellow sun, or some type of artificial solar enhancement in order to recharge." According to Wikipedia (source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Powers_and_abilities), the rewrite that made him fully dependant on energy from a yellow star wasn't made until 1986 by John Byrne. From that Wiki article: "The source of Superman's powers has changed subtly over the course of his history. It was originally stated that Superman's abilities derived from his Kryptonian heritage, which made him eons more evolved than humans. This was soon amended, with the source for the powers now based upon the establishment of Krypton's gravity as having been stronger than that of the Earth. This situation mirrors that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter. As Superman's powers increased, the implication that all Kryptonians had possessed the same abilities became problematic for writers, making it doubtful that a race of such beings could have been wiped out by something as trifling as an exploding planet. In part to counter this, the Superman writers established that Kryptonians, whose native star Rao had been red, possessed superpowers only under the light of a yellow sun." As you can see, his powers and the source of them have changed substantially over the years, but that's not my point. My point is that most of them are completely ridiculous. As I originally stated, if he came from a planet with stronger gravity, how can he move like us when he's here on Earth? Furthermore, if he comes from a planet with a red sun, then his kind would have evolved to withstand the radiation from that type of star. A yellow star gives off more energy than a red one. Looking at Earth biology at large, there isn't a single form of advanced life on our planet that has evolved to withstand radiation levels above what's considered "normal" here on Earth and there's certainly not a single one that suddenly gains superpowers by being exposed to excessive amounts of X-rays, gamma rays and whatnot, yet he comes from a planet with a red star and has no problem flying into the core of a yellow star? Going on that logic, I suppose if he came near a blue supergiant star, he'd be able to rip holes in the fabric of spacetime just by sneezing, right? The whole idea of nuclear radiation as a source of superpowers came about in the 1930's when there wasn't really much knowledge - even in the scientific community - about what radiation would do to living organisms. The idea of nuclear power back then was still so highly theoretical that it could easily be manipulated into fiction without contest. We are now fully aware that being exposed to nuclear radiation doesn't give you superpowers, but actually tears living cells apart and destroys DNA, creating undesirable mutations at best and killing all life at worst, yet we still have the Hulk and Spider-Man running around...? Besides that, Superman can fly around in the vacuum of space without any breathing apparatus, supposedly by holding his breath indefinitely. Let's forget for a moment how utterly ridiculous that is and just focus on the flying around part. What propels him? What source of energy is actually making him move and granting him the ability to change direction at will? In earlier story arcs, he had no problem traversing interstellar space, yet we're supposed to believe that his entire species was wiped out when their planet exploded? Why didn't they all just fly away out into space? Oh, right... The red star thing... They didn't have that ability... So, when Superman "charges his batteries" near a yellow star, he can traverse interstellar space at speeds greater than the speed of light. He can even land on another planet in another solar system in another galaxy, go through a whole story arc there and then return to Earth without ever "depleting his batteries", even though that planet is thousands of lightyears away from the nearest yellow star and he might pass billions of red dwarfs, red giants and other types of stars on his way that supposedly drain him of his energy. I suppose he just warps spacetime, so he's back seconds after he left, nullifying the effects of all those other stars he passes? Look, the idea of nuclear radiation giving people superpowers wasn't just something that seemed like a good idea at the time. It was exciting. It actually inspired some kids to get into science and figure out how this whole radiation thing really worked. Thanks to those people, we now know, so let's honor their work by moving on to the mysteries that plague science today. Let's make a super hero that feeds off dark energy or is constructed purely from dark matter. Something that'll get kids interested in what these things actually are, instead of perpetuating 85 year old myths about things we already understand and keeping superheroes alive whose powers have no scientific basis at all. Except for the people who profit from selling the stories, it's not doing anyone any good. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Apr 27, 2016 15:24:02 GMT
If you look at stories with super powered characters in them you'll realise that gaining those powers from an outside "supernatural" source is nothing new. Hercules is super strong because he's not actually human, but part God...So basically the ancient worlds Superman, including his popularity which in the Roman Empire was probably greater than Supermans some 2000 years later.
Samson got his power from his hair, and likewise had super strength. (In fact looking at the two characters one has to wonder if they might not share the same origin).
These characters also show that there are a limited number of "interesting" powers you can give a hero in a story. More visual effects, such as eye beams, don't seem to have really shown up until stories were being told in part or in whole visually. The exception being lighting, which was reserved for literal Gods like Thor and Zeus, as this was one dramatic power an audience would have seen.
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Post by the light works on Apr 27, 2016 15:51:28 GMT
If you look at stories with super powered characters in them you'll realise that gaining those powers from an outside "supernatural" source is nothing new. Hercules is super strong because he's not actually human, but part God...So basically the ancient worlds Superman, including his popularity which in the Roman Empire was probably greater than Supermans some 2000 years later. Samson got his power from his hair, and likewise had super strength. (In fact looking at the two characters one has to wonder if they might not share the same origin). These characters also show that there are a limited number of "interesting" powers you can give a hero in a story. More visual effects, such as eye beams, don't seem to have really shown up until stories were being told in part or in whole visually. The exception being lighting, which was reserved for literal Gods like Thor and Zeus, as this was one dramatic power an audience would have seen. superheroes are beginning to fall in to the same situation all our other storytelling is falling into. it is getting harder and harder to produce a unique scenario, so people have to either do a good retelling of an existing scenario or go completely bizarre in the quest for something not seen before. |
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