Comic Book and Superhero movie & TV discussion.

[Jesse]

Had a good time with this today. I've been getting back into DC comics a little recently with the Absolute line and the 52 Pick-up podcast so I was ready to relive my childhood (loved Green Lantern for some reason as a teen).

Thought it was about as decent as I could hope for from a modern superhero movie. Casting was great, a bunch of the jokes were funny, and it was nice and colourful and the story hung together. None of the flying and punching did much for me, but when they broke the usual approach with the Green Lantern constructs and Mr. Terrific's big fight scene it drew me back in. In its defense, I also get bored of the flying and punching in the comics too.

I'd be up for a sequel (and I'd really love a World's Finest with Robert Pattinson too, not holding my breath)

[Mr_Danger]

Glad to see the positive word of mouth this is getting. Some of the reviews that aired on the negative side seemed to fault it for being too comic-y or something. I think it was the Empire one that seemed to see Lex Luther as being a bit of a 2d villain fuelled on pettiness and spite as being a bad thing. I’m no comic nerd but isn’t that exactly what you want from Lex Luther?

[Mr_Danger]

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Edited July 12, 2025 by Mr_Danger

[Merzbow]

I feel like there's two camps of dislikers I've been seeing around, the psycho Snyder nonces and people who wanted it to be like The Batman. It does look fun though and I might actually break my run of like a decade of not any seeing DC stuff in the cinema.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

7 hours ago, Jazzy G said:

I loved it. Had tears in my eyes several times throughout. It wasn't perfect, but it's the best Superman movie in decades. I almost walked right back into the cinema for the next showing. I'm looking forward to Fantastic Four, but Superman is one of my earliest superhero menories and this did so much to evoke the feelings I had back then so they've got a heck of a bar to overcome. 

Echo this bar the tears bit, it was a Superman film done right, bright, action packed and with heart. Not heard of the actor playing Mr Terrific before but I thought he was bad ass and Nicholas Hoult made for a decent Luthor

[davertfnewman]

9 hours ago, Merzbow said:

I feel like there's two camps of dislikers I've been seeing around, the psycho Snyder nonces and people who wanted it to be like The Batman. It does look fun though and I might actually break my run of like a decade of not any seeing DC stuff in the cinema.

I'm in the third camp, which doesn't dislike Zack Snyder (and loved Watchmen) and was happy for it to be different from The Batman (which I also loved). I just found it predictable, antagonistic, unnecessarily mean, too heavily layered with personal drama without any establishment of circumstances. The best parts of it were Krypto and Eve.

[DavidB6937]

Would love to hear more of your thoughts @davertfnewman as I came out of it feeling really positive, so interesting to hear a completely different perspective. Especially the antagonistic and mean parts.

[davertfnewman]

Spoiler

It got my back up at first with the Clark/Lois "interview", in which they break up ("I told you I'm not a relationship kind of person" - when? Did we have to read a prequel novel first or are you just banking on everyone coming in with assumed knowledge? If not, is this an army brat thing?). Then you have the parents, who are presented as nice but the most unintelligent, backwards hicks you could find. Even with superpowers, Clark would have to work from a major deficit to pursue a big city career as a journalist of note.

Lex hates Superman - I'll allow for that, but it's not justified by much more than petty jealousy, which is admitted. Lex has a girlfriend called Eve, who's presented as a ditz but in actual fact is one of the smartest people in the film because she's engaging in corporate espionage by taking selfies of herself in front of evidence unbeknown to others. She's in love with Jimmy Olsen - he has zero respect for her and has her listed in his phone as Mutant Toes ("Your feet look like you dropped prawn cocktail over them for some reason."). She's willing to endanger herself to get info out about Lex's dealings with a quasi-European dictator who looks like Ken Dodd, yet he's begrudging spending a weekend with her.

Superman's looking after Krypto, who at the end of the movie is revealed to be the pet of Supergirl, who probably should just be called Partygirl and will be the star of her own obnoxious movie. Apparently a scene was removed after testing where Ultraman (who's a mix of Crime Syndicate Ultraman and Bizarro) kicked him. In all honesty, Krypto probably would've put up more of a fight than Superman. I liked Krypto, who's pretty much the Tazmanian Devil, more than Superman, although I was expecting a shot of dog shit in the Fortress of Solitude, with Robot #4 having to pick it up while reminding us that he doesn't feel bad about it because he doesn't feel anything.

Luthor has a shapeshifting girl working for him called Engineer (a lift from Stormwatch, which in this movie is repurposed as Planetwatch). She's pretty decent, although she has a pointless moment where she does half a back flip just so she can reform turning around to face someone. Her "ending" comes when Superman lifts her and Ultraman into orbit and then missiles them back down to Earth, although it pretty much is through the floors of a building, so like when someone gets thrown off a scaffold, but lands through a table first rather than hitting the concrete. We're told she's "unconscious, but there's a heartbeat", then zero follow-up showing her being apprehended or escaping or whatever.

I could go on, but I just found it an irritating, predictable, obnoxious and mean-spirited movie. The Lois and Clark element should be that she fancies Superman, but she falls for Clark. However, Superman's as insecure as any human, Clark or otherwise, you could meet, with it basically excused as "Just the way I am". I couldn't get into it one bit.

 

[JLM]

I didn’t have the same overriding sentiment (as per my previous post I liked the movie quite a bit!) but I definitely agree on the 

Spoiler

Jimmy and Eve stuff. I think her ending should have at least been to reject both Jimmy and Lex. Lex gets some comeuppance as she’s instrumental in taking him down, but Jimmy completely gets away with being such a dick to her. I don’t think they brought that around to a conclusion that made up for how badly she was treated by everyone in the movie.
 

Also the “ahh everyone was a prick to her because they thought she was stupid but she was actually quite clever!” twist. That sort of ending does imply a little bit that it would have been OK for them to be total shits to her if she WAS as stupid as they thought. This is also a bit mean for a movie which has a good amount of heart in other areas. 
 

It’s a bit like all the movies where the message is “oh they were all being racist to this guy but joke’s on them because he’s actually a genius/has healing powers/is a better person than all of them/has secretly been able to speak their language the whole time etc.” So  the message gets muddied and becomes “don’t be racist because the person might actually be super cool, making your racism INCORRECT!” Instead of “don’t be racist to your fellow human beings in general”. 

 

Edited July 14, 2025 by JLM

[johnnyboy]

The 70s aesthetic with modern tech in Superman really worked for me.

Pretty decent overall.

[RedTwoster]

Agree with everyone about Jimmy and his story. 

That said, what a film. I absolutely loved it, James Gunn really knows how to write a superhero movie.

He made the right choice to de-emphasise America. I don’t have the stomach for a ‘rah-rah America’ movie these days, and this was a film that wasn’t afraid to point out the country’s immoralities.

At the same time, it was bright, fun, heartfelt and unafraid to embrace camp, all while having an important message at its core.

I’m really looking forward to seeing where the DCU goes - even though Super-Man was funny, it didn’t feel like a Marvel film and I didn’t want it to - I’m a bit fed up of that tone of superhero movie. Great stuff.

[DavidB6937]

Really excited for Fantastic Four on Thursday evening. Nice IMAX showing. Hopefully a free poster. Lots of Pedro Pascal.

Should be a decent and mostly isolated movie. I'll enjoy it before they get dragged into everything else.

[johnnyboy]

I cannot give an objective opinion on The Fantastic Four: First Steps because the mid-century retro futurism aesthetic is so far up my street that I would have happily watched them walking around their flat for two hours and maybe popping to the shops.  In fact I was mildly disappointed when they started having battles rather than showing me their kitchen cabinets in greater detail.

Spoiler

I didn't spot any of the alleged cameos from past Fantastic Foursters.

 

Edited July 24, 2025 by johnnyboy

[DavidB6937]

Yeah I really loved it. The whole vibe was so perfect that I would happily stay in that type of world forever.

[JLM]

I enjoyed the world a lot. Lovely seeing Julia Garner get the Marvel money, she’s brilliant, was happy with both her and Galactus.

I was hoping to love the chemistry between the four a bit more than I did. It was there, but I was hoping my cockles would be warmer than they ended up being. Good, but I enjoyed both Thunderbolts and Superman more.