Your DC-Only controversial opinions (part II)...

[achilles]

Wonder Woman was a truly terrible movie. It only got raves because it was better in many ways than the DCEU stuff before it. It featured some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a movie not done by a ten year old as a class project, some of the worst dialog I've heard outside of SyFy channel original movies, no character development at all, a plot so full of holes its more hole than anything else, and truly terrible acting by nearly everyone concerned. Basically, it was the equivalent of a big budget SyFy original, perhaps Mega Shrimp vs Giant Carp. Gadot is very pretty, but she can't act. Pine maybe can act, but he chose not to in the movie WW, going instead for a very special and embarrassing episode of the A-Team type acting. And everyone else was worse. The villains were ripped right out a comic book, which sounds good until you realize I mean out of one from the 40s, written for 5 year olds. I still have no idea what they wanted, apart from mustaches to twirl.

[Alpha]

It featured some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a movie not done by a ten year old as a class project, some of the worst dialog I've heard outside of SyFy channel original movies

I was waiting for you to write "/s". Anyway, Wonder Woman is the only superhero movie that wouldn't cut after Steve Trevor said that Diana being made of clay was "neat". They allowed this conversation to go on naturally. Few of the things they are discussing have anything to do with the plot of the movie, or even with direct exposition about their backstories. It's all about them getting to know each other, not flirting, just learning how they see the world, connecting as human beings with totally different lives and in totally different worlds.

The only other film that I can recall having a scene remotely like this is Winter Soldier with Cap and Natasha talking in the car. Oh and the new Black Widow movie also has a comparable car scene. I still think this scene from WW takes the top spot.

no character development at all

I mean, okay. The girl thinks humanity is evil because a greek god is corrupting them, and freaks out in anger and despair almost destroying the entire military base. Then she finally finds a balanced way to care about the world and appreciating a sunset, while still accepting that the world is full of violence. I think everyone agrees that the third act is the weakest part of the film, but you are the only one that thinks Diana doesn't change.

This is the controversial opinions thread so I guess it's the perfect place for what you wrote, even if you are objectively wrong.

[Ascended]

Retaining all of her history isn't the goal. Making it simple enough for people to follow is the ideal and pragmatic choice.

I think I already proved that the Dark Angel stuff isn't a barrier when it comes to streamlining a IP for easy consumption.

Not that making it simple is really a goal for DC. Explain the speed force or emotional spectrum or any Crisis or Metal event to me and then tell me that DC is heavily invested in making things simple and straightforward.

As I said several times, Dark Angel works if the goal is to build a Donna with a recognizable history and character. If the idea is to reboot and start fresh then it's not needed. I don't believe in reboots, personally. They only cause more problems and I like to think that most of us here have realized that, even if DC hasn't.

It didn't. You might have an idea for what could be done with it but nothing came out of the Dark Angel stuff. No interesting stories, no new enemy (if anything Dark Angel was Hippolyta's enemy not Donna's) and certainly no solo books for Donna.

The role of Harbinger comes with a pretty clear-cut job description. It's not that I personally imagined what *could* be done with it and that resides only in my head. We know what the Harbinger is supposed to do. Donna was the new Harbinger. Seeing what could have come next doesn't require much effort.

The fact that DC never did anything with the role doesn't mean anything. That's not a metric for measuring the viability of the idea. All this tells us is that Donna slid too far from the classic/stagnant NTT status quo and DC couldn't accept that. And forcing these characters to remain in that shape has done real harm to them. DC didn't do Donna any favors here, all they did was ensure she'd remain a bit player in a team book that can't sell well enough to remain on the stands and hasn't mattered since before the turn of the century. So...thanks, DC? Your refusal to try new things has done wonders for all the characters involved and the NTT are selling better than ever.

You may not like her being a Titan but it was a purpose and there is nothing wrong with being in an ensemble. Not everybody has to be the center of their own universe.

I'm fine with Donna being a Titan. At least insofar as I'm fine with any of the NTT crowd still being part of the group at this point in their lives (who doesn't love the thirty year old who keeps showing up at frat parties? They're still cool right? Right?.....). And while you're right that an ensemble character doesnt *need* anything beyond the team....that's not good writing or development. Is it "necessary?" No. But if a character has nothing to add to the narrative, no hook, no plot to wrap around, then they don't really serve a purpose beyond filling up a roster and I don't find that compelling.

And why is it okay for Raven and Kori to have villains and narrative elements of their own, but if Donna gets her own stuff too, it's suddenly not necessary? It's fine for the Titans to go fight Trigon for the billionth time, but they can't help Donna protect earth-43?

A villain isn't needed for that. Plenty found her interesting as an individual without the Dark Angel thing. In fact, you're one of few people who thinks Dark Angel fixed anything.

Nothing we're talking about is "needed" since it's writing and outside of some general structure formats/standards, there are no rules or necessities. But I find it odd that people would rather Donna be nothing but a Titan with no mythos or characters of her own, rather than someone who can actually drive a story.

And I know there's only two of us who liked the Dark Angel/Harbinger concept. Doesn't say much for all you uncultured philistines, does it?

Her continuity is broken because of dumb writing decisions like the Dark Angel crap. The two are very much intertwined.

Yeah we wouldn't have needed the Dark Angel crap if Donna had been written properly in the decades prior. Blame the idiots who screwed her up, not the guys who tried to make an omelet out of those broken eggs. Y'all are way too quick to hit that "reboot" button.

Orphaned girl.

Adopted Amazon.

Superhero.

Much simpler and more relatable than any craziness with the Multiverse which DC almost never uses in an interesting or easy to understand manner these days anyway.

Relatable? Talking about someone adopted by immortal demigod women who live in a fantasy island? Relatable? Sure, you tell yourself that.

I get that people don't like the Dark Angel stuff and I'm not trying to change minds on that, but it's really not that hard to work with or explain. That's just a negative bias influencing opinion. A villain screwed with her history, then she became Harbinger. It's no more complex than Superman dying and then getting better for "reasons" or Flashes getting sucked into the speed force where their infant children miraculously age up.

[achilles]

I was waiting for you to write "/s". Anyway, Wonder Woman is the only superhero movie that wouldn't cut after Steve Trevor said that Diana being made of clay was "neat". They allowed this conversation to go on naturally. Few of the things they are discussing have anything to do with the plot of the movie, or even with direct exposition about their backstories. It's all about them getting to know each other, not flirting, just learning how they see the world, connecting as human beings with totally different lives and in totally different worlds.

The only other film that I can recall having a scene remotely like this is Winter Soldier with Cap and Natasha talking in the car. Oh and the new Black Widow movie also has a comparable car scene. I still think this scene from WW takes the top spot.





I mean, okay. The girl thinks humanity is evil because a greek god is corrupting them, and freaks out in anger and despair almost destroying the entire military base. Then she finally finds a balanced way to care about the world and appreciating a sunset, while still accepting that the world is full of violence. I think everyone agrees that the third act is the weakest part of the film, but you are the only one that thinks Diana doesn't change.

This is the controversial opinions thread so I guess it's the perfect place for what you wrote, even if you are objectively wrong.

Well, she certainly changes in respect to pulling new powers she never used before or since out of thing air because I guess the writer got tired, and wanted to go to the pub, so she just er...reached deep within herself to find her power was always there....or some such fossilized cliche to shoot Godzilla breath or lightning or whatever at Ares, and THAT works, because the movie reached the point in it's runtime where they just had to get it over with. And yes, I'm well aware that even though I'm right, it is a controversial opinion, hence the post in this thread instead of say a thread in the WW forum, (as I don't want to be torn limb from limb).

[Alpha]

So you're just going to ignore everything I wrote?

Do you deny that Diana had a fantastical view of morality in our world at the start of the story?

Do you deny that when she reacted chaotically when she finally understood that humanity caused massive wars by themselves, and started breaking down and destroying things?

Do you deny that then at the end of the movie she found a way to accept the nature of humanity while still being optimistic?

Do you deny that all of these things are huge character development?

[Alpha]

Relatable? Talking about someone adopted by immortal demigod women who live in a fantasy island? Relatable? Sure, you tell yourself that.

Yeah I think we all got exausted from that discussion so it might be good to move on, but there's nothing relateable about Donna's original story. Even the "finding your parents" story is something very few people in this world can relate to.

[marhawkman]

I've had to be reminded of my own parents' birthdays so this wasn't so strange to me.

This wasn't a matter of forgetting. It was seemingly a matter of never having acquired the information in the first place.

So she sucks at sports. Does that justify bullying her?

That's just it. He wasn't bullying her. He was griping at her for not even trying. She literally did nothing but stand there while playing sports. That's not "sucking". Sucking requires you to at least try to play. Her dynamic with her classmates... is that she was worse to them than they were to her. Which, is believable, especially given that Mandy has apparently made it an ambition in life to be everything her mother isn't. However... it makes her a terrible person who has only one actual friend because she's terrible to the few people willing to talk to her. believable for an angsty teen? sure... But the story barely even tries to explain why Mandy is, well... she's not even borderline sociopathic. It kinda strains credulity while still being at least plausible. Starfire seems to be a single mother... while not having many people help her with raising Mandy. Either that or the Titans hang out with Mandy more often than we see in the book.

She was a teenage girl who had no interest in being a superhero or using her powers at all.

Or seemingly anything else. Like the softball game. She was an outfielder... but she might as well have been a spectator for as much as she participated in the game. Or college(she walked out when her teachers tried to get her to do the SAT), or a job... of any kind. See... that's in some ways understandable. However, I was mentioning it because it makes the character unlikeable, not because it didn't make sense in-universe.

Which yeah... the book is extremely easy to dislike... because the main character is the sort of person you pity... while feeling disdain for them.

[marhawkman]

Yeah I think we all got exausted from that discussion so it might be good to move on, but there's nothing relateable about Donna's original story. Even the "finding your parents" story is something very few people in this world can relate to.

To be honest... "relatable" does not apply to any of her other origins at all. So saying the orphan origin is hard to relate to... means it's something people can actually at least conceptualize... unlike most of her other origins.

[Stanlos]

Wonder Woman was a truly terrible movie. It only got raves because it was better in many ways than the DCEU stuff before it. It featured some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a movie not done by a ten year old as a class project, some of the worst dialog I've heard outside of SyFy channel original movies, no character development at all, a plot so full of holes its more hole than anything else, and truly terrible acting by nearly everyone concerned. Basically, it was the equivalent of a big budget SyFy original, perhaps Mega Shrimp vs Giant Carp. Gadot is very pretty, but she can't act. Pine maybe can act, but he chose not to in the movie WW, going instead for a very special and embarrassing episode of the A-Team type acting. And everyone else was worse. The villains were ripped right out a comic book, which sounds good until you realize I mean out of one from the 40s, written for 5 year olds. I still have no idea what they wanted, apart from mustaches to twirl.

We still haven't gotten a Wonder Woman movie.

[SiegePerilous02]

Yeah we wouldn't have needed the Dark Angel crap if Donna had been written properly in the decades prior. Blame the idiots who screwed her up, not the guys who tried to make an omelet out of those broken eggs. Y'all are way too quick to hit that "reboot" button.

She pretty much was written properly pre-Crisis, and while her first post-Crisis origin was lame in comparison and started the ball rolling on making her a mess I'd still say she was much easier to follow at that point than after Byrne got ahold of her and piled more crap onto her. At least the Titan seed stuff was done by Perez and Wolfman, the creative team who gave her her first origin.

A proper melding of pre-Crisis and "Who is Wonder Girl?" would probably yield the best results for her. Diana doesn't have anything to do with the Titans of myth, so that's a corner of Greek myth she can call her own, and the Titans have the New Chronus location with some cosmic corners that are connected to her. A full mythos and rogues gallery for her outside of the Titans or WW franchises doesn't seem necessary for her; she's not designed to be a solo character, she works better as an ensemble character as most of the Titans do, and the Dark Angel stuff is more convoluted nonsense than anything engaging.

I'd be against hitting the reboot button for her if the DC continuity wasn't so unsalvageable as it currently is. At this point, why even care? Damage has already been done and any hope of a coherent DC canon is looooooooong gone.

[RobinGA]

I quite agree that continuity, canon are long gone. That is exactly right. I forget which DC
writer recently said that they were cherry picking from continuity, didn't feel bound by it. That
certainly is where we are with it all happened.

But the problem with that approach is it becomes a history without focus in which the point of the
plot can be lost. This has been an issue with DC for a long while. There is a lot of history here
with DC Comics, you don't want that to be something to overwhelm creativity or those who are new
to the story. But it can also show a lack of respect for what has come before.

The historian in me would point out that even when you reject continuity, canon, you are in fact
by that very choice creating a new continuity, canon. Even if you aren't aware of that, or even
intend to do that as a goal.

There would be a certain irony if after floundering around a lot they eventually circle back to
Wonder Girl's original origin story. A delicious irony in fact.

[Ascended]

I think the next time anyone bothers to dive into Donna's origin they'll just go back to the original, or some version of it. With continuity blown to hell there's really no reason to deal with Donna's actual past, so they'll just short-cut to the easiest thing to write around.

I guess we'll have to wait for someone to use Donna, and who the hell knows how long that's going to take?

So here's my controversial opinion, following from the Donna discussion.

The Titans as a brand, and specifically the NTT roster, will never find success in the direct market again. Not unless DC manages to A) decide if the "Titans" are a bunch of kids or a bunch of adults, and stops splitting and confusing the brand messaging by trying to make it both, and B) allows the NTT to evolve and grow beyond the stagnant status quo's they're trapped by. Someone is gonna have to sit down, decide what each character looks like as an individual at this point in their lives, and then finds a way to keep them working together as a team while folding that new normal into things. It's been proven that Dick, Donna, Raven, Vic, and the rest can't sustain a title when they're just fighting Trigon, Slade, and the Fearsome Five over and over again, nor when they're written as "young" heroes who still haven't reached their full potential.

[RobinGA]

We get back to the whole question as to whether or not we can stand similar groups of people doing the same thing.
If NTT were grownup superheroes someone somewhere would feel that interfered with the JLA, while "confusing"
new readers. Lots of genres deal with this problem here. If you read the Power Girl section over on Superman you
will notice we complain about this all the time. It is also a big source of complaint with the Earth-2 contingent
unhappy that there is no JSA book. The reality is that it certainly appears that some to quote Animal Farm"are
more equal than others." Not whining, being a cynical left winger makes me appreciate of the limits of possibility.

I do think that Titans has made real progress in growing as a franchise. It just is they are bumping up against the ceiling.
It just raises the question of whether they will be allowed to grow or just stay stuck where they are? I would just say to the
Titans fans those of us in other sectors of DC Fandom feel your pain. Which is not meant to be sarcastic, but a sincere
wish things were a little different.

[marhawkman]

We get back to the whole question as to whether or not we can stand similar groups of people doing the same thing.
If NTT were grownup superheroes someone somewhere would feel that interfered with the JLA, while "confusing"
new readers. Lots of genres deal with this problem here. If you read the Power Girl section over on Superman you
will notice we complain about this all the time. It is also a big source of complaint with the Earth-2 contingent
unhappy that there is no JSA book. The reality is that it certainly appears that some to quote Animal Farm"are
more equal than others." Not whining, being a cynical left winger makes me appreciate of the limits of possibility.

I do think that Titans has made real progress in growing as a franchise. It just is they are bumping up against the ceiling.
It just raises the question of whether they will be allowed to grow or just stay stuck where they are? I would just say to the
Titans fans those of us in other sectors of DC Fandom feel your pain. Which is not meant to be sarcastic, but a sincere
wish things were a little different.

I think that's part of why rosters change. To "grow they need to change, but they can't be "Teen" titans if they're no longer teens.

[TheRay]

DC could stand to make more bold moves.