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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Colossus in the Playground
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    Dec 2010
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    Default A new way to do comic book movies.

    I wanted to throw this out there and see what people think of it as an idea. Up till now, most comic book movies tend to follow a similar formula. The origin of the hero and his powers, the formative moments that create his personality, the intro of the iconic bad guy and the big final battle between them. We also see plenty of films recently and semi recently where they wanted to do a story on the villains of various stories and make them more relatable, or seem like they arent really bad after all or whatever. malificent, cruella, joker, you get the gist.

    In this case, i wondered, what would happen if instead of putting together the ensemble cast of heroes to face down the threat or trying to rewrite a character so the villain seems sympathetic, we instead do the opposite. Just as one single example, we cover spidermans villains. Like, each movie is told from their perspective. We see how, I dunno, doc ock, becomes the bad guy he is, his plots and plans for crimes, and then at the end is stopped by spiderman. We then have another film with sandman, one with electro, venom, shocker, etc. Then finally, we have a Sinister Six film. All these bad guys unite to take down their common enemy. We dont try to portray them as anti heroes or as anything but the borderline psychotics and criminals they are, but by making the film be about them instead of the hero, we have a unique cinematic universe that doesnt just feel like doing the same thing as the mcu.

    You could do that for just about any hero really. Most of them have had at least an arc or two where their rogues gallery unites to try and take them down, and most bad guys actually have really interesting characters and backstories to work with.
    "Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
    Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."

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    Traab is yelling everything that I'm thinking already.
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  2. - Top - End - #2
    Titan in the Playground
    Join Date
    Feb 2011

    Default Re: A new way to do comic book movies.

    Originally Posted by Traab
    We see how, I dunno, doc ock, becomes the bad guy he is, his plots and plans for crimes, and then at the end is stopped by spiderman.
    They did this to a degree with Amazing Spider-Man, since there was a fairly detailed exploration of Kurt Connors’ arc--and he made for a surprisingly sympathetic villain, all things considered. And they tried (and failed) to build up the Green Goblin the same way.

    And what you’re outlining is similar to the approach in the first Suicide Squad movie for two of the characters, for whom Batman is a recurring foil and the reason they’re in prison.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Colossus in the Playground
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    Default Re: A new way to do comic book movies.

    Sort of, on suicide squad. My point was to create a cinematic universe based on villains being villains rather than on the heroes out to stop them. So while yes the flashbacks for harley and joker were useful in a "how did we get to here" sort of way, I would have preferred the movie be entirely about that. The creation of the joker, and/or harley quinn and the steps they took to reach the current day, where they are trying to get a bunch of bad guys together to finally take down the bat. That could actually be a great end credit scene for the films too, we see a dark room with joker and harley talking to a group of people who we cant identify as he is convincing them to join his avengers initiative I mean bad guy palooza. Kind of a wink and a nod to the mcu while also providing a hint as to the next film as we see him tell croc to sit down and listen when a hulking figure starts to storm out. Then the next film is crocs story, we go through that, end credit is him knocking a fancy top hat off the guy next to him and we know mad hatter is next. So on and so forth. The final film starting with the complete scene of joker talking to everyone and them all agreeing they need to team up if they want to kill the bat.
    "Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
    Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."

    Quote Originally Posted by Nerd-o-rama View Post
    Traab is yelling everything that I'm thinking already.
    "If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: A new way to do comic book movies.

    Those "sympathetic" takes on villains, I never liked them.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: A new way to do comic book movies.

    My concern is that heroes are popular for a reason. People like to cheer for the good guys/gals trying to make a difference in the world. It would be interesting to follow the madman scheming to steal the world's gold supply or whatever, but if they stay a villain throughout we end up watching someone we want to fail keep succeeding until the end where the hero wins. Put another way, a villain focus spends a lot of time on someone the broad audience is less likely to empathize with.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    PirateCaptain

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    Default Re: A new way to do comic book movies.

    What is the audience supposed to be invested in, if they aren't meant to sympathize with the villain? You mentioned not making the villain sympathetic like what was done in retellings like Maleficent or Joker.

    Would the villain at least be affably evil and charismatic enough for the audience to somewhat like or even root for them? Someone like Hannibal Lecter, or maybe Junes Winfield?

    If not, would ample time still be given to the hero antagonist such that the audience would care enough to root for them instead? That may make the story beats more in line with slasher films, which may not be a terrible concept for a comic book movie.

    Villain protagonist stories can be hard to pull off, and in most of the stories that I saw this successfully done, it had to use one of these "compromises". Personally, if it's just some BAU, drab, evil dude that does iredeemable evil things for about at least 2/3rds of the run-time, I don't see myself caring much for the story.
    Last edited by ben-zayb; 2021-08-06 at 12:56 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by MERC_1 View Post
    I find it very amusing that a very theoretical discussion of how to Optimize Bardic Music, turns into a discussion on how much worms you can eat in 7 minutes.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Clertar's Avatar

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    Default Re: A new way to do comic book movies.

    The problem is that we're getting too many good "straight" superhero stories for average subversive takes to be interesting. The Boys is probably the one exception. If it hadn't been animation, even Invincible would have been meh.
    "Like the old proverb says, if one sees something not right, one must draw out his sword to intervene"

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