Messages

Chris Pine on Wonder Woman 3's cancellation:

"I'm stunned that they said no to a billion-dollar franchise and decided to pivot elsewhere," Pine said to Business Insider. "I don't know what the reasoning was behind that; it's above my pay grade, but Wonder Woman is an incredible character; Patty is such a thoughtful director.

...

In his interview, Pine noted that his character was "dead" and it would've been "ridiculous" to bring him back for a third film.

https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/movies/chris-pine-stunned-wonder-woman-115201737.html

Not that financial merit makes an ounce of difference knowing who's in charge of DC Studios at the moment, but from what I read in WW84, I wish Steve Trevor was never brought back under those story circumstances for WW84. If they had to bring him back, a cameo would've been enough. Probably have Diana wish to speak to him and say farewell one more time before moving on.

I have never seen WW84, but from what I've read this picture was in the film. If that's so then I don't know what Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot were thinking. They went from talking about how the original plan of Diana leaving humanity behind is supposedly going against the character - to have her do nothing and let the Holocaust happen? It doesn't make any sense.

Absolutely correct. They were totally tone deaf on handling this character with what was established from earlier. Totally embarrassing that someone actually photoshopped that picture. It's so frustrating that they threw away a terrific opportunity to have an immortal character like Diana be the wisest and most seasoned superhero living and fighting through atrocities throughout the 20th century and how certain events could make her hardened towards humanity and how people like Superman and Batman could convince her that people are worth saving. Instead, they got too focused on how glamorous Diana should be that just draws unwanted attention and how a superhero like her suffers because a cab will stop for a man instead of her.

Agreed on all counts. If I remember correctly, you say as somebody who otherwise wasn't a fan of Snyder's vision. The fact you still appreciate the intended arc for Wonder Woman unlike those in charge of the IP - both past and present - goes to show how shallow the management is.

I found a couple of videos reacting to the Death of Superman storyline back in 1992. The first video includes snippets of Roger Stern explaining how the concept was conceived and claimed Superman comics at the time were creator-driven, but John Byrne simply sees it as a gimmicky marketing ploy to sell comics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNJTdhLSIjo&ab_channel=crowT10

The next couple of videos are news reports gathering reactions to the storyline; one of them claiming Superman had an image problem and popularity was dwindling compared to the grittier characters at the time.

The concept for the whole saga may have been a marketing gimmick, but it still doesn't take away from some of the most emotional moments ever read in comics. Such as the scenes in Funeral For a Friend, when Ma and Pa Kent couldn't attend the public memorial so they said goodbye to Clark their own way by burying mementos in the same area they found him as an infant, and Jonathan's near-death experience finds him in an afterlife world where he fights hard to convince Clark not to give into death, culminating in Superman's coffin suddenly found empty. It's these sorts of moments that make Superman and his world greater than  even his own fans give him credit for.

The Suicide Squad game lost WBD $200 million.

https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-squad-video-game-failed-cost-warner-brothers-2024-5

With news that WB's profits are down by 70%, I hope the bastards continue to lose more money.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/05/07/james-gunns-first-superman-image-looks-like-ai-and-the-suit-doesnt-fit/?sh=47eed2d54555

This mediocre costume has been memed to death, to the point that Forbes ran an article saying the photo reveal looks AI-generated. The backlash must've been a huge blow to Gunn's ego. Never mind Cavill's suits, Brandon Routh's Kingdom Come costume in the Arrowverse COIE suit looks WAY more cinematic than this. Even Hoechlin's suit in Superman and Lois is better.

I noticed that Gunn tried to pander to the Twitter crowd by showing off with him taking a picture with a group of Superman comics writers who were all wearing generic S logo t-shirts the following day, but this is just a PR attempt to distract people from the negative reaction to the costume.

However, who really gives a sh*t if the costume is good or bad? Leave it to the internet to freak out over a costume reveal, but shrug its shoulders over the creepiness and shadiness of the director.

Looking back at these commercials, I owned some of these toys. I had the original Batman with the grapple and a Bruce Wayne figure with Batsuit armour accessories you put on his body to become Batman. I even owned Two-Face, Robin and Catwoman - her cat Iris came as a plastic accessory so you could put her around Catwoman's neck.

The Bruce Wayne Batsuit armour must've been inspired by a similar toy in the Kenner Burton Batman toyline. Except this toy must've been inspired by The Dark Knight Returns. If a BTAS/TNBA revival were made today and did another take on the Legends of the Dark Knight episode, I've no doubt the animators would've drawn Batman wearing this suit to fight Superman.

I'm currently reading some of Chris Claremont's X-Men run with the new team line-up introduced in 1975's Giant-Sized X-Men, from the moment all members of the original team minus Cyclops part ways to Thunderbird sacrificing himself to stop Count Nefaria. I continued reading through how Jean Grey became the Phoenix when she used all of her telepathic powers to absorb the solar flare in outer space to save everyone after the conflict with Steven Lang - the character himself was another racism allegory, started Project Armageddon in an attempt to wipe out the mutant race starting with the X-Men. While reading through these issues, Storm's backstory was explored and showed she suffered from claustrophia due to the tragedy of losing her parents during the Suez Wars (a brief real-life war conflict in Egypt during some time in the 1950s) and how she found them dead while she was buried in the rubble. That was the reason she kept suffering from PTSD and became paralysed with emotion while the rest of the X-Men were ambushed by Black Tom Cassidy and Juggernaut during a vacation in Ireland.

Great run, and it really expanded X-Men's mythos into something distinctive and unique compared to the rest of the wider Marvel universe. Despite all the talk about what's woke nowadays, these comics written Claremont didn't shy away from sociopolitical and even psychological themes, but he wrote them with tact. Without Claremont, I doubt the X-Men would be among some of the most iconic characters in comics today.

Even putting aside the themes, I enjoyed the little moments in these issues, such as the narration berating Wolverine for discarding flowers he had just bought for Jean Grey for the same lack of care of human life because his planned private moment with her in the hospital was interrupted when all the X-Men showed up, a Star Trek homage when a Shi'ar Empire starship was recording a status report as they hunt Lilandra across the galaxy, and Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dave Cockrum and Claremont made funny cameos in some of the panels. Some of this stuff you don't get to see in comics anymore.

[after himself]

Here's yet more evidence of James Gunn being a sick freak - he wrote this book in 2000 called The Toy Collector. This is about a drug addict named after himself. The stuff that's written in the page below is disgusting:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toy_Collector

This is supposed to be funny? How the hell did this get published in the first place I will never understand.

If you're going to name a character after you, why the f*** would you do it for a character who is depraved beyond belief? To me, it seems Gunn is expressing his real thoughts either in the vein of fiction or the excuse that he has a sick "sense of humour". If there wasn't a pattern of behaviour we've seen over the years, I could honestly give him the benefit of the doubt. But somebody who does this repeatedly throughout adulthood will never change, and the losers who defend him wouldn't dare to think twice and condemn somebody else if they were an average nobody. Unless they're degenerates too.

There were screenshots of Gunn making racist remarks multiple times in the book, which makes his detractors believe he's a bigot. After the alarming track record of this man, anything is possible.

Afterwards, Ray Fisher expressed how unimpressed he was with Gunn, accusing him of using fake grace on Twitter, and more or less accusing Gunn of being two-faced once he got the DC job.

https://twitter.com/ray8fisher/status/1604972198984179712?cxt=HHwWgICjrcTtgMYsAAAA

Now, I should mention that Gunn did reply and defended himself, claiming he auto-deletes every tweet of his every few months and it had nothing to do with comments to Ray. But seeing as he deleted who knows how many vile tweet he made when he was exposed four years ago, I doubt his sincerity, and I get the impression he still has something to hide.

At the time of writing this post, Gunn's response to Fisher is still online.

https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/1605018783407804416

Yet again, what a liar. Anyone who claims to be a fan of Superman or superheroes but looks up to this creep has no credibility whatsoever.

https://i.imgur.com/mWBY5SA.jpg

Zack Snyder finally explained the concept for Wonder Woman 1854. This never had a script, but had it gone through we would've gotten this instead of the film we saw in 2017.

Zack Snyder had come up with another Wonder Woman story that he would have liked develop as a film that saw Wonder Woman fight in the Crimean War in the 1800s.

The project was known as Wonder Woman 1854, and it would have seen Wonder Woman leave the island to pursue Ares earlier.

According to Snyder, "The idea of that was an early riff we were doing: once Wonder Woman left the island in search of Ares, what happened to her in her different incarnations?"

He added: "My idea for it was that she would travel around the world looking for Ares and she would go to every place where there was conflict."

Wonder Woman 1854 never got as far as being an actual script. but Snyder shared a photo on social media back in 2021, which saw Diana carrying the severed heads of enemies.

The resulting story would have been a combination of love and war. Snyder explained: "On those battlefields she found these lovers, warriors, and they would age out because she is immortal.

He continued: "They would be her lover for ten years or they might die in battle, and it was probably sad for a lot of the guys because they would see her starting to be nice to the next young soldier and be like, 'Oh, I'm being replaced.' But all the guys that she had with her were those loyal warriors she found on the battlefields all over the world."

Snyder confirms that the story would have led Diana to Chris Pine's Steve Trevor. "We talked about if Steve Trevor was there in Crimea. It was never a screenplay, but we talked about it so much that it kind of had its own life."

That sounds like it would've been a great Wonder Woman story to tell! But, it's one that will never end up getting made.

https://geektyrant.com/news/zack-snyder-shares-details-on-scrapped-plans-for-wonder-woman-1854-movie

I'm content with the film we got, but I reckon it handicapped itself a bit when the ending was rewritten. Having been through the horrors of war, as Diana saw of pain and  suffering during WWI, and then coming back a century later to face a greater enemy thanks to Superman's sacrifice, would've made Diana's character arc much richer. Yet despite this retconning, WW84 still had this photo of Diana looking horrified at the rise of Nazi Germany.



I have never seen WW84, but from what I've read this picture was in the film. If that's so then I don't know what Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot were thinking. They went from talking about how the original plan of Diana leaving humanity behind is supposedly going against the character - to have her do nothing and let the Holocaust happen? It doesn't make any sense.

This is pretty surprising to read knowing DiCaprio swore he'd never even dare to star in these kind of movies. It's interesting that Snyder confessed that DiCaprio suggested the idea of Superman fighting the Justice League and how that influenced his decision to have him combat the team after his resurrection in ZSJL.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/zack-snyder-leonardo-dicaprio-lex-luthor-1235974867/

DiCaprio would've given BvS a greater level of gravitas. Too bad he turned the role down.

I saw Part Two - The Scargiver last week. It's just fine, the first hour is really about everyone preparing for war at the farm in Veldt before Noble returns to wreck havoc throughout the second half. The highlights of the film were the scenes of the main characters were having a last supper-type of moment sharing their tragic stories caused by the Imperium and some of the sacrifices deep in the second half. The film is pretty choppy though; Jimmy once again is very short-changed as a character. Probably the most out of all of them.

The sooner these director's cuts come out, the better. As it stands now, I think I prefer the ArmyVerse better. The writing was tighter, the editing was smoother and everything simply flowed better. So far, Netflix appears to be very happy with the strategy they enforced with the views that Rebel Moon is getting so far, but you still prefer to see the complete version of a film instead of a choppy one. It sucks that Snyder has this reputation of being THE director's cut director thanks to studio politics.