I loathe restacking quotes twice so let me drop one in the comments: "People long for a time in the past — an unspecified time, which may never have existed — in which Hollywood films spoke directly to the masses, and unified them in a sense of shared humanity."
You know, after years and years of dull, uninteresting superhero slop, it's really nice to see a totally earnest and hopeful movie in that genre, one that jettisons all that origin story crap and bothers to have an interesting aesthetic.
...is what I said after a showing of "Fantastic Four: First Steps," which was actually good -- unlike James Gunn's Jamesgunnified take on Superman, which is OK but firmly up its own ass in the lore department. I am very much not a Marvel fangirl but it seems very clear to me that critics are really, really desperate for this "new" DCU to represent a paradigm shift in the genre that'll force Hollywood out of its Marvelous status, regardless of whether it actually is one. (I'm not sure what Sam thinks of "Into the Spider-Verse," but that is a genuinely fucking great movie -- quite possibly better than even the Raimi Spider-Men!? -- that really did force Disney out of stasis.)
In 1976, I finished a yet-to-be-published-seriously novel (there is an audiobook) in which one character was from Boravia as in Superman Serbia; one from the Island of Mine (making him a Minion); and a man named Harley Quinn who had a large ink stain and so covered himself in motley makeup. I renamed Minions to Lackies from Isle of Lack (for Lackies) and Harley Quinn to Magnus Pye, and now Substacker Lev Grossman used that name in Bright Sword. But the use of Boravia is staying. Uggh. I think a scene from Empire Strikes Back got in there. How could I have been so derivative?
I loathe restacking quotes twice so let me drop one in the comments: "People long for a time in the past — an unspecified time, which may never have existed — in which Hollywood films spoke directly to the masses, and unified them in a sense of shared humanity."
You know, after years and years of dull, uninteresting superhero slop, it's really nice to see a totally earnest and hopeful movie in that genre, one that jettisons all that origin story crap and bothers to have an interesting aesthetic.
...is what I said after a showing of "Fantastic Four: First Steps," which was actually good -- unlike James Gunn's Jamesgunnified take on Superman, which is OK but firmly up its own ass in the lore department. I am very much not a Marvel fangirl but it seems very clear to me that critics are really, really desperate for this "new" DCU to represent a paradigm shift in the genre that'll force Hollywood out of its Marvelous status, regardless of whether it actually is one. (I'm not sure what Sam thinks of "Into the Spider-Verse," but that is a genuinely fucking great movie -- quite possibly better than even the Raimi Spider-Men!? -- that really did force Disney out of stasis.)
In 1976, I finished a yet-to-be-published-seriously novel (there is an audiobook) in which one character was from Boravia as in Superman Serbia; one from the Island of Mine (making him a Minion); and a man named Harley Quinn who had a large ink stain and so covered himself in motley makeup. I renamed Minions to Lackies from Isle of Lack (for Lackies) and Harley Quinn to Magnus Pye, and now Substacker Lev Grossman used that name in Bright Sword. But the use of Boravia is staying. Uggh. I think a scene from Empire Strikes Back got in there. How could I have been so derivative?