Saw it this afternoon in Imax.
I was a little worried that it would be a "Seen it all in the trailers" movie. What else could there be? AN ABSOLUTE BUCKET LOAD!!! As a series, I've liked the Captain America ones the most. Not a weak point in either of them. This would have to be something special, but with it also being dubbed "Avengers 2.5", how much Cap would we see? Answer: Just the right amount. With the other heroes joining in, nothing was lost and they didn't overwhelm the storyline as a continuation of "Winter Soldier". Chris Evans could never be replaced as Steve Rogers and I really hope Marvel listens to him when he says that he wants to carry on with the character. Is this my favourite? Quite possibly. Should you go and see it? Definitely. There were two post-credit sequences, but I understand there could be three with the US release.

I agree, I think the Captain America films are really strong - The First Avenger is underrated! I actually liked the first Fantastic Four when it came out and the Human Torch was far and away my favourite character from that film, so really liked Chris Evans as Johnny Storm as well, but he is truly brilliant as Steve Rogers.

This one was good fun, I really liked it. It's a great instalment, and definitely one of the more rewatchable - the plot isn't exactly complex, but executed really nicely. That's really what sets it apart from it's main competitor this year I think - not being convoluted.
I think it's definitely up there in the MCU - I instinctively feel that Winter Soldier, Guardians, Iron Man and Avengers remain a lot fresher, but I'm sure once the DVD comes out and I rewatch it on loop that it might go up a bit on my list

Some lighter spoilers abound:

I think I was kind of surprised that Spider-Man didn't really need to be in that film as much as I thought he did. I don't know if it was just something I'd inferred wrongly but I was under the impression that he would play an important role in the film. I haven't read the comic version (I know...) but when the film was announced and people were commenting on message boards 'I wonder how they'll do this without Spider-Man?' I just inferred he'd be more pivotal to the plot. In the film his arc is nigh exactly the same as Quicksilver's in DOFP. Literally, "Hmm, we're going to need some help. Wait, I know a guy!" Goes to home, interacts with single parent mother/aunt, goes to room and speaks with teenager - having a bit of comic back and forth while recruiting him. Enter the action set piece! End with: "Ok, thanks for the help, you were great. Take care, kid." Bigger role in later film.
I really liked seeing him with the other characters, and looking forward for his film, but ended up way more buzzed about Black Panther!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: rwn410,

Seems like this movie is blowing up all the box office records for opening weekend receipts worldwide. And people even like it after they have seen it.

I just saw it. As Captain America movies go, it's the best one yet. As Avengers movies go (and it IS an Avengers movie, there's a scene where one full team of Avengers battles another full team of Avengers), it's better than "Ultron" but not as good as "Assemble".

Marvel has the springboard down to a science. Not only are Black Panther and their version of Spider-man instant winners, but the clever use of Ant-Man in this one will raise his profile and bring more interest to his next solo movie.

DC should try to hire away the people who've worked on the Marvel movies to work on theirs and fire/not rehire everyone they possibly can who has worked on the DC movies previously. The writers of Batman/Superman in particular should never be allowed to touch these characters again. If Suicide Squad isn't 3 times as good as Batman V. Superman, DC will be literally backed to square one while Marvel is prepping Avengers 3 and 4 and a slew of new solo pictures that should all do very well indeed.

With a little more time to think about it, I think what I like most about the Captain America movies (and appearances) is that they really have captured the essence of the character in them. He will always do the "right" thing, and does not quit, no matter how unlikely it is he will win, especially if it is unlikely he will win. You can always count on his moral compass pointing north. Though he makes mistakes, they only further drive his zeal to see fair play for all.
A lot of my favorite characters from television over the years have shared degrees of that same quality: Mayberry's Andy, Arlen's Hank, and Milwaukee's Richie, for instance. Plenty more in the old Western shows, besides.
Cap's like them, but also to overhead press 1,200 lbs...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chesspieceface:
He will always do the "right" thing, and does not quit, no matter how unlikely it is he will win, especially if it is unlikely he will win. You can always count on his moral compass pointing north./QUOTE]

It's interesting that you should say that because that is exactly what I find has changed in movies, TV and maybe society in general. How often it is that I watch a movie or show and there is no character I like or even care about because they are all so conflicted and are burdened with a bunch of bad qualities that we are supposed to accept.

Please understand I'm not on a moral or ethical high horse, I just liked it better when fictional heroes were honorable and were not constantly fighting their dark side. I get that human beings are not perfect and make mistakes, but that's why we want to be entertained by something that may be less real. Unfortunately it's all about reality now, even in the superhero universe, and no one can be just a good guy without something terrible eating him up. A sign of our times I guess.

Where entertainment is concerned, I think "flawed" characters are just a lot easier to write.

They don't seem to have that problem with Cap, but apparently, the ultimate boy scout Superman is very hard to write whether he is portrayed as a modern-style anti-hero or an old-fashioned goody two-shoes. They've even got him and Batman routinely killing people now, for some insane reason. There hasn't been a Superman movie that pleased a majority of viewers in over 35 years. Nothing is working for him.

In comics, he was at his most deadly boring in the 1960's and was an absolute relic, particularly later in the decade. The fix was to take away some of his power and it worked for a time. Maybe that has to be done to him in the movies, too, but guess what, that makes him more of a "regular" guy, and with that inevitably comes "regular" guy flaws.

I was watching something a few days ago where someone made the point that too many of the major DC superheroes are presented as gods, and it's difficult to really do much with them on screen that isn't so overly bombastic because they're just too powerful, at least on Earth. Superman never appealed to me as a character because he just makes any lesser character redundant and is portrayed as far too powerful. Wonder Woman isn't too far removed from him either. This is clear in the Justice League cartoon, where you have to wonder what Hawkgirl really adds because she flies and hits things, which is essentially a subset of the abilities of a lot of the other characters. I'm guessing WB are conscious that if they want to build a shared universe in the same way as that cartoon, they need to take him down a notch to make space for the others, or (highlight) just get him out of the way altogether!

Well in that game of who would win if so and so fought so and so, I always contended that Thor would beat Superman because Thor did everything that Superman can do, plus was a God and had no kryptonite weaknesses, other than occasionally being not so bright.

The idea that Batman could beat Superman, which seemed to be the outcome the movie was leaning to before Mom's name came up, seems pretty stupid. You know that Superman is too powerful for any Bat suit, so the only thing left was to make the characters dumb.

Marvel is killing DC now and the Suicide Squad is walking a thin line with all vile characters as anti-heroes. Will Smith has made some horrible movies lately, so this will either be really cool or a complete mess.

Suicide Squad looks like amazing fun! I wouldn't say it's walking a thin line as none of these characters have the weight of building the Justice League on their shoulders - it's tangential enough to not destroy the franchise if things go wrong. (Plus, Wonder Woman has already wrapped so the franchise will definitely plod ahead regardless.) I can't see any of these characters except perhaps the Joker making a meaningful impact on the Justice League, just Batman in solo ventures. It's also from the same school of thought as Guardians of the Galaxy and to a lesser extent Deadpool, which were also tangential, and they were both extolled for their carefree tone compared to their contemporaries. Will Smith is the element I was most concerned about but the last few trailers have down played his prominence to co-lead which is as it should be for Deadshot. Emphasis really seems to be on Harley Quinn if anything. I guess I'm sounding defensive on this one but it's the movie I've been most anticipating from 2016

As for the characters being vile, I think that's a good thing - Guardians of the Galaxy is a fun movie but relies a lot on exposition in its claim that its roster are all a-holes. Most of them come off being severely likable, and Gamora in particular didn't really live up to her supposed reputation as a cold-blooded assassin. With Suicide Squad, there's a bigger familiarity with (some of) the characters to begin with so their reputations precede them, and the trailers seem to imply there'll be lots of fun douchebag-ery in amongst saving the world.

I like the tangential part. Yes it does not have a direct line to the Justice League movies and so you could make the argument that if it fails it would not have a big impact on those planned films, only on its own possible branch of the DC film tree.

I think failure would have a significant impact. Justice League would go on because it has to, Wonder Woman is already done, but after that the studio will wait on the offshoots, maybe for production years if Suicide Squad does not work.

And the thing about all vile characters is that it's hard for an audience to like them enough to care what happens to them. It becomes a lesser of two evils thing, because there has to be villains and heroes. I would argue that the villain is even more important than the hero because you really want someone you can hate and who can be challenging. Think about every good action movie from Die Hard, to Road Warrior, to Terminator, to Alien and you were presented with a great villain.

It will be a different dynamic when you have an R rated movie and no one is a good guy. The fanboys will come out, but you need the larger general audience. The trailers are interesting, but remember that the tone of a 2 minute trailer is one thing, and watching it for 2 hours is another.

I don't think it's a coincidence that shortly after R-Rated Deadpool exploded with record-breaking profits in February, Suicide Squad went in for some re-shoots.

I took that as they reevaluated their own "edgy" entry into the genre, and based on the Deadpool success, decided they needed more jokes, girl chests, guy behinds, and f-words, and attended to those tasks immediately.

My feeling is that despite the pair of jump-cutty trailers, Suicide Squad was going to be another super-serious Christopher Nolan type gravitas fest. The problem is, only Christopher Nolan has shown himself able to make those well. It's come off as over the top in Snyder's hands. Hopefully, this late attempt to replicate Deadpool's energy will result in it being a winner.

Batman is to appear in it. They can get to the needed work on rehabbing his badly tarnished current movie image from "Batman V. Superman" leading into the solo Batman movie, apparently to be scripted by Affleck himself with help from Geoff Johns (a fine comic and TV writer, but also partially responsible for the dreadful Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie.) Affleck should enlist ol' pal Kevin Smith's help, if he hasn't already, but then again, I'm sure the studio holds most of the cards with such a large investment at stake.

Apparently, there is an R-Rated version of Batman V. Superman in the can somewhere. Oh good. Longer. That'll fix it.

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:There were two post-credit sequences, but I understand there could be three with the US release.

Care to expand a little on that. I saw the film yesterday but only got to see the first sequence. Immediately after it, the lights went up and the friends I was with got up and left along with the rest of the audience. As my friends had very kindly provided the tickets, transport to and from the cinema and food afterwards I wasn't about to hold them up for something that might not appear. PM me is you don't want to post any spoilers.

As for the film itself. For me it was not as good as Winter Soldier. As far as I could make out, Spiderman and Antman were really only there to provide some much needed light relief, something that was otherwise extremeley lacking compared with the previous films. So good, but not great. Nice to see it in a cinema on a big screen.

I don't know if anyone has messaged you Kevin, but in case not:

(highlight)
The second post credits scene has Peter Parker in his room messing with what looks like a wristwatch he has on, with Aunt May, who is outside the room, semi-interrogating him about the fight shown by his black eye/bruise, with some light hearted remarks "It was some guy named Steve. You should have seen his friend, he was huge!" before the watch gadget projects a little spider-man signal onto his ceiling to his happy surprise.

I thought the movie was ok but still had the same level of contrivance as in Batman vs. Superman in order to get good guys to fight each other. With just a little more investigation by one of the characters, there wouldn't have been a battle in this Captain America movie nor the Batman vs. Superman. It didn't seem like something that would really happen in those unreal universes given the powers and devices everyone has. I guess it's what happens when you run out of bad guys (Nazis, terrorists, robots, aliens). Where do they go now?

I didn't know all the press ahead of time so the appearance of Spider-Man was a surprise and a good one. They didn't rehash the origin story (again) and yet we seem him early in his development. One updating was to give him a younger Aunt May. I always liked Spider-Man as a character (not all-powerful but making the most of his powers and intellect) and the recent movies were good.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
I just saw it. As Captain America movies go, it's the best one yet. As Avengers movies go (and it IS an Avengers movie, there's a scene where one full team of Avengers battles another full team of Avengers), it's better than "Ultron" but not as good as "Assemble".

Marvel has the springboard down to a science. Not only are Black Panther and their version of Spider-man instant winners, but the clever use of Ant-Man in this one will raise his profile and bring more interest to his next solo movie.

DC should try to hire away the people who've worked on the Marvel movies to work on theirs and fire/not rehire everyone they possibly can who has worked on the DC movies previously. The writers of Batman/Superman in particular should never be allowed to touch these characters again. If Suicide Squad isn't 3 times as good as Batman V. Superman, DC will be literally backed to square one while Marvel is prepping Avengers 3 and 4 and a slew of new solo pictures that should all do very well indeed.

For a writer flawed characters are more interesting to write. I think though for someone like Captain America and Superman, though, you can't mess with the essence of the character too much or you risk him behaving just like other superheroes. The writer saw that with Captain America but they've gone the wrong way with Superman. The real challenge with Superman is that he can do too much so you have to find a way to put him at a disadvantage to create some danger and drama. In Superman 2 he had to get his powers back and defeat three people with the same powers and trick always-savvy Lex Luthor into helping him.

I liked the first Henry Cavill Superman movie more after a second viewing but it still wasn't great. I agree that no one has come close to the first Christopher Reeve movie which also had a good sequel (forget about 3 and 4). That was the first time we did believe a man could fly. It was a real thrill when he saved both Lois Lane and the helicopter. It's got to be tougher to give a 21st century audience that kind of "wow" moment.

Reeve played him as a 50's Boy Scout in as-cynical-as-today 1970's NYC and it fit that Lex Luthor would be able to trick him into opening a box with Krytonite in it. Superman gained some wisdom in the second movie. I think they need to bring back that Superman because he would stand out as the pure good guy with his weakness perhaps being a little more of a gullibility. Let other Justice Leaguers have a dark side to fight.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
Where entertainment is concerned, I think "flawed" characters are just a lot easier to write.

They don't seem to have that problem with Cap, but apparently, the ultimate boy scout Superman is very hard to write whether he is portrayed as a modern-style anti-hero or an old-fashioned goody two-shoes. They've even got him and Batman routinely killing people now, for some insane reason. There hasn't been a Superman movie that pleased a majority of viewers in over 35 years. Nothing is working for him.

In comics, he was at his most deadly boring in the 1960's and was an absolute relic, particularly later in the decade. The fix was to take away some of his power and it worked for a time. Maybe that has to be done to him in the movies, too, but guess what, that makes him more of a "regular" guy, and with that inevitably comes "regular" guy flaws.

The best of the modern Superman stories in terms of tales that maintain the character's essence while updating him for today's audience is not found in DC Comics Superman titles at all.

Rather, it is found in the pages of "Supreme", originally yet another knock-off of Superman, as published by Image Comics beginning in the early 1990's. An absolutely dreadful comic for it's first 40 issues, it was taken over by famed writer Alan Moore with issue #41 and he immediately cleaned house, re-invigorated the character, and using the handy Superman archetype of Supreme, wrote the title the way he might of had he not completely severed all ties years earlier with DC Comics (over DC's asserting ownership over the Watchmen characters he and Dave Gibbons had created with the tacit understanding that the rights would be given to them within a few years of initial publication).

These stories, nearly 30 issues worth in all, were filled with whimsy and wonder of the classic Silver Age Superman while at the same time jettisoning the primitive and repetitive plotlines that make those same stories so difficult to take seriously these days. In addition to this triumph, a few years later Moore duplicated that same all-ages magic in his "Tom Strong" series from America's Best Comics (purchased by DC as a roundabout way to get him Moore into the fold. Left to his own devices, he'd have quit immediately, but he soldiered on for the sake of artists the books in the line employed).

Both comics, Supreme (#41-58 and Supreme: The Return #1-6) and Tom Strong (#1-36), are all-ages fun that respect the "traditional" time-honored superhero AND are designed to appeal to a modern audience, so it is possible to do both. It's just a lot easier when the greatest comic writer of all-time is involved. Moore himself has said that part of why he wrote those titles that way was because he did regret the part he played in injecting the kind grittiness that, in lesser hands of imitators overwhelmed comics in the wake of the anti-hero success of his own "Watchmen" and "Miracleman" along with Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns", all from 1986.