The "realism" thread

[Franklin Richards]

Were you trying to make a point? Or where you just trying to manufacture a straw man?


So your arbitrary rules say that you can change the race but not the sex? Ok. Gotcha.


:

 

[some guy]

Were you trying to make a point? Or where you just trying to manufacture a straw man?


So your arbitrary rules say that you can change the race but not the sex? Ok. Gotcha.


:

My point was that you were talking about changing races, and cited Thor being white and Sif being a woman.

And woman is not a race.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that.

 

[Paste Pot Pete]

Whoever's best for the role is best for the role. Elba's Heimdall looks kick ass.

 

[JAK®]

And when casting a character who has been drawn a certain way for decades, part of what makes you the best for the part is your appearance.

There are degrees as to how important that is, though.

 

[Paste Pot Pete]

This is not an argument I can engage in, cause I just don't care enough. When a 6 foot Aussie kills as Wolverine and the best Batman was a scrawny guy with a receeding hairline, I guess I'm over the details.

 

[Lencho01]

I thought this was interesting...

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/05/happy_superheroes.html

As The Dark Knight Recedes, Have Superheroes Gotten Happy Again?

• 5/6/11 at 5:45 PM

Photo: Zade Rosenthal / Marvel; Warner Bros; Paramount

When a movie is one of the highest-grossing films ever made, you can bet it's going to be widely imitated, so when Christopher Nolan's gritty, serious The Dark Knight shattered box-office records in 2008, Hollywood took notice. In its wake, Fox announced that it would be rebooting the upbeat Fantastic Four series for a take that was "less bubblegum" than its predecessors, director Breck Eisner declared that his version of Flash Gordon would be "intense, aggressive, gritty and real ... it's not camp," and Samuel Bayer defended his humorless remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street by saying, "I'm taking this very seriously. I really do look at a movie like The Dark Knight as an inspiration." The year after The Dark Knight's dominance was so flooded with producers talking up their downbeat new reboots that io9.com cried out, "Please, No More Dark Superheroes." Perhaps the site got its wish: In 2011, caped crusaders are finally having fun again.

Unlike recent heroes who agonized over their calling to help people, this year's superheroes have been eagerly accepting the challenge, from the Green Hornet to Captain America. Their costumes reflect the change: Thor's is as boldly embossed as a Halloween costume (or a Joel Schumacher–era Batsuit), the Green Lantern looks like a glow worm, and though Bryan Singer clothed his X-Men in more realistic black leather — and had Cyclops crack "What would you prefer, yellow spandex?" — the upcoming X-Men: First Class takes a different approach. "The costumes are blue and yellow ... because **** it," explained director Matthew Vaughn. "Let's take it back it the original [comic book]."

Even Marvel, the company that has a plausible, realistic superhero in Iron Man, is starting to introduce magic and fantasy into its continuity. Next year in The Avengers, when Tony Stark fights aliens alongside a Norse God in the hopes of securing a Cosmic Cube, is there really any going back for that character and his formerly real world? Maybe not, but Marvel has concluded that the best thing to do is sincerely embrace that outlandishness, and perhaps that's why Thor (which features a magical rainbow bridge as one of its settings) is cleaning up overseas, while more subversive superhero takes like Super and Kick-Ass struggled to find an audience.

Maybe, then, the tail of The Dark Knight isn't as long as we were expecting. Shortly after that film did boffo business, Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov told The Wall Street Journal that his upcoming superhero movies would be every bit as brooding. "We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it," he said. The following year, WB released Zack Snyder's grim Watchmen, which grossed well under its $130 million budget. The year after that, WB had no better luck with Bayer's Dark Knight–inspired Elm Street reboot, and tabled plans to continue the franchise. This year, their "dark" superhero movie is Green Lantern, a film that boasts a straight-arrow hero, kid-friendly alien sidekicks, and cartoonish special effects (including the huge-headed, villainous Peter Sarsgaard, who's contracted whatever strain of CG-induced encephalitis Helena Bonham Carter had in last year's Alice in Wonderland).

It's true that Nolan has The Dark Knight Rises on deck for next year, but with his trilogy ending (and without the death of Heath Ledger lending a dark pallor over the proceedings), that serious-superhero vibe is about to be crowded out by the would-be franchises that embrace bright colors and family appeal. Maybe The Dark Knight actually wasn't the most influential superhero movie of the last decade: Maybe it was Iron Man, a property that, while realistic, had plenty of room to go dark (in the comic, Tony Stark battled alcoholism, and the movie could have mined Robert Downey Jr.'s real-life drug problems for even more pathos), yet turned out a first film that was fleet, fun, and lucrative. At the end of The Dark Knight, Batman has to go into hiding; at the end of Iron Man, Stark proudly tells the world that he's a superhero. Which one would audiences rather be?

 

[Grayson]

With movies like Thor and Green Lantern, it's impossible to completely throw out the fantastical elements, but all superhero movies should have as much "realism" as possible. That's what translates best.

 

[JAK®]

Just make a good film. That's all that matters.

 

[Brother Jack]

Just make a good film. That's all that matters.

 

[Lencho01]

It sort of goes with what I posted in the TMNT thread.

But, it's pretty standard for Hollywood to react to one major success and try to copy it. So, the idea of being "real" and "gritty" had been all over the place. I remember seeing a manip of Alex Ross' JLA with the TDK Batman helmet on everyone once Robinov made his comments.

Here's what I posted...

http://scottalanmendelson.blogspot.com/2011/04/thor-comic-book-adventure-is-kid.html

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Thor, a comic book adventure, is kid-friendly? You speak madness! Just how 'dark and gritty' do we want our fantasy pictures, anyway?



There was talk last week of Paramount moving its all-media press screenings for Thor in several cities to a this Saturday at 10am. The reason was pretty simple: in research and arguably in practice (the film has been open in Australia for nearly two weeks), the big-budget comic book adventure film was playing pretty well to surprisingly young audiences. I don't know if this came to pass anywhere (I'm seeing the film on Tuesday the 3rd), but it brings to mind an interesting observation. There was a certain amount of surprise when it was revealed in one review or another just how kid-friendly the larger-than-life action picture turned out to be. I confess that I've been hard on the film based on the footage we had thus far seen, and it frankly never occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this 31-year old father of one (with another on the way) might not be the intended audience for Kenneth Branagh's Thor.

It's no secret that the various comic book/action figure epics are marketed towards a duel audience. It's a constant double-play, aiming at audiences young and old, as well as general moviegoer versus hardcore fan. And since Bryan Singer revived the genre eleven years ago by taking the world of X-Men very very seriously, the modus operandi for big-budget fantasy films has been to go as dark, violent, and 'real' as you can justify. The irony of course is that the proceeding decade has been dominated by young-adult or outright grownup fanboys, still stung by the aftertaste of Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, demanding that their big-budget comic book adaptations and action figure-based action films be pitched to their level. Thus we get a Fantastic Four series that gets slammed for, among other reasons, being too kid friendly and campy. We get promises of a darker, gritter GI Joe sequel after the first film was slammed for (again, among other things) being too much brightly-colored larger-than-life fun? We get promises from Michael Bay that Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon will be darker and more violent than the campier first two films. I wanted such darkness and monster-movie carnage from the second film and was initially intrigued by Bay's promises this time around. But is that really what we need?

Do we want a Transformers picture that is violent and bleak enough that parents have to question whether or not they can take their younger kids to a film based on a series of 1980s action figures? Do we want a GI Joe film that basically plays out like The Kingdom on steroids? Yes, I know, I grew up on the Burton/Schumacher Batman series, a franchise whose Burton-helmed installments took enormous lumps for their violence and sexual kinkiness. And I distinctly remember rolling my eyes back in 1991 at all the reviews that attacked Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for being too bloody and violent. So, at the risk of becoming one of those annoying parents who changes how he sees the world after having kids, I suppose I simply believe that there needs to be a happy medium. And in this current 'everything must be dark and uber-serious' climate, where even Teen Wolf is being remade as a morose horror drama, we need to be reminded of something.

We were once kids ourselves. We discovered these properties as youngsters because the available media avenues were, if not geared toward kids, appropriate for them. Most of us discovered the X-Men thanks to that 1990s Fox cartoon or the Konami arcade game. We discovered the DC Comics universe through the Super Powers cartoon and action figures and then through the DC Animated Universe that began through Batman: the Animated Series. We discovered Superman from watching the kid-friendly films, from Lois and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman, and/or from Smallville. But those properties, while often PG-13 or TV-14, were family-friendly enough for our parents to allow us to discover those worlds. Those TV shows and films were gateway drugs. They were our introduction to the vast world of DC and Marvel comics and the pleasures that they contained. But had those films or TV shows been pitched to appeal to the hardened and cynical thirty-year old, with the adult content and violence that comes with that, do you think any of our parents would have let us watch them at a young age?
We don't like to admit it, but George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing twelve years ago. While the overgrown original fans carped about the kid-friendly tone and juvenile antics of The Phantom Menace, Lucas just sat back as that PG-rated adventure hooked an entirely new generation of youngsters on the Star Wars mythology. And nine years after that, he did it all over again, crafting an animated television show that hooked the generation after that into the Star Wars franchise. Star Wars turns 35-years old next year, and it's the one wholly original film franchise that has never died, never gone out of style, and never become uncool to the core fanbase of youngsters. If Lucas had given the hardcore fans what they wanted back in 1999, a dark and gritty Phantom Menace with Darth Maul slaughtering innocents left and right and/or a relentlessly bleak Attack of the Clones with a psychotic Anakin Skywalker raping Padme to conceive Luke and Lea, do you really think kids would still be playing Star Wars games on the playground this very day?

There can be a happy medium when the content calls for it. Chris Nolan's Batman Begins was an action drama pitched at an adult level that nonetheless contained very little onscreen content that wasn't appropriate for eight year olds (even The Dark Knight was very careful about its onscreen violence). The first X-Men film opened with a grim concentration camp prologue but maintained a single-digit body count throughout the narrative. Fantastic Four told a kid-friendly story of recognizable family dysfunction that just enough shots of Dr. Doom blowing holes in people's chests and faces to make the kids feel like they were getting away with something. And Kenneth Branagh's Thor seems to recognize that a story about Norse gods beating the hell out of each other with giant hammers might be something that kids would enjoy more than adults.

Point being, these properties will only get new fans if they are enjoyed and embraced by the younger audience. And they will only be enjoyed and embraced by the younger audience if their parents let them see these movies in the first place. And that may not happen if something like Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, a film based on action figures, is not to the young, but merely to the young at heart. Just because it's what I want to see in such a movie doesn't mean its what I deserve to see. After all, I'm a grownup. I probably shouldn't be all that interested in Transformers 3 at all, right?

Scott Mendelson

 

[Chris Wallace]

With movies like Thor and Green Lantern, it's impossible to completely throw out the fantastical elements, but all superhero movies should have as much "realism" as possible. That's what translates best.

As much as possible leads to everything being like Kick-Ass.

 

[roach]

I liked Thor but I didnt like the explanation for magic. Will we see an explanation for magic in Dr. Strange?

 

[JAK®]

I liked Thor but I didnt like the explanation for magic. Will we see an explanation for magic in Dr. Strange?

I don't see the problem with Thor's explanation of magic. In the worldview of gods and sorcerers, magic is like a science, simply because they understand it. If you took a guy from 100 years ago and brought him to the modern day a lot of our technology would be considered magic by him. And of course, there is the famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke;

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

[roach]

I don't see the problem with Thor's explanation of magic. In the worldview of gods and sorcerers, magic is like a science, simply because they understand it. If you took a guy from 100 years ago and brought him to the modern day a lot of our technology would be considered magic by him. And of course, there is the famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke;

I understand where they got it from. I just didnt like it being in the movie especially coming from Thor....maybe it would have been better to have come from the scientist guy as his way to rationalize Thor and Gods

 

[JAK®]

But I don't see what it changes. The magic was still magic.

 

[The Overlord]

I thought this was interesting...

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/05/happy_superheroes.html

Well in regards to that article, not all super heroes were meant to be dark characters. Batman was meant to be a dark character, so when Nolan made him dark again after the campy Batman and Robin, it worked. But characters like Thor and Green Lantern were never meant to be dark, making them dark would ruin their character. You have a light hearted and fun comic book movie that isn't completely campy, as long as it has a good plot and strong characterization.

 

[Lencho01]

Well in regards to that article, not all super heroes were meant to be dark characters. Batman was meant to be a dark character, so when Nolan made him dark again after the campy Batman and Robin, it worked. But characters like Thor and Green Lantern were never meant to be dark, making them dark would ruin their character. You have a light hearted and fun comic book movie that isn't completely campy, as long as it has a good plot and strong characterization.

The article was talking more along the lines of the initial reaction to BB/TDK. After BB, so many people kept bringing it up about how they were going to go about their version of whatever comic book character they were working on. TDK even pushed it over the edge where a WB exec (Horn or Robinov) even said they were going to take all their characters to as dark as the characters allow. That could be read multiple ways.

So, when we have talks of "dark" or "realistic" Fantastic Four films coming out, we know Hollywood's love of copying other films' formulas is just screwing things up.

The funny thing to me is that BB/TDK aren't as dark as people make them out to be.

 

[Godzilla2014]

Personally, when it comes to realism or believability, I think that the extent that it can go depends on the character, more specifically, their origin, their costume, their abilities, villains and so on.

The realistic, grounded approach really works for Batman because there's little to nothing inherently unrealistic or implausible about the character himself at the most basic level, at least by superhero standards. There's nothing science-fictionesque about his origin, as a boy, he witnesses his parents being murdered by an ordinary crook, and it motivates him to fight against the evil that took their lives. He trains himself to become the best crimefighter he can be, and he does it the same way we would, he works hard and long for it, and he uses the resources that he was blessed to do it. There are no superhuman powers that are derived alien heritage, super soldier serums, radioactive spiders, or toxic waste.
Even his choice to wear a costume makes a lot of sense considering his motivations. His costume is very dark in color, for blending into the shadows. He is, in some ways, scarred by his parent's death and the loss of his innocence as a result. He wants criminals to fear him as he once did them, and I think that he wants the scum he encounters to remember him as a symbol. Add in the fact that his costume is also body armor, and wearing a specialized outfit makes a lot of sense. Sure he has some sci-fi villains and may use some sci-fi tech, but these things are not always present. Combine this with the fact that his most famous villains are somewhat similar in this realistic regards, and the realistic approach works for him.

I don't think you can take realism or grounding as far with most other well-known superheroes, though the exact extent varies. Take Captain America, for example. His origin involves a Super Soldier Serum, which takes Steve Rogers from being unfit for military service to the perfect soldier almost instantly with no hard work involved. His costume is patterned after the American flag, and makes no attempt at camoflague, not even using the subdued colors of the flags on Soldier's uniforms. His primary weapon is an indestructible shield he throws around. While you can tweak these things, to apply the same level of realism the Nolan Batman films have would require either changing these elements to the point of being unrecognizable or dropping them all-together, which would severely alter the character of Captain America, and quite possibly beyond recognition.

Thoughts?

 

[JAK®]

When realism stops us from seeing characters in their full glory that means there is too much of it.

 

[roach]

When realism stops us from seeing characters in their full glory that means there is too much of it.

I agree with this. Realism is fine and dandy but I think in the years since TDK its becoming too prevalent. I laugh at the explanation of why the Mandarin couldn't be in the IM movies or why magic couldnt exist in a world of technology....while remember a little movie called Star Wars the perfectly melded technology and mysticism.

I like these movies to be 'real-looking' as possible but I would hate to watch a movie where Shazam explains to young Billy Batson that the word of power is anything more than magic

 

[The Overlord]

I always thought giving characters believable motives and fleshed out personality is the most important thing, that's what makes a work realistic more then anything else.

Frankly the comics are filled with extremely lame, one dimensional super villains who are not menacing in the least. Giving those villains better fleshed out motives and personalities or making them menacing, makes them more believable and realistic. It makes them seem more real, less like villains from a bad sat morning cartoon show from the 80s.

 

[Godzilla2014]

When realism stops us from seeing characters in their full glory that means there is too much of it.

Agreed.

I agree with this. Realism is fine and dandy but I think in the years since TDK its becoming too prevalent. I laugh at the explanation of why the Mandarin couldn't be in the IM movies or why magic couldnt exist in a world of technology....while remember a little movie called Star Wars the perfectly melded technology and mysticism.

I like these movies to be 'real-looking' as possible but I would hate to watch a movie where Shazam explains to young Billy Batson that the word of power is anything more than magic

Agreed. To me, it's not that it's too much realism, but misapplied and done badly. The hard part about realism is that most superhero stories are set in what is meant to be a version our world. Batman and Superman may live in the fictional cities of Gotham and Metropolis, but those cities are meant to be American cities. They don't live on Middle Earth or another galaxy.

My opinion is that things that represent real things (like say the United States military or government) should be portrayed realistically, with realistic responses and actions. This is something that Superman: The Movie screws up. In the scene in which Lex Luthor steals the nuclear missile, all the troops get out of the vehicle to assist the woman in the road, leaving a damn nuke unattended for no good reason. That is just insulting the audience's intelligence.

I always thought giving characters believable motives and fleshed out personality is the most important thing, that's what makes a work realistic more then anything else.

Frankly the comics are filled with extremely lame, one dimensional super villains who are not menacing in the least. Giving those villains better fleshed out motives and personalities or making them menacing, makes them more believable and realistic them seem more real, less like villains from a bad sat morning cartoon show from the 80s.

Agreed. That is way to be realistic that all superhero films (and movies in general) can benefit from.

 

[Bubonic]

certain colors work on screen....Superman and Spider-man being prime examples

the X-men....bright yellow/gold looks like absolute ass on film

That's completely subjective and you've just jumped on a bandwagon fitted for you by the preconceptions of a director that wasn't brave enough to give it a try.

It made sense that the X-Men had team uniforms instead individualistic costumes, and really that is how the X-Men started.

Yet I'm sure audiences wouldn't of liked the movie any less if the colourful costumes had been as brilliantly executed as Spider-Mans.

But I don't see what it changes. The magic was still magic.

Exactly, the scope of magic wasn't reduced by his comments. He was simplifying what magic was in order for Jane to understand. Dr.Strange can bridge the gap between magic and science.

Science isn't really a physical thing is it? Science is an attempt to make sense of the world around us, yet we've barely scratched the surface of our reality.

Magic is the 90% we haven't discovered yet through our petty human means. It's a question of harnessing the vast energies of the universe, and I'll be able to buy that certain mystical artifacts and incantations will serve as a conduit of magic.

Most of the magic we will see will be the manipulation of matter and gravity. Stuff we can or will be able to do with science. I mean we manipulate gravity by flying planes right? There is some very sound science behind that, but magic is just a shortcut, Thor can fly using his Mjonir. Whatever.

 

[roach]

I didnt mind the explanation just that it came from Thor