DC cinematic universe thread.

Whelp, Cavill has his next job lined up.
Warhammer.
https://www.darkhorizons.com/amazon-wants-cavill-led-warhammer-40k/

Couldn't disagree more.

I get some fanboy "purists" hate Man of Steel. But it was a much-needed fresh take on the Superman mythos and probably the best film to come out of the DC Cinematic Universe. There's enough room in the world to love Christopher Reeve's Superman as well as Cavill's Man of Steel, recognizing that they are very different films.

I should rephrase/clarify.

Man of Steel was not a mess because it was not Superman the Movie. Departures from norm can be great, or at least great at what they do. I think Joker and The Batman, for example, are good films at what they do even though they are big departures from the established Bat-Mythos.

Man of Steel was a mess because it wanted to pretend that its Superman was like the Chris Reeve Superman but then had him act like he was a emo tortured soul without doing the necessary work to make that pivot make sense. I would happily see a good film about a version of Superman that stressed his alien heritage and his alienation from the rest of humanity. Man of Steel wasn't it IMO.

Yeah, there was not a lot of "what's going on in Clark/Kal-El's head" and that really hurt the progression of the movie for me.

Man I'm so glad I waited for Black Adam to come to HBO Max. This movie was very meh. Where did Intergang get all of this tech, is it Kryptonian? Luthor? They gave Dr. Fate and Hawkman no back stories. So the Justice Society has existed for some time, but with only three members? If Waller could make a phone call to Superman, then why not do that from the beginning? I mean we know why in the real world, but still. This felt kind of like The Eternals, C list superheroes saving the day. Hawk Man gave me some real Anthony Makie vibes. So this is Carter Hall. In the JL Animated series his powers come from an Egyptian god, but in this movie it looks like he has Thanagarian tech so a little bit of explanation would have been nice. Anyway, we now know it was senseless to bring back Cavil and they're just going to reboot the DCU so this was just a way for me to pass the time. Not that good of a movie.

Dwayne Johnson is all *burning house* "this is fine, everything is fine!" about the future of Black Adam.

https://www.darkhorizons.com/johnson-issues-statement-on-black-adam-2/

Word is that Johnson turned down a chance to film a cameo for the upcoming Shazam sequel. I know DC post-credit cameos are sort of cursed at this point, but if he was truly serious about sticking around and not just trying to save face while he's lining up other projects, you think he'd have been up for it.

Black Adam only WORKS in the long-term if it's tied to Shazam... has he READ comics?!

Don’t know, but I know The Rock wanted to make this movie for a long time. Is that because he read the comics or is it because he’s a fan of anti-heroes? Seems like they were trying really hard to convey to the audience that black Adam is not a hero. It was extremely dumbed down.

I saw someone point out that they should have had Peacemaker on the Justice Society.

Man, Black Adam really sucked. With the exception of a few movies - Wonder Woman, Man of Steel, 2nd Suicide Squad, Snyder Cut - this has been an unmitigated disaster. Definitely time to start fresh

I bet I can find a Hawkman or Dr. Fate centered Justice League Animated episode that doesn’t involve Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman that’s better than this movie.

FTFY

Hawkman-centered? Good luck - he's only in JLU for about two eps to play off the Hawkgirl/Green Lantern tension.

Fate's in it a bit more, but I can't think of an ep that's actually centered on him. The one where Shayera has to mercy-kill Grundy is probably the main one but that has a lot of Supes in it (albeit getting the shit kicked out of him).

*sniff*

Who cares where Intergang got its tech from? Does it make a difference if it's Darkseid, Luthor, or all Intergang originals, or somewhere lese?
What is relevant is that Intergang are super-generic baddies who exist only to get the shit kicked out of them by Black Adam.

YMMV, but I don't really care about the backstories of Hawkman and Dr. Fate (or Atom Smasher or Cyclone for that matter). The movie would have probably been better if it cut all four of them and focused on making Intergang and Sabbac more formidable. Because the way it was set up, it raised the question that it never answered of "Why did the Justice Society not intervene in Intergang's taking over of Khandaq but feel the need to intervene with Black Adam being present?"

The movie implies that there were other members of the Justice Society besides Hawkman, Dr. Fate and original Atom/Atom Smasher.

Superman isn't at Waller's beck and call. And there's no reason to think that Waller thought that the Justice Society couldn't take care of Black Adam. In fact, they fought him to a standstill and were able to get him to surrender. It makes sense to me that she only called in Superman after knowing that the Justice Society was no longer able capable/willing to take care of Black Adam any more, what with them being down Dr. Fate and having reached a detente with him..

Hawkman has little to do with Falcon and Aldis Hodge has nothing to do with Anthony Mackie except they both play black winged superheroes.

Hawkman in this movie is more a combo platter of Batman/Tony Stark than anything else: a rich superhero leader who has weaponry/armor that puts him on par with a demigod. He is intense and uptight in a way that Sam Wilson never is.

Black Adam was dreadful. Worst movie I've seen in some time.

What made me laugh was the earnest tell, don't show between Hawkman and Fate. I don't know anything about their characters from the comics. But clearly, they were an established duo. There was a lot of "Oh, my old friend. Oh, our grand friendship. I sacrifice my life for you, my lifelong buddy and colleague in crime fighting across the decades." These guys are so damn close and have such a long-standing relationship - or so the film goes to pains to tell us. DO YOU SEE?

And that annoying as fuck kid with 20 skateboards insisting on Black Adam finessing his catchphrase as he is murdering people. So cool - not at all tired and hackneyed / cringeworthy after a metric shit ton of comic book movie overflow these past ~20 years.

Were there any alarm bells at WB over this clusterfuck as the dailies were coming in? Did they really need James Gunn to come along and lay down the hard truths? Apparently yes.

The Superman we need.

Superman never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down...etc etc.

Although, that's not so much true of some of the movie Supermen. Chris Reeve Supes gives up his powers to be with Lois. Brandon Routh Superman flew off for like five years meaning that he was absent for 9/11.

There's a deleted scene from Superman Returns where he reads a stack of newspapers with superspeed x-ray vision, and we see the 9/11 edition of Daily Planet, then we see him wince with guilt.

I mean, it's sort of nice that he felt guilt about THAT, even if he didn't for not being around to help for five years of natural disasters, garden-variety crime, supervillain crime, etc.

In fact, I don't know how the modern adaptation of Superman doesn't crumble over the guilt he must feel over the fact that every second he spends in a staff meeting or covering a story as Clark Kent is a second that he could be doing something far more valuable to save/help someone with fairly little effort on his part.

Jesus, his super hearing must hear SO much domestic abuse.
SO much.
How does he sleep?

He kind of plays God. He works at the Planet for two reasons, A) he actually likes being a reporter and B) he can keep his ear to the ground, so to speak. So he presumably picks the bigger threats that the cops can't deal with like a huge bank robbery that results in a shootout. Of course that also allows Clark Kent to get the scoop on the story so he probably has decide which scoops he gives to Lois.

Imagine all the fapping he has to listen to.

Eh, at least some of that you'd want to hear. Domestic abuse? Not so much.

There was a two part story about the time Superman tried to scare an abusive husband into behaving, then a few days later Clark Kent gets sent to a crime scene and finds out the guy murdered his wife a few days later after she worked up the courage to finally leave him. Then he tries saving another woman, and when the cops show up she claims Superman attacked her husband for no reason.

Domestic violence is one of those things that Superman has to force himself to ignore, because the only way to really solve it effectively would involve breaking his moral code against murder. I bet Injustice Superman has exploded the heads of so many wife beaters.

So, the radical opposite of Mike from Breaking Bad.

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