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Justice League

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Gee… I just took a look at some scenes from the film on YouTube and I am simply baffled at how bad the film looks.  The cinematography, the effects (and unfortunately not only the infamous moustache), the grading, is all bad.  Just really, really bad.  It reminded me of “The Avengers”’ look (I know the love many people keep for the film, but its look was just as bad and television looking).  
I will suspend further opinion until I see the full film…
 

bionicbob

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Picked up the Blu-ray and watched all the bonus features....

Observations:  
--Not a single interview featuring either Snyder or Whedon.   
--All the bonus features have footage showing Snyder directing but not a single shot of Whedon.
--Snyder is referenced by different interviewees, but again, not a single mention of Whedon.
--Zero mention of reshoots or production issues.
--And of course, no movie commentary.

:blush:
 

Gaith

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Spoilers

I finally gave this a spin, having read and watched nearly all the spoilers, and expecting watchable mediocrity. Instead... woof. It's terrible. Watchable, but only barely, thanks largely to Gadot and the sheer car-wreck fascination factor.

The story is a shambolic, half-assed rip-off of The Avengers. (To quote Cap: if any comics experts want to point out that actually, this or that DC thing came before this or that Marvel thing in print: "Son... just don't.") The dialogue is honkingly bad, with the exception of a few decent Whedon cracks here and there. I was genuinely embarrassed by the camera's fixation on Gadot's ass. (Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gratuitous fanservice, but not so much in an ostensibly all-ages entertainment such as this.) Sorry, Bob, the villain is far worse than Hela or Ultron. I have nothing against CG characters - I think Apocalypse should have been one - but Ciarán Hinds has one of the most badass faces around, so WTF is the point of casting him and not at least using his features as the basis for a CG model? CG characters should have exaggerated features, like Gollum or Hulk, to make up for the detail lost without human actors, but Steppenwolf's face looked easily achievable with makeup/prosthetics.

That whole Russian family... huh?

Bruce (who, without his irrational but compelling BvS murderousness, is boring as hell here) only summoning Lois as a "contingency" if the revived Clark freaks out, instead of the default plan... why? And why is her appearance treated like a reveal, when we have that useless scene of Martha and Lois earlier?! ("Surprise! The character you already saw in this movie is in this movie! Bet you didn't see that coming!") Also, Cavill/Supes looked weird, and I don't think it was just the Uncanny Lip. The Lisa Frank Purple-looking suit didn't help, of course, and maybe it was the way its texture made the whole of him look ridiculous at all times, but, I dunno, he looked bad.

And, "Mother Boxes"? Really? Um... No? (And what was with all those gratuitous swears?) Also: I thought we'd left grunge/nu-metal music cues back in the W. Bush years?

Ezra Milller's Barry/Flash was... fine? He was fine. I almost forgot about Cyborg - a nothing character whose design looks terrible, and whose entire role is a poor retread of Vision. As for Aquaman... bleeeaaaarrrrgggghhh. And if Diana can outrun bullets all of a sudden, why does she keep letting the villain smack her?

This wasn't quite a Terminator Genisys or Star Trek Beyond-level fiasco, but it wasn't far off. I've always said that, permissive IP rights notwithstanding, Batman and Superman don't belong in the same live-action universe, nor does Supes belong in a universe with other superheroes, and I feel entirely vindicated on both counts here. I give Justice League, absolutely pathetic end-credits scene and all, what the AV Club commentariat has so sagely termed the "Gentleman's F": a

D+
 

Gaith

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A well-written, well-edited dissection of the cinematic corpse that is Justice League. The "How to Steal a Cube" song at 16:07 is particularly great  :p:

 

TM2YC

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I happened to be reading the review of the JL BR on blu-ray.com and it mentioned:

Photographed in 4-perf Super35, JL was completed on a digital intermediate at 2K, from which the 1080p master for Warner's AVC-encoded Blu-ray has been derived.

I thought that can't be right, they wouldn't spend 300 million Dollars on a 2017 movie and only make it at basically blu-ray quality?!? Then I checked the (usually reliable) IMDB and it says the same. The 35mm negative was scanned at 5.1K, then they did everything after that at 2K. Then I checked other movies, BvS was done at 4K but Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad and MOS were made at 2K. From a quick glance it seems all Marvel films are 2K and Star Wars is all 4K. I guess this is to save time and money on big CGI heavy films.

I never realised this was standard industry practice. You learn something new everyday. Makes you wonder how many of these UHD discs are little more than upscaled blu-rays and the same for what we see in cinemas. So it's a good bet that any movie that involves significant FX will look almost as good in Digital projection, as if you brought your blu-ray along to the Cinema and played that on the screen. Bring back 35mm and 70mm practical-FX! :D
 

hbenthow

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TM2YC said:
Makes you wonder how many of these UHD discs are little more than upscaled blu-rays and the same for what we see in cinemas. So it's a good bet that any movie that involves significant FX will look almost as good in Digital projection, as if you brought your blu-ray along to the Cinema and played that on the screen.

2K is still a significantly higher resolution than 1080p. The 4K UHD discs are upscaled from the 2K masters, so they should still have higher picture quality than an upscaled 1080p Blu-ray.
 

TM2YC

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hbenthow said:
2K is still a significantly higher resolution than 1080p.

Google is telling me:

2K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels. Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) defines 2K resolution standard as 2048×1080.

1920x1080 doesn't seem all that different to me, so I'd have thought that upscaling a blu-ray and upscaling a 2K DCI would give similar results.
 

hbenthow

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TM2YC said:
Google is telling me:

2K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels. Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) defines 2K resolution standard as 2048×1080.

1920x1080 doesn't seem all that different to me, so I'd have thought that upscaling a blu-ray and upscaling a 2K DCI would give similar results.

Interesting. I had assumed that it was a bigger difference than that. Still, the original 2K digital master of any given movie is presumably far less compressed than a consumer copy such as a Blu-ray. It's probably as big a difference as the difference between a 1080p Blu-ray and a 1080p Youtube video. Upscaling a high-bitrate master is likely to result in a higher-quality picture than upscaling a lower-bitrate compressed video from a Blu-ray.
 

TM2YC

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hbenthow said:
TM2YC said:
Google is telling me:

2K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels. Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) defines 2K resolution standard as 2048×1080.

1920x1080 doesn't seem all that different to me, so I'd have thought that upscaling a blu-ray and upscaling a 2K DCI would give similar results.

Interesting. I had assumed that it was a bigger difference than that. Still, the original 2K digital master of any given movie is presumably far less compressed than a consumer copy such as a Blu-ray. It's probably as big a difference as the difference between a 1080p Blu-ray and a 1080p Youtube video. Upscaling a high-bitrate master is likely to result in a higher-quality picture than upscaling a lower-bitrate compressed video from a Blu-ray.

Yes, very true. I hadn't considered the compression factor, which would be significant as you say. I'm still surprised that Marvel and DC spend hundreds of millions of Dollars on their movies, yet prepare them at half the resolution that they know they will be projected at. Are the cost/time/logistical implications of 4K that large? I suppose they must be.
 

Gaith

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Welp, my takeaway here is my blu-rays will not be rendered outdated by 4K blus or whatever the way my DVDs have been. Hell, even compressed streaming HD video looks amazing on my mother's projector screen (which is as big as a wall). Which suits me just fine!  :cool:
 

TinyBreadMouse

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Gaith said:
Welp, my takeaway here is my blu-rays will not be rendered outdated by 4K blus or whatever the way my DVDs have been.

Yep. UHD will last longer than 3D BD but it won't pass it. The only real advantage it has is the decrease in price of 4k tv sets, but for the average consumer, it's meaningless.
 

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So, I haven't actually seen Justice League in full, and I don't care to. But, out of curiosity, I checked out a quick clip of an action scene. I thought at least that would look good.


Dear Gods... This is even worse than I heard. The momentary editing is beyond atrocious. None of the shots connect to eachother, I have no idea where in the scene people are or what's going on. The green screen is pathetically bad, the CGI looks like it's from a PS2 game. And Henry Cavill's face is.... yeesh

Fucking hell, this is supposed to be one of the most expensive movies ever made?

Good luck faneditors, and may Darkseid have mercy on your immortal souls...
 

TinyBreadMouse

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Zamros said:
Dear Gods... This is even worse than I heard. The momentary editing is beyond atrocious. None of the shots connect to eachother, I have no idea where in the scene people are or what's going on. The green screen is pathetically bad, the CGI looks like it's from a PS2 game. And Henry Cavill's face is.... yeesh

Will WB learn a lesson here? Will they realize cutting a director loose midway is dumb?

Better yet, will they learn to not give auteur vision of an entire franchise to an untested director?

Find out next time!
 

addiesin

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TinyBreadMouse said:
Better yet, will they learn to not give auteur vision of an entire franchise to an untested director?

Snyder had several big budget films under his belt before the DCEU, even worked with WB/DC on Watchmen. Whedon directed two billion dollar movies. Who was untested?

Not that I disagree with the statement, but I'd say that applies more to Lucasfilm, Fox, and Sony than to WB/DC.
 

TinyBreadMouse

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addiesin said:
TinyBreadMouse said:
Better yet, will they learn to not give auteur vision of an entire franchise to an untested director?

Snyder had several big budget films under his belt before the DCEU, even worked with WB/DC on Watchmen. Whedon directed two billion dollar movies. Who was untested?

Snyder was an up and coming director with loads of potential, specifically for his comic book adaptations (but also his ability to manage a budget exceptionally well). But even with his crowning achievement of 300, I don't believe WB was justified in giving him the keys to the entire franchise. And by untested, I meant within the realm of film franchises. But, then again, in 2013 there weren't as many people you could reliably ask to make a cinematic universe outside of people currently employed by Marvel. And of course hindsight is 20/20

All we can do now is hope that the DCEU's failure can be used as a teaching lesson, not just for future DCEU movies, but for CU's as a whole. Monsterverse is shaping up to be good, and the MCU is obviously fine. If Dark Universe can salvage what was good from The Mummy and return to a Dracula Untold/The Wolfman style aesthetic while Sony finally gets it right with Valiant, we might see the CU fad live longer than we thought.
 

Zamros

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TinyBreadMouse said:
If Dark Universe can salvage what was good from The Mummy

I'm sorry, this is a bit off topic, but what was good from The Mummy? Don't get me wrong, I had a trememendous time laughing at it, but don't remember anything I'd call *good*
 

addiesin

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TinyBreadMouse said:
addiesin said:
TinyBreadMouse said:
Better yet, will they learn to not give auteur vision of an entire franchise to an untested director?

Snyder had several big budget films under his belt before the DCEU, even worked with WB/DC on Watchmen. Whedon directed two billion dollar movies. Who was untested?

Snyder was an up and coming director with loads of potential, specifically for his comic book adaptations (but also his ability to manage a budget exceptionally well). But even with his crowning achievement of 300, I don't believe WB was justified in giving him the keys to the entire franchise. And by untested, I meant within the realm of film franchises. 

He only made one original film. All his other pre-DCEU films have been remakes or adaptations from existing franchises and have been successful. I think you're conflating Snyder's role as director of three DCEU films, with the lack of a "Kevin Feige" at WB/DC, and the hiring of actual untested directors, which I would define as directors who have done less than one big budget film before being placed in charge of a large CGI-heavy franchise, like Gareth Edwards, Colin Trevorrow, Rian Johnson, Josh Trank, Marc Webb, Taika Waititi, etc.

I would say Zack Snyder was untested when he did Dawn of the Dead, but that pretty solidly established him (14 years ago, now).
 

bionicbob

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As @"Zarius" reported yesterday in the Fan Edit Ideas thread, based on a new Amazon listing, the Justice League is getting some sort of SPECIAL EDITION release.

There are two different dates listed, one in August and the other for October which as significantly higher price tag.  There has been no official press release yet.  So it is not clear if this an extended cut, and if so, whose version -- Whedon or Snyder?  It also appears to be listed as DVD only.

For more details and speculation:
https://www.cosmicbooknews.com/justice-league-extended-cut-getting-released
 
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