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19 Mar, 4 tweets, 3 min read
Okay, so the big movie release of the week is #ZackSnydersJusticeLeague.

It’s... fine. Big, messy, sprawling, sweeping, exposition-laden, indulgent, mythic. I reviewed it here for @EscapistMag.

WATCH:
As #ZackSnydersJusticeLeague is a four-hour film, and because I am somebody who has lots of thoughts about regular-length movies anyway, I wrote more about it.

Notably, however you feel about Snyder, the restoration of his vision should be celebrated.

escapistmagazine.com/v2/the-whedon-…
What’s interesting about Snyder’s work on the DCEU, from “Man of Steel” to The #SnyderCut, is that it exists in conversation with the characters’ history.

In particular, Richard Donner and Richard Lester’s “Superman II” is a cornerstone of the DCEU.

escapistmagazine.com/v2/from-man-of…
#FalconAndWinterSoldier premieres today, and it’s good! Which is great, because I can’t be accused of being *either* a paid DC or Marvel shill.

It’s a fun throwback to Reagan era American action cinema, literally opening with a hijacking hostage crisis.

escapistmagazine.com/v2/the-falcon-…

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More from @Darren_Mooney

Darren Mooney Profile picture
19 Mar
Just following on from that discussion of Zack Snyder’s “Justice League”, some thoughts that were too nerdy and esoteric for the article.

In terms of positioning “Justice League” as a reconstruction, it’s obvious even looking at the comics from which it draws. Image
“Batman v. Superman” drew very heavily from two of the biggest “dark age of comics” stories, and hinted at a third.

A lot of the Old Batman Versus Institutionally Challenged Superman stuff comes from Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns”, which ushered in “the dark age.” Image
The climax of the film is lifted directly from the mid-nineties event “The Death of Superman”, which involved - you guessed it - the death of Superman and the introduction of Doomsday.

It was the peak of the nineties “darker and edgier” era, and the height of comics speculation. Image
Read 15 tweets
Darren Mooney Profile picture
19 Mar
Great
1. WONDER WOMAN
2. JOKER
3. BATMAN V. SUPERMAN

Good
4. BIRDS OF PREY
5. JUSTICE LEAGUE (Snyder)
6. SHAZAM

Interesting
7. WONDER WOMAN 1984
8. MAN OF STEEL

Bad
9. SUICIDE SQUAD
10. AQUAMAN
11. JUSTICE LEAGUE (Whedon)
Still, none of the modern wave of DC movies are as good as the “Dark Knight” trilogy, “Mask of the Phantasm”, “Batman Returns” or even “Batman ‘66.”

But who knows, I freely admit that they might when given time to settle. I’m a firm believer in the idea of letting things settle.
Indeed, I suspect “Birds of Prey” might get bumped up from “good” to “great” with another rewatch or two.

Having seen it a couple of times now, it is immensely rewatchable.
Read 4 tweets
Darren Mooney Profile picture
11 Mar
#NowWatching “Man of Steel”

Considering a Twitter Thread where I tick everybody off by neither loving nor hating it enough.
I have never really loved “Man of Steel”, even though I admire a lot of what it’s attempting.

I’d describe it as Snyder’s weakest film, but really I don’t want to get into the “Suckerpunch” discourse.
“We may only have a matter of weeks.”

The Krypton sequence is “Man of Steel” in a microcosm.

There’s a lot of really, really great stuff here. But there’s far too much happening in far too little space.

It could almost be a movie unto itself.
Read 54 tweets
Darren Mooney Profile picture
11 Mar
This is a very *revealing* conversation, and illustrates how insidious fandom racism is.

It’s well worth reading in its entirety.

buzzfeed.com/larryfitzmauri…
The victims of racism don’t owe the public the performance of their trauma. Anyone who has been bullied knows the impulse not to show a bully your tears.

But anybody who has discussed, say, the racist abuse of Kelly Marie Tran has inevitably seen her silence used as validation.
“If the racism really bothered this actor, how come they never actually explicitly talked about it? Fandom doesn’t have a problem.”

Ignoring that they shouldn’t have to, Katie Leung explains one very logical reason why a victim of racist abuse might not publicly talk about it.
Read 4 tweets
Darren Mooney Profile picture
24 Dec 20
It has been a very long year, in terms of “Star Wars” content.

So #NowWatching “The Last Jedi.”

Here I joke, and suggest it’s a real shame they haven’t made any “Star Wars” since, as there’s a real gap in the market.
“You did it, Poe. Now get your squad back here so we can get out of this place.”
“No, General... We can do this.”

I can’t imagine how this story about a hotshot arrogant roguish pilot who needs to learn to listen to women - a recurring motif in the film - could ruffle feathers.
What’s interesting about the Poe storythread in “The Last Jedi” is that it becomes fundamentally self-proving.

In that it’s about the sort of arrogance of these sorts narratively-favoured roguish protagonists, and how fans and narratives fetishise that.

(Which was very timely.)
Read 54 tweets
Darren Mooney Profile picture
23 Dec 20
I have thought about this a lot.

So much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is largely just trivia sheets of “things that happen”, with plots designed to avoid agency.

(Think about how “Civil War” or “Infinity War” are designed to prevent characters making choices.)
To get a sense of why so many blockbuster movies are structured like that, look at how fans react to a blockbuster with actual characterisation.

Compare the reaction to the use of Luke Skywalker as a person in “The Last Jedi” to his use as a plot function in “The Mandalorian.”
Because having a character make choices - rather than just having a plot “happen” to them - risks alienating all those fans who have invested in their own head canon version of the character and treat any contradiction as heresy.

So avoiding characterisation avoids that.
Read 4 tweets

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