Cinema Issues: Trouble In The DCU

So with Supergirl crashing out in almost comical style at the box office, what’s next for DC. In the immediate term what’s next is a Green Lanterns show that is so embarrassed of its source material it won’t even call itself Green Lanterns and Clayface a film no one was asking for. However in terms of what’s next as a broader more heady topic the idea is likely a movie back towards the hardcore fanbase and masculinity. Superman last year had a soft more feminine form of masculinity and Supergirl this year de-centred men as they are toxic okay. Look at how well it worked out for them Superman didn’t reach the heights they wanted it to and Supergirl will cost them money. You can already see this movie towards the hardcore fans, by the fact they have fast tracked the Deathstroke and Bane film.

The fact is as unpopular as it may be Superhero films are aimed for a male audience, the vast bulk of comic readers and people who attend these films are men, as such making Superhero films for women or for softer men when may like more will result in box office failure. James Gunn seems to like championing this kind of soy boy masculinity, look what he did with Peacemaker over time, however, Gunn’s influence is likely shaky, he’s up for a contract renewal in 2027 as co-head of DC and he doesn’t have a lot to recommend him, particularly if Clayface fails.

What is very curious is the brand damaged control. After Supergirl flopped, the toxic fans of the film screamed everyone who didn’t like it was a misogynist and attacked them. However Gunn, Alcock and the rest of team DC stayed quiet which is odd for this kind of thing. Normally victim narratives are spun up. There was the fan hit piece in the New York Times screaming about “misogyny” whilst ignoring the misandry of Ms Alcock, which could be seen as doing damage control for the studio. However, even in Peter Safran’s statement wherein he acknowledges that Supergirl is a flop he doesn’t say a word about the fans. It’s very curious.

A lot is now on Clayface if that too flops then you would imagine the incoming Paramount takeover will not look favourably on Gunn’s DCU and may wipe the slate clean.

If you enjoyed this Cinema Issues article , then please head over to Patreon to support the blog. All film reviews are free, with no early access, sponsorships, or content locked behind paywalls. If you value independent coverage of the entertainment industry, your support over there helps to keep it going. Become a member on Patreon below

patreon.com/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to the Ko-Fi donation page below

http://ko-fi.com/anothermillennialreviewer

Supergirl: Toxic Femininity

Summary: Superman’s cousin puts down the bottle, more like moves with it, and actually does something.

Maybe having your lead saying how men don’t own women’s bodies, when no one said they did, then insulting those offended on the grounds of their gender and religion, then changing the canon of a character to say she’s Bi and then finally saying the films better as it doesn’t centre men, isn’t a great way to market a film, as the terrible preview numbers show.

Kara is deeply unlikeable, she is very much the human embodiment of the damaged tattoo from the forehead of Jared Leto’s Joker. She drinks, she’s sad, she’s unpleasant to those around her, as God forbid she doesn’t take out her mental issues on other people. The message of this film is that that is okay behaviour as you can be good but not nice, which is a self defeating morally bankrupt principle. The film thinks this is showing her as a damaged character, with the journey being to show how she becomes more connected to people. However, the film tries to make her seem cool in her broken state glorifying her entitled and bratty behaviour.

Superman is in this, as more than just a target for dog urine, as Gunn and co really respect the character, herein he plays the concerned mother hen constantly checking in, usually to be met with derision or a well actually from Kara.

Of course the film likens being a bride to slavery, by having the villain literally kidnapping women and turning them not into sex slaves as is the case with most human trafficking, but rather brides. The message here is clear, marriage is bad and a prison for women. It is also entirely unoriginal as Mad Max Fury Road did a similar thing about ten years ago.

Lobo gets less screen time than you imagine and serves really to be red meat to throw to the male fans who Alcock has alienated so completely. He’s maybe on screen for a total of 5 minutes.

The focus on Krypto once again shows the weakness of the Gunn verse as it does not seem to be able to stand without having a cute dog to try and guilt butts into seats. This shows a weakness in storytelling. The actual journey of healing if you want to view it like that shows off the toxicity of Kara’s damaged personality and even when she does something good it quickly becomes self centered once again.

Overall, there is a reason that Clayface is having it’s premium formats reconsidered, this feels like edgy Tumblr fanfic from about 2 decades ago.

0.5/5

Pros.

It’s not a 3 hour slog

Cons.

Kara is unlikable

The journey feels incomplete by the end

You’ve seen it before

Lobo is barely in it

It feels like it’s for edgy girls circa 2009

If you enjoyed this film review, then please head over to Patreon to support the blog. All reviews, articles and interviews are free, with no early access, sponsorships, or content locked behind paywalls. If you value independent coverage of the entertainment industry, your support over there helps to keep it going. Become a member on Patreon below

patreon.com/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to the Ko-Fi donation page below

http://ko-fi.com/anothermillennialreviewer

Cinema Issues The Death Of DC

In this edition of Cinema Issues we will be discussing the state of DC, in terms of films and tv shows.

When the new Gunn lead DC was announced immediately after the previous DCEU failed attempts were made to win fans back however it has been a series of large scale mistakes that have hurt this universe to the point where it could be rebooted once again in the near future.

Firstly, announcing the slate so far in advance was an error, it made it look like they were trying to copy Marvel it also allowed everyone to see each time they missed a deadline for a film and then that to influence the narrative. As was the case with the Authority.

Secondly the focus on characters has been wrong, of you wanted to do something interesting you could have focused on characters that had not been adapted before. However they went straight for Superman, it appeared they were going for all the old favourites, however, then they neglected to make a Batman film.

Thirdly the new universe is inherently confusing. As certain elements of the old DCEU carry over it becomes unclear what is canon and what isn’t. What is the fate of Blue Beetle?

Fourthly is the fact that James Gunn is the wrong man for the job. He does odd ball well, he could have been good for a Creature Commandos or Doom Patrol, but Superman? He just didn’t get it, and the film underperformed. There is also the ego issue, Gunn seems to have developed megalomania, he named the Justice Gang after his own initials, he debated taking on a Stan Lee like role in the DCEU, he got himself animated into the Creature Commandos logo and he puts his wife in everything. The DCUs fascination with Krypto who here is based on Gunn’s own dog is just another example.

Finally you have the fact it has already gone negative. Think about the MCU at its peak, did it attack the audience and call them names? No that came later as the cracks emerged. We are a TV series and a film into Gunn’s DCU and we already have stars attacking fans with Milly Alcock deciding to consistently bad mouth men.

Supergirl does not look like it will do well, Lanterns has already angered fans by viewing the Green part of the name as dumb, and Clayface who the hell cares.

The DCU has half its hull missing and is sinking, what we are seeing now is the final attempts to save the doomed ship.

patreon.com/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to the Ko-Fi donation page below

http://ko-fi.com/anothermillennialreviewer

Cinema Issues: James Gunn The Man Who Should Have Stayed Cancelled

In this edition of Cinema Issues we are talking about James Gunn, why he’s a truly awful studio head and why God willing he’ll be fired soon.

Where to start, perhaps with the fact that he was too afraid to use the phrase truth, justice and the American way on the Superman poster but will use truth, justice, whatever, on the Supergirl poster.

Or perhaps we should think about how edgy he is, and how he needed to have Superman cancelled in his film, just like James was, or have him called a bitch by his cousin or have a photo of him pissed on by his dog. Just to remind you that no one cares about Superman least of all James Gunn. As why respect one of DC’s oldest and most beloved heroes?

Why not have Kal-El suggest Superman take a harem, why not force in the Justice Gang as it has then invokes his initials. It’s bad decision after bad decision.

In that same vein why not allow a guy who thinks the word Green in Green Lanterns is lame to make a Green Lanterns show in a true detective style. Or shoot a Clayface film without a Batman.

How about his new feminist side of showing how women can be just as messy as men, and how women aren’t perfect by having them be damaged drunk party girls who don’t grow. The same person who thinks telling little girls it’s okay to be a mess is a positive message.

Maybe we can get back to the fact that he likes to get into spats online, or the fact he revealed a whole slate of projects most of which haven’t been seen or heard from again. Remember the Authority?

All of this comes without all the creepy jokes he made about kids or SA and thing of that nature that got him canned from Marvel.

Honestly his tenure as studio head, opening with a cartoon no one watched, following it with a Superman film that was a financial disappointment and then following that with a Supergirl film with zero hype, suggests that he really was the wrong man for the job.

It’s time for WBD or Paramount to just fire him.

Peacemaker Season Two: The Orgy Scene Shows Why Gunn Should Have Stayed Cancelled

Summary

Peacemaker, John Cena, is back and if the prolonged orgy sequence in the first episode is anything to go off James Gunn is indulging all of his questionable tastes.

So I really enjoyed the first season of Peacemaker and thought that it was funny and irreverent, however, that was several years ago and tastes change. What I thought whilst watching this season was that it felt like it was written by a group of teenagers on Reddit. It had a deep sense of immaturity and as though it was just doing things for the shock value of it rather than because they made sense narratively.

Moreover, the whole idea of multiverses has proven universally unpopular across the board, so why Gunn thought to wove that thread into the second season is a little beyond me. The multiverse angle I suppose allows them to fix things from the previous DCEU and reset things going forward, but it still feels like a cheap trick.

The message, the broader progressive sort of call and response, also feels a lot stronger this time around. It is more overt here and it was pretty overt in the first season. In many ways this project feels like Gunn unchained and if it proves anything it is that he needs caging. There is a reason that the Guardians’ films are his best and that is due to the fact that he had oversight and was not allowed to have all the Guardians have an orgy together at the start of the second film.

Overall, James Gunn needs to step away creatively from these films and tv shows, as he is going to run the new DCU into the ground before it has even begun.

1.5/5

Pros.

A few funny lines

Hardcourt, Jennifer Holland, is still excellent

Cons.

The message

The need to be shocking and vulgar

The writing is far more lazy and simplistic

It has pacing issues

If you enjoyed this review, then please head over to my Patreon to support me, I offer personalized shoutouts, customised film recommendations to suit your personality and tastes, the ability for you to pick what I review next and full access to my Patreon exclusive game reviews. Check it out!

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Superman: Soy Boy Savior

Summary

James Gunn’s Superman arrives, but is it enough to save the DCU.

So for the purpose of this review we’ll try and keep politics out of it, after Sean Gunn really tried to centre it around that, and we’ll leave off any references to Man Of Steel, with one quick addendum to say that adjusted for inflation Man Of Steel made more on its opening domestic weekend.

The film itself is pretty meh. I went into it with low expectations, the marketing had done a horrible job of making the film look stupid, goofy and far too present day, and whilst there are elements of that in this to be sure I think the film managed to exceed by rock bottom expectations.

There were a few good Superman comic esque moments mainly in the third act that made me smile, and a number of funny lines. However, Superman is not the Guardians of The Galaxy and the humour quickly becomes clawing. There are perfectly good scenes that could stand on their own, but then they’ll force in a joke to make you retch a little bit and ruin the scene.

Moreover, the weakening of Superman is a little too on the nose for me. Previous Superman films have kept him macho and powerful whilst also showing his good nature and down to earth personality, look at Smallville. However, here they go out of their way to make him more effeminate and soft, whilst this could be argued to just be how modern Hollywood views masculinity, or an attempt to make him more sympathetic during the sequence where he is basically cancelled is unclear, but it does become noticeable for all the wrong reasons, including but not limited to the use of therapy speak.

The final thing to note is that this is a James Gunn vanity project of that you can have no doubt, and whilst I like him as a director I do think it gets a bit irritating as the film progresses. We already know Krypto was based off Gunn’s own dog, and that his wife and brother are in the film, but then when you look at the cast you see that it is stacked with Gunn’s personal friends as well as the aforementioned cancelling storyline being reflective of Gunn’s own experiences to a degree. When you think about this in totality it starts to become a bit sickening.

Overall, fairly mid-range.

2.5/5

Pros.

A few good moments

The third act is better than the other two

It world builds

Cons.

Clarke and Lois

They make Superman weak

How this is a Gunn vanity project

patreon.com/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Creature Commandos Season 1 Overview: James Gunn’s Fragile Ego

Summary

The DCU is born.

Right from the off something about this series struck a bad chord with me. It’s taken me a while to really think about what’s wrong with it and be able to articulate that, here is my best attempt.

Firstly, this feels like a spin off of the Harley Quinn animated show, and by that I mean the humour is exactly the same, however, where that show allows its characters to have serious moments this shows allergic to that. Whenever there will be a tragic or sad moment the writer will feel the need to undercut with a quippy joke or some sort of absurdist visuals.

Secondly, and relating to the first point, each of the Creature Commandos has tragic back stories, and this is bad for two key reasons. Chiefly, it shows a lack of any genuine villains in the show, which is supposed to be about a team of villains going on missions, as well as a fear of anti-heroes and not having everyone be sympathetic. Moreover, these back stories are often quite depressing, so the show feels the need to overcompensate by having it side by side with the present timeline in which something absurd or silly will be happening in order to get away from the sadness. This cheapens it.

Thirdly, the humour as I’ve mentioned in my previous two points is really what ruins this show and runs through all of the criticism, It is juvenile, gross out, and often edgy for shock value. I don’t think I laughed once during the entire run of the show.

Fourthly, and perhaps worst of all, is the fact that one of the sub antagonists of the show are the Sons of Themyscira, who are portrayed as incel online nerds. Not only does this feel like screw the audience, but also feels like Gunn personally taking shots at his critics. This is potentially catastrophically bad as it shows that Gunn is a reactionary and shows how even mild criticism of him can find its way into his projects and affect them in a major way, hence he’ll get more of it. It also destroys any kind of confidence one may have in his upcoming Superman film, and you have already seem him coming out to attack haters on that and to respond to criticism. The Sons are of course horribly cringe and die off in humiliating ways in order for Gunn to own his critics.

Overall, it is nice to see a more mature tone and some of the ideas were good, but the humour, the lack of meaningful emotion and Gunn’s fragile attempt to own the haters all result in this being a damaging start for the DCU, and a red flag for this summers Superman. :

2/5

Pros.

The mature tone

A few good ideas

Cons.

The humour

The backstories

Gunn’s fragile ego

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

The Penguin Season One Overview

Summary

Colin Farrell is the Penguin.

This was a near perfect show in a lot of ways. Farrell was fantastic as was Milioti. However, there were some issues.

Broadly these can be boiled down to two things, firstly it was stupid that Batman was not mentioned on the show, realistically in that world he would have shown up and tried to end the gang war, but to not even mention him is just silly. Secondly, the tone of the show was a bit all over the place, at times it was incredibly dark and gritty such as when Sofia gassed her family, however, there were also lighter scenes such as the end of episode one that felt tonally mismatched.

That aside this is a fantastic crime show, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a fantastic superhero show as really it has very little to do with them, but as far as a mob show this is right up there. The show is well written which is becoming increasingly rare these days and has a show don’t tell approach to storytelling. You can see and imagine Oz’s machinations but they are never spelled out to you.

I also appreciated how brutal this series got at times and that it wasn’t afraid to be bloody when it needed to be, despite some folks thinking of it as a comic book show and hence inherently for kids.

Overall, one of the best DC projects in years.

4/5

Pros.

The grit

The lore

Farrell

Milioti

Cons.

The uneven tone

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Batman The Caped Crusader: The Life And Times Of Oswalda Cobblepot

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Batman the much cancelled series finally finds a home, that it then proceeds to stink up.

So, as someone who enjoyed many Batman tv series as a kid particularly The Brave And The Bold I was excited for the idea of a new Batman series to get stuck into. However, little did I know that this series was made by the franchise destroyer himself J.J Abrams. After WBD didn’t want the series and sold it off there should have been red flags, but I was like maybe there was a good reason for it and the series is still good, but no.

Upon turning the show on the first thing that hits you is that this is made for modern audiences. We see every ethnicity, gender, ability level and what not on screen in the first episode and it only goes more over the top from there. There is nothing wrong with diversity when it is done for a reason or with a point in mind, particularly if it is organic to the show, but here it is clearly just ticking boxes in order to try and get as much virtue signalling as possible, it is tokenistic. The worst example of this is Oswalda Cobblepot, Batman has a long history of female villains why not feature one of them instead of forcing in a gender swap for no good reason. At times it felt like Abrams and co wanted to flip off the fans as much as possible

We also, perhaps in some sick homage to Snyder, have a scene wherein Batman is holding a gun, this to me and many fans just highlights how this series has no respect for the character or his lore, it is just more low grade slop wrapped in a Batman colouring.

Overall, if you want a new Batman the Animated Series this is not it.

1/5

Pros.

The animation was okay

Cons.

It doesn’t understand Batman

The series as a whole has a terrible pace

It doesn’t make sense at times

The tokenism and gender/race swaps

https://www.patreon.com/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Aquaman 2: Isn’t The Ocean Polluted Enough Without Garbage Like This

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Aquaman, Jason Momoa, has to have one last tiresome fight against the tide in a final farewell to the DCEU.

I liked seeing Jason Momoa being a dad and being softer and not the alpha male he often plays, I think it is important to see guys be a bit softer from time to time. Again did the film emasculate him I’d say not as he is quickly back to fighting and carrying on. In a sense this feels very much like Thor Ragnarök or even Love and Thunder, goofy softness mixed with some action hero moments just so you remember what you are watching.

The Amber Heard stuff was not dealt with as it should have been at WB with Emilia Clarke taking over the role and she is still here if only briefly, and if only as Elon threatened to sue allegedly. Her presence drags the film down but hey at least the film flopped so her acting career goes out on a low note, like pooing the bed.

Honestly it was hard to care about anything in this film or the world at large as you know the reboot is coming so it all has an air of what’s the point.

James Wann’s talents were wasted and he should have gone back to the Conjuring universe and left this turkey to die. It is sad to see the DCEU end on such a low note but they did it to themselves this wound was self-inflicted.

Overall, an average to poor superhero film in a year of bad superhero films.

2/5

Pros.

Jason Momoa has some charm

It is unintentionally funny

Cons.

Amber Heard is in it

It is too long

You just don’t care about it

If you enjoyed this review, then please head over to my Patreon to support me, I offer personalized shoutouts, the ability for you to pick what I review next, bespoke film recommendation to fit you as a person and full access to my Patreon exclusive game reviews. Check it out!