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The DC Comics TV & Movie Thread - A Thread for Talking about Detective Comics Comics Television Shows and Movies

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
"After conferring with the Kryptonian witch hologram, we've deduced the next totem Nyxly will go after."

I'm going to miss Supergirl.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
Before I start digging into the last CW DC show I need to catch up on, can someone tell me if Batwoman ever acknowledges that the Crows are the bad guys?
 
Batwoman took the show’s only Asian character and made her have a heel turn, making her the new Poison Ivy. Horribly unconvincing. Also, we’ve got a new Joker and it’s Batwoman’s brother. I’m not really sure why they let that happen.

Legends continues to be fine. But it’s also a show that still has no clue about history in general. This week, the crew go hangout in a WW2 airplane factory. And they keep talking about the “DoD” despite the fact that, you know, it was the Department of War until 1947. Worst time travel show ever.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Legends continues to be fine. But it’s also a show that still has no clue about history in general. This week, the crew go hangout in a WW2 airplane factory. And they keep talking about the “DoD” despite the fact that, you know, it was the Department of War until 1947. Worst time travel show ever.
I haven't actually watched Batwoman beyond the one crossover episode, but I've been getting the impression that if I ever become a Bat-person, I need to preemptively hunt down all of my siblings.

And you're talking about the show that played actually football with the nuclear football and kidnapped a narrating cowboy. It's become Crack-fic: The Series and I love it in that niche.
 

gogglebob

The Goggles Do Nothing
(he/him)
Whenever there is an anachronism in Legends of Tomorrow, just remember that this is a timeline wherein the Legends of Tomorrow have been mucking things up back to the dawn of time for literal years, so things are going to be a little different in a universe wherein Rasputin may have publicly exploded.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
How would folks compare Legends of Tomorrow with Doom Patrol? Obviously the former is still beholden to being a CW show while the latter is... not, but otherwise it seems like they both occupy similar spaces of "really zany stuff happens a lot and the characters just roll with it" and that's absolutely the reason Doom Patrol is the only one of these DC shows I've actually stuck with.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
On that level, they’re pretty comparable; at least after the first season of Legends.

It eventually reaches the point where Legends is pointedly *not* dealing with crossovers and is content being it’s own separate weird-ass show
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Doom Patrol takes itself seriously, for a certain value of "serious". Even if it's pathos surrounding a blob-lady falling in love with a man with a birdcage for a torso, Doom Patrol is trying to evoke pathos. Legends has abandoned most of the pretense of ever trying to be gritty or realistic in favor of trying to be wacky fun.
 
For what it's worth, Legends has attempted to engender real pathos this season regarding its character development arcs (which isn't new for the show, but feels a little more concentrated than normal) and it's actually taking "whacky time travel show" premise seriously for once since it's sticking around in its locations longer than normal and attempting to do some real reflecting on how shitty these time periods were for minorities/anyone not firmly rooted in the mainstream. So it's attempting to take the subject matter seriously for once. It's just abundantly clear the writers themselves have zero knowledge or background in history whatsoever.

I would say Doom Patrol and Legends are actually very comparable and similar in terms of M.O., themes, and taking themselves seriously. The main difference being, Legends is whacky in a 'Saturday morning cartoon' variety, and Doom Patrol is whacky in a 'mad tv/snl' variety.
 
I had very low expectations going into Peacemaker and it's so far a lot of fun. It surprisingly had a lot of heart and is pretty thoughtful. And while it does ask you to empathize with a douchenozzle like Peacemaker, it tempers that by humiliating him at an almost unfathomable rate which is just a lot of fun to watch. It's been a great dissertation on toxic masculinity so far.

As much as I bitch about CW's DC shows, Legends of Tomorrow is really fantastic. This last week's episode in Hell was a lot of fun. Love Behrad too, it's great how they turned him from a gag character into someone very relateable and heartfelt.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
I'm still going through the complete Arrowverse, a project I started when people were going on about Crisis and decided to get through when Covid started. It's been slow going and overall I don't care for a lot of the shows like a lot seem to. But I think I've gotten to the point where Legends is great and Supergirl finally found it's fun button while still being very ridiculously on the nose about it's messaging. Like, I liked most of season 4 but Jon Cryer's Lex is very much the character I think of from the comics, a nice balance between Clancy Brown's unflappable crime master and Hackman's sillier take. "You're right, I'll give myself cancer" is exactly the kind of Lex I love.

I still think the Arrowverse is more hit than miss but it was worth it to get here. It's a shame that the Flash, the show that should be more fun, isn't most of the time.

The problem with getting to Crisis, which is very close now, is that I need to track down Batwoman, which is apparently hard to get to in Canada unless you want to spend actual money on a show people say isn't that good. So that might be the only one I'll have to see through extra-legal means.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
I still think the Arrowverse is more hit than miss but it was worth it to get here. It's a shame that the Flash, the show that should be more fun, isn't most of the time.

The problem with getting to Crisis, which is very close now, is that I need to track down Batwoman, which is apparently hard to get to in Canada unless you want to spend actual money on a show people say isn't that good. So that might be the only one I'll have to see through extra-legal means.
Honestly, you can just pay the $2 rental to watch the one Crisis tie-in episode of Batwoman and be fine. (Or not, wink wink.)

The Flash had an extremely strong start and has had some better and worse bits over the years (Sue Reardon is a particular bright spot in the later seasons) but generally falters because Barry is a moron. Legends realized that it was supposed to be incredibly queer crack-fic and never looked back, and it's been amazing for that. Supergirl has a range of quality depending on who scripted that week's episode, but Cryer's Lex is indeed fantastic. Black Lightning is probably the most "serious" of the shows, but it manages to also be one of the best written at that tone level, and with only 4 seasons, it went out on top. Superman & Lois distances itself from the rest of the Arrowverse a bit by taking post-Crisis history, but has a really strong opening season with one of the best-written marriages in a superhero show I think I've ever seen.
 
The Batwoman lead up to Crisis isn't really worth it. She doesn't really have a large or important role in Crisis. And the most meaningful thing that comes from it, is having Kate Cain meet Kara, which is played off as the beginning of a potentially major friendship a la the classic World's Finest Supergirl/Batgirl team up. But then Kate gets written off the show after Season 1, and Supergirl has now ended, so that thread goes nowhere.

That show btw, remains incredibly frustrating to watch. But I weirdly look forward to it every week? Alice is fun. The new Batwoman is ok. They reconciled the stupid Crows finally, but it was painful to get there. It's always doing something to piss me off, but it's a lot more entertaining of a train wreck than Flash is - which just actively makes me angry when I watch it.
 
Yeah, I went into it expecting it to be terrible. And so far it’s… one of the better DC shows that have been made in a while. And that’s saying something when DC typically has very strong shows outside of the glut of CW content.
 
I kinda am. What works on a big screen, often doesn't work in a longer format. Guardians of the Galaxy 1&2 are both a lot of flash and style over any meaningful substance, and the second film is actively bad. I enjoyed Suicide Squad a lot, but it wasn't nearly as good as Birds of Prey and often felt disjointed with only the bare minimum of dramatic themes. And when I think of good actors, John Cena isn't even in the first five hundred names I could come up with. (I pegged him as being budget-Dwayne Johnson, and it turns out he's a helluva lot better actor than The Rock could ever dream to be.) A lot of James Gunn's more self-indulgent quirks as a filmmaker are actually rather annoying to me too, so if you told me he got to make a TV show with little to no editorial oversight and could be as self-indulgent as he pleased, I'd be very apprehensive about that show.

Turns out it's fantastic! Who knew? Some of y'all I guess, but definitely not me.
 
I kinda am. What works on a big screen, often doesn't work in a longer format. Guardians of the Galaxy 1&2 are both a lot of flash and style over any meaningful substance, and the second film is actively bad. I enjoyed Suicide Squad a lot, but it wasn't nearly as good as Birds of Prey and often felt disjointed with only the bare minimum of dramatic themes. And when I think of good actors, John Cena isn't even in the first five hundred names I could come up with. (I pegged him as being budget-Dwayne Johnson, and it turns out he's a helluva lot better actor than The Rock could ever dream to be.) A lot of James Gunn's more self-indulgent quirks as a filmmaker are actually rather annoying to me too, so if you told me he got to make a TV show with little to no editorial oversight and could be as self-indulgent as he pleased, I'd be very apprehensive about that show.

Turns out it's fantastic! Who knew? Some of y'all I guess, but definitely not me.
I'm a Gunn fan since Tromeo and Juliet - but I was thinking like, who cares about Peacemaker. Def fun in the latest movie, but he is kind of a 3rd stringer even there.

You're 100% right with Cena - I'm shocked at his range. And you're also right about The Rock - I think he is an android.
 
Catwoman: Hunted came out recently. It's another direct-to-video animated thing that DC puts out on a regular basis.

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Visually it looks on par with other DC animated movies of this nature - lotta really rough edges, essentially looks like it has a TV budget for a cartoon. It's very workmanlike, but it doesn't look awful. This specific film is a collab with a Japanese studio (I think TMS?) with a Japanese director (who is a rather prolific key animator/episode director, but never done any full directing of merit that I can tell) and animation staff, but the creative side (writers/storyboarders/etc) is All-American.

The voice work is fine. Several moderate to high profile voice actors/actors in the cast. Some sound like they're phoning things in; others sound like they didn't even get to see drafts of the video to do their voice overs. Chalk it up to Pandemic recording I guess. The script itself is corny, and cheesy, and kinda embarrassing a times, but the film itself is fun.

The real reason the film is noteworthy is because thematically and stylistically, it's basically just a Lupin III movie. (This becomes blatantly obvious as soon as the movie begins with an intro credits sequence that wants to be Lupin III so bad.) But instead of about Lupin III, it's about Fujiko Mine with a DC Comics coat of paint on top. So if you like Lupin III there's a lot to enjoy here. The film plays up Catwoman as a femme fatale pretty hard early on, and it's almost groan-worthy, but she eventually gets to business and kicks major butt. Batwoman shows up in an Inspector Zenigata role and does the reluctant team-up to take on Leviathan. It's a lot of fun to watch Catwoman take on every other Cat-themed villain in DC and come out on top as the Alpha Cat. (Including a final showdown with Cheetah that was badass/the best that character has ever been shown on screen.) The ending is fun as it teases a possible sequel as well where Catwoman has to potentially face down Talia Al Ghul and I'll gladly watch that - I hope it gets made.

All in all, a decent time. Better than what a lot of these end up being. I don't know if I'd pay top dollar to watch it, but it's worth keeping an eye out for when it eventually hits HBO Max or if you can borrow it or something. 7/10 - good time.
 

Posting this mostly because it looks like Black Adam is actually just an undercover Justice Society movie and NOW I'm interested.
Dr Fate. Wild

Also: peacemaker continues to astound.
End of EP with The Hellacopters "By the Grace of God" playing. Best song from an incredible band. Very exciting
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
End of EP with The Hellacopters "By the Grace of God" playing. Best song from an incredible band. Very exciting
Haven't seen the show yet but man, it would be easy to call Gunn the needle drop guy but he always does good ones so I never really want to fault him.
 
Last ep also pretty good!
Glad this got picked up for a 2nd season.

Cameos at end was fun! And I like that the top level god-beings are johnny come latelies.
 
Yeah pretty good ending. Really enjoyed Adebayo both coming into their own and kicking major ass, and also her completely screwing over her mom, that look on Waller's face at the end was priceless. I don't think this show needs a 2nd season, nor do I really want or need it. This was a pretty good place to leave thing off. But hey, I'll take more if you're giving it to me, sure thing. Show was awesome.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
I really liked this show. Great job humanizing a one-note Suicide Squad character in a way that doesn't feel forced or cheap. I really liked the last scene: sitting on his steps, feeding the last of his jar of goo to a doomed alien queen because he's won, but he's not cruel, while the shade of his dead asshole dad sits grinning, promising to pop up whenever he's least welcome from now on.

One of the inherent advantages of taking a D-list nobody and making a show is that you're not hemmed in by previous characterizations. To do the sort of thing they did with Peacemaker to a character like Superman, they'd have to make a whole different show, like The Boys. But with this, they can take an established but loosely defined guy, and go "What if a shallow, jingoistic asshole...didn't want to be as much of an asshole anymore, because it makes him miserable?" And it's interesting how they go about it.

Also, I'm not sure there's a director around with a better understanding of which song would really elevate a scene than Gunn. Consistently makes an ideal choice you'd not expect.

He's also one of very few directors who can strike just the right balance of crudity and violence and poignancy and heart, pushing the limit of what I'm willing to buy into without going over the line.
 
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