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[Monk]

Who here has seen Suicide Squad? What did you think? Some quick initial thoughts below, definitely interested to hear what you thought. Spoilers of course.

"#theskwad" is so groan-worthy which is the point but still.

Spoiler: Show

Worse than BvS, but more fun.

Constant God imagery / references with Amanda Waller. Angel wings (helicopter flares), tower to heaven, "meet God". Pretty interesting. She descends downward in the helicopter. Is she a fallen angel?

Batman is an asshole. The way he captures Deadshot is amazing considering the way his own parents died.

Bruce Wayne likes what Waller did with #theskwad. Batman is a bad guy.

Waller gave Batman Deadshot's whereabouts, knowing he'd be with his daughter, and also knowing Batman is a vigilante who brands criminals... in the words of Deadshot, she is a mean lady.

Waller's end-game is slavery of assets, weaponized humans. When she hands Bruce the dossier at the end, the implication is she intended to enslave The Flash and Aquaman in much the same way she did #theskwad.

Joker exists only as a figment of Harley's imagination. Throughout the whole movie, he is her fantasy. She fantasises about being rescued by him. We only ever seen him from her POV. The camera and editing is very specific about that, even in the helicopter rescue sequence.

Captain beer-drinking Australia had a lot of personality, but I think the editing did a lot of work to remove that which is a shame. His funniest bit is when Enchantress shows them all their perfect fantasy futures, and he doesn't have one. Probably ties into his weird unicorn fetish, because unicorns aren't real.

Captain Boomerang also talks slipknot into trying to escape, knowing that they have bombs in their necks. When slipknot's bomb goes off, decapitating him, Captain Boomerang makes a joke. He's definitely a colourful character.

The end-of-the-world blue beam thing looks just like Zod's world engine. It seemed to be grinding rubbish and debris in the air. Zod's world engine crushes. They are very similar, but what's the metaphor?

The editing felt rough in places. Gags were held for too long, or build-up to a joke was too short. Some redundancy with repeated flashbacks. But where the editing works is reducing Joker to just being in Harley's mind, as well as making sure the city is devoid of personality.

The city is just a backdrop for violence, it doesn't actually matter. This is in contrast to BvS where we are shown cities with two distinct personalities. What's the film saying by having a meaningless city? It's called Midway, too, which strikes me as being on the nose. Does it have something to do with #theskwad earning their freedom?

Joker is played like a soft-drink Tony Montana, but white.

Between Nicholson and Ledger, Leto plays the sanest, least controversial Joker.

Joker is very conscious of his brand, but that may be because we only see him through Harley's eyes, and she is very conscious of his brand.

Robbie's fluctuating accent did get a little distracting. Love that she sees her self in a reflection of a store window. Her fight scene in the elevator was by far the best.

The action scenes sucked. Deadshot had some cool poses, but mostly fighting no-face goons was pretty boring. It's hard to imagine this is from the same director who gave us Fury which had excellent combat and action sequences. The only character who got decent characterisation through the action sequences was Deadshot.

Will Smith is very Will Smith, which you'd expect. If Hardy hadn't been forced to abandon SS, then he would have been a personality magnetic enough to counter Smith. As it stands, Kinnamon, while I think he's a pretty good actor, lacks a lot of screen presence, and this is even with his impressive size -- he's like two inches taller than Smith and way bigger.

Enchantress' weird little dance everytime we see her doing whatever to her energy beam was probably unintentionally funny.

The movie was way too fucking dark! I saw it in 3D on an imax, but fuck, there seemed to be very little contrast.

[Larno]

4.5/10

It was very very avg. Letos joker was abysmal imo it served 0 purpose to the plot and the movie would have been better if you just edit all his scenes out.

It was possibly the worst of all of the superhero movies in the last decade imo including green lantern.

[Monk]

One thing that struck me was the Captain Australia apprehension shot. That just looked 100x better than any other shot in the movie, and it was filmed by Snyder. Visually, I don't think you can find a better comic book movie director today when it comes to beautiful shots. Snyder really just knows how to use depth so well and his shots always lead your eye. You feel like you're on a theme park ride when you look at a Snyder shot; your eyes follow the track the way he wants you to. It's great for action sequences, because it means that he can craft very coherant but fast moving action (such as the Smallville fight in MOS, or the fights in Watchmen).

I like Ayer, but his action sequences really were boring in this film. In Fury, Ayer's flatter style really worked for compressing tank warfare, marching soldiers, convoys, and ruined towns, onto a single 'page' that we could catch and understand all at a glance. Here, with close-ups of individual people, the flatter look feels like it excludes you from the fight. I think a good example of this is the underwater fight between Killer Croc; because everything is so flat, we can't really understand what's going on. We don't know where the enemies are coming from, or how Croc is really fighting them. Perhaps that was deliberate, and meant to mimic the kind of nature documentary shots we see of crocodiles churning up their prey, but every other action sequence also has this kind of flat look so it's hard to tell where everybody is in relation to each other.

Spoiler: Show

Just the slipknot escaping scene is another example because he shoots a grappling hook at some wall, and then another at another wall, and it's only after he's been decapitated do we realize he's about 1 story off the ground. Maybe it was the editing.

[punk]

@monk

@larno
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePoxmPMwJNQ&t=274s[/youtube]

[Bongoloid]

Jesus wept.

- I point out they got Batman wrong a movie ago and you fucks lose your minds. Now it's insightful?
- Remember Waller's bit about Superman and the White House? Is it possible she has files on potential threats as well as potential members?
- Joker is not a figment of Harley's imagination, ffs. He is a victim of reshoots and aggressive editing because test audiences didn't like how he treated her.
- Why does big laser vortex have to be a metaphor? What was it a metaphor for in BvS? Fantastic 4? Ghostbusters? Avengers? Ghostbusters again?

"We need a defense in case that bulletproof Superman fella goes rogue. Get me a sniper and a stripper with a baseball bat".
That's all you need to know right there.

[Monk]

Well, we can go through it again I guess. "Got Batman wrong" is wrong. The Batman we have in this here cinematic universe is not "wrong", it's just what we have. What if somebody has never watched or read a batman comic before? Is it still wrong then? "They got my batman wrong" is refusal to engage with text, which actually fit in BvS since you refused to watch it for some silly reason, but you seem to have watched SS so iono...

Waller has files on The Flash and Aquaman, and hands them over to Bruce Wayne to continue and evolve Secret Team X or whatever it's called in her place (Justice League). Logically, she was going after them next. It's implied, but that scene exists and has to be read. You can choose to not find a place for it in the story, and instead think it's WB getting antsy over the reception to their Jl trailer and getting redundant, but, you know, there's nothing really to talk about there.

I don't care about production or reshoots. The one and only movie we have clearly shows that Joker is Harley's fantasy throughout the film. This is achieved via editing, even in the helicopter rescue sequence. That is why you can cut all his scenes, and the sequence of events does not change. But do you know what does change? Harley's characterisation.

Bad guy creates super weapon to destroy Earth. The method of destruction carries meaning. Only, we never really see the beam do anything. except shoot huge Prototype-style tentacles out? Pretty weird, but a conscious choice. I'm not sure what the significance of Enchantress' beam-ring of rubbish is all about, but I'd love to hear theories.

Given that Krypton is posited as Earth's ecological-worst-case and eventual armageddon, that the world engine crushes everything to dust is fitting. I mean, it was a terraforming device, they could have had it just bake the world in steam or fill the atmosphere with ozone to block out the sun or whatever. They chose to have it crush things. Crush our cars, our buildings, our possessions, and our people. The world machine lifts it all up, then throws it back onto the ground. I'd say there is definitely a metaphor, considering the "uplifted" or "enlightened" kryptonions ended up going extinct because of their own foolishness.

I agree with you that Amanda Waller is completely incompetent and borderline retarded. It's part of her character. She is responsible for everything that goes wrong in this movie, and when when we get to the mid-point "twist", it's a fantastically lame reveal. She is stupid and she is bad.

In the words of Deadshot, she is a mean lady.

[Bongoloid]

You're still reaching. Clearly shows he's a fantasy? No. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a lazy vortex is just a lazy vortex, and making Batman a bad guy IS getting him wrong (first experience of the character or not).

[Monk]

Clearly shows he's a fantasy? No.

Why not? Considering her character is the only one that changes when you remove Joker from the film, his character's sole function is to expound on Harley.

It ties in to why he's playing a role in the SS universe. I mean, here we have this guy who is acting like he's some maniacal clown, but really all he is is a drug dealer and street-level gangster. There is nothing profound or even pretentious about this Joker and he insincerely plays up his craziness like it's the hottest thing since sliced bread. Much like Harley does. Which is why her "hey boys" scene when being briefed by Flagg in the army camp is cringe-worthy. It's all an act, a brand, not genuine. (Which makes the 'Leto was crazy on set' rumours come off as pure marketing stunt, which they probably were).

Even if, literally, Joker is not a *figment of imagination*, his role or function in this movie is to tell us what is going on inside Harley's head. That's what I mean when I say he's in her head. He is completely irrelevant to every single other character, with the exception of Deadshot. But Deadshot is also part of Harley's fantasy. That's why Harley and Deadshot have their little stairwell talk (and off-screen fuck). Since you like to cite production and editing issues as being part of the story, then we should say that Harley and Deadshot had a cut romance that would have formed a love triangle.

making Batman a bad guy IS getting him wrong (first experience of the character or not).

Why? I've never read a batman comic, or watched a batman movie. Explain to me why is it wrong, objectively, that Batman is a bad guy, without referencing what he is supposed to be (remember, I have no knowledge of him), or what you personally think he should be? You can't. All you can do is stamp your feet and say "its not my Batman".

But if I'm watching BvS or SS, or reading Frank Miller's turn on him, and it's my first exposure to Batman, I'm probably coming away thinking he's a knob. And it's really not a quality or right-wrong assessment; it's just who he is. If you want your Batman, you can always watch or read your favourite rendition of him.

Spoiler: Show

Thinking about it a little more, isn't it weird that an ancient Mayan/Aztec/Whatever fire god decided to spend his life's work doing street-level gangster shit? There's this weird undercurrent of underachievement, lack of ambition, or maybe lack of imagination. Deadshot is constantly throwing threats but never following through. Captain Boomerang is played up like he's going to have a proper role in the film with his boomerangs, but all he does is stab people a couple of times or drink beer behind a rubbish bin.

Rick Flagg is super army soldier SAS bad-ass American man, but all he does is fall prey to his own emotions he can't control. Harley is supposedly fearless and crazy, but really, the craziest things she does is spout out teenage quotes, and while she's clearly competent (the elevator fight), she's hardly fearless.

Killer Croc is the only character who does not underachieve, because he does not think himself anything more than he is. He is treated like a monster, and is quite happy to simply be a monster. He's satisfied with BET and eating raw pigs and sometimes human guards, and ends up playing a pivotal role in the destruction of Enchantress' brother, all while Mexican Banger Man acts as a self-sacrificial decoy.

And Amanda Waller, who plays up Enchantress and #theskwad as being an answer to a Superman who is *not* from Kansas, only uses #theskwad to bail her own arse out and to use as a patsy for the destruction of Midway City, which she herself caused. At the end, Bruce Wayne tells her to shut it down. This means that all #theskwad did, and will do, is save Waller's arse. Per Bruce Wayne, there will be no SS2.

It's like there's all this potential to each character, and everybody deliberately falls short. Even Enchantress doesn't use her powers to their full extent, having *just* displayed them when disarming #theskwad. What a pathetic bunch.

[Bongoloid]

Batman (definition) - A DC hero that abhors guns and killing.
Movie Batman - Well, they got the DC part right I guess.

I also saw a movie where Jesus was a foul-mouthed kung fu legend dispatching zombies. I wish it was my first exposure to the character but sadly it would still be "wrong".
TDKR is an Elseworlds tale, a 'what if?' scenario set in a distant, dystopian future. Basing your interpretation of Batman on it is flawed.

I'm intrigued, what do you make of being the only person in the world to go with this 'imaginary boyfriend' interpretation?

Spoiler: Show

lol, yep. There will be no suicide Squad 2 because of Bruce Wayne. Ignore the movie's reception. Also ignore that Waller clearly knows he's Batman and doesn't give a fuck what he says.

[Monk]

I didn't realise Batman was a documentary about a real man who dresses up as a bat and beats up street-level mooks. What is that guy's problem?!?!?

Personally, I was looking forward to Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.

You're talking about canon, aka the arbitrary lines that limit creativity and exploration and allow people to play gatekeeper.

Humans all go the way of the Kryptonians, and the only surviving media of Batman, Batman versus Superman, is dug up by future alien archaeologists. After watching the material, one alien says to the other, "I think we should probably not judge this film based on its own merits and flaws, because we could be missing the canonical context of a larger universe which would render this an elseworlds, or objectively wrong tale, and therefore subject to boycott."

"He really was a dipshit, wasn't he? I guess this wasn't their Batman."

"It's wrong. Objectively. What should we do with it?"

"Airlock it.," the alien said with disgust. His pinched face resembled a puckered anus.

Captain America in The Winter Solider, a film you sing the praises of, is an "incorrect" portrayal of him based on canon. We end the movie not trusting Cap's decision-making. He compromised, and allowed SHIELD to reform as STARK and a dozen other American agencies.

Batman in Batman vs Superman, is an "incorrect" portrayal of him based on canon. He uses guns, kills people (I think?), brands people, and quotes Dick Cheney.

Had these two films adhered to canonical laws, we wouldn't be able to explore this sort of Batman, an unlikable Batman. Nor would we lose trust in Cap, only to regain it in Civil War. It would rob both of these characters of interesting dimensions and weaknesses, and turn them into the mary sues we so love and cherish.

Canon is so stupid, and I hope we never get the day where every single rendition of batman or any comic book wo/man has to follow a rigid dictionary definition.

I'm intrigued, what do you make of being the only person in the world to go with this 'imaginary boyfriend' interpretation?

I mean, this is less likely than you allowing yourself to enjoy Batman vs Superman.

With all of that said, I think it's pretty telling that Batman is the most interesting character to talk about with regard to SS. His cultural cache obviously plays a part, but every character of #theskwad is really forgettable, with the exception of Captain Boomerang. He's got the most personality. I'd watch a solo movie of him robbing banks and stuff.

[Monk]

@monk

Yeah, I mean, I agree with this. BvS is too preoccupied with its own politics to really be a fun or moving film. SS is more enjoyable than BvS but I think it's a worse film.

BvS is gorgeous and gives us a Batman we haven't really seen on film before, but it lacks a lot of the charm that MOS had. Speaking in the language the youtuber uses (which i think is overly reductive), MOS has plenty of "scenes" in between the "moments". MOS is a better film than BvS by any metric.

I wonder if the director's cut fixes any of that. Not really looking forward to sitting through 3 hours but I'll probably do it whenever I get my hands on Civil War and just spend a day off watching comic book movies and finishing a too-big bag of chips, and afterwards I'll hate myself for a little bit while I rub my engorged stomach and pick crumbs up off the sofa.

But, I mean, come on, Age of Ultron? Nothing in AoU felt "poignant". Youtuber should have used the much better example Captain America: The First Avenger, which is the best MCU movie, and probably tied for best comic book movie since the MCU or Nolanverse started, whichever came earlier, and is full of these "scenes". I mean, let's face, it skinny Captain fulfills both of these qualities any time he's on screen (which is why the youtuber is being overly reductive).

Obviously, it's tied with Dredd.

[Bongoloid]

I enjoyed TDKR. I have no problem with different takes on the character. I would have taken issue if it was Batman #673 instead of a standalone mini-series though.
I know you refuse to see these films as part of a far-reaching, interconnected universe (except when it suits you) but that's just too bad. They are what they are and they don't pretend to be anything else.
Nolan's Batman stood alone and was ripe for reinterpreting. Snyder was tasked with kicking off a vast, enduring, interconnected movie universe for multiple filmmakers to play in. Rather than give a solid foundation to build on and explore down the track he went straight to the most extreme version, Batman's (and Superman's) endgame. Where do you go when a story starts at the end? The only option is backwards. And he didn't do it to explore or expand the character, he did it because TDKR is popular and because "I'm edgy, brah". He shat the bed, knowing full well he'd be sharing it with others.
This is the same guy that criticised Nolan's Batman for not being dark enough, saying his Batman would get raped in prison. A WB exec saw that and gave him the job anyway.
So people criticised the tone of MoS and asked for more of the innocent elements of the mythos.
"Fuck you. Here's Jimmy Olsen. Happy? BLAM!"
Was that also a clever reinterpretation? Or just Snyder throwing an edgy tantrum?

Canon = continuity. Snyder was tasked with creating a new one. He did a terrible, lazy, selfish job.
Maybe it was DC mandate. "We're behind Marvel, start in Phase 4 so we'll be ahead!"
I don't think so though, this has the Snyders (his missus is just as bad, the Hillary to Zack's Trump) all over it.

And now the retcon begins. Retcons suck but Snyder and DC made it a necessity. Don't expect subtlety or restraint though.
Going forward we have a jokey Stark, I mean Wayne. He goes to recruit a young Spiderman, I mean Flash, at his home.
Then we get Captain America: The First Avenger (now with boobs).
"Are we Marvel yet?"

Speaking of Cap, I still have no idea what you're talking about. Then again, you invent movies that nobody else sees, I shouldn't be surprised.
You know, you could remove Indy from Raiders and the outcome wouldn't change. He's clearly a Nazi fantasy. And the ark was a metaphor for sub-prime bank loans, because reasons (most of them masturbatory).

[Larno]

And the ark was a metaphor for sub-prime bank loans, because reasons (most of them masturbatory).

[Monk]

Canon is functionally more than continuity. Canon is a dictionary definition of a fictional character. Canon is law. Canon is what makes people like or dislike characters and stories based on whether or not they follow in the footsteps of previous stories or characterisations. Canon is "my Batman".

TDKR is an underrated movie, and the twist that Banes politics are all for show is pretty great. It doesn't end happily, either. It just tells us that Rich Bruce Wayne can escape Gotham without having fixed any of it, leaving the poors to deal with whatever else the shitty city breeds out. Batman attacked the symptoms, not the cause. I think that's why people generally rate it lower than TDK. The ending implication is, even unconsciously, souring. Batman was not the hero we needed.

I'm surprised you don't understand The Winter Soldier, given how high you rate it. To recap the plot, neonazis infiltrate SHIELD, and so Cap disbands SHIELD. That's good, right? Yes, except he compromises by allowing SHIELD to reform as STARK. That's the point of the ending montage where we see high-level SHIELD operatives signing up with the NSA or whatever, and STARK (Agent 13 iirc).

The point being that Cap did nothing to fix the system that allowed nazi infiltration in the first place. The joke of TWS is that Hydra and SHIELD were the same. They both sought similar things via similar means (unrestrained security at the cost of freedom to ensure an ideology). In SHIELD, and subsequently STARK's case, that is libertarianism.

This is what I mean when I say Cap is not characterised as we would expect him to be. Because in TFA, he didn't compromise against Hydra, and he died for it. In TWS, he shrugs his shoulders and says maybe Stark will do a better job. This is DESPITE the fact that he doesn't trust Stark, which is then explored more in AoU and Civil War (which I haven't watched but the trailers make it seem like that's the case).

Why would Cap put world security into the hands of Stark, weapons manufacturer, after having taken a stand against SHIELD? The two are, functionally, the same. They still have helicarriers, they still go around the world dispensing American justice, and they still operate without oversight (until Civil War). TWS ends with Cap making a decision that we can't trust, because we don't trust Stark, because Stark is a dickhead. Like Batman.

You draw a correct comparison between Iron Man and Batman. Only, Iron Man walks away from killing explosions looking cool, such as in IM1 and probably every other movie he has appeared in. The funny thing is that Transformers 2 is often criticised for its ridiculous scene where cars drive through the Middle East and BLOW UP SOME ARABS, but IM is a God damn hero doing it. This joke is expanded upon when War Machine tries to do the same, but actually, it's based off incorrect intel and he's just pointing guns at unarmed women in a sweatshop.

As for BvS Batman being "end-game", I can definitely see that his character is a question of: "What happens if Batman went too far?". Of course, that was always the question with Batman. Can a vigilante protect humans, humanely? How deep does the rabbit hole go? How long until he loses himself?

Perfect Mary Sue Batman is boring. Give me somebody who falls prey. I don't agree with you that there's nothing left to say about Batman. I'd just say you have no imagination. Could be that canon constraining you.

Whether or not Snyder takes Batman anywhere in Justice League is irrelevant. You judge films based off how well they can kickstart a series (The Force Awakens). You are evidently judging BvS and SS based off how far you think Batman's story can be "progressed". This is not the way I look at it. I don't look at BvS and try to imagine where Batman will be in JL to make some kind of quality assessment.

In BvS, Batman is an asshole. That's just who he is. It doesn't make the film inherently bad, even if I don't like who Batman is in the film. BvS is a not-good film because it is weirdly edited, pivots around a weak character moment, and seems to just be muscle and bone without any ligaments to tie it all together. It is, however, still a better movie than SS, even if SS is more enjoyable to sit through.

You should quit canon, it's bad for you.

[Bongoloid]

Canon has seen Batman endure for nearly 80 years. Boring and restrictive? Only if you lack imagination.
And all this hanging on "we got to explore a Batman we haven't seen before". Bollocks. We've explored him in 3 films and a Netflix series, he was called the Punisher.
And what exploring did Snyder do? Batman kills a bunch of people, Martha, the end. Will he be haunted by those deaths or be made to face any consequences? Fuck no, it's quip time.
We haven't seen a midget/lesbian/robot Batman either. Fingers crossed, eh?

Also, TDKR is The Dark Knight Returns, the comic Snyder lifted much of BvS from.

[Monk]

Also, TDKR is The Dark Knight Returns, the comic Snyder lifted much of BvS from.

The canon of acronym. I don't think I'll ever get my head around all these rules!!

The fact that Batman doesn't use guns isn't what defines his character. It's a piece of trivia. He still beats the shit out of people and leaves them likely crippled forever. In the underrated Schumacher-verse we see Batman leading a couple of goons off that giant statue's finger in the batmobile. He blasts off his his BatNOS, to make a Batjump. They don't have rocket thrusters on their cars. We cut away.

(Of course they died.)

You say this Batman is nothing new, so why all the outrage now? It's not because Batman is fundamentally a different or wrong character (he's not), but because actually Snyder is successful in communicating his film's politics. That Batman, from a certain angle, is fucking bad and crazy. What kind of person does it take to be a hero. The contrast is to Superman, who says he's just a boy from Kansas. He's as American as the rest of us.

Snyder achieves this by showing us the after math for a little longer. What would be off-screen or off-panel is now right there for us to see. We're brought closer to death, but never actually see it. A car explodes, no cut to a body in flames. A man is in front of the Batmobile; no cut to his body being torn apart like a ragdoll. Even in BvS it's implied. Still pulling punches. But we get some gorgeous shots of Batman doing what he does best: Beating the living shit out of mooks.



In his very first comic appearance Batman killed, with a gun. In Tim Burton's two turns, he killed. In Schumacher's Batman's, he killed, but just off-screen. Batman kills in "elseworlds tales" and he has killed in both 80s comic runs and 90s comic runs. Batman killing and Batman using a gun is there in the canon.

You can't have it both ways.

Canon is 80 years but Synder fucked up his own canon? If canon is just story runs, like the Snyderverse, you can't really bring in another Batman. If canon is 80 years, you have to reconcile all of Batman. The easy solution is to draw convenient lines in the sand. You don't count, you don't count, and you don't count *flick*. Why is a future Batman subject to the rules of a collection of past Batmans? It just makes no sense at all. By this logic, Aliens should never have been made because it radically changes the character of the xenomorph.

Batman is a weak character in BvS, but not because he is "not my batman" but because his characterisation is all heaped off-screen. The robin suit, the turns cruel line, why he buys into that 1% bs, and obviously why he now kills people. That's all the interesting stuff but it all happened before the movie starts, and leaves very little for the movie itself. We never get to find out how Batman became the way he did. It's all just implied.

[Bongoloid]

So you wanted the canon Batman first, then you wanted to see him broken?
ME TOO.

Why do you assume that Batman wasn't always a killer in BvS? Alfred may have been referring to him escalating from executions to branding and torture. The 1% was maybe justifying a step to pre emptive killing. Hitmen can mourn lost partners too.
Or maybe deep down you embrace the canon.
It's for the best, without it there's no Batman. Orphan? Canon. Rich? Canon. Bat-themed? Canon. Wonderful toys? Canon. World's greatest detective? Canon. A pathological refusal to kill or use guns? You guessed it, canon.
The canon is what allows exploration in the first place. It's the starting point of the journey. You can deviate, that's the point, but you've gotta earn it. Or you get BvS.


And I don't know what movie you watched (wow, deja vu), but the now independent Avengers moved to Stark Tower. I assume this would only be allowed to happen with some form of government liason, lucky for them Agent 13 is loyal to Fury and Cap.
Cap didn't give SHIELD to Stark.

[Monk]

But all that stuff, minus the no guns and killing part, is in the movie. It's not something I have to reference in my bank of Batman canon.

You make a good point, Batman might have been an insane killer the whole time. I think it's implied that he wasn't; for one, all the news reports we see (which is a cheap way to do exposition) have reporters being surprised at the brutality of the returned Bat. We also have Alfred's line, which could very well mean torture, but could mean more.

So I mean, if Batman was always this murderous psycho, I think I like it more. Because then why did he retire? Unfortunately, also off-screen.

Still, it's impossible to completely ignore canon in the sense of shared cultural knowledge. That was never my point. My point was about using canon to draw arbitrary lines of quality and exclusion. Your argument has changed. First it was that this is the "wrong" batman aka "not my batman". This is a canonical judgment. This is what lead to you boycotting the movie for a short while.

Now it's that we don't get to see how he becomes the wrong batman aka he's not characterised enough. If that's the case, I don't disagree with you anymore.

The difference here is that if in the Directors Cut or Batfleck solo film or JL or whatever, Batman is shown to have always been a mass-murdering psychopath, then I won't have a problem with that in the name of canon. Will you?


SHIELD was more than a team of supersoldiers and norse gods. SHIELD was the infrastructure, the huge machine that allowed it to do all sorts of really bad things in the name of security. When SHIELD becomes disbanded, we don't just see Agent 13 join STARK, but we see someone else join the CIA or NSA or whatever it was. Obviously they re not going to show every low level SHIELD operative joining a new agency. It's implied.

The system of SHIELD, one that willfully sacrificed freedom for security, and one that allowed itself to be infiltrated by Hydra, still exists, just spread out over different agencies. Just because we don't SEE the infrastructure of STARK doesn't mean it's not implied. Where do they get all their intel, then? All their military assets? Weapons technology? The whole infrastructure still exists. You can say it's different, now it's run by Tony Stark and not Nick Fury. Except it's not really different. It's all about maintaining the status quo, which just so happens to allow Tony Stark to be a mega billionaire but not share a ton of technology that would unquestionably fix a ton of world issues. Even if he's stopped selling weapons (overtly), he's still profiting of this system via his technology. STARK, then, becomes a tool of his ideology. SHIELD was, too. Not his in particular, but he didn't mind. Nice weapons contracts!

The nearly unrestricted access nuSHIELD has, and SHIELDprime had, is never addressed. The huge arsenal of weapons, not just available to the heroes we can trust, but to all the operatives who are human. The point is nothing changed. We still see a helicarrier in AoU. Where did it come from? (Does it still have that targeting software?) They eliminated one bad guy, yes, but Hydra was just the mirror-universe SHIELD. The only thing that differed between them (now) was ideology. That's why you have the excellent US Senator being a secret neoNazi. Nobody could tell?! It's a great joke! Shandling's scenes are the best in the film.

The only governemnt oversight we'd seen prior to civil war was in Avengers when the World Gov or whatever wanted to nuke Manhattan so that's not exactly comforting. What TWS does is retroactively make Tony Stark's ending line in Iron Man 1 prophetic. nuSHEILD is now, literally, a privatised global security force that upholds a certain ideology (basically American-values Hydra).

"I've privatised world peace." More like <fingerquotes>peace</fingerquotes>

[Bongoloid]