DC Catch-All [Spoiler Zone]

BadKen wrote:

Looks pretty hot. Service still isn't worth $8/mo for me, though.

It's worth eight bucks for the one month when Young Justice drops the rest of their season. I'll probably check it out then.

kazooka wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Looks pretty hot. Service still isn't worth $8/mo for me, though.

It's worth eight bucks for the one month when Young Justice drops the rest of their season. I'll probably check it out then.

That's me when they get the PS4 app up and running. Between Young Justice, Titans, Doom Patrol and now Swamp Thing there's enough stuff on there to justify a month or two. $16 to "rent" all of those over the course of two months isn't too bad. The comics are just an added bonus.

I've been thinking of messing with calendar software (or some Android APIs if I'm feeling fancy) to try and put together a series of reminders; when shows I want to watch drop, when they finish, what I'm subscribed to, when I have to cancel/disable auto-renew (I very much doubt any of these services allow cancellation via API, sadly), and so on.

With the balkanization of streaming services going full tilt, what with Hulu now being Disney, Disney+ being a thing, and NBC/Comcast looking to produce their own streaming service it's getting hard to keep up with, even assuming you just keep constant on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Plus the more niche services if you're into them like CrunchyRoll and Shudder.

I just signed up for the DC Universe service last weekend after a long time considering it. I posted in the Comics thread about this, but in short, it's pretty cool. I'm on a monthly sub for now (and I'm not clear if I got the one week trial I thought I was signing up for or not?), but I will keep an eye out for whenever they next do a sale on annual memberships (I assume they will, though maybe not). In addition to reading the first 20 or so issues of Tom Taylor's Injustice comic, I've watched the first episode of Doom Patrol (a little long, a little opaque, but I'm intrigued), the Death of Superman animated movie (fun enough nostalgia background viewing while I was working from home, looking forward to watching the Reign of the Supermen follow-up), and the first episode of Titans (despite the negative impression of the trailers, I've heard good things from folks who watched the show, and I think I like it so far, although the violence seems excessive and gross).

What explains the lack of DCU feature movies from the last decade on the service? I'm of the opinion that most of them have been garbage, and I think I've seen all the ones that aren't, but if they put Aquaman up there I would definitely watch it.

Swamp Thing first episode was pretty good. Looks like it costs a lot of money so I don't think it will be around long.

So, because my brain is broken, after watching the first episode of Doom Patrol, I noticed that they had appeared earlier in the Titans series, and thus I felt compelled to watch all of Titans before I watch any more of Doom Patrol (and will now probably watch all of Doom Patrol before I watch Swamp Thing even though I don't know that there is any reason that would matter). But! ...Titans is a great show and I love it?!

When I saw the "F@$# BATMAN" trailer for this show, I was so embarrassed for the creators and it was certainly one of the reasons I didn't sign up for the DC Universe membership sooner. But I did hear a few subsequent positive comments about Titans after it started airing, so I figured I should give it a shot. I'm so glad I did. I'm 7 or 8 episodes in now, and I'm having a great time with it, and really appreciate the spin they're putting on the characters in this universe. There's a character whose name is the title of the 6th episode, a character who I do not like at all in the comics, but I love everything about how he is introduced and portrayed in this universe, it is so smart and fun. The violence continues to be gratuitous and kind of gross, and I specifically don't like the angle they're taking on Dick Grayson with respect to that violence, but I think/hope the show is moving away from that. (I get that it's a longstanding version of Batman where he is breaking bones left and right, but I've never liked the idea of him having a code against killing and yet every fight seemingly ends with dozens of henchman messed up so badly that they'll never walk again). It's not the most sophisticated show in the world, but it's a great show to have on a second screen while I'm playing a video game.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/fxFyxRF.jpg)

farley3k wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/fxFyxRF.jpg)

Ok, fine. Under the proposed terms, I accept Pattinson as a Batman.

Surely because I just signed up for it and am liking it, the DC streaming service is being "reevaluated" by AT&T and could be cut as AT&T/Warner consolidates their various streaming services. I would hope that at worst some of these shows and the video offerings and comics get folded into whatever new service they end up making in its place...

Also, apparently Swamp Thing is already canceled (which I gather just means that it won't get a second season, my understanding is they've already made the first season even if it's not released fully yet). Sounds like there were some weird financial shenanigans going on that made it too expensive to continue. Not having watched it yet, I don't know how disappointed to be!

I finished watching Titans Season 1, and it was really good, though I was a little disappointed that things ended on a cliffhanger. Hopefully any turmoil with the streaming service won't stop them from at least finishing the second season...

A live action Lobo series is in the works which is a spinoff of the show Krypton. Color me shocked. The main man shows up in the first episode of the second season of Krypton. I didn't really care for the character but he was only on screen for maybe 5 minutes.

Does it count as a tease when there’s already a Black Adam film in the works? The Rock is going to be Black Adam.

Doom Patrol is coming back for season 2 in 2020 and will simultaneously drop on both DC Universe and the new HBO/Warner streaming service.

I'm about 10 or 11 episodes into Doom Patrol at this point, and it's quite good. I particularly enjoyed the absurdity of the Beard Hunter character and his powers. Initially, I was rolling my eyes at the character's "fat nerd who lives with his mom" introduction, but the character and situation ended up being much more enjoyable than I'd expected. Is that an actual character from the comics, or an original invention? I suspect he's original, but I'm not nearly as up on DC-minutiae as I am with Marvel.

I'm very much looking forward to the second season of Titans! It'll be the first of the DCU series that I will plan to watch each week. I liked binging the first season when I first subscribed, but I think it will be nice to have one episode at a time to check out instead of suddenly feeling like I've got another 10-15 hours of shows I need to find time for.

Beard Hunter is from Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. The comic version is more of a straight-up parody of The Punisher than the show version though, no super powers aside from his raging, psychotic hatred of beards. Aside from the name and repressed family life the show version is basically a different character.

IMAGE(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/1/19/Ernest_Franklin_007.jpg)

Ah, interesting. I think Doom Patrol and the Invisibles are my two Grant Morrison blindspots. Beard Hunter feels like a Garth Ennis type of invention (a la Dog Welder). I would've enjoyed the character more without the whole "look at this fat nerd who lives in his mom's basement" angle, and it seems like someone more like the image above might've played even sillier than the version the show went with, but, oh well.

Busy working through Doom Patrol at the moment. I admire the sort of creative bravery that puts the apocalypse on the table halfway through the first season, then solves it the next episode.

I watched the first 2 episodes of Titans Season 2 over the weekend. They are good, but the first half of the first episode very clearly should have been the Season 1 finale. I can't tell if they changed their mind about having that Season 1 story play out longer or what, but the first episode of Season 2 takes some stuff that was slowly and painstakingly set up over the whole first season and just says "okay, all done!" Kinda weird.

Spoilers about a character who shows up in these first few episodes that I hadn't seen previewed in trailers or anything:

Spoiler:

Bruce Wayne is here! Huh! I like it. Similar to the way the CW Supergirl went from lots of winking references to Superman to just straight up saying "yeah okay here he is", I like that they decided not to beat around the bush about Batman (which I read importantly as them choosing not to tie their shows into the DC cinematic stuff). He's played by Iain Glen, Jorah Mormont from Game of Thrones. It's an interesting look for Bruce Wayne (and so far we haven't seen him do anything as Batman, just talking with Dick). I'm somewhat unsure about his voice. Is he just bad at doing an American accent? Or is he doing a bit of like a 1940s moviestar style Midatlantic accent? He hasn't spoken enough for me to fully get a handle on what he's doing, but his voice sounds a little questionable, though perhaps it's because I'm expecting to hear Jorah's voice when he talks.

I really liked binging the first season when I got onto this show, but I'll hope to keep up with this each week as it comes out.

Saw the Joker movie. I think it has some very good action but the movie itself has absolutely nothing to say. It exists to exist.

Watched the first Batwoman episode and thought it was pretty bad. The show seems to not have a big enough budget. The story is really dumb. The fights were just ok. None of the characters were interesting. I will still keep watching, it wouldn't be the first show I loved but hated at first.

bnpederson wrote:

Saw the Joker movie. I think it has some very good action but the movie itself has absolutely nothing to say. It exists to exist.

I have to agree with this. We went because our older daughter wanted to see it (my wife would rather have seen Downton Abby). While it was an interesting 2+ hour ad for the values of proper mental health treatment, it didn't really captivate me. When the movie was getting close to the end, I thought, "Huh, I guess I was expecting more story out of it."

I also feel like DC can't keep their story straight on the Joker specifically. In the last few years, the pictoral of Joker in Suicide Squad and this Joker movie felt completely different. Nevermind the back story in the 1989 Batman doesn't gel with this one.

Anyway, moving on...

I'm not sure, but I thought DC's canon was that the Joker's backstory was still relatively unknown?

bnpederson wrote:

Saw the Joker movie. I think it has some very good action but the movie itself has absolutely nothing to say. It exists to exist.

I really liked it but yeah it needed a deeper plot. The Joker is one my favorite villains and I loved seeing the semi realistic treatment and the revenge fantasy being carried out perfectly.

I can sympathize with the argument that Joaquin put in a better performance than Brie Larson as Captain Marvel (aka what seems to be the ongoing cultural smack down). Of course Captain Marvel in my opinion was the better movie overall. Outside of Phoenix there wasn’t any other noteworthy performance.

Nevin73 wrote:

I'm not sure, but I thought DC's canon was that the Joker's backstory was still relatively unknown?

DC constantly reboots the Joker with different backstories. So it's not that it's unknown, it's that it keeps changing.

Or different Jokers in recent years.

As I understand it the Joker movie isn't set in any other DC universe, for what that's worth. The world seems to be a weird mashup of technology from the 1960s to the 1980s that mostly evoked New York as seen in Taxi Driver and other similar movies. But, y'know, with answering machines when needed for plot reasons.

bnpederson wrote:

As I understand it the Joker movie isn't set in any other DC universe, for what that's worth. The world seems to be a weird mashup of technology from the 1960s to the 1980s that mostly evoked New York as seen in Taxi Driver and other similar movies. But, y'know, with answering machines when needed for plot reasons.

I got the impression it was early to mid 80s based on tech such as VCRs. Some of the cars and clothes seemed from the 60s-70s but that wouldn’t be completely out of place. There are also mentions of an ongoing recession which if I’m not mistaken would be early 80s.

Or it could just be a fictional world.

A few thoughts on Joker:

The score, by the lady who did the score for Chernobyl, is amazing. It holds every other element of the movie together.

There's enough unreliable narration that it is unclear what, if any, elements of the story are 'true'. This is as it should be for a story about the Joker.

I think the movie did a great job of walking the fine line of creating space for some empathy with the main character without turning him into an object for the audiences' sympathy.

Crisis On Infinite Earths Trailer