The Problem With DC's Heroes

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[Music] so I just saw Justice League and and I gotta say I loved it no I really mean it guys I actually thought it was hilarious it was such a mess that I actually enjoyed myself I liked watching these movies fuck up and fail every year it's become a great tradition I was on record saying that Wonder Woman was a fluke and that it could not save Justice League from failing the second you hear about Desperate reshoots you know you're in for some shit however while this movie was funny it was still bad and it still did make me upset a lot of the time and I've been thinking about this idea for this video for a while now because it's been an issue that I've had for a while my issue is that DC just has the worst heroes or at least that's what the public thinks are you mortal Marvel guy or DC guy let's start by saying I actually love DC's characters and the stories that they're in most of my comic library is made up of DC Comics while I do prefer Marvel like most people do nowadays there was a time when I did not feel that way but lately I think Marvel's been represented very well in media and that's the key media representation outside of comics is how you shape public opinion about comic book characters the biggest problem with DC superheroes is that they are misrepresented in popular media there that's the whole video I'm done by guys but no seriously I'm gonna try to explain this little deeper because it's kind of a big problem public perception of superheroes is important to the integrity of the character if you change a concept about Batman in a movie the people are gonna think that's how things are supposed to be you know how just a few years ago people thought spider-man's webs came out of his fucking body uh god it's so nasty just because the general public was told that in a movie if you told any of those normies back to then that shooting webs was not actually one of spider-man's powers they would look at you like what what excuse me fact is that movies and shows shape public perception about these characters most people think the Fantastic Four are boring and stupid because they haven't been in a movie that isn't boring or stupid in reality the Fantastic Four are awesome but the non comic reading public doesn't know that the Adam West Batman series left a lot of people thinking that Batman was silly and campy a series for children but then Tim Burton came out with his take on Batman and it made people realize that Batman was actually dark and action-packed but still kind of silly and campy but the general public also didn't know that in the comics Batman was already doing dark and gritty shit you can't rely on comic books to shape public perception lots of people think Aquaman is stupid because of the Superfriends he was lame as fuck in that show and Family Guy made some jokes because of it damn fool he'll more useless than Aquaman and everybody made some jokes because of it and everybody thought Aquaman was his fucking goofball because that's how he was represented in media ever since then there's been what I like to call the Aquaman restoration plan where writers try every conceivable idea to try and make him cool that's why they picked this big cool badass handsome Dothraki guy to play him you know the joke about him talking to fish in the movie and you can talk to fish that joke has been told in comic books in cartoons in video games scare says you talk to fish I'm sick of that fucking joke it's not funny anymore oh and by the way he can't even talk to fish he sends signals to the brain say like convinced them to do shit for him can if you talk to the fish you know yes movies and TV are just insanely more popular than comic books comics are in niche medium they are a cult medium it's sad but it's true people don't like to fucking read ok most people don't fucking bother because it's easier to watch a movie or a show so when you change ideas about a superhero in a show or a movie and those ideas become popular it bleeds into the comic books and the games it creates this weird parasitic circle but I'll get into that a little later first let's talk about TV shows I remember a little while ago people were saying yeah Marvel movies are better but DC has better shows right they were mainly referring to arrow and flash when that came out but then Marvel came out with this fucking sleeper hit over here followed it up with a killer second season and a few decent spin-offs and no not you not you I know there are a lot of people out there who like flash and arrow and shows like that but honestly they're just cheesy CW dramas with crummy acting bad direction but an engaging so pop or story structure I'm not saying that last part in a bad way people like these shows because the plot is laid out much like a soap opera but that's also the appeal of comic books however daredevil show people that comic book superhero shows can actually be good shows not just good for a superhero show but good TV altogether the first two episodes of daredevil contains some of my favorite storytelling in television from the past few years I can't even stomach single episode of arrow so even though people enjoy these shows which is fine I think there are definitely worse shows to enjoy out there they still aren't considered good shows anymore Marvel beat them again just like how they beat them with movies and the reason they beat them in the movie department is because the guys who make these movies and these shows know their shit the people making these new DC movies they don't get it ok and if they don't get it then neither does the general public I have a very strong hypothesis about the people who direct and create the DC movies I am convinced that most directors don't read more than a few comics to prepare for the movie I think that what a movie director looks at Batman they're like okay I get it I don't need to read all this other shit because I understand Batman who doesn't I mean look at the Tim Burton Batman movie that shit isn't even comprehensible from a comic book standpoint he just made his own shit up it worked for the time but it's not based on anything look at the old Superman movies you get the core ideas about who Superman is but it doesn't really go any deeper than that again they're just making shit up because they figured they understood the gist of it but I guess it's not really fair to talk about these older movies because they are pioneers that kind of created these genres all on their own so they have a little more leeway right let's talk about the Dark Knight then I'm pretty sure Christopher Nolan only read it the long Halloween The Killing Joke The Dark Knight Returns and year 1 now I know what you're thinking hey Marcus that's like four or five stories you just listed there that's a lot to adapt for a trilogy that's better than nothing right well here's the thing if you do a basic Google search for the best and most iconic Batman stories these are on the top 100% of the time these are baby's first Batman stories this is what everybody reads it first they're great yeah but it's hard to feel love for a character when you're only seeing a representation of their core stories and that's it let's compare this to two things that I think get Batman right and feel faithful the Arkham series of games and Lego Batman the movie these two properties obviously have a lot of love and then plus they create unique stories that we haven't seen before the Arkham games go that extra mile to show ideas that are from more obscure stories makes the series stand out more likewise for lego batman but obviously in a lighter way i'm using this is another example because hey i want to show how a loving adaptation can show different sides of a character and present a completely new story and be not enough people have seen this movie as someone who has read Batman comics for years this is easily the most faithful Batman movie ever made period it's also actually funny like it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen I've seen you go through similar phases in 2016 in 2012 and 2008 and 2005 1997 1995 1992 with 1989 and that weird one in 1966 so why am I even ranting about this idea because Marvel does it all the time they take this reference material and then they make an entirely new experience based on it oh hey what comics are we gonna use for the new Thor movie I don't know let's take some of the grand-scale epic fights from Thor god of thunder let's take some of the comedic elements from Thor the mighty Avenger and let's just throw in some Planet Hulk just to be safe wait excuse me what is that last part where the fuck did you get that from you can just tell that the writers making these stories have a pretty good idea of how the source material works they know the stories inside and out and as such they can craft unique movies spider-man homecoming is not based on any spider-man comic as someone who happens to know his shit I can tell when the creator does or doesn't when Batman starts shooting people and killing them then I get the idea that maybe someone doesn't understand the point of The Dark Knight Returns and with that I'm gonna talk about how Zack Snyder does understand the point of Batman or Superman let's start with Superman since I've already bitched about Batman a lot so far I'm pretty biased I'm not gonna lie Man of Steel and Batman V Superman are a mess because Zack Snyder has no idea how these characters work and since movies and TV dictate how people view these characters now the public doesn't understand these characters either how often do you hear when people say I think Superman is really dumb I'm just not that into Superman I'd say that most people probably have this opinion right now but guess what if you've actually read a Superman comic you'll see this Superman is nothing like movie Superman he's actually fucking cool in the movies he's shown to be this emotionless godlike figure he's more of a symbol than a real person his only motivation in movies is to save people and hang out Lois Lane I guess that is like the bare minimum of what it takes to ride a Superman story he's not even a real person in these movies he's completely unrelated bull this leads to the public thinking that he's boring in actuality Superman is a chill ass dude he grew up as a normal kid on this planet it doesn't make sense for him to be this emotionless God because for all intents and purposes he's just a normal everyday guy the Justice League show does this the best in fact it does everything the best it's easily one of my favorite superhero shows out there it has mature elements and it tells a lot of really good stories this is one episode where it's Superman's birthday so Diana and Bruce go to his little ice castle and they find that he's in an alien parasite induced coma he's trapped in this fantasy world where he lives a lovely life on Krypton with a family and a good job and then he realizes that it's not real and you get this heartbreaking moment where he has to tell his son goodbye this is everything I ever wanted in a life I've got responsibilities fan by my little heart can't take it then there's a two-parter where in the first episode Superman is apparently killed and the Justice League has to cope without him they have to learn how to save the world when he's not around but then in the second episode you learned that Superman was just thrown into the distant future a future where his powers don't work so he has to go on this Odyssey on his own to try and return to the present this show is so fucking good guys I'm serious the thing is people just don't know that Superman is this relaxed mellow dude they think that Clark Kent views humanity as beneath him let's look at this scene from Kill Bill Vol - a staple of a superhero mythology is there's the superhero and there's the alter ego Batman is actually Bruce Wayne spider-man is actually Peter Parker and it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone Superman didn't become Superman Superman was born Superman when Superman wakes up in the morning he's Superman what Kent wears the glasses the business suit that's the costume Clark Kent is how Superman uses and what are the characteristics of Clark Kent he's weak he's unsure of himself he's a coward Clark Kent is Superman's critique and the whole human race now this is one of my favorite movies ever made but this is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard Clark Kent is not Superman's costume he was Clark Kent before he was Superman he was a regular dude before he was an all-powerful demigod he loved his parents had friends relationships he broke his heart all of it happened on earth all before he started being a superhero full-time and this is reflected in his personality he has a tender soul and he's a human being before anything else he doesn't save people because humans are weak and frail he saves him because he has the power to because he wants to Superman is the costume that Clark Kent wears now I was gonna put this video out before Justice League came out but I knew that Justice League was gonna have some kind of effect on what I'm about to say now I'm only gonna talk about two scenes so if you don't want any spoilers at all skip to the timecode here there's a scene in this movie which is obviously one of the scenes that Joss Whedon wrote because I at least know that he's read a comic book in the scene it shows Bruce talking to Alfred or maybe Wonder Woman I don't really remember and I don't fucking care but anyway he's talking about how Superman is a good guy and how he should be alive and leading the team because he's more human than Bruce's in this little speech he mentions every single line that I wrote that I just said how Clark is first and foremost a human he grew up on earth all that stuff I wrote this script three days before the movie came out so obviously someone's on the same page as me however the Superman that Bruce is talking about is not shown in this film this is not the Superman that we see in this movie in the first scene of the whole movie we see these kids approaching Superman as they record him on an on Apple smartphone now I'm not gonna talk about his weird CGI monster face a lot of people already talked about that that's not the point of this video my problem with this scene is more about how Superman's acting these kids are trying to talk to him because they look up to him but the thing that I noticed was that Superman stays like 10 feet away from these kids he stands there all stiff and motionless overall he looks kind of pissed off that these kids are even bothering him the real Superman would actually engage with these kids he might kneel down and actually talk to them now I'll give him the benefit of the doubt maybe he doesn't get close to the kids because he had the weird CGI mustache face fine but that's not the only problem that I have with this scene the last thing the kids ask him is what is your favorite thing about planet Earth and when they ask this Superman chuckles and he looks off to the distance this is heavily implying that he's thinking about Lois Lane because Lois Lane is kind of the main point of Superman's character in this movie and that's the problem in Superman movies Superman only cares about Lois Lane that's one of the reasons people can't relate to this guy you can't have a character whose motivations are solely based around their love interest Superman and Clark Kent as a whole should have lots of things they love about Earth it's his home so we've got movies that are portraying Superman as a boring and emotionless and goody two-shoes Zack Snyder's showed us a Superman that acts just like this a Superman who is not fun to watch then in BVS we have a Superman who once faced with the death of dozens of people which was entirely his fault he flies away and hides from everyone there were a lot of things about this movie that pissed me off but this is probably the number one thing in Man of Steel Superman kills Zod because there just wasn't any other way to stop him now when I saw the trailers for a Man of Steel back in the day I was fuckin hyped because I could tell that they were taking some inspiration from all-star Superman which is my favorite Superman story it's probably one of my favorite comic books ever made it's a short alternate universe miniseries where Superman is dying of an incurable disease in it he tries to come up with a way to either stop himself from dying are coming with a way to keep people protected while he's dead it seems like a simple story but the main concept is that of perseverance how even when you're told there is no solution no alternative path no way to win that in the end there's always another way it's probably the most inspiring comic I've ever read in the comics Superman says that there's always another way but what happens with this version of Clark Kent he can't fix anything he never finds any solutions to any of his problems you're telling me that you couldn't have done anything to stop Zod from lasering these people to death seriously if you're strong enough to snap his fucking neck and leave a shockwave afterwards then why don't you just aim his face somewhere else you didn't even try but it's not just Superman man has been getting fucked for years now I was originally gonna release this video last year and it was gonna be just about Batman because I have a lot to say about how mr. Bruce Wayne gets treated in these movies the ben affleck batman is way way way too mean and trust me I like when Batman is a mean guy but this Batman goes a little too far what I mean to say is that he's actually evil in Justice League Batman doesn't save a single innocent person I don't know why people are now only into the idea of Batman being a crime fighter Batman wants to protect life too that's kind of a big deal to him I'm dying very soon yes I'm sorry could you stay with me I'm scared [Music] [Music] I put my I perceive it as not him killing directly but by sort of the bad guys are associated with a thing that happens to blow up that's not only new Batman has a total disregard for human life my personal favorite moment for Ben Affleck's Batman is in Suicide Squad where he beats up a man and arrests him in front of his daughter look how scared she is Batman please don't kill my dad this core misunderstanding of Batman stems from something that I mentioned earlier Zack Snyder only read one Batman comic The Dark Knight Returns is arguably the most popular and influential Batman comic ever made it's also one of the best in this universe Bruce is an old retired cynical and angry man Robin died a long time ago so he's retired he's alone and he's depressed but he returns to crime-fighting when he sees that the world needs him again the villains that he faces are a lot meaner a lot darker and a lot more violent he has to adjust to this new world of crime this story was designed to bring Batman back to form to make him a badass again after Adam West kind of made him a joke the story explores extreme versions of Batman and Superman Superman is a tool of the government and Batman's more brutal and aggressive against crime this story is the core inspiration for Batman V Superman there's a lot of stuff in this movie that's just ripped directly from this comic but this should never be your first Batman story this isn't a hero he's an antihero this is not how Bruce normally is so why is this the version that we have in our movies now this story is regarded as the best in the same way that many people say Evangelion is the best mecha anime if you watch Ava you're still not getting a good representation of mecha anime you're getting a dissection of those tropes if you've never seen a mecha anime before you can still enjoy Aven galleon obviously but you're missing out on a lot of details that the Creator put in if this is the only Batman you know you're gonna have a pretty messed up idea of what Batman is so why are things like this why can't DC seem to get it right well it's because of the studio and the creator's talking about the fellas over at Warner Brothers Warner Brothers doesn't care about superheroes there's the whole incident with Ben Affleck leaving the solo Batman and that movie being delayed almost indefinitely because nobody wants to work on it how the studio executives apparently said that they don't care if the movie was bad look how long it took for WB to put out a Wonder Woman movie they didn't even believe in their own property fuckin forget the fact that she's a whole third of your iconic trio and that doesn't matter right guys she's one of the most popular superheroes in the entire world now one of the main reasons Diana didn't get a movie for so long is because she gets revamped and changed so often that most people don't even know what her more is she's gotten it pretty rough if we're being honest but then patty Jenkins came along and she made a fun superhero movie that stays faithful to the core ideas of the character while telling a unique story I talked a lot about Wonder Woman in the other video I made so if you want more of that and you go and check that out now for being honest I think this movie is gonna be the only good movie for DC they're gonna fuck up the Wonder Woman sequel and any other Batman or Superman spin-offs are gonna crash and burn - that is if they even managed to get released the only movie on the horizon from DC that I think is actually going to get released his flashpoint and by god I really wish that movie had a chance of being good the original flashpoint story is super cool and I think that would make for a really good sci-fi movie if done correctly flash is the only character that I think has been getting good representation in media and that's why people tend to like him a lot more nowadays I really hope that he doesn't get ruined like these other guys have Diana at least hasn't been ruined yet but with her being the only likable character in these films it'd be great if we could get some love for everybody else DC and Marvel are way different Marvel characters see their powers as a curse where DC heroes are born with them or they cultivate them through training or something like that Marvel heroes are mortal and they have mortal problems DC heroes are gods amongst mankind and a lot of their issues stem from that concept some people may see that as being less interesting than Marvel's idea of a superhero but I would disagree I think that neither is better than the other I think that you can make interesting stories around these characters while staying true to it makes them great not by copying the success of Marvel by throwing in random cringy jokes when it's not the matically appropriate but by looking at the things that make these characters special now I mentioned a lot of great comic books in this video and I bet that if you guys go ahead and read any of these you'll have a way different version of these characters in your mind I bet you won't come out of them saying DC has way worse characters in Marvel No you'll probably just be as frustrated as I am that these iconic characters are drifting away from the concepts that make them great hi guys it's me thanks for watching this really long drawn-out video that I made I was gonna make this video a year ago but I need it to cook in the oven a little bit more and this is this is the product so thanks for sitting through it I am talking to you guys today because we have a very special announcement and that is the new cosmonaut patreon page now we've been spending a while looking at other people's patreon pages and trying to analyze what we can do to make it so that everybody's getting the same amount of content everybody's getting as much stuff for most of us as possible and we realized that we actually would love to quit our jobs so that we can put videos out weekly regularly more than one video a week like stuff like that we're gonna have an official announcement later but for now you guys can go ahead and click on the little patreon button down there if you want to go ahead and duh and pledge to us there's a whole lot of rewards and the $5 and up tier that you guys can get your hands on but the main thing is the stretch goals now if you guys look over at the stretch goals to notice that we have some very interesting stuff like dungeons and cosmonauts and Nuzlocke the second coming and those are things that we can work on if we get to you know certain tiers because then we can quit our jobs and make more money so that we can fund better shows for you like a real camera that we can use on our shows instead of this webcam that I'm using right now it should be great I would love that and you guys would love that too I'm sure on top of that we also have what is this what is this that's the shirt that I designed some of you guys may have already heard about that but yeah our official store is technically open again we don't have an official like video up for it yet because we're still working on all that stuff but for now I figure I'll let you guys know so you can go ahead and order stuff if you want to now oh and I know we hit a hundred thousand subscribers which is really cool and I'm really happy about that but the real celebration for that is going to come later this week later this coming week I should say we're gonna have a stream a very special stream and I think you guys are gonna like it so stay tuned I don't know exactly what day that's gonna be on but it'll be soon we have our wonder case subscriber special thing everybody can enjoy all right so see you guys later thanks for thanks for tuning in bye bye

Info

Channel: The Cosmonaut Variety Hour

Views: 5,284,370

Rating: 4.6909971 out of 5

Keywords: cosmonaut variety hour, cosmonaut, commentary, justice league, dc superheroes, comics, batman, superman

Id: PraUjsClgDM

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2017

Reddit Comments

This (whole video) made me want to read comics.

👍︎︎ 48 👤︎︎ u/The_Legend_of_Groose 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2017 🗫︎ replies

"Batman doesn't kill"

👍︎︎ 35 👤︎︎ u/KomradBoris 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2017 🗫︎ replies

Massive DC fan here.

This whole video cuts deep with hard truths.

👍︎︎ 24 👤︎︎ u/Milhouse_is_a_meme 📅︎︎ Dec 01 2017 🗫︎ replies

How can I link only a section of a video like this?

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/erotic_rook 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2017 🗫︎ replies

CosmonautVarietyHour on YouTube. Fucking love Marcus.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Goku_uses_Spoons 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2017 🗫︎ replies

which episode of the animated series was that

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Golldum 📅︎︎ Dec 01 2017 🗫︎ replies