LogFAQs > #927501469

Aaantlion posted...

You say that, but Burton's first two Batman films turned out great

I'd strongly disagree, but that's mostly because I've seen Batman Returns.

But my statement there wasn't that his movies were terrible (though I'd be willing to argue that as well), but that he straight up gloated that he'd never read a comic. Which is what prompted this exchange:

Burton: "Anybody that knows me knows I do not read comic books"

Smith: "Which, to me, explains fucking Batman."

Though I suspect what Smith was really thinking about was the clusterfuck that was Burton's Superman attempt (which actually involved Kevin Smith). But since that never came out and no one else ever got to see it, it didn't make as effective a "gotcha".

But either way, he's still the earliest example of a DC/WB director kind of showing open disdain for the very medium they're attempting to adapt.



Aaantlion posted...

(the latter two he only produced, but I will say that B&R is fantastic in its own way)

Yes, but "its own way" is "This is such a phenomenal clusterfuck of terrible movie that it comes out the other side and becomes an awesome unintentional comedy". Which isn't the best look unless your master plan is to kill one of your most lucrative franchises completely dead for nearly a decade.

And let's be honest, if Nolan's film hadn't been... well, Nolan's film, it probably would have stayed dead. It would have been less Batman Begins and more Superman Returns.



Aaantlion posted...

Zack Snyder's *other* work aside, I'd easily put Watchmen over ANYTHING in the MCU.

Most fans of the Watchmen comic would disagree with you. As would most people who had no investment in the comic at all and were tricked into the movie by trailers that basically told them it was going to be a movie like X-Men, because the studio had zero faith anyone would ever want to watch the actual movie.

Hell, for that matter, I actually liked Watchmen (the movie), and I'd still disagree with you. It was a pretty flawed movie in a lot of ways, and a lot of that goes back to the source material itself. I'd be hard-pressed to rank it over anything in the MCU, other than maybe Thor: The Dark World. Or The Incredible Hulk.

But let's be honest, Zack Snyder hating and misunderstanding comics and the only comic movie he's ever made that was worth anything at all being the one based on the comic that existed solely to kind of shit on comics and which ushered in one of the worst periods of comic history may not be unconnected concepts.

Snyder's pretty much the living avatar of 90s grimderp.

And again, he's the recent example of a director who is overly contemptuous of both the medium and the fans of the medium, which suggests he may not be the best person to be adapting the medium.



Aaantlion posted...

And, notwithstanding, comic fan doesn't always mean quality.

It doesn't. But adaptations between different media are tricksy things to pull off successfully in the best of cases, and almost only ever work when someone who actually loves and understands the source material makes a good-faith effort to try and translate what made it work into a new medium. Peter Jackson and LotR is a good example here.

People who hate the source tend to fail to understand it, and thus only adapt superficial elements while changing important elements, or otherwise cynically exploit the brand rather than making any real effort to translate it well.
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