The Gaming Den

PhoneLobster wrote:I liked those trashy glitzy bat man movies more than I liked the two new ones.

The new ones are all "Oh we are so cool and gritty and realistic".

And I'm all like, "No you aren't, you are STILL driving an armored assault motorbike that just detached from a funky armored car and wearing a fucking BAT costume."

If they don't kill off another actor for the next movie and make sure it is very widely cross publicized with the movies release like they did with the last one I can't see the latest incarnation of the franchise lasting for long.

Sooner or later someone is going to realize it's still campy shit only now with added pretentions and the third or fourth movie will get all the harsh bagging the first two already so richly deserve.

You know sometimes I think sequels aren't worse, it just takes some viewers two or three sittings before the glaring flaws in a piece of fiction become obvious to them.

Batman Begins and TDK were done exceptionally well, they were taken seriously while made, and it shows, it made possibly the best comic book movies yet.

However.... there are moments when you're sitting there, watching TDK and really getting into the gritty drama...

...and you realize....

...fucker's dressed like a damned bat!

I mean, it's like they made Law & Order SVU into a movie, and Stabler REALLY went off the deep end and put on a fucking halloween costume to go beat the shit out of suspects... and they decided to throw in Goren who also REALLY went off the deep end after he became a district attourney and got half his face burned off and decided to run around shooting people.

Prak Anima wrote:I mean, it's like they made Law & Order SVU into a movie, and Stabler REALLY went off the deep end and put on a fucking halloween costume to go beat the shit out of suspects... and they decided to throw in Goren who also REALLY went off the deep end after he became a district attourney and got half his face burned off and decided to run around shooting people.

What the hell?

Why are you complaining? Those movies were really, really well done and breathed fresh life into a franchise twenty years dead.

'Oh no, he's dressed like a bat!' - Well yes, yes he is. Cause he has a fear of bats. That... I don't fully understand why you have a problem with this.

'Oh no, he drives an armoured assault vehicle!' - Yes. Yes he does. It's part of the reason he's so awesome. Why is this a bad thing? Is it unrealistic? He's a fucking billionaire ninja samurai knight with a justice complex and a mansion and a butler. Why exactly can't he have an armoured assault vehicle? We, the human race, know how to build giant armoured walking humanoid robots. Hell, the soviets did. We don't because they cost a lot.

Billionaire.

And I don't really see what characters from a crappy detective/mystery show has to do with batman. At all. This isn't gumby suddenly swinging from the rafters and riding porpoise-cars, this is fucking batman. His entire life is swinging from the rafters and driving around in his cool car. And do you know why he has a cool car? Cause he's a fucking billionaire!

As for twoface-dude... y'know, I personally don't see the problem with a strung-out guy who has already taken it on himself to clean up an entire city in a one-DA crusade for light and justice might make some kind of abrupt face-turn when he has to listen to the person he loves die and blames it on the guy who could have saved her but didn't. Oh, and the people who didn't listen to his advice when that could have stopped it all from happening.

Y'know, the guy who was borderline fucking obsessive to start with may have had a few problems. And getting half his face burnt off when he prized his personal beauty, knowing that people would pity him and call him a monster, having heard the girl he loved die horribly...

Any of these things perhaps convince you that perhaps his personality might have changed slightly? Not that from the evidence it was super-normal to begin with.

Why, when so many bad fucking movies exist, are promoted on a day to day basis, would you take time off to slag one of the few, few good ones?

Christ on a crutch. Has anyone considered that perhaps that's why so many bad movies are made and do so fucking well? Because the people with 'taste' just assume that people know that when they're ragging on something it's because they think it's good enough to rag on?

God.

I'm going to go and take a shower. When I get back I will be less angry.

-R

Rejakor, I appreciate the rant but could you not use the '/' like they were underlines/boldface/italics? We have typeface on these boards so when you use '/' to emphasize words it looks more like you're singing. (-:

I was singing. *shifty*

But yes, i've gotten addicted to using those things. I should really, really stop.

Ganbare Gincun wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Most movie threads I read about TF2 just state "It's got Megan Fox" as the reason to watch the movie.

Megan Fox has a lovely enough face, but she needs to eat a sammich or two. But even then her presence would still not be sufficient to offset the sheer awfulness that is the Transformer movie franchise. You could pack the movie to the brim with sammich-fed Megan Foxes and it would still suck sweaty hobo scrotums.

Megan Fox looks like a porn star. Seriously.

If we want to complain about a shitty movie, put House of 1000 Corpses on the chopping block.

Rejakor wrote:Those movies were really, really well done and breathed fresh life into a franchise twenty years dead.

Their production values were no better than any of the other batman movies except for the first one with the actors from the extra campy TV series.

And need I mention that not only was that extra campy TV series incredibly popular, but so were most of the more recent bat man movies, only the 1st of which is 20 years old. (so I can only assume you are saying "aaah sequels, I like the first ones only ever the first ones, restart forever!")

'Oh no, he's dressed like a bat!' - Well yes, yes he is. Cause he has a fear of bats. That... I don't fully understand why you have a problem with this.

... I wonder what you dress as during your day job and your hobbies in your free time?

'Oh no, he drives an armoured assault vehicle!' - Yes.

He drives a detachable giant wheeled armored assault motor bike, that detaches from a prototype jumping super boosted armored assault tank quad all terrain hybrid vehicle. With zany super gadgets.

That's a lot sillier than JUST an armored assault vehicle. I mean he isn't just driving an armored car here.

Yes he does. It's part of the reason he's so awesome. Why is this a bad thing? Is it unrealistic? He's a fucking billionaire ninja samurai knight with a justice complex and a mansion and a butler.

Do you see where the gritty realism breaks down within your own sentence here?

Or is it all a back handed sarcasm attempt to critique the stupidity of the movie?

Why, when so many bad fucking movies exist, are promoted on a day to day basis, would you take time off to slag one of the few, few good ones?

You seem to be talking about the new one.

It's dark and mediocre.

Most of the actors give second rate performances. The guy who plays batman is crap. The girlfriend is uninteresting. Two face is a bore. Morgan Freeman phones it in for whoring money.

The only actors remotely good were Micheal Caine (who also phones it in, but is fricking Micheal Caine) who gets basically no screen time in a MASSIVE movie, and Heath Ledger. Who's acceptable performance sparkles only in comparison to the crap ones surrounding it.

The movie is MASSIVELY too long. The plot line wanders pointlessly. The Joker is NOT satisfactorily depicted in any way shape or form, everything with two face involved is tacked on, surperflous and boring, and the whole "should I quit being a hero" angst plot line of batman is shit and poorly done.

Rejakor wrote:'Oh no, he's dressed like a bat!' - Well yes, yes he is. Cause he has a fear of bats. That... I don't fully understand why you have a problem with this.

Batman - the fearful crime-fighting furry of the Golden Age of comics!

Golden Age Batman wrecked peoples' shit--hanging people (as in, executing by rope and noose) from planes, throwing criminals off buildings, so on.

All right, the level of preachy and obnoxious in Shortpacked! has reached unreadable levels as of 7/7/2008. I'll read it again in a month, hopefully it'll improve by then.

Of course, when your favorite show is Scrubs this kind of swerve towards boorishness is inevitable.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:All right, the level of preachy and obnoxious in Shortpacked! has reached unreadable levels as of 7/7/2008. I'll read it again in a month, hopefully it'll improve by then.

I thought it got unreadable longer than a year ago even...

I also abandoned gpf and somethingpositive a while back. I don't remember exactly when they drove me away, but it's been at least a couple years I imagine.

Rejakor wrote:*completely missing the point inspired ranting*

I was merely pointing out how surreal The Dark Knight, and Batman Begins, I suppose, are. I rather like both of them, think they're some of the best comic book movies in a while, and certainly the best Batman movies, pretty much ever, but it is kinda surreal to really get into two of the more acclaimed movies, which have strong grimdark gritty story lines and do everything seriously, and then about half way through (the Joker interrogation scene is what does it for me) that... this dark vigilante hellbent on justice and the common good is dressed like a fucking bat! And people fucking respect him!

It's surreal, that's all.

Prak_Anima wrote:

Rejakor wrote:*completely missing the point inspired ranting*

It's surreal, that's all.

It's only missing the point if you think it was aimed full force at your post. I suspect it was not.

I imagne that the rant was more directed at PL, who was contending that it wasn't surreal so much as that it was mediocrap.

I will grant that the motorcycle and some aspects of the urban tank are retarded, but all in all, I definitely felt that the newest batman movies were by far the best. I enjoy them beginning to end and even enjoy re-watching them.

I don't read comics about girls by guys.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA wrote:All right, the level of preachy and obnoxious in Shortpacked! has reached unreadable levels as of 7/7/2008. I'll read it again in a month, hopefully it'll improve by then.

Of course, when your favorite show is Scrubs this kind of swerve towards boorishness is inevitable.

I'm not sure I get this, why exactly is this comic so bad? I don't follow the strip so I can't really tell why it's unreadable.

Does that mean you read comics about girls by girls Crissa? The only one I can verify as being that way is Red String, and that's amerimanga style.

Akula wrote:I'm not sure I get this, why exactly is this comic so bad? I don't follow the strip so I can't really tell why it's unreadable.

The strip lurches uncontrollably between having the characters act like bastards (even Ethan and Amber) for hilarity while also trying to give us cheesy lessons about said characters acting like bastards. The problem is that A) the strip goes out of its way to avoid punishment for characters acting like bastards and B) the strip goes out of its way to avoid having to do any substantial character development that would interfere with the characters acting like bastards, so it never sticks.

This makes the comic annoyingly hypocritical at times. But that wasn't the breaking point for me.

Right now Shortpacked! is combining said hypocrisy with a plot straight out of a fanfic: a whimsical blithe spirit bursts into the scene and shakes up the characters' lives. The one person who doesn't think much of them is forced to confront their own inadequacies and admit that they had no basis for disliking the person.

That's awful enough on its own but Mike, a character I really despise, just ended 7/7/2008 about a rant on Robin's personality which has the hypocrisy problem I complained about, but distilled.

I probably wouldn't read comics that are specifically about girls that were written by guys either. But only if we're counting the "This is how girls think and act!" kind. I mean, I have no problems reading looking at the pictures of the Ikki Tousen manga, because sure it's written by a Japanese man who's afraid of koalas, but the girls are just there to kick arse and show their knickers.

As for webcomics, I used to read heaps and heaps. But then, one by one, I started losing interest. Now, a couple of times per week I check S*P and Penny Arcade. I would also still read Ghastly if he didn't stop working on his comic.

Relevant to the topic though, is Exploitation Now. I liked it as a rather stupid series of jokes and panty shots. It sucked when they suddenly decided it was time to go for a serious plot (with more or less unrelated characters). They should have just finished EN and made that as a separate comic.

Crissa wrote:I don't read comics about girls by guys.

-Crissa

Huh. I would have thought you'd be a SiP fan.

I don't read comics about men written by women.

I don't watch cartoons about animals written by people.

Fuck you Chuck Jones.

An itneresting take on the new Batman:

http://www.kitwhitfield.com/2008/09/pla ... ntasy.html

I think he missed the first movie, somehow. It's a sequel. All that was preceded by another movie, for which all the actors and roles were there.

His parents were super-rich, and built the fantastical elements into the city, from the many replica Chevron buildings to the skyway rail all throughout the city. The city is teaming with violent, organized crime with tendrils deep into the police and other departments. Graft is more common than dirt.

And he calls a guy in a bat suit strange?

-Crissa

Yeah, I do read Red String. I also read several web novellas, and art-fronts like Devil's Panties. Oh, and Pink. And some others I can't find at the moment, but I hide them from reading more than once every four months so I don't keep pinging unchanged sites.

The thing is, I got rather sick of comics like Sore Thumbs or Sexy even if I might like the protagonist, there just isn't any character development and I get sick of the 'sex pot as liberated woman' thing; which is nearly entirely the provenance of men who write comics about women.

The thing these guys seem not to get is that girls aren't actually different from boys. Boys don't dress 'sexy', why should these girl characters? Boys don't bounce and flirt and talk real fast in their comics, so why should girls?

It just seriously peeves me.

-Crissa

Strangers in Paradise is certainly one that's different, but I was specifically meaning web comics, as that was the topic.