and you don't think that is stupid?

It looks like the typical Gunn style... A colourful mix of action, bright visuals, but also some thoughtful moments and a lively score or music... I can't imagine that the new SUPERMAN is really "bad"...
Perhaps you shouldn't constantly compare it to SNYDER's "man of Steel". This particular approach to staging is (literally) completely different, especially in terms of the dark atmosphere...

It's not just the staging of the movie, there's a vast difference in who Snyder's Superman is and/or is trying to be and who Gunn's is, particularly in MoS (whereas in BvS there are some similarities in the public persecution of Superman and how he's considered a threat to the world)

Superman isn't bad and a lot of things Gunn wanted to achieve he did, but I don't like the beginning of the movie, the introduction into this new world, but I think the world Gunn is creating can work.

Right. And Green Lantern is limited only by his imagination, and therefore beats everyone with perfunctory effort.

That's why the Handbooks and Stats guides are less help than they ought to be. Once you define Charcter X as being able run at this speed and lift this much weight, necessarily anyone who can lift more or run faster must have a higher upper limit (and vice versa), and soon there is an immutable hierarchy and you discover that (e.g.) the Flash is faster than light and Superman can move the sun. Meaning that anything lesser (and EVERYTHING's lesser) is easy and fast.

Blink. And all the currently-active criminals are already in jail. Blink. No more nuclear weapons. Blink. All the costumed heroes are in Arkham, and Mr Terrific + Batman designed the infallible security systems. Blink. Proof of Lex's crimes. Et cetera.

Hence why I've always advocating thinking of these characters as mythological entities, rather than operating on the level of rationalist modernity.

Batman beats Superman because it represents the idea of human ambition overcoming the ultimate opponent. Sun Wukong is a lowly monkey, but is able to use his trickery to overcome even the Jade Emperor in many ways.
Superman beats Wonder Woman because he's the best, greatest hero. Gilgamesh defeats all other champions sent against him, even the mighty Enkidu, someone similar to him that he befriends.
Wonder Woman beats Batman because it represents the fact that there will always be a new problem that humans have no answer for. Icarus falls when he flies too close to the sun.

I actually thought the “3 Centuries, 3 decades, 3 hours, 3 minutes…” opening was pretty sweet!

The only thing that disappointed me about the opening was that it was used in all the promotional clips for the movie.

(I'm going by old memories of the actual comics, so you could be right per the new DC film universe. I do not recall that line, so let's say that an unknown at the moment!)

No more so than, say, Metamorpho. Stupid in terms of reaction time, stupid in terms of concept...?

The concept is just a hi-tech headset to a sportsteam or fighter, feeding them realtime information. The concept is videogames. The concept is a malformed clone being primed to fight Superman. The concept is daft, wacky and semi-fictional - but it's no more stupid than most, and less so than many.

The reaction time is both potentially explicable - evenly matched, used to reacting at human speed* - and (more likely) a conceit of the medium.

i.e. does the Flash default to lightspeed and have to consciously slow himself down to react to normal people? Does he just 'speed up' like a runner does and keep accelerating? Or does he switch into a different concept of movement? Ditto, Superman: does he have to concentrate all the time to not crush hands when he shakes hands? How does he not fly by accident constantly? Does he feel as if he's moving and talking in slow motion on a normal day, or does he have to concentrate and expend specific energy in a specific way to punch hard, fly and go fast? If the latter, logically he'd conserve it when possible AND run out when exerting in different ways - so he'd consciously punch harder, but not want to risk punching harder AND faster unless there was a guarantee of getting through the fight in seconds, lest he run out of power. Or something.

It's not an exact science, because it's fiction.

Yeah, the opening crawl told us pretty much everything we needed to know, and then OK let's go. While we had seen the opening scene in the promotion, I thought contextualizing it in the movie really worked. I'm also glad if they are going to give something away that it's the opening scene.

One thing that really struck me about it is just how out-dated Superman is as a character.

For one thing, the idea that he's a reporter at a major metropolitan newspaper, while newspapers are a dying industry. The idea of Clark Kent being a reporter is so ingrained into the character that it's going to be impossible for him to be anything else, but at the same time those old-fashioned beat reporters in a chaotic newsroom don't really exist anymore. He's going to be sitting at home without his glasses typing his stories up on a laptop and e-mailing them to his editor.

And another, that he was raised by farmers in Kansas. I grew up in Kansas around that time, and if Superman had been raised by rural Kansas farmers with their values, he would've grown up to be fucking Homelander.

Yeah I went back and checked. When he's introducing Planetwatch (I'm surprised they didn't use Stormwatch) Luthor says:
"The Engineer: a former special operative whose blood I infused with microscopic machines called nanites..."

Obviously they can get out of it later if they want the Engineer to have a different origin by saying Lex was lying and stroking his own ego. BTW, did we ever find out why the heck she seemingly hated Superman so much?

The other snippet I went back to watch is the whole thing about hypno glasses as the reason people can't recognize him as Clark...

I didn't mind that part or the fortress of solitude with the robots, but when Superman returns to Metropolis he just went into a fight against the Hammer who's controlled by Lex and I don't know anything about anything. I know that's exactly what Gunn was gunning for, but he didn't get me. I think The Incredible Hulk or F4: First Steps did it better. They fast forward the origin story, but the characters are still introduced and the movie starts with a new adventure and not during 2nd act of an ongoing story.
Having an established Superman is a good thing, but I would have prefered a movie that starts with the 1st act.

I don't mind skipping the first act. I do think opening the movie with Superman having the crap beaten out of him, limping to the Fortress and healing, then getting the crap beaten out of him again and the villain just like leaving with nobody really caring was odd. I realize in the context of things it was because it was all a distraction. The good thing is that I didn't hear anyone complain that it was hard to follow, which would've been my initial fear about everything going on in those scenes.

Would have been nice to at least know what Ultra did which launches Supes from Metropolis to where the fortress is. Pretty lucky of them that he landed right there!

I thought he was injured, knew that he needed healing, and headed there himself, just didn't make it. That tracks with Lex having the Engineer follow him. Lucky for him the Hammer didn't really want to hurt civilians, I guess.

I didn't consider that with how he slammed into the ground. Seemed like it was from being hit by something. Makes sense, though.

Theres a deleted scene that shows the Hammer reading all the online criticism of Man of Steel. So he knew to avoid civilians.

Superman intervened against Boravia. So the Hammer of Boravia was sent like the proverbial big brother to teach him a lesson. Hit him hard enough to send flying away, waited for him to return, kicked him about and said something like 'that's what you get - stay out of Boravia.'

People cared, but this was (seen as) essentially a private talk/threat... held in public.

I fully understand what happened. This was a foreign power with a metahuman stronger than Superman coming onto domestic soil, beating the crap out of Superman twice, and leaving, and the US government is shown to be more concerned about the threat of Superman than this foreign power (and where they got this armor, etc.) That's what I meant about not caring. It's just a nitpick, once the audience knows who's behind the Hammer I guess we move on plotwise, but nobody else supposedly knows.

FYI for those who don't really read the Streaming Talk forum. The 4K digital with all the extras is only $9.99 via a Fanflix email link. The deal is in the Streaming deals thread. Better hurry, these deals don't last.

https://forum.dvdtalk.com/streaming-...l#post14636606

Of course, if you don't do digital and want the physical media, then that's perfectly fine as well.

Deal is already dead.

I'm on DVDTalk, I'm waiting on physical.

Yeah man, that deal was posted on the 29th. You snooze you lose. But didn’t buy a copy already?

I've had the 4K disc preordered since July 11.
No, I only rented it when I had guests over. Honestly, even at $25, it was cheaper than taking them to see it in the theater.