Back on track (sorry I’m kind of making this a JJ thread) I have to admit they really show the creepiness and downright horror of mind-controlling someone and to be controlled in such a manner.
Because Iron Fist is a white guy. Always has been.
For what it’s worth, Iron Fist’s supporting cast often includes Colleen Wing, a private eye of Asian ancestry (as well as her dad, a well-off professor). I’m hoping she makes it into the series.
The underrepresentation of Asian and others in movies is best served in another thread.
Let’s stop it here and start another thread and link to this one if you’d like.
Mod Hat Off
Master of None is an excellent show.
Carry on. 
Of course, in order to get a SAG-AFTRA card, you have to already be able to show acting work or be associated with an affiliated union. SAG has kind of a history of discrimination, tacitly condoned racial segregation, and participated in the Hollywood blacklist (unlike Actors’ Equity Association). They’ve tried to get away from that image but the lack of Asian actors in major roles with only rare exceptions would tend to indicate that they aren’t doing that much or well about the issue. Anaamika’s observation that New York City–one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet–should show a more representative spread of actors is entirely on point; having an almost ethnically homogenous cast is more anachronistic than everyone walking around talking on Motorola brick phones. Of course, other popular shows set in the same locale, like, say, Friends or How I Met Your Mother are even worse in this regard, insofar as the entire cast and the vast majority of side characters and even incidential roles are so pasty white they may as well just stepped off the boat circa 1770.
Stranger
Stranger On A Train: I just said to drop this tangent. Look at the post directly above yours.
Drop it, please.
Sorry, I was writing that post on my phone before your instruction was posted.
I do think it is a perfectly valid point of discussion about why viewers may or may not be interested in the films in question (and one brought into the thread by the o.p. herself) but I’ll defer to a different thread on the topic.
Stranger
I had skipped “Man of Steel” back when it was released, but decided I might as well cross it off the list, so I saw it last month.
Wow. I mean, it had some decent ideas, but it was mostly horrible.
And Jesus, the end battle between Superman and Zod? How many human beings died in that battle? Has to be thousands, if not more. You can’t show dozens of skyscrapers collapsing and not realize that hundreds or thousands of people are dying each time a skyscraper collapses. It would be OK if you want to deal with the implications of this, that Superman has to fight Zod even at the cost of thousands and thousands of people dying. But no. Superman has time to save Lois Lane, but nobody else. Arg, what a horrible movie.
And I just couldn’t buy Cavill as Superman. He would have made a decent Batman. But not Superman. See, the thing about Superman is that he doesn’t have to wrestle with his conscience. He makes the right choices, always. Because if he doesn’t, then his ordinary human frailties would make him a monster.
So take the scene where poor Clark is getting bullied by some redneck. He takes the punches, but then goes outside and trashes the redneck’s truck. Wow, Clark really showed him! Except Superman doesn’t have the ego need to trash a human’s truck. The nerds who watch the movie want to trash the bully’s truck, but that’s because they don’t have the power to crush the bully’s skull with a flick of a finger. Clark doesn’t need to crush the bully’s truck to prove to himself that he’s better than the bully, he can just smile as the bully punches him and insults him. And if he’s petty enough to crush the bully’s truck, he’s petty enough to smash the bully through a wall. Since he wouldn’t be Superman if he crushes people who annoy him into bloody paste, he’d be a monster, he can’t be the kind of guy who crushes an annoying person’s truck.
Arg. So many things wrong with this movie.
A thought about this whole superheroes-fighting-each-other concept, meanwhile: It’s nothing new. The ancient Greeks did basically the same thing in the Trojan War. You’ve got all these folks with powers beyond those of mere mortals, and everyone wonders what would happen if they all got down to fighting each other. So you take everyone you’ve got in the continuity, and figure out some excuse for each and every one of them to be on one side or the other, making sure you’re maintaining some reasonable balance when doing so (thus, for instance, Ares and Athena must be on opposite sides because we can’t have the two war-gods working together, and Scarlet Witch and Vision must be on opposite sides because they’re the only ones who can neutralize each other). And the fans have always loved it.
The parallels between Greek mythology and comic book universes are really quite striking. Same sorts of themes, same shared universe with multiple creators, same retcons, same arguments over who’s cooler than who. And there’s stuff like in the Iliad Artemis goes down to the battle and gets her ass kicked by Diomedes, and it’s basically Doctor Doom getting his ass kicked by Squirrel Girl.
Maaaan, if they go this route I will be SO PISSED that he’s not Kamala Kahn.
With a current 35% Rotten at Rotten Tomatoes I can safely cross Bats V Supes off my must-see list. Which is great, because there are so many good movies I’ve never seen and life is short.
SALON.COM: “In Batman v Superman, the only winner is Marvel.”
Nice. Yeah, this movie is getting savaged online.
The most glaring comments, well, besides how confusing the plot apparently is, is a lack of humor.
Betting on Zack Snyder vs. a combination of Jon Favreau and Joss Whedon for the initial Marvel “statement movies” that established the full MCU says so much.
Use of humor both to shape the tone and keep the workings of the plot moving, but also to give the characters more relate-ability. Seems so obvious, but dialing in the right amount of humor is critical.
I saw some critic tweeted this: “Post-Spectre I rewatched Licence To Kill to remind myself how much better Bond could be. Post-Batman v Superman, I’m watching Batman & Robin.”
Awww, poo. Sorry, that is my fault, I just thought it was part of natural thread drift. 
I would argue that Superman doesn’t always do the right thing, however - he gets blinded by love just as much as anyone. Which movie was it that he saved Lois and didn’t save any of the other people who had died? Superman II?
Anyway, I honestly just don’t know if you can sell Superman right now. I’m not sure how to make him better but it’s hard to look at a “perfect” being and enjoy watching him, at all. I know they tried to put flaws in him, a creature that always does the right thing is extremely boring, but the flaw is love, and that’s a little corny. And that’s coming from a person who usually loves corny!
I like that in Man of Steel* - this is a bit more of a ‘human’ clark/superman - in that he’s ultimately doing his best not to be in the limelight. (Dad Kent really did a number on him)
I like the concept of his ‘coming to power’ would cause fear and trepidation and that also it might change his own viewpoint on his role , - and that atleast one ‘super’ (Bats) apparently tries to take him to task for the destruction in Metropolis and embodies our fear of what Supes could do (and in atleast one trailer scene, certainly appears to be doing).
I am truly hoping that, like deadpool, most of the teaser/trailers are for the first bits of the actual movie and that we move beyond that pretty quickly.
I feear now, with the reviews, that I will regret pre-purchasinng tickets for this - I wasn’t entirely excited about it based on trailers, but I also know the trailers are only one aspect of the film, so I still hold out hope.
- don’t take that wrong, there are a few elements of MoS that are actually quite interesting, but overall, I can’t watch that film, and I won’t buy it - its just not that compelling - compare this to CA: FA which seems to get better with each re-watching, and it was a very simple origin story *
Huh.
You know, it’s been pretty obvious from the trailers and commercials why Batman is so concerned about Superman – but it also seems like Superman is the one who’s getting all up in Batman’s business, rather than vice versa.
Could it be that Superman, following the events that made a lot of people look at him warily, is going after Batman primarily for good publicity? That he wants to reassure the general public and look like a darned nice guy, and so is gunning for the high-profile scary criminal not out of principle but out of LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!
That’d be weird but interesting. It’d even tie the whole Appear-Before-Congress thing in with the DARK KNIGHT RETURNS plot: You want the public to be okay with you? Well, then, do this publicity stunt for the gent in the White House!
Well, I can think of three really obvious reasons why that might happen:
- You may eventually run out of ideas and simply become repetitive, churning out duplicates of previous movies. A particular well can become exhausted. For a really dramatic example, look at the precipitous dropoff in quality from “The Fellowship of the Ring,” which was a sensational movie, to “The Battle of the Five Armies,” which was dreadful.
As a film franchise moves along, the central point of the movie - be it thematic, commercial, or whatever - can be lost, and cause a disconnect between the film’s point and reason for success, or can become repetitive. Look no further than Star Wars. The film series was already getting repetitive by its third installment. Films four through six (the prequels) tried to go in a different direction but created a disconnect between their theme, whatever it was, as the movies’ original appeal, which was that they were fun, rollicking space adventures. When they went back to fun with “The Force Awakens” they were immediately, and with some justification, criticized for being repetitive.
-
Massive financial success rewards the rapid production of movies, not necessarily a focus on quality. There have been somewhere between four and fifty thousand “Transformers” movies, all of them apparently quite terrible, but they keep being produced because they’re guaranteed moneymakers. The sheer volume of MCU movies - they are averaging one every five months and plan to increase the volume to one every four months, all produced by the same person - is going to make it difficult to maintain a high level of quality.
-
If the movies continue making money irrespective of quality, there will be a decreasing incentive to make the movies good. The first batch of MCU products were certainly very good, but the mediocre ones make money too, and products like the “Daredevil” TV show are often flatly terrible but still draw an audience. To most of the people involved in making a movie or TV show, “success” means money, not critical acclaim. And understandably so; people need to make money.
This doesn’t prove they WILL suck, but there are reasons why they could.