I’m sorry you have had to work for shitty bosses. I would quit if I were unlucky enough to work for a boss who thought he could condescend to me the way Whedon did to Fisher or Gadot.
Did I say she did?
Relevant to your assinine idea that misogyny in Hollywood only consists of asking for sex.
Weinstein was the impetus for #MeToo becoming a well-known phenomenon, that’s why I mentioned him. Doesn’t mean it was only about sexual assaults.
The argument was already made, and won, with Charisma Carpenter’s pregnancy.
Whedon is a sexist dick, posing as a female ally.
Clearly.
I didn’t think it was worth answering.
I still don’t, since I don’t think you can be seriously wondering if there’s a difference between a kid’s cartoon and a movie.
So which is it? Is Cyborg unknown, or popular enough that his cartoon catchphrase has to be included?
Projecting…
CN explicitly considers them kid’s shows - in fact, TT was pushed specifically because “the six and seven and eight-year-olds were not gelling with the Justice League and some of the more of the fanboy shows”, but plenty of adults enjoy them, too (or at least watch them when their kids do). But they are not adult shows. They are silly (TTG much more so than TT).
Because he was a Teen Titan at the time, not in the JL. Big whoop. You know what series overlapped with the JL animated one on CN? The Teen Titans.
Sure, but what does that matter? The audience craves catchphrases. Apparently.
…this isn’t in disagreement with anything I said. Whether someone actually was difficult to work with or not is an entirely different story.
I’m sorry, but did you just cite a bunch of gossip-clickbait listicles? You do know how much of a bad reputation, especially Screenrant, have for posting utter nonsense? Just read what they have to say about Sharon Stone for goodness sakes.
But when you read about what actually happened behind the scenes in the first one, on how she was betrayed by the director in one of the most iconic scenes in the film, do you blame her?
Those lists are meaningless drivel. Gossip. The exact thing I was talking about.
You are literally responding to a post where I wrote:
How on earth would you think I was claiming “that the females on this list are really all angels, but just refused to sleep with the bosses”? Did you not read the words that I posted?
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Hollywood who have been problematic, who aren’t “angels.” But I have no time for listicles from gossip-clickbait sites that repeat rumours that are often dropped for the exact reasons outlined in my original cites.
It is obvious that you have no idea what being an actor is about our anything about the collaborative processes that take place between actors and directors. Your constant disparagement of them as essentially disposable meat puppets who just read words off of a page says much more about you than it does about them.
Acting well is really hard. I’ve only done it a little (acting, not acting well) but there is a lot of creativity required to make a role work. Actors aren’t robots you can program. If someone went to Van Gogh and said, “Paint a starry sky, make sure you see the moon, oh and it should be overlooking a town,” you wouldn’t give the bulk of the credit to the person who made the suggestion. Acting is much the same; you can be given lines, be given queues as to where to stand, when to time your movements, what to do, but your delivery, your mannerisms, the part that makes the character and makes the scene have to come from you.
Plus, franchise are different. Whedon may be directing Wonder Woman now, but he won’t be directly Wonder Woman’s next film, or the one after that - and yet, she has to be the same character in all of them. Gal Gadot needs to make sure that Wonder Woman is fundamentally the same person she was in the past and the same person she would be in the future. In a way, the franchise actors are their characters’ “custodians”, far more than they would be in a non-franchise film, especially when the franchise lacks a manager like Kevin Feige to keep a strong hand on the tiller.
Neither of us think that’s true. It’s not about catchphrases per se, it’s about connecting the film to other popular incarnations of these characters. Audience like the animated Cyborg, and WB was desperate to attach some of that good will to their dour and poorly received live action movies. Having him use the catchphrase from the cartoon is one fairly benign way to do that. Having Superman say “Up, Up and Away,” wouldn’t have the same effect, because almost no one alive has first-hand memories of the Superman radio serial.
…this reminds me of a story that J. Michael Straczynski once told about the late, great Andreas Katsulas.
The scene in question if you haven’t seen it.
Stracynski notoriously didn’t allow the actors to improvise lines on the set of Babylon 5 because the series was conceived as one-long-novel-for-television and scripts were peppered with lines that’s meaning might not be revealed until many episodes (or even years) later.
And the episodes (Convictions) A-Plot wasn’t a particularly interesting episode, wasn’t that tied to the story arc, and almost nobody outside of Babylon 5 fandom know who directed the episode (It was Mike Vejar).
But every Babylon 5 fan remembers that scene. It was a great script. But Katsulas and Jurasik elevated that moment and took it in a direction that even the writer didn’t know was possible.
And that’s the thing you seem to be missing. Movies and television are enormously complex machines and almost every part of that production is important. I’ve only dabbled in the industry, I made a couple of (really bad) short films for film school a couple of years ago and what struck me from that experience was that any production, even the bad ones, that make it onto screen are a minor miracle. A simple scene of a couple of characters walking down a street, having a conversation, walking up to a house, opening the door, going inside and sitting down could take half a day to film, maybe even longer. You’ve got wardrobe and make up and lighting and sound and the camera crew and the assistants and often they are all making major decisions independent of the director because thats what you’ve got to do to get a movie made.
So the thought that actors are simply supposed to “recite the lines that they are given, in the way that the director wants them recited” ignores pretty much everything that makes hollywood what it is. Film and television are collaborative works. This doesn’t mean that production should grind to a halt every time an actor thinks that a line delivery should be done differently. But context is important.
And when we look at what happened with Justice League that context is clear. The story we were lead to believe at the time was that Synder was pulling back from the production to spend time with his family after the death of his daughter, and the impression we got was that Whedon was “hand picked” and approved by Snyder to take over the film.
But that wasn’t what happened. At the highest level there were worries about the direction Snyder was taking the franchise, and rightfully so IMHO. I don’t like the Snyderverse. I’ve tried watching all the films in the franchise but never managed to finish any of them.
And so they bought in people to “babysit” the production.
Again, nothing really wrong with this, and Synder agreed.
Whedon was bought onto the production not at the request of Snyder, but because Johns bought him in to do rewrites. But he didn’t only do rewrites, he was advising during reshoots and even directing scenes while Synder was still attached to the production.
I don’t think we can ignore all of this when talking about individual incidents like the “Booyah” moment. This was a major shift in the direction of the production. It was essentially a hostile takeover. I’m sure that many of us have had this happen in real life: you had a boss who was always honest, respectful and collaborative, but didn’t always get the results the bosses wanted so they fired him and replaced him with a cocky arsehole who doesn’t give a fuck.
Whedon is the cocky arsehole who didn’t give a fuck and I don’t blame the cast and crew of Justice League for pushing back on him at all. We can’t ignore Whedon’s history and pattern of abusive behaviour before this movie and pretend that he didn’t act the very same way on set here. Context is everything. And the conversation between Fisher and Whedon didn’t happen in a vacuum.
I’m in awe of what Feige has done with the MCU since they essentially handed him the keys to do whatever he wanted.
I have an acting degree and a resume of credits in both theater and film, and the phenomenal level of grotesque and judgmental ignorance being displayed in this thread about the art and craft of being a professional actor is absolutely infuriating.
It’s disheartening that we have to say this on the 'Dope, but… if you don’t actually know what you’re talking about, e.g. if you think actors are interchangeable meat puppets who contribute nothing to a production except as story delivery systems for the actual creative leaders of the show, then maybe you should stop talking.
The thread title might give you a hint on where to start. Then maybe try reading some of the thread you are participating in. Hint: the thread is called “Whedon’s history of creating toxic and hostile work environments.” Plenty of cites have already been provided.
The phrase is still very attached to Superman, even if he doesn’t actually say it anymore. You just have to look at the title of one of the YT trailers for the new Superman & Lois series to see that.
But yes, Supes and WW no longer use their old catchphrases. You seem to think it’s because they’re not needed for iconic characters. I think it’s because many people think in this context, they’re lame and infantilizing. Or, at best, meme-fodder (“I’m Batman”, anyone?)
Anyone watching the movie because they were familiar with cartoon Cyborg is already sold on at least watching the movie. As for what they think about it afterwards - giving this Cyborg the cartoon catchphrase isn’t going to remind them how much they like that one, it’s going to have them make comparisons between how shitty this rewritten characterization is compared to that one. Ask me how I know?
I’m a big fan of both the TT and TTG incarnations. This one left me cold. Part of that was the terrible dehumanizing overly-busy Transformers-like CGI they chose for him, but part of it was how he was written. Not a fan of the Flash in this, either. And I’m not against character rewrites - Aquaman was a huge favourite for me.
What thread do you think you’re posting in? Did you read the OP?
It means no one but you read that and was under the illusion they were talking about inventing the actual character of Cyborg. They were clearly talking about developing the characterization of Cyborg in this movie.
Our culture is steeped in unspoken, unconscious bigotry. It’s a stretch to conclude that racism is not an implicit factor in interactions between white and black people. We live in a racist, white supremacist society. Every black person faced with a white person is facing institutional and cultural bigotry.
Of course it can. What kind of world do you think you’re living in? That’s practically in the definition of a racist culture.
Nothing if you isolate it that way. Fisher had plenty of reasons why, based on the history of the development of the character and the nature and relationship to other characters. Racism is about context.
Who are you to tell someone who feels demeaned that E has not actually been demeaned?
Different context.
This is a cop-out. We aren’t just fighting racists, sexists, and rapists. We are fighting abuse of all kind.
There is a lot to learn in this thread about acting and the complex relationships in a performance. Anyone who sits here saying an actor’s job is just to “do what E’s told” needs to sit back and listen.
I think you’re confusing me with another poster - I never said the iconic characters didn’t need them, I just said that they don’t have them. I also don’t think they’re lame or infantilizing at all - although I suspect Zack Snyder probably feels that way. Which, I suppose, goes to your “in this context” comment, but that’s sort of the point: WB was trying as hard as they could, within the limits of the footage that had already been shot, to change the context of the film from what Snyder was trying to create, to something that an audience might actually want to watch.
And, to be clear, it absolutely failed - the movie they put in theaters was awful, and no amount of cribbing from more successful iterations of these characters would have fixed that. I personally find the idea that the studio spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on the issue of whether a character should say “Booyah” or not, while the rest of the production is such an obvious, unsalvageable trash fire, to be kind of hilarious.
The man in charge of the studio at the time, Kevin Tsujihara, came to the job after successfully running a chain of theme parks. That tells you everything you need to know about how he approached the role.
Snyder is a no talent hack and his work in the DCEU is an Abomination Unto Nuggan. It’s no wonder TPTB brought in the architect of Marvel’s major blockbuster to that point. They were hoping that something could be done to save the mess Snyder created with all their money.
