Exactly - one of my favourites too.
1 Like
It was the first I read, and I usually give it to prospective Banks readers as it’s a good place to wade in at the shallow end.
Truth be told, I’d be wary regardless. Banks plots aren’t the sort of straight-forward fare that filmmakers seem to know how to handle well, and even when they do a decent job of a complex plot (Primer, for example), a lot of movie-goers still get fed up with having to follow it. I shudder to think what would happen if they tried to film Use of Weapons.
1 Like
My main problem with that movie was that they basically tried to turn Clark Kent into Wolverine (i.e. a depressed loner haunted by questions of his own mysterious past who takes odd jobs across Canada while trying to avoid getting in bar fights that would expose his super-invulnerability).
Oh, and that part where Pa Kent—the guy who was supposed to be Superman’s moral compass—scolds Clark for saving a busload of drowning children.
And the part where every single Kryptonian is a fucking moron.
8 Likes
Imagine how cool it would have been if DC had decided to throw Snyder overboard and made a couple Superman movies and then a JL that were bright and optimistic and featured superheroes acting, you know, heroic more than they sulk and brood?
And side-note: does anyone anywhere think the 99.99% CGI finale to JL is pleasant to watch? Does anyone think that it looks like anything other than a video game?
4 Likes
Uh. NO! Birthright…and the Man of Steel pieces taken from it…is about Kal El seeing the people who inhabit his new home world. Him learning WHO are the people he is protecting and saving which is to help resonate for him WHY he is doing it in the first place.
His father instilled in him the sense of “because you have the power to do so, you should” which is at its core the whole “with great power comes great responsibility”…but just as Spiderman needed his Uncle Ben to die because of his unwillingness to act when he should and then subsequently needed Gwen Stacy to die as a result of him acting…Supes needs to know he should act because he has the power, but also why he should do it even if he had no powers. The whole point of Birthright and All Star Supes was to demonstrate he does what he does, because humanity is worth it.
Wolverine never roamed the counrty side in Canadia as a loner haunted by his own self doubt in the comics. NEVER. The ridiculous X-Men movie franchise showed that to some extent and also was touched upon in the Wolverine movie to show him haunted by killing Jean Grey…also from the same stupid films. But that was never him from the comics.
Which is my point to @Tamsin_Bailey and throughout any thread discussing these film franchises…Marvel films have stuck to the source material fairly closely. Whereas Warner Brothers have gone completely off the rails. As a result the DC films are overall garbage (I do concur with others they can be entertaining and have some bright spots) and the Marvel films (while not always perfect and have plenty fo mis-steps and plot holes and such) are still overall exceptional and light years better than the DC films.
One other thing…when Clark was young, Pa Kent did in fact often tell him not to ever use his powers openly and was against him saving people outright…it was one fairly accurate point from the source material.
1 Like
OK, fine. Man of Steel tried way to hard to make Clark Kent into the MOVIE version of Wolverine.
3 Likes
The biggest problem I have with Superman is that he’s effectively deus ex machina and protagonist in one.
1 Like
That’s also why Vision and Martian Manhunter are terrible characters who will hopefully never get their own movies. When a hero has All the Powers you can’t put them in a fight scene that actually makes sense. That’s why the most powerful member of the Justice League spends most of his time sitting around on a space station while mortals like Batman and Green Arrow are doing the actual fighting, and why the most powerful member of the Avengers barely even made an appearance in Captain America: Civil War.
3 Likes
I admit I am probably being a zealot and completely pendantic about this. 
1 Like
Martian Manhunter is actually a great character for his own film.
Picture it is the JL battling some enemy from afar. A dark figure watches them with a voice over stating something about how he has remain hidden, watching, waiting, living among those who are native to his adopted home…it closes in and we see the alien green face of the J’onn J’onzz…right away within 45 seconds of the movies opening we get the Martian Manhunter…but as he stands motionless he then says in inner monologue…I’ve been hiding for so long…Phase out to post-WWII 1940’s/50’s New York, Idris Elba is center stage. A black man who served in WWII now coming home to face racism and cynicism as a private detective. Keep the entire thing noir and about him trying to do the right thing and solve a serial killer murder spree that the NYPD is powerless to stop and the trope of a racist NYPD Chief keeps putting Jon Jones Private Detective in the cross hairs; but the lead detective sees more. He knows that Jones has helped in the past and isn’t the enemy. He also knows there is something more to this killing spree…it is of course a White Martian, and only Jones can stop him but at the risk of revealing who he really is. As bad as the racism due to his skin color is…the backlash for being a green martian would be worse in his view.
A detective noir film, dealing with racism and isolationism on two different levels. With Idris Elba as the star.
YES. FUCKING. PLEASE.
That’s my 2 cents anyway. 
cc @GulliverFoyle
Edit: typos…lots of them
3 Likes
The setting and the general premise sound fun but given that Martian Manhunter can
- Read minds
- Change shape and appearance
- Utilize super strength
- Shoot lasers out of his eyes
- Fly
- Survive in space
- Become intangible
- Probably do other stuff I forgot
Where does the actual challenge come from? I love a good detective noir film but if Jake had those powers in Chinatown the movie would have been over in 30 seconds.
Maybe if they stripped away like 60 percent of those powers for the film we could have something.
2 Likes
Well. The main thing about MM is he is an extreme introvert when it comes to his powers.
So that’s the hitch. It’s self inflicted. Plus he is extremely susceptible to fire.
1 Like
I’m not a big fan of superhero movies or comics in general, but the idea of superpowers does intrigue me.
John Hodgman does a great job in revealing the underlying psychological reasons for desiring certain superpowers
Well, reportedly, they did.
And you can definitely tell that there’s parts of Justice League that are trying really hard to adopt a bright, breezy, heroic tone, with a minimum of brooding (pretty much anything not involving Bats or Supes). Whether that’s Snyder doing his best to act like Joss Wheadon or the actual Wheadon parts, it’s impossible to say.
3 Likes
My wife rated the JL movie as “pretty okay” but for me it’s the most enjoyable super-hero movie I’ve seen. It made me feel like a kid excitedly reading comic books, again.
3 Likes
Well, there was Ang Lee’s The Hulk, but I suppose that was a Valuable Lesson in How Not To Do Things.
(Personally, I rather liked how that film tried to do something different, though it is clear that is the path to neither critical nor financial success.)
4 Likes
Not a Marvel Studios production though (ditto other unfortunate adaptations like the various “Fantastic Four” films). The first Hulk movie produced by Marvel Studios and set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the 2008 reboot starring Ed Norton.
2 Likes
you have to leave out Hulk, and anything prior to 2008. Those are not part of the revamped Marvel Films properties which really began with Iron Man and Incredible Hulk.
Edit: @Brainspore beat me to it.
And anything Marvel Studios didn’t get the film rights back for yet.
Anybody else see that new Venom trailer? Who had the bright idea of making a movie about a villain whose entire identity is more or less based on his relationship to Spider-Man even though Sony Pictures already relinquished the film rights to Spider-man? That’s like making a movie about Bizarro which carefully omits any mention of Superman or Lex Luthor.
4 Likes
About the only parts of the film I liked involved those three.
The CW shows kinda of ruined me on their Flash. I like the cheaper costume for Grant Gustin better than the plastic hockey gear type they used for Ezra Miller in the movie.
Terrible plot. The Deus ex Kryptonia ending was such a groaner.
2 Likes
