Canon Editor said:
Frankly, I’m not satisfied with “generic, pop-corn flicks”. To ask Shyamalan to not “Shyamalan it all up” is like asking Hitchcock to not put his fingerprints all over it. One may or may not like the personality or style of one particular artist, but to ask him (even if only on a forum board) not to is going against the very idea of what I call “expression in art”… or else, go to the more and more popular route.
Zack Snyder, who is no impeccable storyteller in my opinion too, has a very distinct style of representation in the art of film. The popular point many people on discussion forums seem to make is that his style is the fault in his storytelling - mistaking form (style) with content (narrative structure/storytelling). That is the biggest fault in today’s critiquing of filmmaking: the misunderstanding of style - which is entirely subjective just like cinematography (that too can convey what is on screen to a larger extent, but visually speaking it’s different) with narrative, that may or may not be effective not depending on style. That is why many people who claim Marvel’s superior form of atorytelling make me angry. It is bland, generic and without any distinctive element (cinematically speaking, not in its contents.
Back to “Aquaman”, this is to say that this trailer makes me afraid this film may be that, but other DC films/trailers have been making me think otherwise, as James Wan’s direction.
I took the Shyamalan phrase to mean hopefully he makes a film comparable to his early work, like The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, rather than something comparable to The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening, and The Last Airbender. I don't think there's a comparably "bad" era in Hitchcock's filmography.
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IMO, the popular points used to critique Snyder's films are that he:
1 pays more attention to style than substance
2 misunderstands "character" in general/needs a writer
I'm curious why you think others think his aesthetic choices (his style) are a mistake. Going through his work, it's obvious his sense of aesthetics is his greatest strength as a filmmaker, and I personally haven't seen many complaints about Snyder's visuals overall (though there are complaints about specific visual elements, like the amount of heavy grading on the colors in his newer films, or the amount of slow motion in his older films).
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What people generally consider "superior" about Marvel films are:
1 they're consistently fun films (no single Marvel film is a total drag to get through, nor will one make a child cry)
2 they have likeable characters
3 they have proper setup and payoff, the details are not forgotten over time (really, plenty of details are forgotten or let go of, but it
feels like they remember the small stuff)
None of these things make them award-winning films, but I don't see what's generic unless you're talking about the fact that they use origin stories for some of the film plots, or some villains are there more as plot devices than as actual characters. Both of these things have been addressed and toned down over time. I'm just not sure what you mean.