Wonder Woman Out Dec 16th

[Umbran]

Yep. I think we are gonna see a live action Miles in the next several years, as well.

Maybe. He's doing really well in animation, though, so I am not sure of Sony's going to change up a winning thing just because.

I wouldn’t bank on the vaccine putting things back to normal. This likely won’t be the last pandemic this decade.

I don't think the public has a lot of patience for such controls without a clear and present danger. If covid-19 gets under control I don't expect folks to stay home. If and when another pandemic comes along, then maybe they'll be have learned to respond more appropriately, but until that next issue comes along, they're not going to stay home "just in case".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Maybe. He's doing really well in animation, though, so I am not sure of Sony's going to change up a winning thing just because.

I mean, they can do both.

I don't think the public has a lot of patience for such controls without a clear and present danger. If covid-19 gets under control I don't expect folks to stay home. If and when another pandemic comes along, then maybe they'll be have learned to respond more appropriately, but until that next issue comes along, they're not going to stay home "just in case".

I didn’t suggest any such thing. I didn’t even vaguely kinda hint at any such thing. I don’t normally have to worry about this sort of hyperbolic reply when discussing things with you. If I’d said anything about people “staying home just in case”, this might be a

But people’s behaviors will change for a while. We won’t go back to normal overnight, even if we ignore all the people who likely just cannot ever get the vaccine, and the people who will refuse it.

People will be more reluctant to be in a small room that can’t fit any more people than are in it for a while.

Businesses will be more reluctant to try to cram as many people in the establishment as the fire code allows, for a while.

And every time a flu is a little harder to make a vaccine for in a given year, or a new virus looks like it might go pandemic, for the next several years if not longer, people will react by pulling back and restricting how many strangers can be near them.

And there will likely be another pandemic. And some restrictions will become permanent when that happens. We accept fire code occupancy limits. Surely you don’t think we would refuse to accept slightly stricter limits?

But to the thing I actually said, crowded venues like theaters already made a lot of people uncomfortable before the pandemic. That discomfort won’t go back to pre-COVID levels any time soon, nor will willingness to ignore it. Theaters with smaller numbers of seats per theater room will have an easier time selling tickets, for a good while.

 

[Gradine]

Yeah, I'm wondering if it's just DCEU films being graded on a curve. The first film coasted basically on the fact that it really needed to succeed, because otherwise it was barely passable. This one is just plain bad, offensively so, in spite of having more interesting villains (which again, low bar and all).

 

[Umbran]

The first film coasted basically on the fact that it really needed to succeed, because otherwise it was barely passable.

The first film grossed $822+ million dollars worldwide. Your suggestion that it was "barely passable" does not seem aligned with that reality.

 

[Gradine]

The first film grossed $822+ million dollars worldwide. Your suggestion that it was "barely passable" does not seem aligned with that reality.

Do I really need to make the Michael Bay argument here? Success and quality are two very different metrics. For what it's worth, I'm quite pleased the film did as well as it did, knowing how much was riding on its success (never mind that should never have been the case in the first place, but alas and alack, the world we have is very imperfect). I just would have also preferred it had been a good movie on top of that.

 

[Marc_C]

Saw it. I give it a 6.5 on 10. The only part I really liked was the beginning when Diana is young. The script and fight scenes were lacklustre. A movie on auto-pilot. Flying on a fighter plane from NY to Cairo was silly. I much prefer the first one which was entertaining and funny.

 

[Umbran]

I didn’t suggest any such thing. I didn’t even vaguely kinda hint at any such thing. I don’t normally have to worry about this sort of hyperbolic reply

There was nothing hyperbolic in my reply.

And there will likely be another pandemic. And some restrictions will become permanent when that happens. We accept fire code occupancy limits. Surely you don’t think we would refuse to accept slightly stricter limits?

They should refuse to accept them, because they would not be a smart, science-based response to the issue. But that's probably a discussion for the pandemic thread, not this one.

 

[Umbran]

Do I really need to make the Michael Bay argument here? Success and quality are two very different metrics.

Fine. The Tomatometer then - the 2017 Wonder Woman got a 95% positive critical score, and an 84% positive audience rating.

WW84 is doing much less well on both fronts. I would agree it is not as good a movie. But broadly speaking, the first one was broadly well-accepted, and you're just going to have to deal with that.

 

[Gradine]

Fine. The Tomatometer then - the 2017 Wonder Woman got a 95% positive critical score, and an 84% positive audience rating.

WW84 is doing much less well on both fronts. I would agree it is not as good a movie. But broadly speaking, the first one was broadly well-accepted, and you're just going to have to deal with that.

I didn't say that it wasn't well accepted. I said that it wasn't very good, so the former was a little puzzling to me. I, again, chalked it up to at least being quite a bit better than any previous DCEU efforts, the moment in which it came out, and how much it really needed to be successful. I suspect that history will be less kind to it, but that is mere speculation.

As to the Tomato, well, there's no accounting for taste. I'd imagine that that 84% audience rating is even lower than it ought to be, given the nature of review bombing and the types of products those actions tend to target. But they're also similar to the Tomato scores for Skyfall, an incredibly beloved Bond film that I considered to be total rubbish. So maybe I'm the weirdo (fwiw, I only thought the first WW was so-so, my partner loathed it).

Or maybe I'm bitter that it stole all the acclaim and adoration that the previous year's far superior but never given half a chance Ghostbusters reboot. Maybe the world was more ready to accept a female-led genre action movie with an incredibly physically attractive actress despite barely being able to emote while speaking. Maybe Feig hired the wrong Chris. Maybe they needed even more stupidly cartoonish villains. Maybe the action in the climax was a little too easy to follow. Maybe the world wasn't (and still isn't) ready to accept Kristen Wiig as a major star. Or maybe the intervening year and all that happened in it led audiences to be much more committed to allowing the movie to succeed.

I'd guess it's that last one, but the world will probably never know.

In any case, now that the future of female led (and female directed) genre films is more or less secure at this point, it does offer a bit of schadenfreude to watch the sequel taken to task for many of the same issues that, frankly, were wrong with the first one too (hell, WW84 even has actual somewhat compelling villains, rather than the Saturday morning cartoon villains of its predecessor, this time around too!) If it hadn't gone out of its way to crap all over the Middle East for no adequately explored reason, it might have even been better. By a little bit. Again, low bar

 

[Umbran]

I didn't say that it wasn't well accepted. I said that it wasn't very good, so the former was a little puzzling to me. I, again, chalked it up to at least being quite a bit better than any previous DCEU efforts, the moment in which it came out, and how much it really needed to be successful. I suspect that history will be less kind to it, but that is mere speculation.

As to the Tomato, well, there's no accounting for taste.

Okay, so maybe I am missing something. This started with you saying:

"Yeah, I'm wondering if it's just DCEU films being graded on a curve. The first film coasted basically on the fact that it really needed to succeed..."

Perhaps I got the wrong thing. So, let me ask explicitly:

What is IT? You are wondering if WHAT is just DCEU films being graded on a curve?

And what did the first film coast by, on the fact that it needed to succeed?

Because from where I sit, you seem to be basically complaining that there's some mystery in how millions of people can like a movie you don't.