I'm actually a fan of the Batfleck casting *runs and hides*
The Horror... The Shame...
I don't disagree that Afleck has grown as an actor. That is not a question in my mind. The question is more a matter of The Batman. However, in my view Christian Bale (who did an AWESOME job) was not appropriate for the role.... *runs and hides*.
In fact, I don't think we have had a good fit for my view of The Batman. The closest we have come (personal and subjective) is Kevin Conroy and that was a cartoon.
As for John Diggle, I see where that might be a working theory. I personally don't see it going that way for the following reasons.
1. They actually make reference to Hal Jordan in the most recent Flash episode. Though not by name, the reference was dead clear.
2. The Green Lantern in the Up coming Justice League movies will be the John Stewart version. I really doubt that they will cross media between TV and Movies and I suspect that they will get a bigger name actor for the Movie version.
3. Given John Diggle's performance/popularity on Arrow, I can't see him stepping back to a 'Frequent guest star'. To include a Green Lantern character is to invite a fair amount of outer space episodes. So they would have to either vastly increase the special effects budget and change the direction of Arrow completely, or demote the actor to an occasional appearance.
However, I could be wrong on all accounts. In any event, I guess we will see in the months to come.
And have you watched the Netflix Daredevil? I think you might see how bad the Afleck Daredevil was after watching the new stuff. Or I could be wrong.
And have you watched the Netflix Daredevil? I think you might see how bad the Afleck Daredevil was after watching the new stuff. Or I could be wrong.
Pfffftt... have I seen Netflix Daredevil? I've only been waiting MY WHOLE LIFE FOR IT hahaha
I'll be honest, when I first heard they got Charlie Cox for it, I thought it was horrible. Not Toby MaCrier horrible, but it was a let down after waiting so long.
But he killed it! So I no longer think poorly of casting decisions until I've seen them in action. I still don't think Ben Affleck was that bad. The movie was blah (though the young Matt Murdock scenes were done well) and I think people's overall negative opinion on the movie has led them to dislike Affleck's part in it, but I'd actually argue he was the only member of that cast that didn't butcher their role (I'm looking at you Colin Farrell and Jennifer Garner)
I think Affleck didn't do terrible as Daredevil so much as the movie was royally boned by so many other factors. I was in my rock/metal era back then, and listened many, many times to The Man Without Fear. Yet the movie did not really have 'it', to say the least. Director/producer let down maybe? Not having Bullseye in his costume?! On the one hand, he does look silly, but Loki was VASTLY improved by his proper kit, and NOBODY has a sillier costume then that!* I really suspect nobody had 'the formula' yet to make a properly zippy Super movie, so inevitably it was a bit of a slog to watch. Of course, the biggest part of the formula was 'make it an objectively good movie', so it shouldn't have been so hard!
I honestly never saw the present generation of Batman movies, but I loved Batman Returns. I think this movie was pretty instructional... The villains were both interesting and well cast, there was impressive visuals, and it wasn't overly campy. Mind you, the first one was solid too, but I found the 2nd one more interesting. Action scenes are worlds apart now mind you.
*Don't call me on this, supers have some really stupid outfits. But Loki is in the Hall of Fame imho for absurd outfits.
Next Wave would be amazing, really it was the best thing to happen to Marvel in the last 10 years, so obviously it got cancelled and they cut it from the cannon, because well you just can't kill off super important characters like Fin Fang Foom, He said sarcastically.
Well Deadpool's getting made, so I'm happy. Just can't wait for wise cracking goodness, mixed with some good old fashion ultra violence. Which as we all know is the best kind of violence.
For a Marvel Series I would love to see the RunAways.
A She-Hulk movie would make extremely happy too.
A X-Factor movie would be awesome, but you Marvel doesn't have the movie rights to X-men or Deapool so that's a no go.
Namor, would make for a great series too. Atlantean politics could be interesting.
I want a animated series for deadpool after the movie hits, obviously R rated of course
The Punisher would make for a great series, the last movie was pretty good too. Titus Pullo was a great Frank Castle.
Blade is another good candidate for a TV series, Wesley Snipes could probably use the work too.
In fact, I don't think we have had a good fit for my view of The Batman. The closest we have come (personal and subjective) is Kevin Conroy and that was a cartoon.
I certainly agree in terms of the Bat-voice. I always detected a hint of a welsh lilt when Bale did the voice.
3. Given John Diggle's performance/popularity on Arrow, I can't see him stepping back to a 'Frequent guest star'. To include a Green Lantern character is to invite a fair amount of outer space episodes. So they would have to either vastly increase the special effects budget and change the direction of Arrow completely, or demote the actor to an occasional appearance.
Aye, I think "how much will it cost to do that hero's powers?" is always the big question when it comes to TV. GL has to be an expensive guy.
And have you watched the Netflix Daredevil? I think you might see how bad the Afleck Daredevil was after watching the new stuff. Or I could be wrong.
I don't think you can blame it all on Afleck's acting. The Netflix series had better script, better direction, better supporting cast, better FX and more grit.
I don't "Necessarily" blame the Afleck Daredevil on Ben's acting ability. Certainly it suffered from casting and writing and Directing. It also suffered from a delivery stand point in that it just got so very many things wrong.
What do you folks think about The New Mutants spin off that is being talked about?
I have the New Mutants TV movie on DVD. It had Banshee, Emma Frost, Skin, a girl named Buff, a boy who could see through anything (almost) and always wore dark glasses, Jubilee… and I know there were others, but don't remember them off the top of my head. Generation X… that was it.
Overkill. I like superheroes, but it's time for something else now. Preferably space opera.
Blake's 7!!!!
I like Blake's 7 (and it's certainly dark enough and topical enough - maybe too topical) but I think the format worked better as a TV show. You would have to cut too much in a movie.
There is a whole load of classic/pulp SF literature that has never been touched by Holywood though: Poul Anderson, Allan Dean Foster's Commonwealth novels, E. E. "Doc" Smith to name but a few.
@Fardragon There was a animated movie from Japan about the Lensman. But yeah, not Hollywood.
Mandrill and Nekra (DC)
Another Hellboy film, plz.
Or Liz Sherman/Abe Sapien movie. Or… Lobster Johnson!
The DNAgents… The Elementals (Bill Willingham comic), Southern Knights (Which has an actual DRAGON, aka Mark Dagon, amongst its members). Grendel or the original Mage comic.
Going off other indie comics, Shi, about a female ninja, would be great.
I agree that the season finale of Arrow was quite the let down.
It really felt like they wrote it back before they knew they were being renewed and with a real fear that it would NOT be renewed. So they tied everything up in a nice bow. Of course we all know that things will fall all apart in episode one of season 4.
I will say that I am really getting sick of the on again/off again between Oliver and Felicity. I really like Felicity's character (and the actress), but they just can't seem to get past that infinite regression loop. And the whole trope where Oliver does something and everyone is shocked and dismayed to such a degree that they will "Never trust him again" which usually lasts about 2 episodes. They need new material.
Quite honestly I was hoping, considering the spin-off casting announcements lately,that Sarah would be found to have actually been alive all along and that she was in some way behind everything, maybe with Nyssa's help. It will be interesting to see how the League, and specifically the whole Malcolm and Nyssa characters, plays into season 4.
And the final solution with Raz just seemed tacked on. "Well, it's the end of the season and we need to kill him off. Who cares that Oliver has failed miserably every single time he has fought. It's the season finale, so all of the sudden he is 10x the fighter he was. " Doh!!!
At the end of the day, I wasn't massively impressed with the season and it felt like on the whole they need new material. I think that they were focusing more on The Flash this season though so maybe it was only a mild miss-step.
Absolutely. The Flash season finale was great. I wanted to say "Get the Arrow people to sit down with The Flash People and see how to end a season."
I did find two rather significant flaws in it though.
Barry goes back to 'Save his Mom', only he doesn't so that he can maintain the timeline. Then he goes back. Eddie then shoots himself, thus removing The Reverse Flash from ever existing. Doesn't THAT revert the timeline?
Also, Flash runs into a black hole? I mean come on.
I did think it was awesome that the Golden Age Flash's Helmet came through the rift. That was really cool. I also like Cisco's line, "So long and thanks for all the fish."
Arrow: 1) Felicity = meh. Also, is any TV show or movie *ever* going to portray any sort of programmer or computer scientist accurately? Yes, there needs to be a certain amount of drama or the show wouldn't draw in an audience but through how many instances of "we need to hack into that system in order to do x? Okay--give me 30 seconds" must we suffer before screenwriters will portray it accurately?
Flash: not bad at all. To date, though, the only show which has gotten its time travel episodes correct is Babylon 5, primarily because the plots for those shows were all drafted before being filmed so there are no plot holes or unforseen paradoxes.
Flash: not bad at all. To date, though, the only show which has gotten its time travel episodes correct is Babylon 5, primarily because the plots for those shows were all drafted before being filmed so there are no plot holes or unforseen paradoxes.
While it's unlikely The Flash has been plotted out to the extent of B5, I don't think the paradoxes in the show were unforeseen. It looks to me like the creators are leaning into them hard with Legends of Tomorrow and the parallel earths Flash S2 is supposedly going to be dealing with.
Hey is anybody else kinda underwhelmed by the Dare Devil series? I haven't finished watching it yet. Got about half way and then lost interest, They did Fisk well and Dare Devil is fine and all, I just wish there was more of Fisk and Dare Devil and less of the pointless side characters, like reporter guy, that red head from True Blood "who is amazing in True Blood, but plays a filler character in Dare Devil" and Foggy. Wow do I hate Foggy, such a whiny little man, I really hope he gets killed off.
Going by the comics, resign yourself to Foggy being there for the long haul. AFAIK, he's still around today. Daredevil has several foes (and friends/sometimes foes) like Bullseye, Elektra Nachios, etc. Most of early Daredevil was him taking on street punk types and low-level criminals.
Also his original costume was red, black and yellow (insert joke about blind men being unable to color-coordinate here). This only lasted six issues before being changed to the all-red costume known today.
Kingpin didn't appear in comics until the 1980's, almost 20 years *after* Daredevil started in comics (the 60's). In his early issues, Matt Murdock's rather sombre mien contrasted wildly with DD's "Swashbuckling": antics. It's only since the 80's and a major revamp that DD has become the same sort of personality as Matt Murdock.
@LadyRhian, yeah truth be told I haven't read much Daredevil. I read Shadow Land and that's about it. Read alot of Bullseye though, got interested in the character from Deadpool comics strangely enough. He really became one of favorite Marvel villians, during Warren Ellis's amazing run of Thunderbolts. He was fun in the Dark Avengers too, then I got ahold of Bullseye's Greatest Hits "lol" and that is one hell of a read.
I for one am amazed by Daredevil. I thought they did a superb job all the way down the line. And the "pointless side characters" will be around a lot, and they aren't so pointless. If they follow the comic at all (in spirit rather than letter), Karen (the redhead turned blonde from True Blood) will remain quite important going forward. Foggy will continue to be Matt's partner. Ben Ulrich won't be as much of an issue, but the media will play a big part going forward. And the Priest will start making more regular appearances as Matt continues to struggle with the morality of his alter-ego.
I suspect that what a lot of people like about the series is not what you go to comics for. The series is a lot more about the Man, Matt Murdock rather than the vigilante Daredevil. And therefore his relationships and the people in his life will feature prominently over the battles and fight scenes. There's nothing wrong with liking Hero shows for the action. I suspect that won't be the focus of Daredevil going forward.
I don't think Daredvil was too heroworshipy in the comic, it was usually fairly dark/gritty. Daredevil doesn't have really substantial powers when you get down to it; Spiderman is well beyond human strength limits, for example. Daredevil hits many of the same notes as Batman I think. But with less wealth of course, and more blindness.
The villains he deals with as a result aren't powerhouses usually; Bullseye is really skilled, but I doubt he could handle Sabertooth, for example, without serious gimickery. Kingpin's 'superpower' iirc is his background in sumo, and his impressive strength that resulted from it. He's pretty smart too I suppose.
Irrespective of their relative power level, both Daredevil and Spiderman usually focus more on the human side of their characters, at least classically in the comics. One of Spiderman's greatest weaknesses was his Aunt May. There was a whole story line where he went around avoiding combat of any kind because he was afraid that Aunt May would find his broken body and it would kill her. And various villains over the years have figured out who he was and held both May and his various girlfriends over his head.
I think when doing a TV series, you kind of have to focus more on the man than on the Hero. Otherwise you have huge battle scene after huge battle scene and then credits, every week for 22 weeks. Basically a MIchael Bay movie in 22 parts. That would get old very quick in my view.
Comments
I don't disagree that Afleck has grown as an actor. That is not a question in my mind. The question is more a matter of The Batman. However, in my view Christian Bale (who did an AWESOME job) was not appropriate for the role.... *runs and hides*.
In fact, I don't think we have had a good fit for my view of The Batman. The closest we have come (personal and subjective) is Kevin Conroy and that was a cartoon.
As for John Diggle, I see where that might be a working theory. I personally don't see it going that way for the following reasons.
1. They actually make reference to Hal Jordan in the most recent Flash episode. Though not by name, the reference was dead clear.
2. The Green Lantern in the Up coming Justice League movies will be the John Stewart version. I really doubt that they will cross media between TV and Movies and I suspect that they will get a bigger name actor for the Movie version.
3. Given John Diggle's performance/popularity on Arrow, I can't see him stepping back to a 'Frequent guest star'. To include a Green Lantern character is to invite a fair amount of outer space episodes. So they would have to either vastly increase the special effects budget and change the direction of Arrow completely, or demote the actor to an occasional appearance.
However, I could be wrong on all accounts. In any event, I guess we will see in the months to come.
And have you watched the Netflix Daredevil? I think you might see how bad the Afleck Daredevil was after watching the new stuff. Or I could be wrong.
I'll be honest, when I first heard they got Charlie Cox for it, I thought it was horrible. Not Toby MaCrier horrible, but it was a let down after waiting so long.
But he killed it! So I no longer think poorly of casting decisions until I've seen them in action. I still don't think Ben Affleck was that bad. The movie was blah (though the young Matt Murdock scenes were done well) and I think people's overall negative opinion on the movie has led them to dislike Affleck's part in it, but I'd actually argue he was the only member of that cast that didn't butcher their role (I'm looking at you Colin Farrell and Jennifer Garner)
I honestly never saw the present generation of Batman movies, but I loved Batman Returns. I think this movie was pretty instructional... The villains were both interesting and well cast, there was impressive visuals, and it wasn't overly campy. Mind you, the first one was solid too, but I found the 2nd one more interesting. Action scenes are worlds apart now mind you.
*Don't call me on this, supers have some really stupid outfits. But Loki is in the Hall of Fame imho for absurd outfits.
For a Marvel Series I would love to see the RunAways.
A She-Hulk movie would make extremely happy too.
A X-Factor movie would be awesome, but you Marvel doesn't have the movie rights to X-men or Deapool so that's a no go.
Namor, would make for a great series too. Atlantean politics could be interesting.
I want a animated series for deadpool after the movie hits, obviously R rated of course
The Punisher would make for a great series, the last movie was pretty good too. Titus Pullo was a great Frank Castle.
Blade is another good candidate for a TV series, Wesley Snipes could probably use the work too.
I don't think you can blame it all on Afleck's acting. The Netflix series had better script, better direction, better supporting cast, better FX and more grit.
What do you folks think about The New Mutants spin off that is being talked about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X_(film)
There is a whole load of classic/pulp SF literature that has never been touched by Holywood though: Poul Anderson, Allan Dean Foster's Commonwealth novels, E. E. "Doc" Smith to name but a few.
Mandrill and Nekra (DC)
Another Hellboy film, plz.
Or Liz Sherman/Abe Sapien movie. Or… Lobster Johnson!
The DNAgents… The Elementals (Bill Willingham comic), Southern Knights (Which has an actual DRAGON, aka Mark Dagon, amongst its members). Grendel or the original Mage comic.
Going off other indie comics, Shi, about a female ninja, would be great.
How utterly garbage was the finale (and pretty much the season in general)?
It was the most disappointed I've been in a while with a show I enjoy
I will say that I am really getting sick of the on again/off again between Oliver and Felicity. I really like Felicity's character (and the actress), but they just can't seem to get past that infinite regression loop. And the whole trope where Oliver does something and everyone is shocked and dismayed to such a degree that they will "Never trust him again" which usually lasts about 2 episodes. They need new material.
Quite honestly I was hoping, considering the spin-off casting announcements lately,that Sarah would be found to have actually been alive all along and that she was in some way behind everything, maybe with Nyssa's help. It will be interesting to see how the League, and specifically the whole Malcolm and Nyssa characters, plays into season 4.
And the final solution with Raz just seemed tacked on. "Well, it's the end of the season and we need to kill him off. Who cares that Oliver has failed miserably every single time he has fought. It's the season finale, so all of the sudden he is 10x the fighter he was. " Doh!!!
At the end of the day, I wasn't massively impressed with the season and it felt like on the whole they need new material. I think that they were focusing more on The Flash this season though so maybe it was only a mild miss-step.
I did find two rather significant flaws in it though.
Also, Flash runs into a black hole? I mean come on.
I did think it was awesome that the Golden Age Flash's Helmet came through the rift. That was really cool. I also like Cisco's line, "So long and thanks for all the fish."
Flash: not bad at all. To date, though, the only show which has gotten its time travel episodes correct is Babylon 5, primarily because the plots for those shows were all drafted before being filmed so there are no plot holes or unforseen paradoxes.
I haven't finished watching it yet. Got about half way and then lost interest, They did Fisk well and Dare Devil is fine and all, I just wish there was more of Fisk and Dare Devil and less of the pointless side characters, like reporter guy, that red head from True Blood "who is amazing in True Blood, but plays a filler character in Dare Devil" and Foggy.
Wow do I hate Foggy, such a whiny little man, I really hope he gets killed off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Daredevil_enemies
Also his original costume was red, black and yellow (insert joke about blind men being unable to color-coordinate here). This only lasted six issues before being changed to the all-red costume known today.
Kingpin didn't appear in comics until the 1980's, almost 20 years *after* Daredevil started in comics (the 60's). In his early issues, Matt Murdock's rather sombre mien contrasted wildly with DD's "Swashbuckling": antics. It's only since the 80's and a major revamp that DD has become the same sort of personality as Matt Murdock.
I suspect that what a lot of people like about the series is not what you go to comics for. The series is a lot more about the Man, Matt Murdock rather than the vigilante Daredevil. And therefore his relationships and the people in his life will feature prominently over the battles and fight scenes. There's nothing wrong with liking Hero shows for the action. I suspect that won't be the focus of Daredevil going forward.
The villains he deals with as a result aren't powerhouses usually; Bullseye is really skilled, but I doubt he could handle Sabertooth, for example, without serious gimickery. Kingpin's 'superpower' iirc is his background in sumo, and his impressive strength that resulted from it. He's pretty smart too I suppose.
Anyways, has The Hand showed up yet?
I think when doing a TV series, you kind of have to focus more on the man than on the Hero. Otherwise you have huge battle scene after huge battle scene and then credits, every week for 22 weeks. Basically a MIchael Bay movie in 22 parts. That would get old very quick in my view.