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Kal-El814

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Everything posted by Kal-El814

  1. As ever, the issue is not as black and white as “what if this version of Batman killed people” or “what if this version.of Superman was viewed as potentially dangerous.” The issue with doing that in a movie, forgetting Snyder for a moment, is that even though comic book movies happen much more often today than they used to, it’s still unfortunate that we’d see a version of this character on the big screen that’s not a reflection of the most ironic version of an iconic character. Like if Gunn wants to fuck with the Guardians of the Galaxy or Vigilante or Peacemaker… that’s probably GOOD because nobody really gives a shit about them. That’s not the same with Superman or Batman or The Flash. I love an Elseworlds or alternate take story in print. For as fun as something like Red Son was… I dunno if I’d want a big budget, movie adaptation of that especially since it’s been so long since we’ve seen a great movie Superman. Or the recent DC games in the Rocksteady Batman universe or whatever it’s called, or the Injustice universe, etc. I may not like all of those, but it’s cool that they exist in those media because they’re interesting CONTRASTS to the existing characters and their stories. The Snyder aspect of the issue is that he doesn’t take the actual question to any point beyond the superficial. “What if Batman killed?” Okay… what if he did? The other heroes don’t really react differently to Batman being a killer compared to how they do in the comics, which kinda makes sense if Wonder Woman is clicking terrorist heads and leaving their brains splattered against walls in front of children while not giving a single fuck. And we get a throwaway line about how Batman brands people he sends to prison with the knowledge that they’ll be abused in there because of that, and that’s supposed to show how “hard” Batman is… but it really just makes him a horrible person. So criminals fear Batman, sure, but Bruce Wayne is just still… Bruce Wayne in the Snyderverse. There’s no different insight into the character, nobody really treats him all that differently than he’s treated in the comics where he DOESN’T kill people. It doesn’t seem like he’s even all that fussed about killing them. He just kills them. So why change a critical aspect of a character if it ultimately doesn’t mater? And it’s the same with Superman; he’s out there brooding, he’s letting his dad die, he’s not containing collateral damage… and then people make statues of him anyway.
  2. It's more thought out than the narrative of Bioshock Infinite
  3. Nope is fine. I don’t think it’s as dumb or pointless or whatever as some people seemed to think it was, and I also don’t think it’s as smart or interesting or has as much to say as I assume Peele thinks it does. As a vibe it’s pretty good, it’s occasionally interesting, but I don’t know that I think it works. Probably worth seeing if you like thinking about movies, if you go to them to escape and be titillated… eh.
  4. I wish I knew what it was about conspiracies that so many people find compelling. I know people who think that Qanon is obvious bullshit but do believe that Epstein ran a pedophile blackmail operation despite a lack of evidence for both. I feel like I’m missing something.
  5. D!P FUCKED FOOT GANG... ASSEMBLE @stepee - OUR LORD AND SAVIOR @Kal-El814 - FELL OFF A WALL HE HAD NO BUSINESS CLIMBING, NOW THE LEAST METAL POSTER HAS ACTUAL METAL INSIDE OF HIM @Chris- - PIZZA FRIDAY MORE LIKE FUCKED FOOT FRIDAY @Phaseknox - I THINK HE'S A MEMBER, POSSIBLY PETER TO STEPEE'S JESUS, I CANNOT REMEMBER, SORRY IF I GOT THIS WRONG If you have a fucked foot sound off in the replies for inclusion in the next episode of... FUCKED FOOT GANG
  6. I don't know that the feeling energized bit is true, and I don't know that there's research that shows that swing voters are motived by impeachment as a tactic. I appreciate that voters are to at least some extent vibes based but I don't know that this is a winning issue. I do appreciate that similar tactics "worked" with Clinton to the extent that she lost the election but still won the popular vote. I just don't see anything that suggests that people care more about Hunter than they did about Hillary's email server, "people" in this context meaning an actual undecided voter. Or if those people exist, Trump is not teflon coated to the point that a shitload of indictments and trying to lynch his own Vice President aren't going to cause an equal swing of those people to not vote for him. I wouldn't be surprised to see "impeachment as campaign strategy" be adopted more frequently if it worked, but I don't think that it will. At some point Republican voters are going to want their party to actually govern to at least SOME extent. The difference between Fox and Newsmax or whoever the fuck screaming about impeachment and the actual Republican party wasting time and energy on it is substantial.
  7. If a flight is 5 hours or less, I'm asleep before takeoff and wake when the plane lands. Worship me.
  8. Out of all the people for the GOP to latch onto with the CRIMES narrative, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have got to be some of the stupidest targets, The Clintons had been under the microscope for decades before she was Secretary of State and Biden's been a Washington staple with POTUS ambitions for longer than that. The notion that either of them are just going to derp around committing high crimes has always been nonsensical. I appreciate that when Hillary was running for POTUS there's some juice to be had from that specific squeeze since it's chum for the base and I appreciate that for outlets like Fox News the topic is a crowd pleaser / ratings driver. But for the actual Republican Party to waste time and energy looking into the "Biden Crime Family" while Biden is actually in office is fucking bonkers.
  9. Rodgers has spent his whole adult life hearing that he's the smartest person in the room but he's not bright enough to realize that's a useless fucking metric when the room in question is an NFL locker room.
  10. As in topics like gun control, I don't deny that there would be collateral damage if I could snap my fingers and have all guns vanish. There would be some people who were in a position to defend themselves before that would no longer be able to at a pivotal moment, which could result in the loss of property, bodily harm, or death. And I don't doubt that there are examples where DEI initiatives have caused harm to people. In both cases I do genuinely sympathize. But that sympathy isn't a compelling enough reason to not do *something* even if that something is potentially flawed and causes harm, if the overall benefit outweighs that. Again in the aviation or medical industries, where a lot of the current agita around DEI programs happens to be at the moment... there are candidates out there who are qualified and not white. If nincompoops are being hired over qualified candidates, that's a problem of the people or organizations doing the hiring and not the notion that hiring should be more equitable. I suspect that the perspectives around this topic are going to get worse before they get better. More women are going to college than ever before, outpacing men. It's still not equitable, but the gains I've seen in the biopharma and biotech divisions in the 20 or so years I've been working are staggering. Somewhat ironically, the people who carp the most about DEI programs potentially killing you by letting an unqualified black person be your doctor or pilot are also the same people who bitch about how college is a waste of time and money... actively encouraging a largely white, male audience to not be educated.
  11. I feel like the "super qualified guy who gets passed up for a DEI applicant" is like the welfare queen. I don't believe it really happens broadly and generally correcting the historical imbalance is worth it on the aggregate even if there are individuals who are adversely affected by it. If the injustice is historical and all the people responsible for it are dead, someone contemporaneous is going to have to take the hit or else the status quo just gets maintained. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good, or even better. Aside from that, I don't really think people who lose jobs in these areas are often in a position to know if that's what is really happening. Besides, there's always the weird undercurrent that a lot of people who complain about "diversity hires" (or whatever the term du jour is) assume that those people are going to be less competent than non-diversity hires... for "reasons."
  12. The sculpts continue to be hot hot hot. I know it’ll never happen but I really wish they’d move into sequel trilogy content for this or Legion.
  13. Watching Man of Steel after hearing from a lot of people that it was bad was such a weird experience. The opening stuff on Krypton was pretty fucking cool, and I was wondering what the hell they were talking about. Then it's a 2 hour exercise in watching the wheels fall off with some of the most baffling character beats and dialog, it's just so uneven.
  14. Ongoing wrongness about Man of Steel aside... I watched parts of that interview and it was actually shocking? I know I'm down on a lot of Snyder's DC stuff, But I do get why people like his work and there are aspects of even the bad stuff, LIKE MAN OF STEEL, that are genuinely good. But that interview makes me feel like he's just a broken clock? He talks about "deconstructing" things a lot and he either does not know what that means or is using the term in a way that is NOT what everyone else means when they talk about film deconstruction. It was really weird.
  15. I truly hope that Biden gets up and says... "The state of the union is Maine... the state of the union is New Hampshire... the state of the union is Vermont... the state of the union is Massachusetts... the state of the union is New York..." and takes 45 seconds with each state. And also that he includes Washington DC for good measure. Then just gets off the stager as soon as he's done with the list.
  16. It’s really really great. Without knowing how they’re gonna set some things up for Dun3, the only small nitpicks I might have is that there’s a touch much too much time spent with the non-Jessica spice girls, and the movie ends with perhaps a little too much of a whimper. But that’s a book sin too IMHO so whatever. I feel like almost all the changes made from the book are smart. And it’s wild to see that some people say that this movie specifically is still a white savior narrative… like Jesus Christ short of a Blazing Saddles / Holy Grail ending where Denis shows up, breaks the fourth wall and says, “saviors are bad hon hon hon” right into the camera I don’t know what else he could have done. Chani getting more screen time is smart and Zendaya really crushes it. Everyone does, honestly. There’s not a bad performance to be had other than maybe Christopher Walken who’s… just kind of there? Anyway whatever, give Javier Bardem awards, please. He’s awesome here. I think the reason that these movies and LotR are so successful is that they’re not afraid to be very “about” the material while not being afraid to adapt it. LotR really leans into the fellowship aspect of the characters and those vibes are a non trivial part of why those movies endure. I dunno if Dune(s) will have the same lasting power, but if they do, I think it’ll be because they’re not afraid to be bold and lean into the parts that have broad appeal (sword fighting and worm surfing are cool) while also embracing the specific theme that messiahs are bad, actually. It’s also why stuff like The Witcher and the Snyderverse, for me, don’t work. The vibes in those are often good, but the reasons those characters endure is discarded as baggage in the case of the DC stuff, or in The Witcher… there just wasn’t enough time spent on making sure that anything made any fucking sense. In Dune it doesn’t matter that Paul didn’t inherit some coffee cups and Chani when he killed Janis; how they adapted it makes sense in the movie and has the added benefit of not equating a woman with pottery. Anyway this is great and everyone should see it. Unless you haven’t seen Dune 1, this is not an accessible sequel
  17. For the umpteenth fucking time, this notion that kids, generally, don't know which way they're wired is fucking absurd to me. Ask any of these reductive shit gobblers if there was ever a time when they were young, before they had feelings that could be categorized as sexual attraction, that they weren't sure if they would be into boys or girls. None of them will. I've said it before but when I was in preschool or kindergarten, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to smooch like our respective parents did, and we tried it. I wouldn't have said yes if my friend was a boy. And we were young enough that it wasn't sexual. I wouldn't have had the ability to explain why I wouldn't have been "interested" in kissing a boy, but I knew that I wasn't. Obviously sexuality is complicated, not everyone is "as straight" as I was and am (lousy and inelegant phrasing, but I don't have better to draw upon at the moment), but this notion that most children, even young ones, somehow don't know what or how they feel is silly. And again for the billionth time, nobody's advocating that gender reassignment surgery is first, second, or third line treatment for kids. That's just not happening. Motherfuckers need to leave trans and enby kids alone if they're not theirs or their loved ones. It's so fucking easy to do, Jesus Christ.
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