I’d be happy. so, looks like you’re wrong.
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To each their own opinion, right? 
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The hordes of fans who have been calling on WB to release the movie since its cancelation would strongly beg to differ
And now it appears we have Lex:
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Not a bad actor, but not who i would have chosen
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JIMMY OLSEN LIVES!!!
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Based on his past work do not be surprised if Gunn makes Jimmy the villain.
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Snyder already killed Jimmy off after a minute on-screen in Bat vs. Supes, so I expect Jimmy gets better treatment in this. But being the villain was the best thing that ever happened to Scrappy Doo, so maybe Gunn will make Jimmy take a Snapper Carr turn.
Superman was Mr. Zaslov’s priority all along, so I hope Mr. Gunn is equally enthused about this project is a big Superman fan
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What if Jimmy is the office prankster
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Yep, which to me doesn’t make sense.
Just like jumping to Damian as Robin doesn’t make sense either.
While I disagree with the batgod cultist and fanatics that want Dick, then Babs, then Jason, then Tim, then the other randos I also don’t pay attention to, and then the Demon Spawn introduced, I don’t think we need that, but we need (a) movies without a lot of exposition, (b) movies that can appeal to normies but also to comic book fans so at least some relationship to canon, and (c) Bruce to have some history - as he should be at least 40 if we are going to get a truly competent Demon Spawn.
I personally have minimal interest in a Batman and Robin movie in the first place, but I definitely have less interest in a Hit Girl wannabee retelling but with a ten year old boy, so he should be at least a teenager or not be as highly competent and murder obsessed, even if played for laughs, as the Demon Spawn was often depicted originally (and which is the impression that most normies have of his character today, even notwithstanding Super Sons).
My point was that Fillion, who did voice work for Hal in the past, could have been a good Hal in the Returns days. I doubt he would have been well cast to replace Ryan Reynolds, but he could have been a good Hal with a Bale Bats, Routh as Superman, Reynolds as Barry Allen like he originally wanted to play a comedic Flash (although that would be Wally, not Barry, for normies), not the GL role he got saddled with and whomever else they cast to fill out the League.
Supposedly, Gunn tweeted that he wants to put Fillion in the bowl cut; it will probably be some shaving and a wig, or potentially sketchy CGI, since he has a TV show with far more episodes, and he’s also going to be twice the age of Corenswet. It feels like a two minute joke for several hundred thousand dollars of WB money, that won’t mean anything in the scheme of the DCU that is being developed, at the expense of having a Hal, or an Alan Scott, or even better, an Abin Sur or other alien Lantern.
I know you were not replying to me, and I was replying, in passing to someone else, but to continue the daisy chain of discussion!
- I don’t want to come across as suggesting or saying Gunn is not competent. I didn’t want out of GotG thinking it was poorly or technically badly made, my chief complaint was that it went on far too long (the Warlock stuff could all have been cut down and the Gamora/Peter stuff could all have been chopped since I don’t care and frankly, given that they won’t have an MCU future, it’s pointless to invest the energy in their relationship for a movie that more than likely won’t have a further sequel, for example. Even if you cared for the relationship or want to defend it, I’m sure everyone would agree the movie could have been shorter.
What I am saying and do want to say about Gunn, is that I’m not confident with Gunn (or, for that matter, Safran) as architects for the DCU (not that Hamada, or Cereal Lord or the Cult Leader, for that matter, were any better) can keep some of the types of impulses that scriptwriters make, that aren’t necessarily the best impulses to making a good, or interesting movie for the widest possible audience, when they are directing their own material.
- As I said, I do think Gunn is competent, either as a director OR as a scriptwriter, but to me, Peacemaker is already an example of what I mean when I say that Gunn should not be allowed to direct as well as be the sole or main writing voice, on any one DC project.
Peacemaker was hurt by this, yes - admittedly - on a much smaller level and with far more screen time which certainly helped to both constrain and minimize the effect, and in the series, Gunn was constricted in that - in addition to wearing the two hats of Director and Screenplay Writer - he was not also wearing the third hat of Suit.
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If you’re talking about Guardians 3, then certainly not everyone. I absolutely loved that movie and appreciated that they took a lot of time to properly wrap up the trilogy
Just in your opinion. I never felt like Gunn was too influential on the show and I know plenty of fans agree
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That might have worked if returns had been better
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Pal, everything anyone posts here is ‘our opinion.’ Both of your responses are essentially that.
Gunn wrote and conceived of the characterization of Peacemaker, added elements and created (and made them distinct) characters for the series, and also got to direct (and for television, being both the director and show runner, as Gunn was here, essentially makes you God In Disguise as far as that show goes, absent a strong suit or network/streaming exec who overr rules, which did not really happen much here).
It’s great that you loved the third movie and ‘appreciated’ that ‘a lot of time’ was spent, but the by and large majority opinion generally is that movies have become too long - is it ‘everyone’ saying this? No, and there are fans that will, for example, defend Oppenheimer or Barbie or Napoleon or whatever else as ‘not long enough’ but one of those Barbie fans can and will complain that Oppenheimer was too long and one of those Napoleon fans will complain that Tenent was too long, etc. etc.
The point is that very large numbers of actual theater goers will say, generically, that movies are too long and even if you ask a specific defender of a specifically called out long movie, they will say they preferred seeing that movie at home so they could pause the movie for a snack break or a bathroom break, etc. etc.
I’m talking about in theater experiences here.
And just to save you, yes, I agree - some stuff here is ‘my opinion,’ however some of the facts I am referring to here are publicly published opinion polling, by theater chains, trade and industry publications, general interest news sites or general polling, that you can find on line and via your own research, over the past few years, but most particularly post-pandemic lock downs, since a lot of research has gone into the entire why aren’t cinemas/theaters fully back studies and analysis.
I suspect that Gunn wants to introduce the idea that some principals in his DCU will be a little less opaque as to their heroism - not necessarily an anti-hero in the vein the Rock went with Black Adam or the excesses of Snyder. I mean, he portrayed both Batman as acting violent enough to cause either significant serious injury or death in BvS and had Superman literally and unequivocally kill another sentient being in MoS. I suspect we might actually have the conversation that explains it, at least on some level, hopefully not a purely surface one, on the eventual The Authority film. I’ve only seen the first 15-20 minutes of Gunn’s version of TSS, but he’s got blood on Waller’s hand, so it’s a question of whether you consider her a villain or not - and a bit more significant, how do most audience members take her? I mean, SHIELD definitely has murdered people in the MCU, how much of that rubbed off on say Nick Fury? Two of the Avengers admitted on screen to having blood on their hands and one can’t even say that all that death was while he was under the influence of some McGuffin.
I don’t dislike casting Hoult in the next stage of DC films, but I think it’s a waste of Hoult in the DCU to have him be (a) a villain and (b) specifically Lex Luthor.
I think recognizable IP that isn’t just Batgod was the DISCO priority, since they mistakenly felt it was a money printing thing and would rescue them from the debt they incurred to make the Joint Venture Happen. I’m not sure Gunn is as enthusiastic about Superman nor is a big Superman fan, per se.
That’s always going to be true, which is why I harp on a script and equally would say that an additional strong voice is needed with the Suits in charge of an IP, and while Singer didn’t pen the script for Returns, it was partially based on his ‘story idea by’ concepts and those were his specific collaborators, versus say the Green Lantern script being one thing, then someone being hired to direct and making their own changes to the script and even have chunks re-written, as was the case with that film.
Barbie is an excellent example of clueless suits and the notes they provided on the screen play and production - albeit we only have Gerwig’s say so on much of that. However, if you spend any time on industry trades or director’s commentary track, etc., we have plenty of evidence of even storied, award winning directors and producers acknowledging that a note, comment or other contribution from a studio executive actually improved a picture. The Kid Stays in the Picture and the recent streaming series about the making of the Godfather are good examples of that.
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And yet it felt like and still feels like you’re treating a lot of your opinions as objective fact, and that’s what I take issue w/
Where are you getting this impression from? Just this year, Guardians 3 and Oppenheimer were huge successes at the box office despite being 2.5 and 3 hours long, respectively. I know plenty of people prefer shorter movies and/or being able to watch them at home, but the box office success of longer movies like those proves there’s still very much a market for them. If a vast majority of moviegoers really were still opposed to that, they would’ve made a lot less money
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The highest grossing movies of all time are typically very long, so there is indeed a giant appetite for them.
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Been following what Gunn’s said about Superman since he was attached and pleasantly surprised at how much of a fan he is.
^Superman 78’ being one of his top Comic Book Movies is a good sign
He talks here about his hesitancy to accept the original offer of Superman years ago (when he chose The Suicide Squad instead). The take, the casting process, etc. (Timestamped)
Bonus tweet about his excitement
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That always bothered me. Killing off Jimmy Olsen was a bad move and so was making him a CIA agent. I write it off by headcanoning that he was just a CIA agent using Jimmy’s name and info as a cover identity and that there’s an actual Jimmy Olsen in the DCEU’s Daily Planet.
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I’d prefer to see an authentic modern live-action Dick Grayson Robin in a Batman movie but there is a fix to immediately jumping to Damien. Maybe there is an established Bat Family in The Brave and the Bold. Like, we’ll get appearances or at least acknowledgements of Dick Grayson as Nightwing, Tim as Red Robin, etc.
I’m with you there. Gunn can tell a good-enough story with good-enough characters. The problem is he only makes James Gunn movies. He’ll pay lip service to the comics but none of his Marvel or DC projects are overly concerned with BEING Marvel or DC projects. They’re James Gunn movies with James Gunn tropes (which I find excessive and irritating at this point) dressed up as Marvel/DC properties.
It’s like he thinks all he has to do is drop a few deep-cut comic references and the job’s done. “Hey guys! He mentioned Bat-Mite and said he stans Batman! LOL!” The Guardians movies could slide because they’re even obscure to Marvel fans but his problems really showed in Peacemaker.
If he got another couple of movies/shows off to the side of a new slate of DC projects, that’s one thing but I think it was a spectacularly bad choice to put him in charge of the DC Universe itself and saddle him with the writing and directing duties of a Superman film that will launch said universe.
He has no reason whatsoever to show restraint now. I fear he’ll make Legacy chock full of his Gunn-isms and I’m just not excited to see that in a Superman movie. But I’m also in the minority here. Most people will eat it up.
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I’m not going to get into a back and forth with you. Opinions are saying, for example, I hated Movie X, or saying I absolutely loved Movie B.
If I am writing in response to you or anyone else and making a statement like;
large numbers of actual theater goers will say, generically, that movies are too long and … will say they preferred seeing that movie at home so they could pause … for a snack break or a bathroom break
Then you can rest assured that these are NOT opinions but are based on, as I wrote, industry publications, national surveys, academic research, etc.
I’m not going to spam this thread with a number of links - but the Motion Picture Association annually releases PDFs that you can find and so do academics, that cover things like people who stream versus people who go out to cinemas, and break this down by things like geography, income, education AND also look at factors like the length of movies.
I’m not going to respond further to you on this specific topic, it’s pointless - especially since I was commenting on a response you made to someone else about, as you correctly pointed out, a script no one in the public has seen, and a script that may either be very close to or not close at all to the finished final shooting script. However, anyone can intelligently give an impression based on someone who does have a body of work, including a body of work that makes reference to the character in question here (e.g. Superman) and in particular when that person (e.g. Gunn) has also made public statements about that character (which he has about Superman and about any number of other DC characters).
I’m planning on seeing the movie in theaters on opening weekend, and I saw Peacemaker (well after it dropped and didn’t see the final episode until something like 4-7 weeks after the rest, which is not unusual for me if I get frustrated with something - I finally saw the last two episodes of Lower Deck about three weeks after the series ended and only because it was becoming difficult not to get badly spoiled, and I had been watching that as it dropped; Loki I saw the last three episodes in the same manner, only this time I had been badly spoiled - which I frankly felt no investment about in either direction.
Thanks for the time stamps, I’ll take a look at it when I have more time. I don’t doubt Gunn is excited, I’m sure the money, control and decision making are all pluses, including the opportunity to hire people he likes or wants to work with - all things he wouldn’t necessarily have if he was only going to do this streaming series, or this movie.
I went into Man of Steel with an open enough mind, even given the internet rumors (nothing like the past 3-5 years about anything genre related) at that time, which was also true even as the internet was far more nascent in 2005/2006, as far back as Superman Returns, which I also went into with an open enough mind - and again, saw both of these films on their opening weekend.
One of my concerns with Peacemaker was the butterflies. We already have a couple of villains in DC canon who have that Puppet-Humanity/Parasite quality, or Mind-Control-Humanity/Alien quality, or pure and simple mind control. It could have been Despero with an army of people from his planet, it could have been time traveling people from Titan, with mind-control telepathy, or even Starro spores, even if they had already been used for the LOLZ in his movie, or any number of other villains with these capabilities - without having to come up with, essentially, an OC.
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Yup, I’m with you on all points. Adding to this, I feel that James Gunn’s characters are all just OCs who share the name and sometimes the appearance of their respective Marvel/DC counterparts. I got excited to see Starro in TSS but then it was just a James Gunn monster with the name and appearance of Starro.
Guardians 3 had The High Evolutionary but he was just a James Gunn “evil daddy figure” villain who was a mad scientist. In fact, Gunn even said he used High Evolutionary because he needed a mad scientist type for the movie. He was not interested in adapting High Evolutionary from the comics, despite High Evolutionary having a storied history that was worth adapting to film (Gunn blew any chance of there being an Evolutionary War adaptation in the MCU).
Gunn really eschewed any pretense of caring about the comics in Peacemaker outside of the occasional name-drop to satiate comic fans. It was all just James Gunn characters making James Gunn jokes with a James Gunn plot. It made my brain melt. And this was Gunn with SOME restraint left. He has absolutely no reason whatsoever to show restraint in Legacy because he’s writing it, directing it, AND he’s the literal co-CEO of DC films so he has less oversight than ever before. Legacy could end up being Peacemaker-level nonsense dialed up to eleven.
Can’t wait for his famous “guys, we need to focus” jokes EVERY TEN MINUTES.
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