#not a big fan of the nolan trilogy

[sp00ky-scary]

Cranes turn, he's so baby girl coded <3

Design rant time !!

Jonathan Cranes backstory is the one where he lived with his great grandma and she terrorised the shit out of him, especially with birds. And he got bullied and all that too, and it all just kinda fucked him up. Eventually he ended up killing both his bullies and his grandmother, the events leading him to pursue psychology and study fear. Also he's from the south, I still dunno if that's ever been canon but I know it's a popular headcanon if it isn't. So yeah he's southern, although he tries to hide his accent (don't ask what state I don't know enough about American States to pick one).

So blah blah blah he moved to Gotham after university and he eventually became a Professor of Psychology, he then used his position to run experiments on "consenting" university students (he tried to argue they agreed to it, he failed to argue his point but he still made an attempt). Over time he developed his fear toxin (he didn't actually use fear toxin for a good few years) and developed the Scarecrow persona. During this time he also got fired from the University but managed to become a psychologist at Arkham Asylum which gave him ample opportunity to run his experiments. Eventually he expanded his experiments, using fear gas on a crowd at a currently undecided event to test it at a larger scale and a diverse range of people instead of just uni students and the mentally ill. However he got caught by Batman and became a patient at Arkham which obviously also got him fired. Nevertheless he continued his experiments although over the years a variety of factors have resulted in the Scarecrow persona almost becoming a second personality (he doesn't have DID just to clarify, this bit is more of a made up disorder on my part that's unique to him because his fear gas/toxin had a big part in its development, he's not immune to his fear stuff and whilst he tries to limit his exposure it's just not possible to avoid it). The best way to describe it is basically as Scarecrow his personality becomes harsher and under extreme circumstances and/or over exposure to his fear gas/toxin, he'll often disassociate and act more violent, mostly just attempting to do what he thinks is best in order to protect himself, it's similar in a way to a fight or flight response type thing I guess. It's basically just his brain attempting to protect him, it's really hard to explain what I'm thinking.

As Jonathan Crane he's reclusive with very few personal connections to other people. he can be cold and lacks empathy (not totally he still experiences a little), and often doesn't display much emotion, despite this he's still somewhat considerate of others. He's skilled in psychology and chemistry, and lacks fighting skills. He's persuasive and his knowledge of psychology makes it quite easy for him to get in other's heads. As Scarecrow very little is different, although he appears to completely lack empathy, has more violent impulses, and is generally more sadistic. Depending on the circumstances he'll either be more controlled and calm (when he chooses to slip into the persona), or he'll be impulsive and reckless, his actions reminiscent of someone doing what they can to survive (when he's forced into the persona, or further into them intended). Anyway at Arkham he gets the straight jacket treatment, also the mask whatever, he's never actually bitten someone they're just scared of him, he doesn't always wear the mask. When he's brought into Arkham he will often be more violent before calming down after a few days, usually they put him in solitary confinement for the first few days.

He began his crimes in his 30s and continues them into his 50s so he's like middle aged. He's aroace, also he's autistic, why? Because I say so, his special interest is fear lmao. Anyway he's close friends with Jervis Tetch and friends with Poison Ivy, friendly with Riddler (they have their issues), other than that he's mostly neutral with the other rogues. Also a note his body is covered in scars from the whole Grandmother terrorizing him with birds thing, the worst of the scars are on his arms and his back. Also he knits as a hobby, I just think that suits him. One more thing, he's 6'6" I just thought y'all should know that, he's stupidly tall. And that is all I have to say about him.

[timbourinedrake]

reread the last few issues of Batgirl (2000) today and then went and saw The Dark Knight at the cinema

the parallels between Cass and Bruce are giving me brainrot. the fight to save everyone no matter who they are, only to end up getting more and more people killed leaving them to question whether there's any point to their moral code at all

[hier--soir]

feb + mar + apr reads

norma jean baker of troy by anne carson [★★★★★]

"Sometimes I think language should cover its own eyes when it speaks."

"Is she human? Are you? Is she a beast out of control? There's so much danger. No human can become just a beast, you plunge beyond - beyond what? Remember Jack the Ripper? 'I'm down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I get buckled,' Jack wrote in a letter to the newspaper, September 18, 1888. He never did get buckled. Of course insane, his mind blooming with it, who could go down that rabbit-hole or unlock such a puzzle as Jack? - but still, the woman! the thing is! the woman has everything and you smile and you take some."

: ̗̀➛ an exploration of the lives and myths of marilyn monroe and helen of troy.

: ̗̀➛ anne carson is there anything you can't do? please email me back. please.

piglet by lottie hazell [★★★★]

"'I want to make some food,' she said. 'For both of us?' he asked. 'No, just for me.'"

: ̗̀➛ one woman, piglet, and the lead up to her wedding in the face of a big confession from her fiancé.

: ̗̀➛ this one slipped beneath my skin and writhed around the spot inside me where i've tucked away all of my food issues.

merciless gods by christos tsiolkas [★★]

"I'm scared that if I let go, not only the room, not only this city, but the whole world will go cold forever."

"Your false gods cannot save you. There is only one God, my God."

: ̗̀➛ short stories that bash you over the head with how awful things and people and places can be. i did not live for this one... particularly wasn't into the one where a guy jerked his dad who has alzheimers off.

foe by iain reid [★★]

"All day. Time keeps moving. I've always thought that was a good thing. Until recently. I'm not so sure now. Is it good? For time to go by fast?"

: ̗̀➛ they want to send junior to space and replace him with a robot that looks and acts and talks exactly like him so his wife has company in his absence.

: ̗̀➛ marriage and trust and complacency, and a guy called terrence who we get reminded over and over has long gorgeous hair.

: ̗̀➛ a little boring for my taste. i had an idea of where it was going pretty early on, and it took a while for me to be proven right. pretty disconcerting!

acts of desperation by megan nolan [★★★★]

"The need was a true and human part of me, but I could feel nothing else of myself to be true or human, and so the need seemed ungodly, an aberration."

: ̗̀➛ a book full of confession, desire, jealousy, violence, and power. messy messy messy!!!! readers procceed with caution.

: ̗̀➛ shout out to everyone who said i should read this - you were right, it is up my alley.

gone girl by gillian flynn [★★★★]

"My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of solving Amy. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings."

: ̗̀➛ i have become a gillian flynn STAN this year, it's true. despite having seen the movie multiple times, i enjoyed reading this, and was delighted to find some differences in the texts [for better and for worse].

: ̗̀➛ nick dunne, big fan of the lie of omission, mama's boy whose mama is dead, i'd like to introduce you to couples therapy.

dead beautiful and life eternal by yvonne woon [reread] [★★★]

: ̗̀➛ the first two books in a paranormal romance trilogy. these kinda bang guys, i can't lie. 15-year-old me was onto something when she decided to keep these instead of donating them. however, they DO have some of the worst book covers i've ever seen, sorry yvonne.

fourth wing by rebecca yarros [★★★]

: ̗̀➛ a romantasy book that has dragons, smut, and twists that you'll see coming from a mile away. pretty fun. recced to me by one man in person and a thousand women on tik tok.

: ̗̀➛ no one who has the thought 'double standards for the win' is using 'whomever' in a casual sentence with the guy she's having sex with.

: ̗̀➛ good enemies to lovers should have actual murder attempts. but maybe that's jusT MY OPINION.

my book rating system is as follows:

★ = i felt pure contempt the entire time

★★ = yeah it's a book

★★★ = i liked it!

★★★★ = good fucking book, damn

★★★★★ = blew my dick clean off and i'll throw a tantrum if everyone i know doesn't also read it and love it

[slavicdollie]

Lin kuei movie headcanons 🎬🗡

As a film girlie I saw another user talking about how the Lin kuei brothers wouldn't really be into the mean girls so it made me think what kind of movies would they be into

Bi-han

I cannot picture this man being into comedies or romance, so if you're down for some 10 ways to lose a guy or the notebook enjoy watching that by yourself.

Comedies,no the only time we see this man crack a smile is when he's saying something snarky to his opponents in the intros.

Likes Quentin Tarantino movies like kill bill and inglorious bastards,not a big fan of pulp fiction because he thinks the characters and plot are silly but he enjoys the martial arts and revenge plots in other Quentin movies.

He will like movies where the main character is problematic but he doesn't understand that the audience isn't supposed to be rooting for them eg,scarface,taxi driver and joker(2019)

I also see him fucking with kung fu panda💀

Kuai liang

Similar to bi-han,can appreciate a good action movie but leans more towards movie's that make you think, such as interstellar, inception,shutter Island and the Truman show.

Definitely a Christopher nolan fan,I can see him liking the dark knight trilogy.

Unlike bi-han he would not put down watching a romance movie.

I see him enjoying 10 things I hate about you.

Unlike bi han he would watch films like scarface and taxi driver but criticize the main characters

Tomas

Opposite of bi han loves romcoms and classics.

I assume Johnny would def give tomas movie recommendations which consist of classics and action.

Doesn't like action as much as the others,I feel like Tomas's views are different from the other two men even though all of them basically grew up around violence Tomas uses films to escape from his real-life experiences.

Enjoys light hearted stuff with drama like Wes Anderson,he enjoys the cinematography of his films.

Not really a movie but he would watch sitcoms.

Enjoys movies like The royale Tenenbaums, the mask,Shrek 2

[finniestoncrane]

Hello Finnie! I was curious, How long have you been a fan of the riddler? What caused you to realize how much you like him as a character? I've been a big fan of him for about nine months now, ever since I first played arkham Asylum! Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful week! 💚

IT GETS YOU DOESN'T IT!? it gets you FAST lmao

my 2 year tumblr anniversary is in july this year, and that will mark 2 years of pining after that beautiful loser lol so i'm fresh to him like you are u-u 💚

SO i thought i hated batman for the longest time because my husband only showed me the nolan trilogy and that's just james bond with pointy ears, so i avoided it like the plague

then the batman came out, and i didn't see it in cinemas either, but my husband did. tiktok kept showing me all these edits of a round headed buffoon and i was like "OK GIRL" and my husband (knowing that i once had a mental breakdown and thought i could solve the zodiac killings) was like "i think you should see this"

head over heels. the theatrics? the drama? the obsession with batman and the dumb ass little riddles?

then i came back to tumblr after a veeeeeeery long break and in the riddler tags people kept talking about arkham riddler, and luckily my husband had played all the games and owned them so he helped me play the asylum and i was like GIDDY whenever eddie was mean to me

each riddler after that was bestowed upon me like a gift from my beloved friends, i think i went soft for gotham riddler first, then zero year(?) and then i just sort of found the others as i went along

i think i have ranked the boys before, but i will say arkham remains my favourite boy, specifically arkham knight. i love me a dishevelled man approaching his mid-50s with a receding hairline and the ability to be a psychosexual nightmare father figure to me lmao

i feel like i'm right in heacanonning him in his 50s, youngest late 40s for arkham knight, it just tracks. like he's had it rough but not that rough, it's natural aging for that range. and i like old men. that's a BIG thing for me >:3 he also has big strong forearms and a nice amount of body hair (he could stand to have more, but it's fine i can cope). i also like dumb nerds with round glasses. AND i love when someone's mean and grumpy. AND AND AND my dad is a terrible person, so my grandparents were my father figure, and my papa used to let me sit in his garage while he worked on making things, so there's a nice bit of nostalgia with arkham riddler, like i know he would smell like my childhood and my safe space (i'm warped but i have a therapist it's fine) 💚💚💚

who are your favourites?? who are all of you guys' favourite riddlers??

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

I think the general idea for Batman (and DC/Marvel in general) canon is basically just the multiverse model. Like the mainline comics get respect for being the first one to exist, and of course you get the obnoxious idiots who whinge about how and deviation from the comics is Bad and Wrong, but otherwise the various different shows and movies are all their own seperate canons. Like BTAS Batman has his own canon, with only Dick and Tim as Robins and ending with him passing the Batman identity to Terry, but no one expects that to impact the comics. (Well, beyond massively popular characters from the other canons like Harley Quinn inevitably showing up in comics too.)

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Batman as a story is big enough and has so many canons that it's really not unusual to be a Batman fan without ever reading the mainline comics.

It's an entry point thing. So take, I don't know, Middle Earth, for example. (Though technically, as broad as that phrasing is, even that isn't accurate because there are other places outside of Middle Earth that are still within the same universe. Don't come at me.)

There's capital C Canon, and that's the original books as penned by J.R.R. Tolkien (though even he dabbled in some metatextual rewriting with the retcon of the Ring between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings but we won't get into THAT right now.) The world of Middle Earth as a whole was created starting in the 1930s as a piece of literature up through J.R.R. Tolkien's death in 1973.

From there, though, it gets trickier. The stories of Middle Earth et al have been transformed and added to in the intervening years. Bakshi created an animated movie in the late 1970s that, because it is told in a different medium, by necessity tells a slightly different story. Is that canon? The live-action trilogies from Peter Jackson in the 2000s and 2010s, those are again different and diverging stories from the books. Are those canon? What about the added materials from Christopher Tolkien, as revised and published from his father's materials by the estate? Are those canon? What about the Amazon Prime television series? The Veggietales movie? They're ALL "Middle Earth" and all likely have functioned as the initial entry point for someone and therefore ARE capital C Canon for someone, but by design or circumstance each displays a different version of events and characterization that will necessarily conflict in small or large ways.

With comic-based canon, it can be even more complicated because Hollywood has a habit of skinning comic properties and dressing up new little blorbos in the names of older comic characters. Even I know the Nolan Batman movies look noooooooooothing like the Silver Age Batman comics and the Birds of Prey Cassandra Cain has no relation at all to any other Canon or canon depiction of her, as far as I'm aware.

So, yes. "Batman as a story is big enough and has so many canons that it's really not unusual to be a Batman fan without ever reading the mainline comics" because defining canon in and of itself is such a HARD and complicated thing to do. And I also understand why folks with a much more simplistic and rigid definition of canon (aka, their own specific, personal entry point to the world and characters) can feel so weird when they encounter someone else with a different definition.

But also I think there's an argument to be made that when the Arbiters Of Official Canon (in this case, DC) have aggressively rebooted and rewritten THEIR OWN CANON so many times without regard for continuity or even inherent internal logic, then there is no absolute authority of Canon or canon and we can all do what we want with the understanding that when you or I or anyone else gripes about "canon" and "characterization" we're speaking only within our own pocket of the bramble.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Sorry another zoomer anon about comics

Actually I was referring to new 52 about batgirl and Starfire. Did you know new 52 stated that Starfire don’t remember people names unless she had sex with them?

Obviously that was ignored and retcon to hell and back. But comic writers, there a difference between being a sexual liberating woman vs being a hentai slut

Also about a year ago iirc, the old head of DC Dan Didio (who responsible for the mess that was new 52 and 2010’s shit) said that comics lost a generation of heroes because mines wasn’t interested in superheroes…during the height of the MCU

Pssst Didio let me tell you something, there something called the internet so my generation can look up the history of dc and marvel comics.

We are not getting emotionally invested in comics who are handle by fuckers with the mentality of a ten year old

So we went to manga and hmm, what that popular shounen?

MY FUCKING HERO ACADEMIA! YOU DIDN’T LOSE A GENERATION OF READERS BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T INTERESTED IN SUPERHEROES! YOU LOST THEM BECAUSE WE CAN SMELL SHITTY COMICS LIKE HOW A BLOODHOUND SMELLS PISS!!

Ugh, how…out of touch these fuckers are?

Also you guys made it damn near impossible to get easy access to comics so manga is far easier to get. Obviously you can….but a comic shop is a huge luxury item

Sorry for this essay rant, and I only been into comics for ten fucking years

Pssst Didio let me tell you something, there something called the internet so my generation can look up the history of dc and marvel comics.

OMG YES. THIS. FUCK.

Sorry, about to hijack this ask to go on a rant but my God I fucking hate this idea that people can only ever be interested in things that they experience in real time. It's such bullshit. Do you know what I wasn't alive for? The original run of Spider-Man written by Stan Lee. You know what my favorite Spider-Man stories are? The original run of Spider-Man written by Stan Lee. I got into Spider-Man because of the 90s animated series on Fox Kids. From there, I got a few of the comics that were running at the time, and from there I found the Marvel Masterworks collections and absolutely devoured the older stories. And even for books I didn't really have much interest in like Captain America or Iron Man, I would get Marvel Encyclopedias and learn about the pasts and presents of all the comic characters, even some I'd never heard of. True fans will always seek out the past of the things they love. You think people who fell in love with the Lord of the Rings movies aren't devouring The Silmarillion? You think the kid whose first Star Wars experience is seeing The Mandalorian isn't going back and watching the original trilogy? You think someone whose only experience with Batman is the Nolan Trilogy isn't going to find and absolutely love Frank Miller's Batman Year One? Of course they are. True fans don't have blinders. True fans will educate themselves on the things they love.

You know who won't, though? You know who just consumes the things that are put in front of them and will never go beyond that, either through laziness or because they don't want to see anything that's "old" or "out of touch"?

Tourists.

Tourists are great during tourist season, but very few come back every year. And in the off-season, it's the locals who keep the place running. You can't always depend on tourists. They'll happily move onto the next big tourist destination at the drop of a hat. But the locals, the true fans? They'll always be there. They'll be buying books, buying merch, going to the movies, generating enthusiasm, organizing conventions, and everything else that comes along with being a true fan. The only things that will drive them away are when the people in charge of the things they love attack them personally or change the things they love into something unrecognizable. And even then, most will still love the thing as it used to be. The fans who hate Rings of Power didn't throw out their Lord of the Rings Extended Edition blu-ray collections. The fans who hate Disney Star Wars didn't smash their original VHS copies of the unaltered original trilogy. And true fans aren't just old fans or original fans. The thing about being a local is that anyone can move into town. And if they stay long enough and fit into the local culture, everyone else will embrace them.

So fuck Didio and everyone else who thinks tourists are the only group that matters. Fuck everyone who thinks that "modern audiences" can't love something from a different era with different stories and different characters from what everyone else is shitting out today. It's bullshit, and it always has been.

[denimbex1986]

'Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan's (The Prestige, Inception, Dunkirk) newest shockingly ambitious movie, and it could finally fix two long-running complaints critics and fans have had about the director. The 2023 movie is about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the physicist who led The Manhattan Project in the 1940s and raced against the Nazis to create the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer looks every bit as epic that's expected from a Nolan movie, but it also looks just as emotional as it delves into Oppenheimer's personal life, including his romantic relationship with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a psychiatrist who died by suicide in 1944.

Oppenheimer is a very different movie from anything Nolan has ever done in many ways. The 2023 movie is full of suspense and dazzling visual effects, just like his other movies, but Oppenheimer is the filmmaker's very first biopic, and it marks his first R-rated movie since 2002's Insomnia. Not only that, but the film will mark the first-ever Nolan movie to have a sex scene, As Oppenheimer has a sex scene between the titular character and Tatlock. While sex scenes can often be gratuitous, this news could fix two 25-year-old complaints critics and audiences have had about Christopher Nolan.

Oppenheimer Can Fix Christopher Nolan's Movies Being Unsexy & Cold

It has been well-documented how much Nolan has spoken about the James Bond series as a big influence on his work. While Nolan has elevated the stylish globetrotting action of James Bond, he has seemingly no idea how to copy the sexiness of Bond. Nolan's movies have often been criticized for being cold, sterile, and unsexy. The lead characters and the love interests in his movies have all lacked believable chemistry, whether it's Bruce (Christian Bale) and Rachel (Katie Holmes, Maggie Gyllenhaal) in the Dark Knight trilogy or Cob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mal (Marion Cotillard) in Inception. Oppenheimer has a chance to change this.

However, the Oppenheimer sex scene does have several major issues to overcome, as the age gap between Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh has drawn controversy. The 20-year age gap between them is a lot more than the real-life 10-year age gap between Oppenheimer and Tatlock, and it speaks to a long-running Hollywood problem, as older men's love interests are almost always much younger. However, these problems can be overcome with valid explanations in Oppenheimer, as the movie spans decades of Oppenheimer's life. That means that Murphy will be playing the character who is both younger and older than his age, and Pugh is age accurate, which makes sense, so Oppenheimer could be the first Nolan movie to feature genuine emotional romance.

Oppenheimer Must Fix Another Long-Standing Christopher Nolan Criticism

Nolan has often been criticized for his female characters, too, as they are relatively underwritten and sidelined compared to the other characters, even if they're instrumental to the plot. While the male lead characters' love interests often motivate the protagonists, such as Cobb in Inception and Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, the female characters are hardly involved. The love interests are often killed off, too, such as in Following, The Dark Knight, and Inception. Sometimes they even end up being the villain, which was the case in Following and The Dark Knight Rises. Now that Oppenheimer includes sex and nudity involving Jean Tatlock, it's more important than ever that Christopher Nolan fixes this habit.'

[bushleaguereviews]

Top Movies of 2022

Solid year for movies, particularly with ensemble casts.

10.  It’s a three-way tie between three horror films: Smile, Barbarian, (pictured below,) and X.

2022 was a great year for the horror genre fan.  Tons of great examples ranging from big budget, to micro budget, from a movie like Smile, which examines the anxieties of day-to-day life, to a classic “Don’t go in there!” movie like Barbarian, which also has a social commentary to make about the state of relationships between members of the opposite sex, or X, which on the surface is a sexy slasher, but in reality has a fair share of commentary as well, talking about society and individualism.  All movies are subversive, offering up much more than meets the eye.

9. Ambulance

Never thought I’d see the day where a Michael Bay movie would top my list, but here we are.  This is arguably the most understated Michael Bay films of all time, and considering it’s less-than-impressive box office, arguably the most underrated.  That said, it has all of the flourishes that make Michael Bay films impressive, with flashy camerawork, and larger-than life explosions, and has a little bit of everything you’d want from a movie like this: it’s a heist film, it’s a car chase film, it’s a shoot out film, it’s a buddy comedy, it’s a drama about two brothers, and has more than the usual amount of emotional depth in a Michael Bay film, showcasing a star performance from Jake Gigglesandall.

8.  Confess, Fletch

Jon Hamm, combining his effortless charm with a Chevy Chase sense of sarcasm, starring in a movie from the director of Superbad and Adventureland, that is an old fashioned sort of murder mystery comedy.  They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, but I wish they would.

7.  Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Another old fashioned movie that they really don’t make anymore: a feel good movie.  Plain in simple.  The movie takes place in the 1950s and feels like a movie from the ‘50s, about a lower class Englishwoman who saves up her money and goes on an adventure to Paris to go a buy a Christian Dior dress.  It’s got hints of Cinderella, Sabrina, and a dash of Pretty Woman for good measure.  Just delightful.

6.  The Fablemans

Steven Spielberg making you feel all the feels.  That’s all I feel I need to say about that.

5.  The Menu

Rising star Anya Taylor-Joy is an outsider restaurant patron going toe-to-toe against Ralph Fiennes’ obsessed chef, in a social satire thriller taking place over the course of one epic dinner.

4.  Glass Onion

Daniel Craig leading another great ensemble cast, (including Kate Hudson, honoring the legacy of all the bubbly characters her mom brought to life through the 70s, 80s, and 90s,) in a sequel whodunit that surpasses the original.

3.  Scream

Another classic Scream movie with all the wit, suspenseful set pieces, and intelligence of the original.  The O.G. cast is still great, particularly David Arquette, and the new ensemble is great is well.  Props to Jenna Ortega who between this, X, and Wednesday, had a great year and became a new scream queen.

2.  The Batman

It may not rise to the greatness of the Nolan trilogy and be a half hour too long, but after Zack Snyder’s tenure at the helm of the D.C. universe, this was a welcome addition to the Batman franchise.  Battison was great, (though his take as Bruce Wayne is probably my least favorite, as was the rest of the cast, most notably Zoe Kravitz, who easily joins the esteemed company of great Catwomen, Michelle Pfeiffer and Anne Hathaway.

1.  Top Gun: Maverick

Yep, I went with the obvious, mainstream answer.  Don’t care.  This is everything you want from a movie: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be thrilled, Tom Cruise being a movie star, Jennifer Connelly being everything you want in a love interest, the young cast is great, the visuals, sound design, the younger ensemble cast lead by Miles Teller, the older supporting cast lead by Jon Hamm, the soundtrack...a great, mainstream American popcorn movie that was one of the few long-awaited sequels that was well worth the wait.

[helix-enterprises117]

*slams hands on desk* give me numbers 2, 3 and 8

For 8, I already answered this ask for @thefinaljediknight, but a before I was a Halo fan, an Undertale fanfic called Inverted-Fate basically spurred my love for creating fanfics and AUs, as well as writing in general.

2. Bride of the Reclaimer (on my Ao3) is apparently my best performing fic, even though it's done and any ideas for stories based on that fic's synopsis are going to be done in future fics. I'm glad people like, but I do feel it sort of overshadows my main-fic, Reloaded: CE. As for stories that I'm writing in real-time; well... Reloaded: CE.

3. I've made a post about this already, but I'll create a distilled, abridged version of this post:

The Super-Soldier - Universal Soldier and it's sequels, Soldier 1998, the Captain America films and the Rambo films (a non-syfy example of this trope) are all of my favorite movies. The idea of a ubermensch-warrior who is created with modern-science to be the ultimate form of military-warfare is so badass to me, and it can be played in a million different ways. Master Chief did this to me.

The Big-Eater - It's funnier/cuter/more endearing in-general if it's a female character; but this comedic-trope is a good way to establish charaters and story tone for me.

The Ultimate Universe - An ultimate universe is meant to be an accessable alternate-continuity designed with the express purpose of being an alternative for newcomers of a work to the original source-material. Can't get into Star Trek - TOS? Watch the JJ Abrams films. Bad at the Halo games (and video-games in-general)? Watch the Paramount show. Have no clue who Batman is but don't wanna read his comics? Watch the Nolan Trilogy. My fic, Halo Reloaded, is meant to be this for Halo.

@ionlymadethissoicouldleaveanask

[recentlyheardcom]

The ‘World of DC’ is really going through a shaky patch, at the moment, though the future looks hopeful. But the current scenario inside and outside the DC Entertainment and Warner Bros., is all about negativities, thanks to social media. The new case is of former DC Entertainment chief, Diane Nelson, who has deleted her Twitter account following a backlash from the fans on posts supporting the upcoming Joker movie, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the next clown prince of DC. Joker is the only project which has quickly gone into production since Walter Hamada became the new president of DC after Diane Nelson left in June, earlier this year. Nelson was also among those who were impressed by the official reveal of Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck aka Joker in his make-up photos, a few days ago. So, she wrote that she loved the look and praised the director’s vision (Phillip Todd), the talented actor (Joaquin Phoenix). And she also wrote that Joker movie’s what DC should have been doing after The Dark Knight trilogy of Chris Nolan, years ago. After this, many of the followers, being DC fans, took her post in a different perspective and thought that she was blaming Zack Snyder’s vision for the failure of earlier DCEU films-which isn’t true at all. So, to clarify things, she also responded to the hate comments by writing, that she really admires Zack Snyder the way she likes Christopher Nolan, as both of them have made memorable films. But the hate comments continued even after her trying to make sort out the complications. And then she blocked the comments from non-confirmed followers on her posts, the picture of which you can see, below. JOKER: Former DC chief Diane Nelson deletes Twitter account after angst from fans But later, her remarks about favoring Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker also made many DC fans and followers furious, which ultimately forced her to delete her account permanently. Many fans are not happy with Joaquin Phoenix as the new Joker. Well, the cases of big names in the industry deactivating their social media accounts have slightly increased. Before Diane Nelson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s Kelly Marie Tran deactivated her Instagram account, after being bullied and Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown had also closed her Twitter account due to similar reasons. Most recently, before Diane Nelson, actress Ruby Rose also left Twitter after being bullied for being cast as the Batwoman for this year’s upcoming Arrowverse crossover. These things are very wrong for the entertainment industry as hatred and negative reactions from users have gone onto a totally different extension, which is dark and dangerous. Read More: Jodie Whittaker gives “Female Doctor Who” the female hand

[twinhood-2dot0]

the entire history of the dceu, i guess

I wanted to write about the entire history of Batman or The Flash but uh, their histories might take a whole book to write. Then I thought of Batgirl, but uh, as much as I love her, I’m only really familiar with her later Oracle days and her Batgirl days from 2011-2018, whereas in the case of the other two mentioned I’ve read pretty much every consequential issue (am I flexing? maybe). I am gonna try to read every single comic she’s in though :P. Huh, it’s only 61 TPBs. The list is not complete, but if we factor in all those that I’ve already read and those yet to read, I think they level out. There are probably much more complete lists, but I can’t find any as easily scrapable ones.

Man Of Steel (2013)

Budget: $225–258 million

Box Office: $668 million

IMDb: 7.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes: Critics: 56% Audience:75%

(Note: None of these are actual metrics for how good the movies are, you’ll see why I’m including those.)

In 2008, after WB’s disappointment with the box office of the sixth instalment in the Superman series, they decided to reboot the film series. 

The writer for The Dark Knight trilogy, David S. Goyer, expressed his idea for a Superman movie to Christopher Nolan, and impressed, Nolan pitched the idea to the studio, and were both hired to write and produce the movie respectively. A few directors were considered, notably Ben Affleck (Batman, in the future) and Matt Reeves (directed The Batman, in the future), but ultimately Zack Snyder was chosen in 2010. There was an idea to set the movie in the TDK trilogy universe, but it was decided against (thank god for that, please, the movies are perfect as is). Anyways, the movie was a box office success, even while critical responses were not so much. Okay, well, it’s Superman, so it’s not very unexpected. I, for one, am not a huge fan of the movie. As much as I looooove darker stories, come on, it’s Superman, the paragon of hope! It’s not a terrible movie, but as a Superman movie, yeah, no. Anyways, seeing the success of the movie, they went along with their idea for a connected universe.

I’ll write a summary for the plot below every movie’s sections, skip if you don’t want to be spoiled. You know what, just read it through. There’s nothing much very consequential since the axing of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and like every superhero is gonna be recast and rebooted, so it doesn’t matter.

Plot: Basically a Superman origin story. If you don’t remember, you can go back to my shallow dive into the Justice League :) The villain is Zod, who wants to terraform (Kryptoform?) Earth and make it habitable for Kryptonians. And Superman also has uhhh the genetic code to fabricate baby Kryptonians placed in him? Which Zod wants to use to repopulate.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016)

Budget: $250–300 million

Box Office: $873.6 million

IMDb: 6.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 29% A: 63% (Yikes)

In 2013, it was announced that Zack Snyder is going to be returning for a Man Of Steel sequel, and later confirmed by Snyder that Batman and Superman (and Wonder Woman) were going to meet for the first time on the big screen and that it was going to be inspired by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns comic, which depicts an older, more brutal Batman.

You can see that clearly in the suit.

The movie opened to a whopping $422.5 million and then experienced an 81.2% decline in its second weekend. The movie seems to have been carried by the hype for Batman and Superman, like wow.

The Rotten Tomatoes website's critical consensus reads: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice smothers a potentially powerful story – and some of America's most iconic superheroes – in a grim whirlwind of effects-driven action." I, too, disliked the movie. I am quite a new DC fan, but even for me, it felt like it butchered the characters of Batman and Superman, although Superman to a lesser extent. Batman kills??? And why exactly does he want to kill Superman??? Also, that plot point would have been made more impactful if Batman didn’t kill freaking goons???

Wow uh, that’s quite a few Golden Raspberries. Yikes, even Catwoman won 4.

Plot: Superman’s fight with Zod created a lot of collateral damage and also destroyed the Wayne Enterprises building, so Batman resents Superman. Lex Luthor manipulates them into hating each other, and he ransoms Superman’s mom to get him to kill Batman. Superman tries to talk to Batman and Batman attacks??? (he got kryptonite). Batman comes to his senses just before he deals the killing blow. Superman confronts Luthor, and Luthor unleashes Doomsday, a monster designed to kill Superman using Kryptonian DNA. Wonder Woman appears. Superman and Doomsday kill each other. Everyone big sad. The End. 

Suicide Squad (2016)

Budget: $175 million

Box Office: $747 million

IMDb: 5.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 26% A: 58%

The film was announced in 2009 and David Ayer signed on to direct in 2014. Ah, where do I begin? The movie was set to have a sombre tone, but with the failure of BvS and the success of Deadpool, the studio worked on a second, lighter cut than Ayer’s and then tried to reach a place of “consensus” between the two. The reshoots cost around $22 million, more than the typical $6-$10 million, and changed the entire third act, and changed Joker and Harley’s relationship to be less abusive??? Thankfully, Birds Of Prey later remedied that, but the emancipation of Harley Quinn would have been much better had it been preserved in Suicide Squad.

The movie was a box office success, but the movie is regarded as possibly the worst DC film made, which is not an easy feat, as much as I hate to admit it. 

I have no comments on this movie. Because I have no memory of when I watched this movie, except for Harley Quinn and how badly the movie treated her. Huh. I don’t remember anything except for Harley Quinn. Wow. That is quite a feat considering how much I love the Suicide Squad from the comics and individual characters like Captain Boomerang, Katana, and Killer Croc. Oh yeah, and Amanda Waller. She’s an awesome character in every version, and Viola Davis does a great job. 

Plot: Superman dies, so Amanda Waller creates Task Force X, a team made up of supervillains forced to do Waller's bidding because of a bomb injected in their neck that she can detonate at any time. An archaeologist becomes possessed by a witch named Enchantress. Turns the city into monsters, summons brother to destroy mankind, the Suicide Squad beat Enchantress, yada yada, I’ll fall asleep if I’m forced to read this, just read it here

Wonder Woman (2017)

Budget: $120–150 million

Box office: $822.8 million

IMDb: 7.4/10 (wow I thought it would be higher than that)

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 93% A: 83% (You can see why I thought that)

DC’s first gem. Heralded as DCEU’s best film, the film was a hit among critics and the audience.

Plans for a Wonder Woman film date back to 1996. After going through a lot of directors and actresses, Patty Jenkins took up the role of director in 2015 and Gal Gadot was casted by Zack Snyder to appear in BvS in 2013. This movie is also an origin story, set in the 1910s in World War I. 

Also, listen to this

I loved this so much. I got into DC in 2018, so this movie was my first exposure to Wonder Woman, and oh boy was it a good one. The acting was awesome, the action scenes were perfect, humour and romance weren’t overbearing and bettered the film.

Plot: Princess Diana is a resident of Themyscira, an island of immortal women and only women. The island is usually shrouded from the outside world, but one day, an American pilot named Steve Trevor crashlands into the island and is followed by German forces who were pursuing him. The Themyscirans fight them off but incur heavy losses. Steve is interrogated using the Lasso Of Truth/Hestia and reveals that there is a war going on in the “land of man”, as the Themyscirans call it, and Diana convinces Hippolyta (oh whoops, I forgot to mention, Themyscirans are Amazons, at least, a sect of them. It’s the same Hippolyta from Greek myth, but modified to fit the story. She’s Diana’s mom. Antiope is also there, but she’s killed off.) to let her go and stop the war, believing that Ares is behind it. And she arms herself with the lasso, a “god-killer” sword, and the armour, and leaves for London. She fights Ares. Steve sacrifices himself, and Wonder Woman beats Ares, WWI is over.

Justice League (2017) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Budget: $275 + $25 (reshoots) million

Box Office: $657.9 million

IMDb: 6.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 39% A: 67%

The biggest disappointment in comic book movie history. After the release of Man Of Steel, Goyer was hired again to write a sequel (BvS) and a Justice League movie. In 2014, it was announced that Zack Snyder would be directing the movie. The production went along and filming wrapped up in Oct 2016. However, in the wake of Snyder’s daughter’s death, he had to step down. They then hired Joss Whedon, the director of Avengers and Avengers: Age Of Ultron, seeing the success of those movies. Under his direction, it went through two months of reshoots costing $25 million. The reshoots coincided with the filming of Mission Impossible: Fallout so Henry Cavill was contractually obligated to keep a moustache for it, so uh… His moustache had to be digitally removed which led to uh…

Justice League - Opening Superman Scene - Mustache Movieclip

Anyways, there were a lot of changes made. There are multiple sources estimating how much was changed. The producer said in an interview that the film was shot originally by eighty to eighty-five percent. I’m too dumb to understand what that means, maybe you’ll be able to. Snyder said around a fourth from what he had been told (he didn’t watch the movie), and the cinematographer said 10%. Whedon’s rewrites were also around 80 pages, so it was mostly his work. The movie was mandated by execs to be under 2 hours, which is the dumbest freaking decision, considering the only superheroes in the movie we’ve met so far are Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. 

Controversy and Changes

It was later reported that Snyder’s rough cut was deemed unwatchable by studio execs.

Ray Fisher, the actor for Cyborg, and Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman, came out with claims against Joss Whedon, with Fisher saying “Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.” and Gadot claiming that Whedon threatened her career if she refused to do something.

There’s a controversial scene in AvengersAoU where in the chaos of Ultron’s attack, Bruce Banner (Hulk) falls on Black Widow’s chest. It’s a horrible sexist thing to have in your movie already, but even more egregious is that he does the exact same thing in Justice League with The Flash falling on Wonder Woman’s chest. Gadot refused to do this scene and it had to be filmed with a double. Seriously dude? You didn’t reconsider after the actor said no?

Chris Terrio considered the Whedon cut an act of vandalism and unsuccessfully tried to get his name removed from the movie.

The Whedon cut was significantly lighter in tone and featured much less violence as the studio was not happy with the results of the previous darker movies, and you know, it is directed by the director of Avengers.

Tom “Junkie XL” Holkenberg completely scored the movie, but halfway into post-production, was replaced by Danny Elfman, composer of Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992).

The movie was exactly 2 hours, removing 90 minutes of Snyder footage, but still adhering to the basic outline

Christopher Nolan and Deborah Snyder (his wife and producer) advised him never to watch the film as it would break his heart. I see what she means, it broke my heart as a huge DC fan, imagine being the creator of a work that you poured blood, sweat and tears into and someone else comes in and completely butchers it.

The underperformance led to the studio deciding to ditch Snyder’s vision for a universe of interconnected films to focus on solo movies.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Budget: $70 million to finish the movie

Box Office: Direct-to-video

IMDb: 8.0/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 71% A: 93%

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut

After the release of the “Josstice League”, fans created a petition to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut that gained more than 180,000 signatures. Various members of the cast showed support for the movement. 

Ahead of San Diego Comic Con 2019, a crowdfunding campaign was started, with half to be spent on advertising and the other half going to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. They purchased ad space on billboards, two in Times Square and a flying banner ad that passed over WB Studios. The fans raised over $500,000 for the ASFP in donations by Feb 2021.

In March 2019, Snyder confirmed that his original cut existed, but that it was up to the studio to release it. The following month, he posted a photo of boxes with tapes labelled “Z.S.J.L. Director’s Cut” captioned “Is it real? Does it exist? Of course it does.”

The studio approached Snyder proposing to release the cut unfinished as he had left it, but he refused, insisting on finishing it if it was to be released. In Feb 2020, WB decided to move forward. In May 2020, Snyder announced that his cut titled “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” would be released on HBO Max in 2021.

Differences

At least 10 comic characters were cut, including but not limited to, Iris West, The Flash’s wife, Ryan Choi, the not-yet Atom, and Darkseid, the big bad of the Justice League, basically DC’s Thanos (technically, Darkseid came before, but not in live-action media, so :P) and Martian Manhunter, a main member of the Justice League.

A lot of the backstory for the new characters like Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg. Cyborg was supposed to be the “heart” of the story, but he had barely any character in the Whedon cut. The Flash is relegated to just comic relief and has pretty much no role in the climax when he had a huge role. Aquaman’s backstory was also cut, but it’s less egregious because of the existence of the solo movie. Even Batman was affected. He is more indecisive, oafish, and obsessive, while in Snyder’s cut, he’s more optimistic and inspired by Superman’s sacrifice. His dynamic with Wonder Woman was also similarly butchered, and she was very sexually objectified.

This was cut. Do I need to elaborate? Well, there is symbolism, but eh I’m lazy. Also, this is a reference to “The Death Of Superman.” storyline.

Just look at this. He went from a menacing alien monster to man in armour. His character was similarly butchered. I’ll expand on the plot section.

Dumb freaking jokes and quips. Marvel style. Except it doesn’t work at all in this movie. In the MCU the audience is used to that tone. Shoe-horning in jokes in a movie that was meant to be dark doesn’t work at all, especially when they make no sense and are just plain unfunny. 

Zack Snyder’s Justice League has 4 hours of runtime. Snyder was given free rein, and he made full use of that. It has a lot of his signature slow-mo scenes, and there are a lot more details too because of that.

Story Differences

The outline of the plot is basically the same, but every character is very fleshed out. We see how Victor Stone turned into the Cyborg, his relationship with his parents, how his powers work, etc, and the same treatment is given to Flash and Aquaman. Cyborg did very little in the theatrical cut, but he’s a decent character in the Snyder cut. 

The theatrical version of Steppenwolf was probably the worst villain in comic book movies, but Snyder’s version fleshed him out and has much more of a motivation. In the theatrical cut he wants to destroy Earth for seemingly no reason, and there’s no mention of the Anti-Life equation, which is like Darkseid’s signature weapon. Steppenwolf is on Earth to gain Darkseid’s favour again after betraying him in the past, and he finds out that the Anti-Life Equation is in the Earth’s core. 

Oh yeah, the climax. I’ll talk about it when I explain the plot because it’s the biggest change.

Plot: 

Blue text is only in Snyder cut, red is only in Josstice League, and white text is in both movies.

Thousands of years ago, Darkseid Steppenwolf came to Earth to destroy it in search of the Anti-Life equation and to build his parademon army. But the Atlanteans, Amazons, and humanity came together to defeat them, and his three Mother Boxes were confiscated, and each tribe stored them away safely. In the present day, sensing Superman, Earth’s protector’s death, the Mother Boxes call out to Steppenwolf, and he arrives in Themyscira, defeats the Amazons, and steals their Mother Box, and Diana is alerted, and she finds out about the war against Darkseid. She and Bruce team up to gather other metahumans to fight an incoming threat that Lex Luthor warned Bruce about in the previous movie and one that the Parademon's presence made obvious. Bruce first goes to Aquaman, but he refuses. Then Diana goes to Cyborg, who also refuses, but he returns home to find his place ransacked and dad missing, and Bruce successfully recruits Barry because… he needed friends. Honestly, mood. 

Then, the Atlantean outpost is attacked and Mera and Aquaman fail to protect the Mother Box. Then the team received intel from Jim Gordon, while Cyborg joins them, and they discover Steppenwolf’s hideout under the Gotham Harbor, where he’s interrogating S.T.A.R Labs employees, one of them being Silas Stone, Victor’s dad. They fight Steppenwolf, and in the process, the facility is flooded, when Aquaman arrives and buys them time to escape. The team retrieves the Mother Box Silas used to rebuild Victor’s body after he met with a car accident, and the team realizes they could bring Superman back with it. They exhume Superman’s body and revive him in the Kryptonian ship that he arrived on Earth in. An amnesiac Superman then attacks the team and comes to his senses when Lois Lane arrives at the scene. Steppenwolf arrives at S.T.A.R Labs and tries to take the Mother Box when Silas sacrifices himself to superheat the Mother Box. This allows the team to locate the Mother Box using its heat signature. The team travels to an abandoned Russian city, a renamed Pripyat. I swear, this will be relevant. Aquaman and Wonder Woman fight off Steppenwolf, while Cyborg is separating the Mother Boxes (oops, I forgot, if the Mother Boxes conjoin and create a Unity, the Earth is razed and everyone is turned into parademons.), and Batman and The Flash fights off parademons and later rescues a family of people trying to escape whatever Steppenwolf is doing to the place. Okay, so 1. This is an abandoned town hit with a nuclear meltdown. 2. This messes with continuity. The Flash (2023) and ZSJL establish that he cannot relocate people. In the former, it is explicitly stated, and in the latter, it’s shown to us, when he just helps people along to escape in the Gotham Harbor fight, and he saves Iris with small taps. 3. The Flash barely has a role. I’m not saving people is not a vital thing to do, but like, look at what everyone else is doing! Also, they cut such a badass scene to make… whatever the heck we got. Meanwhile, Barry is circling the area to build up a charge to separate the Mother Boxes. Steppenwolf then overpowers the two of them, stabs Victor and rips him away from the Mother Boxes and then Superman arrives with the cheesiest line.

Steppenwolf: They’re too weak to see the truth.

Superman: Well… I believe in truth. But I’m also a fan of Justice.

And proceeds to curb-stomp Steppenwolf. Yes, I know it’s a reference to “Truth, Justice and The American Way” but eugh, could have been done so much better. Especially when you see what they cut to make that scene.

Superman then leaves to… relocate… a freaking building full of civilians. It’s like the movie forgot that it was supposed to be abandoned. Also, do I need to explain what’s wrong with this?

swings at Victor, when Superman lands in front of him, and says “Not impressed.”, and proceeds to curbstomp Steppenwolf.

Just look at this and tell me which one is badass.

Victor keeps getting interrupted by Steppenwolf, so Barry is unable to charge it, but by the time Superman arrives and Victor gets back in position, Barry gets shot, and the Mother Boxes form Unity, and the Earth is destroyed… until this happens. I don’t want to describe this scene, it’s that good.

Whoo, goosebumps. This here is the scene that Whedon cut out to make him save a random family. Instead of the Earth, and quite possibly multiple planets. And provided a payoff to the scene where he turns back time just a little bit earlier in the movie. And set up The Flash movie. And it felt so good to have him finally play a role after being comic relief for the whole movie.

After the fight, a few things happen. 1. Bruce has a Knightmare (get it? Cuz The Dark Knight is having a nightmare? Yeah… not subtle at all.) where Superman has established an authoritarian role and Batman is teamed up with Joker and most everyone else is dead. 2. Martian Manhunter reveals himself to Bruce and offers to help when the time comes. 3. Lex Luthor tells Deathstroke Batman’s identity to help him kill him.

Ooooookkkkkkaaaaayyyyy that was long. Still alive? Good. We are only halfway done.

Aquaman (2018)

Budget: $160–200 million

Box Office: $1.148 billion (Wow.)

IMDb: 6.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C:65% A: 72%

Huh did not expect that. DC’s highest grossing movie is Aquaman. Aquaman, the butt of every Justice League joke. Aquaman performed better than Batman v. Superman, a movie with two of the most iconic superheroes ever, and Justice League, the team of the most iconic superheroes. Okay, well, the movies themselves were not very good, but like, Aquaman. Sorry, I just can’t get over that fact. I personally love like (let’s not go that far. Despite being King of Atlantis and my love for the ocean, he’s still not very likeable in the comics. The movies are good though, they do his abrasiveness quite well.) Aquaman (No, it’s not just because of Jason Momoa’s abs, shuddup), but he never struck me as a very popular character.

This movie is a sort of origin story..? This movie takes place after Justice League, where he was man with trident who talked to fish, while in this movie he comes into his role as King of Atlantis. 

I loved the movie. Obviously. I loved Jason Momoa’s acting, I love his characterization, his character arc, I love how well the underwater CGI is done, I loved Atlantis, the adaptation of Black Manta, Orm is good enough. Especially after reading the comics. 

Plot: Origin story. Not very many additions, but it includes Black Manta’s origins, a son of a pirate that Aquaman refused to save, and now he made his life’s mission hunting him down. Never really liked him, kind of a boring villain writing, just look at Reverse Flash to see how well it can be accomplished.

Shazam! (2019)

Budget: $90–100 million

Box Office: $367.7 million

IMDb: 7/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 90% A: 82% (Wow, critics score higher than audience.)

From the supposedly “dark” franchise, we get a comedy film. Okay, well, the main character is a teenage kid, would be dumb to make it dark. Okay, I take that back, Damian Wayne stories are about a pre-teen kid, and do they get dark sometimes. Anyways, it’s a pretty funny movie, not very deep, but enjoyable and a reprieve. I just realized I missed Shazam! in my Justice League shallow dive :P. Well, this will be good enough ig. Also, did you know Shazam! was called Captain Marvel? Well, he still is, sometimes, but they can’t market him as Captain Marvel. It is a little off-topic, but let me take you back to the 1940s. In the 1940s, Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero around, outselling even Superman. This led to DC getting salty, and they decided to sue Fawcett Comics, then owner of the character, for infringing their copyright for Superman. In 1941 DC tried unsuccessfully to stop Fawcett from publishing them and from Republic Films from releasing a serial based on the character. Fawcett won, due to a technicality, but found that he was indeed an illegal copy. Then in 1951, DC appealed the decision, and due to the drop in comic sales, Fawcett decided it was not worth fighting and paid DC for damages and dissolved its comics in the coming years, and in 1967 Marvel trademarked the name in 1972 and that was an issue when DC licensed the rights to all Fawcett characters, and that led to them retitling it to Shazam!. Anyways, sorry for lengthening this already gigantic post.

I liked the movie. It does its job as a comedy superhero film pretty well, and it’s a good adaptation of him. Yeah, nothing much to say here.

Plot: Billy Batson is a kid in the foster system, who keeps running away from foster homes in search of his mother, and he eventually lands in the house of Víctor and Rosa Vásquez with five other children, Mary Bromfield, Pedro Peña, Eugene Choi, Darla Dudley, and superhero enthusiast Freddy Freeman. He gets selected by a wizard to be his new champion, giving him the ability to turn into an adult man who has the Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Stamina of Atlas, the Lightning of Zeus, the Courage of Achilles, and the Speed of Mercury (I do not know why the first is Christian, the next five Greek and the last Roman. Although, I guess Shazah doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

In a flashback at the beginning of the movie, we see Thaddeus Sivana also tested by the wizard but is rejected because of his greed, and he lives the rest of his life consumed by anger due to that.

Sivana deduces his identity, and he takes his foster sibling hostage in exchange for the power, but he shares his powers with them and they team up to beat Sivana.

Birds Of Prey And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)

Budget: $82-100 million

Box Office: $205.3 million

IMDb: 6.1/10

RT: C: 79% A: 78%

The film adaptation of my personal favourite DC teams. I mean, an all-girls (most of the time) team with Batgirl and Black Canary (most of the time)?

Margot Robbie, the actress for Harley Quinn, pitched the idea for a Harley Quinn spin-off in 2015, before the release of Suicide Squad, as "an R-rated girl gang film including Harley because I was like, 'Harley needs friends.'” She spent 3 years working on it and WB decided to make and it hired Cathy Yan, which makes this one of the few superhero films directed by a woman of colour. Batgirl was excluded from the movie for her standalone film. Huh, I thought it was because she was a problematic character to adapt. In 2018 it was announced that the lineup would include Huntress, Black Canary, and Renee Montoya. I refuse to call her Cassandra Cain. With so many things that the movie did right, Cassandra Cain is not it. She has 0 characteristics of the comic book character and I’m not even being hyperbolic. Seriously, I dare you to find one similarity. I’ll just be calling her uhhh Pickpocket. Yeah, that’s good enough.

I watched the movie again today, and oh my god, it. is. AWESOME! Harley Quinn is awesome, obviously. Huntress, oh my god, she’s my new celeb crush.

She’s soooo badass. She has this arc like, she just got into the role, and is trying so hard to be badass, practising in the mirror, saying stuff like “Do you know who I am?”, and “They call me… The Huntress.” It’s also a running gag that whenever she says “They call me…” the other party replies “The Crossbow Killer” and “Helena Bertinelli!”. But she’s so badass when she’s not trying, true to the comics version.

Renee is also cool, a little older tho, but that’s fine.

Oh, Black Canary was soooo good too. A pretty good adaptation, though not truly comic-accurate. 

Cassandra Cain. Just read my Batfamily shallow dive, and read her character here. You’ll see why I refuse to call her Cassandra Cain.

Plot: Years ago, all of the Bertinelli family is gunned down for their fortune, but Helena survives and is taken in and trained as an assassin, and is trying to kill all the people responsible for the massacre of her family (The plot is pretty uhh back-and-forthey, and it keeps switching between flashbacks and the present, so I’m going to try to do this chronologically).

Dinah Lance breaks Roman Sionis’s (Black Mask, played by… Ewan McGregor… Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m sorry when he commits all these evil deeds I can’t see anyone but Obi-Wan Kenobi. Not his fault, I’m just really bad at not relating it to actors’ past roles.) driver’s legs and is hired by him to be his new driver.

GCPD detective Renee Montoya is investigating the “Crossbow Killer” murders and tries to recruit Dinah as an informant, but she refuses.

Four years after the events of Suicide Squad, Joker and Harley break up, and because no one believed that they were actually broken up, Harley drives a truck into ACE Chemicals, “publicly announcing her relationship status”. 

Sionis sends Victor Zsasz and Dinah to retrieve a diamond embedded with the account numbers to the Bertinelli Fortune, but Pickpocket steals it, but she’s caught by the police, so she swallows it.

Harley is kidnapped by Sionis’s men, and she offers to steal the diamond back, and after she’s sent to retrieve it, a bounty is placed on Pickpocket. Harley breaks into the GCPD and rescues Cassandra. They hide out at Harley’s apartment, which is bombed by Sionis’s men. Harley calls Sionis to exchange Pickpocket for his protection, Dinah notifies Montoya, Zsasz tells Sionis about her betrayal, and Sionis dons his eponymous “Black Mask” and decides to go after them at Amusement Mile.

At the park, Montoya confronts Harley, but they fight and Montoya is defenestrated. Zsasz arrives and shoots Harley with a tranq, and holds Dinah at gunpoint when he arrives, but he’s shot by Helena. Montoya returns and tells Helena that Sionis orchestrated the massacre when Sionis arrives with an army of henchmen. They fight, but Pickpocket is caught, and Harley and Huntress try to save her. Pickpocket reveals that she had a grenade in hand, and blows Sionis up, in the only scene that I could think of that gave this movie an R rating, aside from the f words. Montoya quits the GCPD, and Helena, Dinah and Montoya create the crimefighting team of Birds Of Prey.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Budget: $200 million

Box Office: $169.6 million

IMDb: 5.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 58% A: 73%

Plot: Diana gets a wishing stone, wishes for Steve Trevor back, and he comes back… in another man’s body??? And they have sex while he is in another man’s body??? Yeah, I don’t know how no one saw any issue with that. A woman jealous of Diana’s beauty and popularity wishes to be like her, and turns into a Cheetah, a businessman named Maxwell Lord gets the stone, saves his company, makes everyone in the world wish for anything and chaos unfolds and Diana renounces her wish and Steve is gone, Wonder Woman and Cheetah fight, Max and Diana fight, everyone renounces their wish, the end.

(Yeah, I’m in a rush, and this movie is too terrible for me to put any effort into it. Sorry.)

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Budget: $185 million

Box Office: $168.7 million

IMDb: 7.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 90% A: 82%

Yeah, confusing name, I know, but it’s more of a relaunch than a direct sequel.

This is the movie I said where the box office will be relevant. For such a critically acclaimed movie, it grossed only $168 million, the lowest of any DCEU film. 

In 2018, James Gunn, director of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 1-3, and several other… let’s just say interesting films, and now co-CEO of DC Films. I didn’t really know much about him, until recently, except that he directed an awesome DC movie, and he’s possibly the best person to take DC forward according to other people.

How James Gunn Deradicalizes the Manosphere | A RETROSPECTIVE

Watch this to see why I love him so much now. Oh wait oops um… His movies have some pretty… disturbing imagery, so uh only watch it if you’re up for that…. Which you probably definitely aren’t.

DC first asked him to make a Superman movie, which he said he didn’t know if he wanted to make, so they told him he could adapt any DC property he wanted to, and he chose Suicide Squad.

He also insisted on an R-rating, which I love it for. The movie would not be the same without the gratuitous violence. Yeahhh, I did a full 180 from cringing at amputations to loving gratuitous violence. Wow. Who knew I’d be here? I mean okay, it’s obviously where I’d have been, after reading Attack On Titan and Chainsaw Man and DC Black Label stuff. 

He took inspiration from John Ostrander’s 1980s Suicide Squad run, drawn to it because of its loser B-grade supervillains.

The first character he chose was King Shark, who was supposed to be in the first movie but was replaced by Killer Croc, and the others added were Peacemaker, Polka-Dot Man, and a gender-swapped Ratcatcher.

He chose Starro The Conqueror as the villain, who struck him as absurd but terrifying, reflecting what he wanted to do with the film. 

I don’t really care much for actors, but there’s one actor I’ve loved for a long time. David Dastmalchian, Polka-Dot Man. Why do I love this guy you haven’t ever heard about? Well, look at his roles.

The Dark Knight (2008) - Thomas Schiff, one of Joker’s deranged henchmen.

Ant-Man (2015), Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018), What If..? Episode 5 (2021), Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania - Kurt, (in the first three ) one of Ant-Man’s friends, and in the latter movie, a being named… Veb?

Gotham (2017) - Dwight Pollard, one of Joker’s followers.

The Flash (2017, 2021) - Abra Kabadra, a Flash villain who’s a technomagician.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One and Two (2021) - Julian Day (Calendar Man), Oswald Cobblepot (Penguin) 

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Yep, he played 8 different roles in superhero movies and 6 in various DC media. If I were an actress, I would want a resume just like that.

David Dastmalchian suffered from bullying due to his vitiligo in his childhood and developed depression and addiction, and comics gave him much-needed escapism and became somewhat of a comic devotee.

He first auditioned for a member of the Joker crew in the famous heist scene from The Dark Knight, but he didn’t get the part and was devastated. Four months later, however, he received a call that he was cast as Thomas Schiff. A small role, but one he credits with changing his life.

That’s why he was perfect for the role of Polka-Dot Man. Gunn wrote the character with Dastmalchian in mind.

Gunn messaged him saying that he wanted him in his film, and he was wrought with anticipation for what role he was going to play. 

“I am very familiar with so much of the DC canon, and I know the DC villains so well, and he’s like, ‘I want you to be Abner Krill, Polka-Dot Man,'” Dastmalchian recalled. “I was so embarrassed. And I’m like, ‘James, I’m so sorry. I don’t know anything about him.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. I want you to read the script and let me know how you feel.'”

“I was jumping up and down. I was crying. I was yelling,” Dastmalchian said. “I was so moved by what I read, and I was so moved by the thought that he would imagine me getting to bring to life a character that was beautifully created. James told me that when he was writing the character, he just saw me in his place.”

Polka-Dot Man’s abusive mother infected him with an alien virus, to turn him into a superhero, but it left him covered in polka dots and pustules, leading to ridicule and bullying. You can see how he could connect with a character like that.

“I connected with Abner from his first line,” he says. Dastmalchian sees Polka-Dot Man as an avatar for triumph against one’s insecurities.

“I love that Abner came to a point where he not only embraces his strangeness, he turns it into a superpower,” Dastmalchian says. “That’s what we all can do. We have things about ourselves that make us insecure, that make us ashamed. We keep things locked up, and they end up eating us from the inside.”

“We can do the work, get therapy or connect with people that help expel those viruses,” he explains. “We can love ourselves and figure we are meant to be the way we are. We’re fucking superheroes.”

Also, Peacemaker is John Cena.

It’s such a great movie, I was shocked to learn that it was the lowest-grossing DC movie. I guess an R-rating, a pandemic, a terrible prequel and a simultaneous streaming release will do that.

It’s a hilarious, gory, self-aware, ridiculous movie and an awesome adaptation of lesser-known DC supervillains that have been given a new lease on life. And also, Harley Quinn is great, obviously.

Plot: Amanda Waller assembles two Task Force X teams, who are sent to the island nation of Corto Maltese, unaware of each other. The movie goes into quite a bit of effort building character, to unceremoniously annihilate them, but Colonel Rick Flag and Harley Quinn survive. Their massacre provided a distraction for the other team to arrive safely. The team is commanded to find Flag and Harley Quinn, and massacre a soldier base, only to find out it belonged to a rebel group. Harley is captured by the dictator who is in love with Harley. Harley, after her experience with Joker, kills him and in a ridiculously over-the-top, awesome action sequence escapes to find… the others executing a “really good plan” to rescue her. She joins them and finds out that the Project Starfish, whose files they were there to destroy, was funded by the US Government, and the team splits, with one side dedicated to their mission, and the other who wanted to expose the secret. Peacemaker, on the former side, kills Flag but is killed by Bloodsport before he could kill Ratcatcher. Then Starro escapes and starts controlling the cities’ population. Waller orders them to leave, deeming the mission complete, but they revolt, and when Waller was about to detonate the bombs, she is knocked out by a member of the team, and directs them to defeat Starro. In a post-credits scene, the revolters are punished by assigning them to a new mission with Peacemaker, who is revealed to be alive.

Peacemaker (2021)

IMDb: 8.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes: C: 94% A: 89%

A spin-off series set after the events of The Suicide Squad directed by James Gunn.

It follows Peacemaker and Waller’s subordinates punished for insubordination by having to work with Peacemaker. I won’t go into the plot in detail, because it’s an 8 episode series with long ass episodes. The basic premise is, there’s an alien invasion of Butterflies, who take over people's bodies and give them super strength and such, and are trying to take over Earth, and the team has to destroy their food source. It has the same gory and humorous tone, and there’s a subplot of him coming to terms with his abusive Neo-Nazi dad’s terrible acts, oh oh, there’s a great lesbian character too. 

Black Adam (2021)

Budget: $190-260 million

Box Office: $393.3 million

IMDb: 6.3/10

RT: C: 38% A: 88% (wow that is some disparity)

Dwayne Johnson was set to play the character in Shazam!, but he urged to give him his own movie. This movie was supposedly supposed to be “the movie that saved DC”. Honestly, feels like a movie just to have Dwayne Johnson attached to the franchise. It just ended up feeling like a cookie-cutter superhero (ahem, antihero) film.

Plot: Kahndaq was once ruled by a dictator, and a young boy received the powers of Shazam and killed the dictator. Present-day Kahndaq is oppressed by a gang, and Adrianna Tomaz is trying to locate the Crown of Sabbac, she finds it, but her colleagues are killed and she reads the incantation and Teth-Adam arrives and kills them all. Amanda Waller calls the Justice Society, consisting of Atom Smasher, Cyclone, Doctor Fate and Hawkman, to apprehend him. 

Sidenote, I am so happy that Hawkman finally got a film adaptation. He is such an interesting character in the comics. They stop his killing spree and tell Adrianna that he is not a savior, but an imprisoned killer. Her son Amon hid the crown but they took him hostage. They give him the crown but he betrays her, and Adam gets mad and kills the leader and wounds Amon. Adam reveals to Hawkman that his son was the one who was given the powers but he gave his powers to him to save him and died. He surrenders because he felt unworthy and is imprisoned deep underwater by the JSA.

Ishmael comes back as Sabbac and tries to destroy the city. The JSA fail to stop him when Adam comes back and saves all of them.

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023)

Plot: After the events of Shazam!, Hespera and Kalypso steal the wizard’s broken staff and force him to fix it. Freddy falls in love with a girl named Anne. Anne is apparently Anthea, and her sisters appear and take Freddy’s powers and he is imprisoned with the Wizard. The Shazam family fight them, but Hespera steals a Golden Apple, a seed for the Tree Of Life. Meanwhile, Anthea helps Freddy and the wizard escape. Hespera and Anthea want to revive their realm with it while Kalypso wants to destroy Earth with it. Kalypso steals the apple and plants it on Earth. Hespera is mortally wounded and Anthea loses her powers, and Shazam gets Hespera’s help to beat Kalypso and in the ensuing fight, Shazam dies and Wonder Woman brings him back to life. Also, for some reason, Wonder Woman appears in this movie and The Flash. I have no idea why. Maybe Gal Gadot had too much time on her hands.

The Flash (2023)

The chronological movie that reboots the DCEU and jumpstarts the DC Universe.

This movie, whoo. Attempts for a Flash movie date back to the 1980s, but let’s not start the story there.

DC had plans for a Flash movie when they created the DCEU, and in 2016, the movie was set to release in 2018. 

I became a DC fan in 2018, after reading The Death Of Superman and watching the Zack Snyder movies, and later, a ton of Flash comics, so I have been following the release of this movie well before production began. The movie had been in development hell for a very long time, with so many directors being hired then leaving, until 2019, when Andy Muschietti and Christina Hodson signed on and Ezra Miller, the actor for The Flash finished filming TERF movie, and the movie was scheduled to release July 1st 2022 (I was very sceptical when that news came out, and turns out, I was right to be). The movie was set to adapt the Flashpoint storyline, where Barry goes back in time to prevent his mom’s death, resulting in an alternate timeline where Thomas Wayne is Batman while Bruce Wayne was gunned down, and the Atlanteans and Amazons are in a war that could destroy the Earth, Superman is imprisoned in a government facility, and Barry has no powers, and when Barry corrects the timeline, things have changed, and sets up the New 52, so this can transition into the rebooted DCU slate that James Gunn announced. The movie was again shifted to June 3, 2023, due to the pandemic. Michael Keaton was also hired to reprise his role from the 1989 and 1992 Batman movies, along with Ben Affleck.

Hehe, that’s hilarious

I thought chemistry tests meant like idk CSI stuff and Zoom as in Professor Zoom, Reverse-Flash, or, Zoom, the second Reverse-Flash. I still don’t know what chemistry tests mean, testing the chemistry between actors? I don't know why anyone needed to know that information.

Throughout 2022, a controversy much worse than the development hell it went through hit the movie.

Safe to say, Ezra Miller is a terrible person, but replacing them in the role was pretty much impossible, and the movie couldn’t be cancelled because it was so far ahead in production and had a massive budget. The movie did release, but marketing had to be limited due to this.

Plot: Barry Allen’s dad, Henry Allen is set to appeal for his wrongful imprisonment. He visits his childhood home, and overcome with emotions, he accidentally travels back in time a few hours. He tells Batman about it, and he tells Barry that changing things could have unintended consequences. But he ignores it, and prevents his mother’s death, and on the way back to the present, he is knocked out of the Speed Force by another speedster, arrives in 2013, where his mom is alive and his dad is not imprisoned. He encounters his past self, and realizes that he is currently in the day that Barry got his powers, so he rushes his past self to Central City PD so his past self gets his powers too. But, they both get struck by lightning and 2013-Barry gains powers while Barry loses his. Barry trains 2013-Barry to use his powers when they see a transmission by General Zod on a TV screen, and Barry tries to assemble the Justice League, only to find that Aquaman was never born, Wonder Woman can’t be located, Clark Kent doesn’t seem to exist, and Victor Stone is not Cyborg yet. They then travel to Wayne Manor, where they find an old Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) who retired from crime fighting because Gotham is now a safe place (yeah, right), and he explains to Barry that changing events also affect the past. They use the Batcomputer to locate the Kryptonian pod, which is revealed to have landed in Siberia. They go to the Siberian facility but find an emaciated girl instead, who they rescue, and who is revealed to be Kryptonian and she kills the Siberian soldiers. Then she refuses to help them as she thinks humanity is cruel. She then leaves to find Zod. Barry asks Bruce to help him regain his powers, and he tries twice but fails, but Kara returns, saying that Kryptonians are people of hope, not war, and flies Barry into a thundercloud, which succeeds in giving him his powers. They all go to fight Zod, and he reveals that Kara has the Codex, not Kal-El, and fights and kills her to retrieve the Codex, and Bruce sacrifices himself to unsuccessfully destroy a Kryptonian ship. The two Barrys travel back in time to save them but fail, and they try again but fail again, and Barry realizes that they can’t be saved while 2013-Barry keeps trying again and again, failing each time. The speedster who knocked him out of the Speed Force is revealed to be a future 2013-Barry, who kept trying for years and fights Barry, and 2013-Barry sacrifices himself to wipe the future version out of existence, and Barry goes back to prevent himself from preventing his mom’s death, but apparently, he learned absolutely nothing because he placed the can of tomatoes that his dad picked up on the day of his mother’s death on the top shelf, so the camera could capture his dad’s face, acquitting him. He calls Bruce Wayne to let him know of the good news, and he informs him that he is arriving at the courthouse. And he steps out of the car and we see… George Clooney, from the infamous 1997 Batman and Robin.

Okay, so that was a monstrous post :P. Idk why I did this it was probably hella boring. See ya!

[zooterchet]

Assassinations

Hunter S. Thompson: SDF contract, introducing a crime problem to Japan.

Harvey Weinstein: Buddhist League contract, draft of Uma Thurman to the arts with surgery to remove Tibetan High Knights status.

Marisa Tomasic: Canondroga contract, removal of Non-Aligned Movement agent dealing in cheap labor through conjugal housing.

Jeffrey Langier: Midway Games contract, removal of control of internet from Gentiles and Asian-Americans, to Lutheran-German compounds.

Likud: MI-6 contract, counter of Mossad in debt to Britain, as opposing the rights of the Students Revolution of Iran.

Whitey Bulger: Netanyahu contract, as Arab agent of Lebanon.

9/11: LucasArts contract, stopping six planes, out of eleven, eleventh removed by "nil" hack, the film "The Matrix", with self as Cypher.

Berlin Wall: Irish-Catholic contract, removal of influence of Irish Republican Army, Lutherans, over slavery of Polish-Gentiles, for INTERPOL and Cold War Slovaks.

Teamsters Internationale: Jordanian contract, nullification of rich children exploiting writers, from seeming poverty, actually independent wealth in British housing, from labor unions feeding dole of Canada and United Kingdom and Australia; countermand of internet, in NSA command.

National Rifle Association: NSA contract, strip of Code Pink, Raelians, Middlesex County, and Suffolk Courts, of access to firearms, for rogue cop hunts of drug dealers, endowed to Canadian jazz swing culture of Jews.

Hard Candy: Star Trek contract, posture of self in pornography with cougar dominatrix, to confuse older hot women, with big beautiful women, to confuse Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, into arrests as "William Riker", if a hospital CEO, the politicians contract for building a new wing of a hospital, with a psychiatric mass sweep investment.

Arkham Games: FBI contract, game mechanics of Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Knight, Arkham Origins, as game theory stolen from Kill Bill 1, as proper FBI procedure, given procedural state department law.

Havana Affair: CIA/USMC contract, as CIA and USMC armed against INTERPOL with foreign manuals, acting out of precinct, over drug law ritual violations, to induce Transvaal disorder, also known as Havana Syndrome.

That Hideous Strength: Narcotics Bureau MI-6, downfall of Elon Musk, as having seized NSA company data, Twitter, to track records of campus mental health, held in bond as foreign gangster, actually Israeli, through Anglican funeral homes.

Cyberpunk: PRCC contract, the communist Chinese, the print of Cyberpunk 2077, to poison any police working out of Poland anti-Boyar, the Bolshevists, for the Red Russian Army, by tricking into assassinating own trained informants.

GTA 3: Prudential Insurance contract, to blend video game mechanics, with applied gaming, to trap any in crime, also beholden to video game mechanics, someone playing Menonite dynamics, as a criminal, instead of using own academic intuition from schools, libraries, or social words of mouth.

Gotham: MetLife contract, teaching American marijuana dealer ethics, American insurance, the method of exchanged ignorance of fronted monetary benefit, mutually refused on revenge of suit if functional; otherwise, Jerome Valeska, gay haze, admission to insanity, or Jeremiah Valeska, theft of job, transgender disorder.

Nolan Trilogy: Comixology contract, independence of comic book contracting, the sales of FBI COIN, DC Comics, to Time Warner Cable, along with Comcast, AOL, and CNN, for American profit share, through popularity of Heath Ledger's role, to save his daughter, raised as a son.

Adolf Hitler: Disney contract, the printing of Max, through John Cusack, to kill Marvel Haganah writer and research man, John Washburne, cousin of Cusack, after Joan Cusack, sent Washburne, to Westen Massachusetts, over molestation of John Cusack's son; deployed in film "Max", shown to campus, to mimic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as ill-fated attorney of fiction, Dr. Gonzo, Oscar Zeta Acosta. "Arm ourselves, to the teeth".

Donald J. Trump: Persian Intelligence contract, hired by Dr. Golden, to inform the FBI, that israeli, MI-6, and ExSec, were taking over entire towns; Dr. Golden, as an IDF defector, in MI-6 secretly, and an FBI source, Dr. Isaiah Friedlander, featured as Sanchez in License to Kill, Snake Plissken in the Carpenter films, and Solid Snake in the Metal Gear games; an act of conscience.

Cuban Catholic: Vladimir Putin, the end of the House of Tudor, and slave farming numbers, through kidnapped naval sailors, from the worldwide merchant and military marine numbers, "Lady Carole"; the death of Queen Elizabeth II in chess, King Charles II's loss of his inheritence, Prince Andrew's vice charge, Prince Edwards' knighting of Andrew Lloyd Weber as King of the Jews, Prince William and Prince Harry's switch between serial killer and mental illness; the takover of the royal family, by own device, Scientology (a refusal of cop charges, in favor of lawyer's term of device, but through police arbiter).

Colbert Report: MKULTRA, the trifecta triple bolo of lawyer/cop/economist, through accusation of gay beaches (Taliban), field hockey bets (Ba'ath), and South Park (Likud), as a British combine, recruiting US Navy quartermaster rations (M3) and North Korean lawyer for Saddam's trial (NYPD) for Colbert Report, "Truthiness", the brainwashing of Barack Obama, to pose as John McCain in public during 2008 election, earning the Nobel Prize.

Bickford Schmeckler: Campus Communist Union, the theft of IRA special education records, for sales to small businesses, for purchase of land by corporate combines, by frame of small business families, as sex offenders (Massachusetts special education students).

[themovieblogonline]

The Best Upcoming Movies of 2023

2023 is promising to be an epic year at the cinema. The Marvel Cinematic Universe will continue to steam ahead with massively anticipated titles featuring Ant-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy. We’ll also see original films by directors Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig as well as sequels in franchises like Scream, The Fast and the Furious, and Indiana Jones. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Let’s hop into our top picks for the best upcoming movies of 2023.  Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Feb. 17) Ant-Man’s third film (and second alongside The Wasp) is guaranteed to be the trippiest yet. Our heroes, played by Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lily, will venture into the quantum realm and encounter an entirely new world therein. This star-studded adventure also features Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer.  Scream 6 (March 10)  Scream 6 is set to prove that it’s never too late (or early) for Halloween scares. The sixth film in the series comes after a successful “reboot” in 2020. Series regulars Courtney Cox and Hayden Panettiere are back alongside newbies like Jenna Ortega (fresh from Netflix’s hit Wednesday). This time, Ghostface brings terror to New York City!   The Super Mario Bros. Movie (April 7) Mario, Luigi, Peach, and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom gang are hitting the big screen in this animated tale of good vs evil. Chris Pratt and Charlie Day will play Mario and Luigi, and Jack Black will voice the villain Bowser—which all but guarantees a hilarious and nostalgic ride.  Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 (May 5) Speaking of Chris Pratt, he’ll also return with the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy for the third (and final?) installment of James Gunn’s epic Marvel series. Fans are anticipating the return of Zoe Saldaña as Gamora and plenty of action-packed space-bound hijinks.  Fast X (May 19) Do we need another entry in the Fast and Furious series? Fans say yes. The 10th adventure will star Vin Diesel and many series regulars along with new members of the “family” Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. We’re not sure about the plot yet, but it’s sure to include plenty of cars, muscles, and action.  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June 30) Harrison Ford steps back into the role of Indy for what’s sure to be his final adventure in Dial of Destiny. Set during the space race in the 1960s, Jones will surely encounter plenty of Russian baddies and some supernatural twists and turns. Joined by Mads Mikkelsen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Antonio Banderas, this may be the movie event of the summer.  Barbie (July 21) Greta Gerwig’s massively anticipated Barbie pic stars Margot Robbie as the plastic protagonist and Ryan Gosling as her boy-toy Ken. We can’t wait to see the combination of Gerwig’s wit, glossy visuals, and nostalgic sound effects in this unexpected original film. Written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie will receive a PG-13 rating and be targeted more at adults than children.  Oppenheimer (July 21) The new film by all-time great Christopher Nolan will hit theaters this summer and tell the story of the man behind the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy plays the title role in what may be the performance of his career. But he’s by no means the only star on board. Rober Downy Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and more will support.  The Exorcist (Oct. 13) Just in time for Halloween, director David Gordon Green will reboot The Exorcist in what’s expected to be the first in a trilogy of terror. Ellen Burstyn, who played the mother of the possessed child Regan in the original film, will reprise her role and help a new priest with a similar case.  Dune: Part 2 (Nov. 3) Dennis Villeneuve's epic adaptation of the fantasy series will continue late in 2023 with the action-packed conclusion to Dune. We’ll see Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) step into big shoes as the chosen one alongside his love interest played by Zendaya. We see Oscars in this film’s future! Grab the Popcorn, Because 2023 is at the Movies  These are our most anticipated films of 2023, but there are so many more that didn’t make this list, including DC titles like Aqua-Man 2 and Shazam 2, MCU’s The Marvels, the live-action Little Mermaid, and a new Transformers movie. Long story short? We’re going to be glued to our seats in 2023!   Read the full article

[emotionalcadaver]

Let’s do American Psycho, Nope, Inception (I just want to hear all your opinions about this one tbh), American Hustle, and Candyman (1992) for the movie ask

Thank you for the ask, Linds!

American Psycho

Never Seen | Want to See | The Worst | Bad | Whatever | Not My Thing | Good | Great | Favorite | Masterpiece

I feel like I'm not as big of a fan of this movie as the majority of Tumblr. I like it, and I would never say no to re-watching it, but it didn't blow my mind or anything.

Nope

Never Seen | Want to See | The Worst | Bad | Whatever | Not My Thing | Good | Great | Favorite | Masterpiece

I actually only just got around to watching this recently and I loved it! I've loved all of Peele's recent films and I'm super excited to see what he does next.

Inception

Never Seen | Want to See | The Worst | Bad | Whatever | Not My Thing | Good | Great | Favorite | Masterpiece

My comfort movie. If I had to pick a favorite movie, it's between this and the Dark Knight Trilogy. The visuals blew my mind the first time I saw it and I'll never forget that moment where everything seems to come together and click into place. I love everything about it: the visuals, the characters, the story, the world, the soundtrack. It's all so, so good and the ending never fails to make me cry. I also love trippy, mind bending stuff which is probably why I love Nolan's movies so much to begin with. Also Robert Fischer is the sweetest little man who needs cuddles, hot cocoa, and I would DIE for him.

American Hustle

Never Seen | Want to See | The Worst | Bad | Whatever | Not My Thing | Good | Great | Favorite | Masterpiece

Admittedly a part of this may be because I hate David O. Russell but I just remember being kind meh when I saw it. Honestly I don't remember a ton of what happened it in, so maybe if I did a re-watch I'd enjoy it a bit more? I liked the cast a lot.

Candyman (1992)

Never Seen | Want to See | The Worst | Bad | Whatever | Not My Thing | Good | Great | Favorite | Masterpiece

There's a couple classic movies that I for some reason never got around to seeing that are currently on my list to watch and this is one of them!

[vindrawins]

Westworld series spoiler free review

A mind consuming sci-fi drama. In a simple way, "Westworld" is like watching Jurassic park movies but instead of dinos, it's terminator robots with "Memento" and "Inception" type story complexity. Well, I'm not trying to explain that it is a copy of this and that... It's a totally new and amazing story.

Seasons 1 & 2 are way crazier or more than amazing. It just consumes your mind, I mean it's engaging. Storytelling is like you have to solve the puzzle of what's happening in the story to understand the meaning behind it, and hell yeah it has deep meanings related to human vs AI and the concept of the fittest one survives, etc etc.

The problem was season 3, literally, it was not that interesting... I mean it didn't have the taste of the theme like the previous season. Maybe because they were trying to introduce another side of the world, which really didn't work. But yeah, season 3 is also important to understand the depth and story given to our favorite-main characters and also very important for the twist of season 4's first half. So you can't skip season 3 if you really want to experience season 4 very well.

And coming to Season 4, my favorite part was the horror elements added in the first 2-3 episodes of this season... It was like I'm watching sci-fi but also sometimes it's scary/dark. (Which builds interest in my mind to watch robot movies like terminator in horror theme). Also, the twists and story of season 4 brings back the taste of season 1 & 2 (which makes it more interesting, just like the early seasons). Season 4 is just a flip with its own complex story. For which season 5 is a must.

Unfortunately, HBO has canceled the final season 5, maybe because of WB & Discovery merger. But you can't leave a story open... It needs to be closed... It needs an ending.. a beautiful ending with a beautiful character arc for our last character. Right now it's up to fans' imagination which was built with the great journey of 4 seasons.

If you are a big fan or interested in storytelling techniques like Christopher Nolan use in his films (obviously one of the makers of Westworld is Jonathan Nolan who is a brother of Christopher.. aka Jonathan helped Christopher in writing stories like Memento, dark knight trilogy and he wrote the story for Interstellar, so you can imagine the potential) then Westworld is something you should watch.