Comic book movies II: the Richard Donner cut

[DEF]

1 minute ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

I have just started watching again with my wife who

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Has already sobbed and complained about the title sequence being too much with the children being trafficked. 

But to your spoiler, I don't think 

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It was made light of. I think it was a play on the sterotype on males not being comfortable with female body parts. And it has been something previously covered when Natasha discussed what happened to her prior to meeting the Avengers. I don't think they were trying to make light of the situation, but it will be interesting to see other takes.

But yeah, I feel it is too much for my 8 year old. Personally, I watched way worse at her age, but she is much more sensitive to violence, so I will let her watch it in a few years.

Re my spoiler I got that it was a call back but to me it seemed like a flippant joke about a super serious topic. Which I concede that as a dopey male I may be way off the mark as to how to take it.

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 minute ago, DEF said:

Re my spoiler I got that it was a call back but to me it seemed like a flippant joke about a super serious topic. Which I concede that as a dopey male I may be way off the mark as to how to take it.

Directed by a woman, story by a man and woman and screenplay by a man. Will be interesting to see other takes. None of the reviews I have seen have picked up on it though, but I do get why it's jarring. 

[DEF]

2 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Directed by a woman, story by a man and woman and screenplay by a man. Will be interesting to see other takes. None of the reviews I have seen have picked up on it though, but I do get why it's jarring. 

I maybe making a mountain out of mole hill. I've done a lot of training regarding stuff like that and it really made me uncomfortable.

[HarmonicGenerator]

7 hours ago, DEF said:

I maybe making a mountain out of mole hill. I've done a lot of training regarding stuff like that and it really made me uncomfortable.

My wife had no problem with it, she saw it as

Spoiler

the man in the scene making light of the women by making a period joke, and they shut him up by pointing out the abuse they’ve suffered by men. She didn’t see it as them making light of it, but rather using it as part of the ‘armour’ they’ve built up because of the world they live in, controlled by the types of men who try to control women, or reduce their feelings to “oh, on your period are you”. She may not have thought about it in as much depth as you, and would probably agree with you that such things shouldn’t be made light of, but in the moment and afterward she had no issue.

We both really enjoyed Black Widow. It’s top 10 Marvel for me, because I liked the performances, the action and the fact it didn’t feel like it was actively setting up a bunch of other films. It’s top 3 for my wife, who’s been desperate for a great MCU film that’s centred on women - she’d hoped that would be Captain Marvel but got so bored at that one she left the cinema partway through to go for a walk instead. She loved Black Widow.

Edited July 9, 2021 by HarmonicGenerator

[DEF]

13 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

My wife had no problem with it, she saw it as

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the man in the scene making light of the women by making a period joke, and they shut him up by pointing out the abuse they’ve suffered by men. She didn’t see it as them making light of it, but rather using it as part of the ‘armour’ they’ve built up because of the world they live in, controlled by the types of men who try to control women, or reduce their feelings to “oh, on your period are you”. She may not have thought about it in as much depth as you, and would probably agree with you that such things shouldn’t be made light of, but in the moment and afterward she had no issue.

We both really enjoyed Black Widow. It’s top 10 Marvel for me, because I liked the performances, the action and the fact it didn’t feel like it was actively setting up a bunch of other films. It’s top 3 for my wife, who’s been desperate for a great MCU film that’s centred on women - she’d hoped that would be Captain Marvel but got so bored at that one she wandered out of the cinema. She loved Black Widow.

Can't argue with her assessment of my query. Thanks I think I was a little reactionary.

Re the rest of the film. I really didn't like it and thought it was a mess but will be watching it again to take it in properly. Hopefully I miss judged it because I was really looking forward to it. Right now it's sitting next to Hulk in worst of the MCU to me.

[HarmonicGenerator]

1 hour ago, DEF said:

Can't argue with her assessment of my query. Thanks I think I was a little reactionary.

Re the rest of the film. I really didn't like it and thought it was a mess but will be watching it again to take it in properly. Hopefully I miss judged it because I was really looking forward to it. Right now it's sitting next to Hulk in worst of the MCU to me.

Actually came across some quotes from Cate Shortland via journalist Hanna Flint about the scene in question:

Spoiler

This bit from a Little White Lies article on the subject:

“It was altered by Nicole Holofcener, the wit behind Lovely and Amazing, Please Give and Enough Said, who was brought in to polish up the dialogue. As Shortland recalls, “[Holofcener] said, ‘We don’t take it out – we’ll get the girls to answer it.’ She was punching things up by not diminishing the politically incorrect stuff, but saying, ‘Let’s get the women in there and get their hands dirty, too.’ That was fun, and made the film more robust, and made the girls tough. They didn’t back down or squirm. If you want to talk about this, let’s talk about it.””

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by HarmonicGenerator

[DEF]

2 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Actually came across some quotes from Cate Shortland via journalist Hanna Flint about the scene in question:

  Hide contents

This bit from a Little White Lies article on the subject:

“It was altered by Nicole Holofcener, the wit behind Lovely and Amazing, Please Give and Enough Said, who was brought in to polish up the dialogue. As Shortland recalls, “[Holofcener] said, ‘We don’t take it out – we’ll get the girls to answer it.’ She was punching things up by not diminishing the politically incorrect stuff, but saying, ‘Let’s get the women in there and get their hands dirty, too.’ That was fun, and made the film more robust, and made the girls tough. They didn’t back down or squirm. If you want to talk about this, let’s talk about it.””

 

Tremendous context. Iook forward to watching it again hopefully appropriately through the intended prism without my preconceived notions. 

[Thunderplex]

Spoiler

I thought it was going to be more of a spy/espionage film instead of the revenge movie genre.

Quite low in my rankings of the Marvel movies, but still quite good.

[deathrey]

My thoughts on Black Widow

 

Spoiler

I watched Black Widow yesterday. I thought it was ok but nothing spectacular, glad I didn't pay to see it at the cinema. I enjoyed the beginning of the film, Nstasha has an interesting back story so it was good to see some of that. Generally not a huge fan of Florence Pugh but enjoyed her in this and wouldn't mind seeing her pop up again in something, I heard she has been confirmed for the Hawkeye TV Show, that makes me at least slightly interested in it though the end credit scenes have made itbalighhtly predictable I think. The last 30 minutes or so of the film were really poor though, just a silly plot twist after silly plot twist.

In regards to @DEFcomment. It wasn't offensive, they were trying to make a point that men are quite happy to throw the 'oh, are you on your period you moody cow' comments out there but freak out at the mention of actual female anatomy. Hell, Instagram still auto-edits posts about periods but racist stuff is all good, so it was nice to a men squirm at the mention of fallopian tubes.

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by deathrey

[DEF]

1 hour ago, deathrey said:

 

In regards to @DEFcomment. It wasn't offence, they were trying to make a point that men are quite happy to throw the 'oh, are you on your period you moody cow' comments out there but freak out at the mention of actual female anatomy. Hell, Instagram still auto-edits posts about periods but racist stuff is all good, so it was nice to a men squirm at the mention of fallopian tubes.

 

Thanks. I've still yet to rewatch it. I'm hopeful I warm to it a bit more. 

[Chest Rockwell]

@deathrey - tap the little eye in the top left to create a spoiler box:

[Dai]

Black Widow:

Spoiler

Was going along pretty nicely until the final scene. Thought that was really poor, and was pretty unsatisfying all round. It fell into the Marvel trap of having to have a big climatic end scene, but it didnt deliver at all. The bit where Natasha free falls, catches up with Yelena and puts a parachute on her might just be the stupidest thing Ive ever seen in a Marvel movie. That whole free falling bit, where they were hugging and it looked like they were on solid ground, or when she was on the falling debris, just didnt look right and was ridiculous. They didnt nail the end at all.

 

[chokeout]

Ray Winstone trying to do an accent is worth the ticket price for Black Widow

[Factotum]

As someone who really liked the Marvel films, Black Widow just confirmed to me I don't care anymore about them. Bar Wandavision, I don't really care about the other series. Perhaps it is fatigue but Endgame felt like the end of something not the end of a phase. I would have liked for them to just go cosmic and set stuff in a different place. Maybe then it could have felt refreshing.

On the plus side of Black Widow, David Harbor and Florence Pugh were great and the actual scenes with the family were really good. Unfortunately BLOW UP BLOW UP scenes just kinda spoiled what could have been a nice change of pace. 

[CavemanLynn]

5 minutes ago, Factotum said:

As someone who really liked the Marvel films, Black Widow just confirmed to me I don't care anymore about them. Bar Wandavision, I don't really care about the other series. Perhaps it is fatigue but Endgame felt like the end of something not the end of a phase. I would have liked for them to just go cosmic and set stuff in a different place. Maybe then it could have felt refreshing.

On the plus side of Black Widow, David Harbor and Florence Pugh were great and the actual scenes with the family were really good. Unfortunately BLOW UP BLOW UP scenes just kinda spoiled what could have been a nice change of pace. 

I kind of agree. Having spent a decade with this series up to the current Phase, Marvel had me hooked up until the end of Endgame. There's a definite sense of filler and B-team padding, scrabbling fro the next big franchise, which is kind of ironic considering how the announcement of the first Avengers film was derided initially as Marvel plumbing their depths as they had sold the rights to their strong properties. Their TV has been, with the exception of a couple of sparks, utterly cookie-cutter, albeit with the Volume affording them massively-expensive looking backdrops for their repertory to stand in front of and exposit bot-produced dialogue.

The wife and I got back from our first date night since lockdown started. She didn't much care for the Black Widow character, which, to be fair, is more due to the lack of attention given to her by the film-makers and certainly not Scarlett Johansson's herculean efforts to try to wring subtext for her out of her bit roles. I wasn't particularly invested either, but was up for watching as Widow is one of the Avengers MCU Originals.

All the missus could talk about was a plot hole at the end which seemed to skip some important steps to get to the ending required, but still contradicted something Widow said about family in Endgame apparently. I found it fairly standard 3-star Marvel, but with some REALLY good ideas and scenes, a great cast working with a decent script, so everything zipped along at a decent pace. I can't say I was bored once.

Some of the early scenes with the young girls were genuinely upsetting and topical. The prison break was really cool partly for just how simple and clear it was. The dinner scene was excellent, the family veneer being undercut by something dark, cold and profoundly disturbing. I enjoyed how the male characters were deliberately weaker than the standard big bads. The MCU comedy wasn't intrusive. I thought the way Widow overcame the villain at the end was very smart, keeping with the theme, even if the spectacle hit the rails soon afterwards.

The only character I thought was underserved was Taskmaster, who really didn't get a satisfying explanation (although the shot of the helmet closing down over their eyes was chilling), and whose skillset was hugely undermined by Marvel's god-awful herky-jerky fight camerawork. Seriously. I don't know what it is, whether they're cutting too many frames, zooming too close, but fights between two distinct characters end up just being a mess of limbs, until one gets thrown into a wall, and even then, you have to wait til they show their face to see which one it was. At one point, Taskmaster dropped a knife from one hand into the other, and I swear I saw about four knifes in the air. I'd say it was worse than WWE, if I saw any WWE that wasn't 5 second excerpts on twitter.

So yeah, good but inessential.