Both "Shazam" and "Aquaman" surprised me a lot more than I expected.
Their trailers looked like the movies themselves would just be goofy comedies but turned out that wasn't the case. Aquaman had some pretty violent moments and Shazam starts out pretty dark and has a few grisly scenes later on. I expected to be "meh" on both but they both turned out very good.
Although the downside is, I still can't get a few of my friends to take a chance on them. Most of them are like me, they abhor "silly" super-hero movies and won't watch them. I keep trying to explain to them that the marketing was misleading and that neither movie is as goofy or dumb as the trailers would suggest, but they just can't get past the marketing long enough to give either one a chance.
And how the hell do you do a Wonder Woman movie without Aries? If they'd picked any other villain for her first movie, that would've been ass. Her rogues gallery kinda sucks, you've got Aries way up top and then a huge drop-off, then scrubs like Circe and Dr. Psycho or whatever.
Green Lantern was another movie that came out at the wrong time. There's some stuff I'd change but they got the plot and the characters spot-on. It was a bit too silly, but again, if it came out the same year as "Thor: Ragnarok" it would've been called a masterpiece and made tons of money, specifically BECAUSE it had those goofy bits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sumac
Adherence to the source material doesn't mean anything when it comes to the quality of the adaptation.
It is kind of strange to think that "closeness to the source material" is more important than quality of the work as a whole.
And in general, adaptation, should always stand on its own.
If adaptation needs support of the source material to be understood or to be considered a "good adaptation", than this adaptation is trash. Simple as that.
And this is the prime case with WB movies as of late - no matter how close they are to the tone of contemporary comic books, it doesn't make them good, because, quality of writing sucks.
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Nah.
For example, I've never read Doyle; therefore, I don't get to have an opinion on Sherlock Holmes, in any incarnation, be it film, novel, cartoon or otherwise, on account of I don't know jack sh*t and am self-aware enough to admit that fact.
All I'm allowed to say is whether or not I had fun with this or that for the limited time I spent with it. I don't have any authority whatsoever to say whether or not that adaptation was "good", because I don't know enough to state that opinion. Definitely not to plant a flag in concrete about it.
Likewise, people who don't read comics don't have any authority to speak to anything regarding adaptations, outside of, "I personally had fun with this movie for two-ish hours."
A person can in theory make a movie about Jesus where he hops off the cross, straps on a jetpack, and goes off to save Venus from the evil Space Martians. Might be a fun movie. People might like it. It'd still be a terrible adaptation of the Jesus character and his adventures, and Biblical scholars would have every right to cry foul about it from their perspective. The people screaming "It was FUN, though!" wouldn't erase the fact that everything about it was anathema to the material being "adapted".
I swear, movies are the only form of entertainment where having a MORE educated opinion on the subject being adapted somehow makes your opinion "wrong". I'll never understand it. It's weird.