Zack Snyder steps back from JUSTICE LEAGUE

Zack Snyder has decided not to finish the Justice League film after a family tragedy. The film will be finished (by that I mean, pick-up scenes will be written and shot by, and the final editing will be overseen) by Joss Whedon.

Originally, Warner Brothers wanted to push the release date back, but Snyder refused, soldiering on for another two months before realizing that he just couldn't finish the job.

Here are some observations.

1. The stakes for Wonder Woman are now enormous.
When Avengers director Joss Whedon was tapped for Batgirl, my thought was, "oh, no, if Batgirl's the first good DC film, it's going to look like the Snyder/Johns retool didn't work at all and now they've brought in Marvel's most famous director to clean up their mess." Now that Whedon is finishing Justice League, inevitably, anything good about that film is going to be laid at his feet by anti-DC/anti-Snyder folks.

2. Why Whedon? 
Whedon and Snyder have entirely different storytelling methods. I literally cannot imagine Joss Whedon's Watchmen or Zack Snyder's The Avengers. Apparently Whedon was Snyder's choice, which is what makes this tolerable to me, but between this and the studio politicking above, I can't help but feel like now, no matter what happens, Snyder's gonna get nudged aside in the future.

Which is, frankly, a shame. Snyder's not the most popular man in Hollywood, of course, but he has a vision, and Warner needs to either get behind that vision or get a new visionary (undercutting Snyder with the BvS theatrical cut was the single dumbest thing in this entire attempt at a cinematic universe). Now it looks like they're going to go with the latter option by default. Which is sad; if I wanted the Whedon approach, I'd watch Marvel movies.

On an unrelated note, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is awesome. Wait, I already did that review.

Sir Roger Moore, 1927-2017

Sir Roger Moore was, of course, best known for playing a remorseless alcoholic sociopath in seven films, increasingly flabbergasted after each successive one that he hadn't been fired yet. (He was fifty-eight when he finally gave it up.) Also, despite the character's quintessential Britishness, Moore was in fact the first Englishman to play him - his predecessors being an Aussie and a Scot.

His favorite of these films was The Spy Who Loved Me, which happens to be awesome.

Anyway, here are some choice quotes from his book, Bond on Bond:

"When I handed in my licence to kill I was constantly asked who should replace me. No! I lie. I was asked that question after about my third film, which, of course, gives an insecure actor a great feeling of being wanted. In fact, I did make a number of suggestions to Cubby - always names of really bad actors so I looked good by comparison. In the end, I was forced to abandon that idea as I couldn't find any actors worse than me."

"Sometimes [to help Desmond Llewelyn, 'Q,' remember his lines] we had 'idiot boards' on set, with his technical dialogue written in large text. As he glanced up to remind himself of the next line, the cards were peeled back one after the other. I helpfully rewrote some of those too. I like being helpful."

"[Director] Terence Young and [editor] Peter Hunt decided to have a bit of fun with [the explosive attache case from From Russia With Love] when some United Artists executives were visiting Pinewood. They ran the first couple of reels of the movie, and when it reached the scene where Bond opens the attache case, Peter cut to the huge explosion from the end of Dr. No and ran the closing titles. The end."

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Every once in a blue moon, there's a sequel to a decent film that takes everything that was good about the first and elevates it to an art form. From Russia With Love. The Empire Strikes Back. Aliens.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

As you may recall, I had some rather... unkind things to say about the original. Basically I refused to put it on a pedestal. When you consider that Guardians 1 came out around the same time as The Winter Soldier, you're going to have to forgive me for declaring GoldenEye With Superheroes the undisputed victor of that particular bout.

There's one thing I want to mention that I apparently didn't put into either review, and that's that I was confused in the first film as to just how competent Star-Lord was supposed to be. I had assumed from the marketing and the early scenes that he was a fish-out-of-water guy with way too big an estimation of his own competence, but he actually knows what he's doing. In Guardians 2, I never had any doubts as to the film's tone or what the characters are capable of. The opening credits capture the tone of the film perfectly (I will not spoil this if you have not seen it yet).

Now, one of the big problems I had with the first film - its struggle in introducing the setting - is taken care of here because, you know, there was a first film. Yay! Another problem that I had with the first film was that it spent too much time yammering about Thanos and the MacGuffin Mitten. This one does not. Thanos is relegated to being something for Karen Gillan to seethe about. Another complaint I had was that Karen Gillan was wasted in G1. Not so here. It is like somebody got a direct line to my brain and sorted out every single nitpick I had about this first film. Villains whose characterization and motivations made sense! New characters who didn't feel pointlessly shoehorned in! Baby Groot! Sylvester Stallone is in this movie for some reason! (Okay, I did have to read les interwebs to figure out what that was about.)

And let the record show that this film featured what is without a doubt the most quintessentially perfect use of "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans. That is all.