My Thoughts On #RestoreTheSnyderverse

This may upset or make a lot of people angry, but that’s ok.

So I’ve been seeing a lot of talk lately about people wanted Snyder to come back to DC to finish off the story he has been working on with Justice League 2 and 3 after the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League was released on HBO Max. So far it seems to have been a hit critically and among the fans being positively reviewed by most people I’ve seen, even those that don’t like Snyder’s films, and those that don’t like his version of DC. Now I haven’t seen his Justice League yet, but I have some thoughts about this. I’ve enjoyed Snyder’s DC films, MoS was underrated to me and I love BvS, especially the ultimate cut. To me, I don’t see him coming back. I think that people should lower their expectations and don’t expect them to make more. I think we should be happy that we’ve gotten his cut, as WB and DC won’t return to Snyder going forward. I know people both will and won’t be happy with that, but we should face the facts. 

The first, Zack Snyder left originally for a number of reasons, and one of them being that he couldn’t handle the amount of studio interference that was happening on Justice League. And whether we wanted it to or not, that would happen on the two sequels as well. Remember, DC and WB are the ones putting the money into it, and they will have as much control as they want as they want to make sure they get their money back. There’s a reason they interfered as much as they did, the Snyder films were not the hits they wanted them to be. They only barely made their money back on his films, so it makes sense that they are gonna interfere as much as possible to ensure they get their money back. There’s no way that they’ll spend the $1billion on the sequels to Justice League, when they know that they likely won’t make their money back on films they don’t know or think will be hits. They especially won’t put that money towards someone who is a very polarizing figure amongst fans. 

Now you might say, “well they got him back to do the Snyder cut right?” That’s because they saw they could bring attention to their new streaming service, while spending a little bit of money to refinish a film that’s already mostly done. I mean Justice League was already done and made most of its money back, and they’re probably making bank on the Snyder cut after only spending $70 million to refinish the film. Heck they’re able to do another release with the Justice is Grey edition. So that’s 2 cuts AND they didn’t have to pay Zack to direct. They did pretty well for themselves with this. The only other reason they got Zack back was that they gave him creative control over the film. So he did it as a tribute to his daughter, as a way to bookend that stage of his life. And returning to do more sequels might bring back bad things from that time, as a lot of grief was caused by the amount of changes DC was making to the film.

Another the Snyderverse won’t be back, all the stuff that happened surrounding Justice League. A lot of stuff happened on the set of Justice League after Snyder left/was forced out. A lot of stuff that had been in the news since, stuff that WB will want people to forget and be distracted by. Stuff that by continuing the Snyderverse, they’ll have to deal with. Stuff they won’t deal with, as has been shown in Ray Fisher’s Accountability > Entertainment movement (I guess it could be called that). This is all stuff that won’t be dealt with, especially by the point that the sequels could get made. The people that created, reinforced, and encouraged that environment will still be there, and will directly benefit from the sequels. And so if the sequels do end up happening, they will likely happen without Fisher as Cyborg. I mean we haven’t heard anything about the solo Cyborg movie since A>E started. I don’t think Snyder wants or really should go back to that environment.

Remember people, Snyder will not have the freedom with the sequels that he had with the Snyder Cut. If we get the Sequels, it will likely be a mixture between Justice League and BvS in terms of studio involvement. 

In terms of the wider DC movie verse, I also don’t see them continuing it to avoid confusion. I know they’ve talked about going about it as more of a multiverse, but we haven’t seen anything with that yet. So there will be a lot of confusion around that and with what is in what timeline. I mean Marvel has barely even scratched the surface with the idea of the multiverse, and that’s an important part of Marvel’s future. I think DC really needs to think about what it wants to do, cause outside of The Batman, The Flashpoint movie, and maybe Black Adam, everything else stays within the same universe and timeframe. 

Yes I would like to see what Zack would have done with the sequels, but the way DC is going that won’t happen unless it fits into what DC wants to do with their movie universe. I think the only way we’ll see it is if DC decides to do them animated. That way they don’t have to worry as much about being as involved as there’s not as much budget, and because it could be a smaller production we could see Zack have more control over the films. As they won’t do it live action, especially spending that much just to put it on HBO Max, which would be one way to avoid confusion. But again it’s likely not going to happen no matter how much people want it to. No amount of fan hashtags will cause them to spend that money, as it will not turn into box office, as we’ve seen in the past. 

In the wake of the release of the Snyder cut we’ve seen a number of other hashtags and things calling for other cuts. Like the Ayer cut which also won’t happen, or the George Lucas cut of the Star Wars sequels. Which to me is either a joke, as people have been saying that the Snyder cut didn’t exist for years until it was announced that it was coming. The reason I think this is because the George Lucas cuts of the Star Wars sequels actually don’t exist. There is no footage, no scripts, no version of a George Lucas lead sequel trilogy. George gave Disney an overview of what he would do with a sequel trilogy, but it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t go that route. And again, Disney would not spend the likely over $1 billion to remake the sequels with George Lucas as the creative lead. 

In short, I would like to see the Zack Snyder lead Justice league sequels, but I don’t see it happening. And please, stop putting down other movie universes to make yours seem better, there’s a reason they’re doing well.

If anyone wants to talk about this or whatever, please leave a comment and be respectful.

WandaVision Follow-Up (Spoilers)

So after making that post yesterday about the show, I thought a bit and a bunch of questions came to mind, so here’s a follow up. 

When or how did Monica break through Wanda’s control, cause she said that she was under Wanda’s control but acts like she still was when the kids were born. She didn’t go in undercover so how did she mention Ultron and all that stuff. Was that when Wanda started to lose control over the world? 

How did Wanda not know about Agatha until the end? Was she that good at pretending that Wanda didn’t notice? 

Did Agatha go there before Wanda was there to set up shop, or did she bend the rules around her home to put the basement in? Was Agatha the one to give Wanda the visions of the dead characters or was that just Wanda losing control?I mean a little bit of Agatha comes out when she talks to Vision as the “real” Agnes with her laugh and how she doesn’t react like the other people do that have been under control for a while.

How much of this was unconscious for Wanda and how much was a conscious decision? When did Wanda learn it was her and that she had control over the world? Was it from the beginning or when it got to the 70s? We keep seeing her saying that she didn’t know what was happening and how she has control over it, yet we see her exert immense control over it, with being able to exit it and to expanding the world. I wonder if a part of it is the power taking over her in some way. 

How did she not know that Pietro was a fake? Was it that she wanted to believe so bad that she let it go? Or why didn’t she make Pietro like she did Vision and the twins? If he’s a fake, how did he still have the same super powers? Did Agatha give them to him or what? How did Fake Pietro have a knowledge of what was happening, did Agatha give him knowledge as well? It’s interesting as he has a rough knowledge of their past, but doesn’t know the exact details. I wonder if Agatha is using Pietro to talk to Wanda in some way, like he knows about the sitcom thing and how she’s controlling everyone. I guess we’ll never know. He makes jokes about things that someone shouldn’t be able to in Wanda’s world, like with Monica mentioning Ultron.

Did the mindstone give Wanda her powers, or did it just awaken her latent abilities? Did being around when the snaps happened hepled awaken her potential, or was that letting the grief get to her? 

If Agatha saw what was happening and came to see, why didn’t Doctor Strange come to check what was happening as well? I mean it was going on for a while, there would be enough time for him to find out, I mean he showed up when Loki was on earth in Thor 3. 

Will this lead to an almost reverse house of M, as this was kind of an adaptation on a story where Wanda and vision have children that are found out to be pieces of mephisto’s soul (parts of the soul of essentially the devil, comics for ya) with Agatha being Wanda’s teacher that she defeats in that story. I mean Wanda’s barrier gave Monica abilities, or at the least awakened latent abilities? So will something in the future lead to Wanda being the cause of the emergence of Mutants? I mean with the power that 2 infinity gauntlet snaps and Wanda losing her shit with her new abilities could cause that.

Will The twins come back, and how? Are they out in the multiverse somewhere (with the tease at the end) or will they be reincarnated like in the comics? 

What will happen with White Vision going forward? Will he end up with Wanda? How is he different from OG Vision since he doesn’t have the Mindstone?

Why did the director want to make Wanda out to be a villain, he had OG vision the whole time? In reality he didn’t really push her to do what she did, so why do it? Did he do it to test out the new version? Or did he do it to get the energy to power the new vision? Does the new vision have all the same abilities, or did he lose any mind abilities?

Will Wanda be the one to reforge the infinity stones? I mean in her world she recreated the Mind stone pretty well, especially since her recreated Vision was the same being and she couldn’t control him. Or will Wanda be apart of reforming the infinity stones since Endgame established how important they are to the universe? 

Now I will go onto some not really theories, but some speculation.

I think that Fake Pietro originally had a different origin but it was changed to what it was at some point. I think that Wanda will be an important character going forward, and could even be one of the main focuses of the next phase. I think that something will happen to that will cause Wanda to use her abilities to introduce Mutants into the MCU, but this would happen further down the line when Marvel is ready for that. 

I think that a part of Dr. Strange 2 will be finding Wanda’s children in the multiverse. I think that White Vision may have a part in it. 

It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here and if we’ll see the angry side of  Wanda come out again, like there’s a part of the show where she is kind of villainous and it’s interesting that we don’t see it much.

In terms of a sequel or second season, I don’t really see there being a second season of the show as it would be hard to follow up and explain what’s happening, unless someone else is doing it to Wanda for some reason. I mean I would like to see how the could do a series like this for different genres of shows (like supernatural mystery, action, superhero shows etc). I just don’t see how they can do it again. 

I still think the show is pretty good, it just raises a bunch of questions that might not have answers.

If anyone has any ideas or wants to talk about these, leave a comment below!

Is Hollywood becoming uncreative?

So this is a thing I’ve seen a lot over the past few years and something I keep hearing about. “Hollywood is becoming uncreative, all they release or make are things based on prior IPs”. To me this complaint can be valid, but people need to remember a few things.

Firstly, Hollywood is a business and money is the main reason they make movies. For that very reason it makes sense that Hollywood will focus on making things that could possibly make them as much money as possible. That’s why we see so many adaptations, sequels, remakes, reboots etc, being released. there is existing material which means there is an existing fanbase to market too. Sometimes it works, just look at marvel for that, and some times it doesn’t. This way there is less risk involved in making and releasing a film. It’s why whenever something becomes huge there are eventually a ton of movies released to try to copy that success, which will be touched on later.

The second thing that people need to remember is that this isn’t a new thing. People are acting like this is a new phenomenon sweeping the industry. When in reality this has been going on for almost as long as the industry has been around as an industry. So many of the best remembered movies are remakes, reboots, sequels, or adaptations. This isn’t a new thing, though it is increasing and getting more noticeable as time goes on. Now what I can get behind are how remakes especially are getting lazy, but that is due to Disney releasing live-action remakes that are barely adapting the source material. But again, they make a ton of money. I mean heck, I’m a huge Godzilla fan and those franchises are based entirely on rebooting and remaking things. In the Godzilla franchise alone there are 9 reboots in the franchise spanning over 60 years.

Thirdly, this isn’t just a Hollywood thing. This is an everyone thing. Just look at how many tv shows or streaming shows out there are based on pre-existing works. Heck a lot of them are just reboots of older shows. Heck if people are tired of super hero movies in the theatres, just look at how many super hero shows are on tv and more are continuing to be made as more streaming services are becoming more popular. Everyone wants their Daredevil. Netflix had Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Punisher, Jessica Jones, and the Defenders. Amazon Prime has The Boys. Netflix now has the Umbrella academy. HBO Max is going to have the DC shows, and Disney+ is going to have the marvel shows. And those are just streaming services, not just airing shows. This isn’t just a movie thing, this is an everyone thing

Fourthly, the rise of streaming services has caused Hollywood to get worried and start focusing on things that will bring people back to the theatre. Making movies is a hard thing in itself, making a successful movie is something else entirely. Just look at how many movies have been released this year, and how many of them have actually been successful. I’m guessing not a lot. The industry of today is very different from the industry of even 20 years ago. There is much more competition from all over the world to now streaming services which means that Hollywood is going to be even more picky about the movies they choose to produce. These days there is a lot more money riding on them than there used to be. Movie budgets have grown exponentially over time, especially over the last 20 years. Even though filmmaking has become more easily available out there. Film is a very expensive business, even in just making the movie a lot of money is spent. So they’re going to go with what will give the biggest return on the amount of money spent.

Finally, original stuff is still being made out there. Now maybe it’s not in theatres as much anymore, but there are many ways to be seen out there nowadays. Even when it’s an adaptation or based on prior based material it can still be made original and interesting. You gotta look out there for it. I mean there’s so many movies that have gotten huge based on how good they are. They will usually have a huge name behind them.

In conclusion, just relax and watch what you want. This is a trend that will continue because it makes money. When it stops making money than Hollywood will change. Just look at the expanded universe trend. So many movies were trying to copy Marvel, some were successful such as Legendary Godzilla, some were semi-successful such as DC, and some failed upon arrival such as The Dark Universe, but that happened for a different reason that will be talked about one day. There’s a wealth of content out there, just find something and stick with it.

Is CG getting worse ?

This is a question that has been asked many times over the past few years. As time has gone by computer generated images has become incredibly important to the world of filmmaking. It allows the filmmaker to create whatever they want without putting people at risk and spending the money on doing so, as theres a lot of costs in doing that stuff. The issue though is that CG is being so relied on today that companies aren’t able to spend the time on making it look as good as it can be. We as an audience are becoming more and more knowledgeable on the subject as the industry increases its reliance on CG. Because of being surrounded by so much of it we become more aware of the good and the bad. We have been exposed to it in a majority of the movies and tv shows we watch for almost 30 years now. There have been so many examples of good and bad CG over the years. The technology, software, and skillset of today are very different from even 20 years ago. Technology has changed that much in that amount of time. It went from only the biggest movies having the best effects to smaller independent filmmakers on the internet being able to have incredible effects. The big issue is that people aren’t able to spend the time on making things look the best they can, plus as technology advances eventually we’ll get to a point where there is no increase in the way CG looks. The way CG looks has a lot to do with time, budget, workforce, and what they have to work with. Yes technology has changed, but when artists have the time to create these worlds as well as the manpower too, we can get some incredible stuff. Time is a major factor, these companies that do these effects all only have a certain amount of time, or are able to only work on a small part. It’s why the CG in Black Panther can be laughable and then Infinity war is incredible, the time and resources were focused on that movie. CG is very reliant on having the time to get this stuff done. So there may be a decrease in the quality of CG as the effects become much more demanding. It’s why some movies made 25+ years ago still look incredible, while movies released in the last year can look laughable. It’s also why you see a bunch of different companies when it get’s to the effects area in film credits, as a lot of the time they are outsourced to a number of different effects companies so that they each have the time to create them with as much time available. Making these effects is time consuming work, it’s why 10-12 different companies worked on a movie like Avengers Endgame. Making good CG takes a lot of time as there’s a lot of stuff to be accounted for. A good example of this is just how hard it is to recreate a person in CG. Disney has had a lot of trouble getting it right.

The problem is the way CG is used, it’s at it’s best when it’s used to accentuate something real, create a world, or in trying to create something that doesn’t look real. There are great examples of creating real people in CG, it’s just that it needs the time to do so. A great resource for CG info is the Corridor Crew youtube channel. These guys are talented filmmakers and CG artists that understand how CG works. This rant was in response to a question I’ve seen a lot, and my answer comes from stuff I’ve learned from them. Here’s a great example of what I’m talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inbjhcMu46g&t=731s

That’s everything I have to say, keep a look-out for the next post. Have a great day !

Why aren’t Comedy Movies being made anymore?

This is going off of stuff I talked about in my post about PC culture. For a reminder, that post was a response to a lot of criticism I’ve seen around the internet about PC Culture with focus on Joker director Todd Phillips’ recent comments about comedies not being able to be made because of said PC Culture. To me comedy movies aren’t being made as much anymore because of the advent of the internet. The internet has effected the way comedy could be made in this day and age. For a movie to be a comedy now it needs to have another genre with it, it needs to be a movie that’s also funny. I feel this way as the internet has massively changed the way we consume our comedy. As the internet, streaming, and social media have become increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, and increasing number of people are turning to the internet to make a living. One of the biggest ways to do so is to do comedy. People love to say that comedy as a career is dying because everyone gets offended or that pc culture is killing it. In reality that’s a load of shite. Comedy is one of the most prevalent forms of entertainment on the internet. It’s just that there’s so many people out there doing their own comedy out there that traditional comics aren’t able to keep up. If you look at the popularity of gamers online a lot of the time they’re popular because they’re funny, not because they’re good at games. So many channels that started as gaming channels have transitioned over to doing all sorts of other content because they are funny and make people laugh. So much of the internet is devoted to making people laugh. Why pay to go see a comedy show when I can go online and find funny stuff online that tackles a lot of different topics.  Comedy is a very subjective thing, people aren’t always going to agree on what is funny. Comedy also changes all the time, with the rise of the internet that has become very much apparent. The internet has created an environment where our attention span has changed, and that’s for everything including comedy. The internet has created a world where everyone can through their opinion in and create whatever they want. The greatest example of this is memes. Memes are probably the most popular form of comedy on the internet. There are a lot of people out there that make their living off of creating and reacting to memes. Memes are the fastest trends out there as within weeks something can go from being seen everywhere to being forgotten about within the blink of an eye. Memes themselves have changed over time as people try to find more and more things to make into a meme, memes from 5 years ago are completely different than the ones found out there today. Even outside of the memes, the ability for anyone to make anything has allowed a situation where people don’t need to go through the traditional routes to have their comedy seen, they can just go online and make videos. So to me it makes sense to me that  comedy movies aren’t being made as much anymore, everything that the writers would be able to do is online already. It’s also why I say that PC culture stuff is BS because there’s some dark offensive comedy online that gets nothing. Theres a lot of dark humour, weird humour, and random humour out there that movies or comedians just can’t compete with. There’s so many memes that are work off other memes and bring back old memes to work with new memes. It’s insane. No comedian is going to be able to match the creativity or just weirdness of the internet. Even then, comedy movies are still being made and will always be made, they’re just not as prevalent anymore. 

Thoughts on “PC Culture”

Starting off strong here, but I figured why not, also because this is the most recent thing I’ve thought about so let’s begin

So Todd Phillips recently talked about how pc culture has ruined comedies. But here’s what I think about that. Comedy films still come out all the time, it’s just that raunchy comedies aren’t as popular as they used to be. It’s in a down time, all genres go through this.  But outside of that I think it’s a load of rubbish. The only people I see out there are the ones that complain about pc culture and “SJWs”. By that I mean that I’ve seen way more people complain about “political correctness culture” for a long while now over people talking about something that offended them. I just laugh whenever I see people complaining about it, because it’s usually the people who created the culture in the first place. If ‘pc culture” is a real thing, then somebody had to put the idea into our heads. I mean we grew up in a time where when someone didn’t like something it was evil or corrupting the youth and should be banned. Whenever they didn’t like something they created a parental group to try to change stuff. Such as in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers when Lord Zedd became silly because parents complained that he was too scary for their children. It’s a thing that’s been going on for a long time, it goes back to popular music and how jazz or rock n’ roll was corrupting the youth so we have to stop playing it. Even then, times change, things we used to find funny aren’t that funny anymore. 

With the internet we have an easy way to educate ourselves on to why people find things unfunny or offensive. The internet has allowed more people to have their voices and opinions heard and so when people don’t like something or find it offensive they can get their feelings out there much more than in the past. Even then offensive comedy still exists in this day and age, South Park is still on the air, Always Sunny is one of the longest lasting sit-coms of all time, Family Guy is still on the air. Heck we live in a time where so many comedians have been able to make money off of complaining about pc culture. Offensive comedy is one that a lot of people try to do, but is it really worth it? I mean if the joke comes off wrong or doesn’t land like you want it to, you’re now an asshole. All that matters is the execution of the joke, intentions don’t matter, all that matters is how it comes off and how the audience responds to it. You could have the best intentions for a joke, but unless those intentions are laid out before hand, than the only thing that matters is how it’s received. People now just aren’t as willing to receive jokes like that anymore. Outside of that, comedies just aren’t being made as often anymore because of the variety of content out there on the internet. Why pay to see a movie when I can go to YouTube for free to see all kinds of stuff. Even then, comedy is a genre that is really subjective and what kinds of comedy people found funny even a year ago, could change to today. Even then, you can be funny without having to put someone else down. At least nowadays, when it comes to this stuff there’s a dialogue created around it, it’s not just “this is bad and so should be banned” people are talking about what offended them and why. We’re in a better place to deal with this stuff than we were even 20 years ago. I mean just look at the constant suggestion of banning violent video games because parents don’t want to listen to what the ESRB says about the game. It just takes me back to the amount of times I’ve heard “oh, who knew the generation that grew up with South Park would be so sensitive” over the past few weeks and months. I mean I don’t get why being sensitive is a bad thing, it means you’re thinking of others and allowing yourself to feel emotions for others and thinking about others when you do and say things. I don’t know, i think it’s a societal thing to work on as a whole.

Wow this got into me rambling pretty darn fast, in the future I’ll try to be more organized when it comes to posts like these. I might also be coming back to make some edits or additions to this post going forward.