Ww84

[LaZodiac]

Honestly? I dont get the issue. I mean, why the heck is ANYONE taking cinemasins seriously as a source for determining whats "wrong" with movies? From the first time I watched it I knew it for what it was. An amusing joke not to be taken seriously. The closest they get to "seriously" critiquing is poking fun at tropes. Half their "plot holes" are blatantly not, and all in all, they arent reviewing the movie like say, nostalgia critic, just doing fast edits and funny comments. You might as well take HISHE as your source of movie reviewing.

Then congrats, you aren't one of the many folk who do take it as gospel. You'd be surprised at how many people see this and think it is all legitimate.

And on that note; what they do is definitely a review. If you go through an entire film pointing out every thing "wrong" with it, jokes and "intentionally bad" takes and all... you are doing a review. A ****ty one, but still a review.

[Ramza00]

Honestly? I dont get the issue. I mean, why the heck is ANYONE taking cinemasins seriously as a source for determining whats "wrong" with movies? From the first time I watched it I knew it for what it was. An amusing joke not to be taken seriously. The closest they get to "seriously" critiquing is poking fun at tropes. Half their "plot holes" are blatantly not, and all in all, they arent reviewing the movie like say, nostalgia critic, just doing fast edits and funny comments. You might as well take HISHE as your source of movie reviewing.

Why are you calling out my younger self?

Honestly this is about the good faith vs bad faith I was mentioning earlier.

• If you assume CinemaSins is doing this in good faith, then you see it as an endeavor where they are trying to build a better movie via their project. Putting a dream into the universe via ones Endeavors.
• If you assume CinemaSins is doing it via bad faith, or just as a way to get money you see the same endeavors as just time wasters or perhaps as actively harmful.

How we deal with meaning and nihilism in this world is a thing we have to ask ourselves often. For example this arc in My Hero Academia involving X and Y. ^{[edits out my own thoughts for it would be spoilers for anime people and it is like 3 layers removed from the original conversation]}

I say it is the cultural time for the right amount of being earnest in this contradictory and Dionysian age.

[HolyDraconus]

How we deal with meaning and nihilism in this world is a thing we have to ask ourselves often. For example this arc in My Hero Academia involving X and Y. ^{[edits out my own thoughts for it would be spoilers for anime people and it is like 3 layers removed from the original conversation]}

Gasp! How dare you spoil My Hero Academia for me! Its ruined for me now!!!

[Trafalgar]

I should've liked this movie. I like superhero movies and I like Wonder Woman as a character. I liked the first Wonder Woman movie. Patty Jenkins is a decent director (Monster is an excellent movie). Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, and Pedro Pascal are actors I like.

But I found myself not losing interest in the movie the longer I watched it. I ended up shutting it off about 2/3 of the way through the movie and finishing it on another night.

In my opinion, the biggest issue was the writing. I suspect they started with a series of action scenes they wanted (A fight on military trucks on a desert highway, WW in golden armor, a fight in a 80s shopping mall, etc) and then tried to come up with a bare bones plot that connected the action scenes together.

I feel like SW:RoS had a similiar problem. It seems that studios are focusing their efforts on creating a series of spectacles without creating a good story or solid dialogue.

[Dr.Samurai]

Spoiler: False God

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Yes. If you're going to write about it, you should know something about it. And many authors do this because it adds a level of credibility and quality to their writing that is plainly visible. Now, JK may not have thought Potter would blow up like it did when she wrote it, and just not given two kicks, but that's....not a good excuse.


Yes. Because if your ultimate argument is "I don't give a hoot." Well then the complaints about your character, or JK's, are justified. Mistakes are understandable, but as mistakes they should be corrected. If you make a mistake and just say "Well, I don't care." then that's all on you, because people should care. Because not caring perpetuates the acceptability of such things.


If you don't see the harm, you don't understand the issue. If you didn't see the racism, ignorance is an acceptable excuse...once. If you knew, saw, and still don't care well...that's on you. And if your response to that is "I'm okay with that." Then understand some people may not be okay with you. As people are thusly not okay with JK.

Well, the holier-than-thou tone of your post really put me off lol.

I will say this... neither you, or anyone else has demonstrated the point you're asserting. My "ultimate argument" is not that I don't care. It's that you haven't shown me something to care about. You have asserted that the choice JK made is harmful and perpetuates racism, but you haven't shown it. Further, you expect people to simply believe your assertions AND change their opinion or behavior on the strength of the assertion alone. And when they don't, you reply with judgements and ultimatums of the kind that your post is riddled with.

This is not how the world works in general. You have to earn changing other peoples' minds and behavior. Simply complaining about something and claiming bad things are happening is not enough. Telling people that they have one "get out of jail free" card if they make a "mistake" is meaningless if you can't show a mistake has been made. Or if you don't have anything to substantiate that you are some sort of authority to determine who can be forgiven and excused or who is doomed for all time.

Well, it seems CinemaSins really hurt people in this thread . Try out CinemaWins for something more positive/thoughtful .

@Trafalgar - re:writing

As an example of the weird writing... the golden armor could have been Diana's attempt to fight the bad guys and save the world while clinging to her wish and losing her super powers and invulnerability. The armor could have protected her and perhaps boosted her physical abilities while she was powerless. Once she realized she needed to rescind her wish to defeat Cheetah and Maxwell Lord, she could shed the armor in a triumphant moment where she overcomes her own wants and desires to have the power to save the world.

But instead, the story order is mixed. She loses her powers, rescinds her wish and regains her powers, learns how to fly, puts the armor on and it is immediately pointless (no need for wings, no need for protection).

[Trafalgar]

@Trafalgar - re:writing

As an example of the weird writing... the golden armor could have been Diana's attempt to fight the bad guys and save the world while clinging to her wish and losing her super powers and invulnerability. The armor could have protected her and perhaps boosted her physical abilities while she was powerless. Once she realized she needed to rescind her wish to defeat Cheetah and Maxwell Lord, she could shed the armor in a triumphant moment where she overcomes her own wants and desires to have the power to save the world.

But instead, the story order is mixed. She loses her powers, rescinds her wish and regains her powers, learns how to fly, puts the armor on and it is immediately pointless (no need for wings, no need for protection).

Normally, I think it is a pointless mental exercise to rewrite a movie, but this makes too much sense. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something in an early draft that got revised for some weird reason.

[Mordar]

My wife and I finally watched this last night. Both of us thought it was better than the things we'd heard about it...but that is faint praise.

The biggest issues we had seemed to be pacing and hand-waving/inconsistencies.

Pacing is the harder of the two for me to tease out, as I understand the (a?) logic behind keeping all of the scenes they presented in the film, but it needed to be at least 30 minutes shorter. We needed less time on Maxwell Lord and Dr. Minerva, and more effective use of the time on them as well. But every scene I want to remove is tied to something else.

The scene with the investor and the scene with the ex-oil magnate for instance - I really would want them consolidated into one, but the investor scene is where he learns his plan works and thus has the confidence to try the tactic with a much more powerful and supported individual. The desert scene is necessary because they wanted to do the invisible jet/fireworks sequence *and* the APC chase sequence where we learn Diana can impart supernatural resilience to small children she grabs while swinging like Spider-Man ('cause the landing on the road and rolling over on them would have hurt them badly). And the invisible jet/fireworks sequence is key to her learning how to fly. And her learning to fly...well, you get it.

The fashion show? Gender reversal from the first movie. Still, could have given us 3 or 4 minutes back. The White House, perhaps could have gotten a few minutes shorter - and removed the stupidly reductionist "I wish for more nukes" bit which betrays a foundational stereotyping of the person supposedly sitting in that particular White House. But where else? Trim the bit of Diana running through the woods to the big race? Cut out Dr. Minerva's dress shopping? Relay the info dump on the stone's origins as a straight result of Dr. Minerva's research? Each of these things is tied to other reasons for keeping them in, though.

...and you can't do this Minerva/Cheetah without Maxwell Lord, and both are necessary for the lesson and resolution...ugh.

The hand-waving and inconsistencies have been hit already - how does Steve know how to fly a jet? Why is the jet accessible by an archeology head? Why is it on a runway and ready for takeoff? Each question begs more. Why were there so many 70s staches? Why was there so little 80s music? How can you effectively run a black market business in (sometimes large) stolen antiquities from the third level of a popular mall? Why did Dr. Minerva wear non-80s Nikes when they made a point of showing Steve's originals? Why did the Lasso extend to any necessary length?

I expected much better. Still, better than any other DC theatrical release of the last 20 years other than WW.

- M

[Clertar]

Still, better than any other DC theatrical release of the last 20 years other than WW.

- M

Just out of curiosity, are you counting or not Nolan's Batman trilogy?

[Mordar]

Just out of curiosity, are you counting or not Nolan's Batman trilogy?

I am including them, and I know this is a can of worms...they were better than the end of the previous Batman series, and Heath Ledger offered a pretty compelling performance, but other than that I think there were a litany of plot issues and character issues. They were well-shot and visually pleasing at times, and I'll watch Morgan Freeman as virtually any character...but overall, didn't love them. They would be at worst three of the next five films on the list, though. Maybe even three of three.

- M

[The Glyphstone]

Were you not a fan of Birds of Prey? From the little I remember hearing about it people seemed to enjoy The Amazing Adventures of Harley Quinn And Some Other Female Superheroes.

[Thales]

My parents and I watched it at my father's insistence, and I was certainly not a fan. (For the record, my father was quite disappointed, but my mother liked it a bit more, once she was willing to turn her brain off and go with it.)

Spoiler

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Contrary to many people here, I actually liked the fish-out-of-water stuff with Steve (though definitely the body-snatching was very sketchy and had literally no reason to be in the movie, and if for some reason you insist on it being in there, it should have been handled very differently). If you're making your movie a period piece, go with it! Have Steve experiencing more than 80s fashion and the DC Metro. Play up him learning about the moon landing: that's one of the great accomplishments of mankind so let us see it through the eyes of someone who recognizes the scale of it! The more human-scale stuff is important to make these movies work.

I've read a lot of wishes-gone-awry plots (including the original Monkey's Paw), and they all have logical issues. But this one was particularly bad on that front. First of all, there was no pattern to the drawbacks. Magic is a fine plot element, but it has its own logic to this. Corrupted wishes are generally ironically so, but the drawbacks here weren't remotely connected. Nor was there a pattern to them: Diana's powers, Barbara's empathy, Maxwell's health? The actual granting of the wishes veered between weirdly crappy (Steve taking someone's body instead of popping into existence out of nothing) and weirdly benevolent (Maxwell really should have turned into a rock, but then of course the movie would have ended — maybe have his health suffering be gradual petrification?). Once Maxwell gets the stone's powers, the drawbacks go from odd to essentially separate wishes entirely. I'm not quite sure why Maxwell was able to take a mulligan on the price he sought from the Egyptian oil guy — if the price is his oil, that's on you for not knowing he didn't have any. Too bad, jerk genie, you've had one put over you. Maxwell seemed to become addicted to granting wishes, but why this was the case was never clear. Perhaps the stone had a consciousness and it was under a compulsion to grant wishes? Besides Maxwell's original wish for control over wish-granting, which was clever but worded in a way such that it had an obvious way to go catastrophically wrong, no one tries to do anything smart with the wishes. Maxwell doesn't try to fix his health until the end, he for some reason still works on his business despite having essentially infinite power, and Steve doesn't take advantage of the apparent fact that Maxwell can't help but grant wishes (which granted he probably doesn't know about) when he's grappling Maxwell in the White House. Perhaps remove Maxwell's wish to become the stone, and just have him put it on the end of a scepter and have to work harder to get useful wishes out of people since he no longer gets a bonus wish in determining the drawback? Fits his "Lord" name better too.

For things to be fixed by renouncing wishes is bizarre. Diana's wish is straightforwardly enough renounced, since it didn't make a physical difference in the world. But what about the cup of coffee the Smithsonian guy wished for? Is he now mildly dehydrated? I heard one of the wishes in the wishstorm near the end say "I wish I was dead". Well, that person won't be renouncing that wish. In fact, it really strains credulity that everyone who made a wish renounced it or even was capable of renouncing it. Barbara, for instance, had her empathy and humanity magically removed in return for superpowers she was enjoying. Why would she be willing to renounce her wish? And even granting that they somehow did, that doesn't fix the problem! There's still a nuclear war going on, and it makes no sense that only wish-granted missiles got launched. Why would they all disappear?

The whole plot with Barbara was very poorly motivated and thought out. First of all, having your empathy magically drained is not the same thing as character development! But that's kind of necessary, because otherwise her motivation is very weak. I think the movie would have been better served by continuing the relationship between her and Maxwell. Sure, he was just using her to get at the stone, but Barbara is naïve and not used to people acting like they like her — perhaps have her defend Maxwell because she really thinks there's a connection between them. (Heck, if you're going for a really happy ending, have it actually work; give Alistair a new mom!) That also explains why she actively helps Maxwell with his scheme which runs against her interests instead of just keeping him alive but, say, locked in a cage. I like the earlier suggestion to add a bit of romantic jealousy in there too; let Barbara have been interested in Diana!

There was also a lot of carelessness on smaller parts of the plotting. After Diana renounces her wish, her powers are restored. We see her unleashed, running from near the White House lawn, lassoing onto a monument, then onto a passing jet, catapulting herself into the clouds. There, she glides, impossibly fast and impossibly easily. When her momentum flags, she lassos onto the clouds and onto the very lightning! Her divine power, spectacularly realized. After several minutes of this phantasmagoria, she lands adroitly back at her apartment. In the Watergate. Which is about a mile from where she started. Now, I couldn't do it myself, but I think a skilled but normal human sprinter could get from the exact location she starts that scene to the Watergate in less time than that scene took. This is like Superman using his eye beams to heat a frozen meal, but with astonishing production values and dramatic ambience. (Of course, the thing she got at her apartment, the armor, made no difference in the movie, but at least it looked cool.) And once she got there, why go in and confront the villain instead of smashing the big broadcast disk? If he used wish power to protect it, sure, but show that!

I will say I liked the post-credits scene. It's a good way to write the real-world history of the franchise in, and tie up a minor loose end.

[Tyndmyr]

Were you not a fan of Birds of Prey? From the little I remember hearing about it people seemed to enjoy The Amazing Adventures of Harley Quinn And Some Other Female Superheroes.

Birds of Prey is one of the few superhero films I was unable to even finish. It's truly terrible in a way that isn't even funny to mock. I could rip on it a great deal, I think. However, I'd rather rewatch Suicide Squad from start to finish than get through the last chunk of it to be able to bash it completely.

As to the 80s thing...that's a fair point. There's a lot of fantastic 80s music and stuff there. That could have been really amazing.

[Psyren]

*takes a wiiiiiiiide step around the JK Rowling stuff*

If you watch Cinemasins, you are watching youtube wrong as well as watching movies wrong.

There's a "right" way to watch YouTube? And movies? News to me...

OT: I enjoyed Birds of Prey despite its many flaws; I didn't enjoy WW84 nearly as much. A lot of that is expectations - the bar for a Harley Quinn movie was pretty low for me, given her last outing, whereas WW1 set the bar much higher. The other is that while I go into anything starring Harley expecting questionable behavior and an unreliable protagonist, it's a lot more jarring when Diana is the focus.