Unpopular opinions go here

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Nothing from MoS tells me Clark didn't understand murder was bad. That might not be what you're saying, but if it is, its a serious misread of the movie IMO.

I think it's very hard to watch MoS and view Clark as someone who values life in the way even the average person does, to say nothing of one of the paragons of goodness in fiction.

When we watched it in theaters, my son, who was then in elementary school, turned to me and asked why Superman was letting Smallville get destroyed. It would have been trivial to have spared Smallville and even Metropolis much of the damage they suffered. By the end of the movie, Metropolis has suffered damage comparable to a nuclear weapon being dropped there, minus the radioactivity.

Snyder's version of Superman simply doesn't even have the moral compass that the average child does.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Although I agree, I would actually like to watch an entire movie that was only about the day that Bruce Wayne lost his parents. So you know that everything will lead up to them being killed. You know that it will traumatize young Bruce Wayne and set him on his path. But let's really explore this sequence of events and the characters throughout that day over the course of a two-hour film rather than through a 30-second flashback clip.

That would be a really good story, in films or in comics, and is probably one of the few remaining stories left to be told about it, short of the sometimes-silly reinventions of a classic superhero origin. (It's a lot better than, for instance, making Peter Parker's parents into secret agents, which is what Mephisto ought to have taken away in return for Peter's marriage. Oy.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, whatever problems Snyder had put in were just compounded by studio interference there. If you watch it for pacing, its very obviously two movies smashed together; Superman does a self-sacrifice gig twice in less than ten minutes. It makes much more sense if you assume those scenes weren't supposed to be in the same movie.

The problems in his DCEU films can definitely be both due to him and the completely hapless studio management.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Unpopular opinion: we have too many of these meta-commentary threads.

Really unpopular opinion: Not yet, we don't!

(If there were more things to talk about with D&D, there would be less activity on these threads. When the next playtest packet comes out, things will get very quiet in the off-topic threads.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is a moment in which Clark faces the question: What do you do with a villain who would kill the entire human race, when you have no jail enough to hold them?

I think you're giving Goyer's script too much credit. (I think it's Goyer -- the superhero movies that make me roll my eyes usually are.)

The whole movie repeatedly shows us that Superman doesn't really value human life or take action to preserve it. Of course, this Superman killed Zod -- other people's lives just aren't as important as his.

In a better script, the inane thing of Jonathan Kent asking to be allowed to die would be shown to be a moral test that Clark would pass -- by rescuing everyone anyway.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think it's very hard to watch MoS and view Clark as someone who values life in the way even the average person does, to say nothing of one of the paragons of goodness in fiction.

When we watched it in theaters, my son, who was then in elementary school, turned to me and asked why Superman was letting Smallville get destroyed. It would have been trivial to have spared Smallville and even Metropolis much of the damage they suffered. By the end of the movie, Metropolis has suffered damage comparable to a nuclear weapon being dropped there, minus the radioactivity.

Snyder's version of Superman simply doesn't even have the moral compass that the average child does.

And I again think this is a bad misread. It ignores the fact that Clark is not used to being Superman, and is not used to dealing with anything resembling the threat he's under and the number of things he's keeping track of. We're used to seeing supers do that, because we're used to seeing experienced supers (and/or framing that suggests that "coincidentally" the superfight isn't as damaging as it could be).

Thoughout most of the scenes where a lot of damage is being done, Clark is fighting for his life against people who, unlike him, are trained combatants even if they aren't quite as powerful (and the gap is not vast). He's not infrequently dealing with multiples. I just think asking the brand-new Superman who has never had to deal with anything like this before to be as capable of dealing with collateral damage as an experienced hero is, frankly, patently unreasonable.

 

[humble minion]

Unpopular (and certainly financially unrealistic) opinion:

Cinematic universes are bad. Stories need to end if they're going to be stories. There's all sort of money in nostalgia and sequels and spin-offs and nerd completionism, but the whole business is corrosive to good filmmaking. Stories on film can either end well, in a satisfying, planned manner, or they can peter out with a whimper and a million unresolved plot threads once the studio bean counters decide that after 400 sequels of diminishing quality the franchise isn't making enough money any more (and then 3 years later some jerk whose name rhymes with 'backslider' decides to make a 'darker and grittier' reboot).

The MCU should have ended with Endgame (and they should have written an Endgame that wasn't utter rubbish, too, but i digress). Stop making Star Wars. Stop making Alien films (PLEASE stop making Alien films, the last good one was in 1986). Just stop. Do something new.

Tell your story, then leave it to the fanficcers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Unpopular (and certainly financially unrealistic) opinion:

Cinematic universes are bad. Stories need to end if they're going to be stories. There's all sort of money in nostalgia and sequels and spin-offs and nerd completionism, but the whole business is corrosive to good filmmaking. Stories on film can either end well, in a satisfying, planned manner, or they can peter out with a whimper and a million unresolved plot threads once the studio bean counters decide that after 400 sequels of diminishing quality the franchise isn't making enough money any more (and then 3 years later some jerk whose name rhymes with 'backslider' decides to make a 'darker and grittier' reboot).

The MCU should have ended with Endgame (and they should have written an Endgame that wasn't utter rubbish, too, but i digress). Stop making Star Wars. Stop making Alien films (PLEASE stop making Alien films, the last good one was in 1986). Just stop. Do something new.

Tell your story, then leave it to the fanficcers.

If that's what you want, you'll have to convince both Hollywood  and the viewing public. Good luck.

 

[humble minion]

If that's what you want, you'll have to convince both Hollywood  and the viewing public. Good luck.

If you're going to have an unpopular opinion, it might as well be REALLY unpopular!

 

[Hussar]

Unpopular (and certainly financially unrealistic) opinion:

Cinematic universes are bad. Stories need to end if they're going to be stories. There's all sort of money in nostalgia and sequels and spin-offs and nerd completionism, but the whole business is corrosive to good filmmaking. Stories on film can either end well, in a satisfying, planned manner, or they can peter out with a whimper and a million unresolved plot threads once the studio bean counters decide that after 400 sequels of diminishing quality the franchise isn't making enough money any more (and then 3 years later some jerk whose name rhymes with 'backslider' decides to make a 'darker and grittier' reboot).

The MCU should have ended with Endgame (and they should have written an Endgame that wasn't utter rubbish, too, but i digress). Stop making Star Wars. Stop making Alien films (PLEASE stop making Alien films, the last good one was in 1986). Just stop. Do something new.

Tell your story, then leave it to the fanficcers.

I dunno. I just watched Prey and that was a damn fine movie. The new Ghostbusters movies seem to be hitting it well.

Hell I liked Quantimania and GotG3.

Unpopular opinion: people take movies WAY too seriously.