The Avengers Panel - Comic Con 2010 - Cast And Director Introduced

[Tribal Warfare]

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Buck

I don't know if you count this, but probably Superman in Hush.

DC fan.

Feh...

[Buck]

Actually, Superman in Animal Man was pretty funny.

[Buck]

Originally Posted by Rausch

DC fan.

Feh...

I like both.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Buck

Actually, Superman in Animal Man was pretty funny.

...

[Buck]

LOL.

My favorite is probably Image Comics though.

There was a whole storyline in Invincible where pretty much all the main Image characters (Brit, Spawn, Witchblade, Savage Dragon, Wolf-Man, etc) were all thrown into the Invincibleverse. It was pretty good.

[Bowser]

Since we're on a comic tangent at the moment -

The one series from both DC and Marvel I wish they'd make - Secret Wars and Kingdom Come. They'd have to be animated, or course, but I'd really like to see both in movie or short series form.

[007]

Originally Posted by JD10367

Nope, that's some crap-ass theater up in Boston right near the famous Boston Common.



It's true that projection has gone downhill, and you can thank a.) multiplexes and b.) modern society's crappy business model and economy. In the old days, you had one giant theater, and one projectionist who remained in the booth. Then in the 70s and 80s multiplexes came along, and you had one projectionist covering a half-dozen booths. Then they started cutting back on the specialists and having managers do it. Then they started expanding theaters to the point that now some have 20+ screens. Then they started combining duties so that the people overseeing the projection booths had other stuff to do. Long gone are the days where someone is hired specifically to watch the machines, especially now that they're digital; nowadays, you're lucky if the person watching the machines is even slightly trained--and, even if they are, they have so many other things to do that they can't pay attention.

So, your assertion about "sheep" and the price of tickets has little to do with it. It's not like theater owners and operators, and moviemakers, purposefully think, "Eh, **** 'em, they'll pay whatever we ask and we can give shitty service." No one wants angry customers, trust me; there's nothing managers like less than dealing with complaints from the public. Back to the issue, though.... For example, I have 16 screens plus an Imax. We have six different projection "booths" on two floors down long hallways, plus the Imax is across the hall and is a 2 minute walk. There's just no way I could be everywhere at once, even if that was all I had to do... which it isn't, because I have to wear a suit and tie and deal with cashiers and concessionists and ushers and customers and office work and money handling and a laundry-list of other things.

Here's an example from yesterday. A customer came up to me in the afternoon, complaining that the lights in one of the "Avengers" theaters came up 20 minutes before the end of the film. I said, "That's weird, and shouldn't happen." He expressed displeasure. I said I'd look into it. He wanted a freebie. I said, "Well, you're telling me there *supposedly* was a lighting problem, but the film's been over for 10 minutes. If I'd known ASAP I could've checked into it and maybe addressed it. And how do I know you're not full of shit?" (I said it nicer than that, though, LOL.) I asked if he wanted to talk to the theater manager, he said sure. Then I said, "Okay, but before I do, tell you what; I'll go look at the machine and see if I can figure something out." Turns out it was one of the standalone machines that isn't networked, meaning that all programming must be done at the machine. And, sure, enough, poking around, I saw that someone had set the "lights up credit cue" not at the prescribed time distance from the beginning of the film (as they're supposed to) but from the beginning of the whole movie package (i.e. from the first trailer)... meaning that the lights came up 14 minutes early because of all the trailers. A simple mouse-click fix, which I did, and told the guy, and thanked him for letting me know... as the film had been running that way for a day and a half and no one else bothered to complain or tell us. And then I gave him and his family their money back. Now, the area where the mistake was made was three layers of screen menus in, and is a button that never gets clicked on except by accident, and this is the first time I've seen that happen in three months I've been doing it, and, yeah, if the projectionists had time to go through every little thing, maybe we'd catch it. But you have no idea the amount of shit that can go wrong, even in a digital theater. One of the half-dozen lighting elements can go wrong. The sound can muddle on the switchover. The preshow screws up, and/or doesn't cue the projector to start (another problem I had last night... one of the "Avengers" ran 13 minutes late because it didn't start the machine). Basically, sadly, I have to rely on the customer to let me know if something's amiss... and most either a.) aren't smart enough to notice, or b.) don't tell anyone, or c.) do tell someone but it's long after the fact and we can't do anything about it. Take the asshole in that article: instead of griping about it in the press, if he'd gotten off his ass and immediately said to someone, "Hey, something's wrong with the format, can you fix it?", it probably would've been addressed and fixed before the trailers were over. Yes, theaters try to send their ushers around to check picture quality; but you're talking about minimum-wage teens paid to sweep up popcorn and mop up barf. Most of the time, we're lucky if they even show up for work, let alone do what they're told. It's incredibly hard to get them to do what we need... and, even with them, they're overworked and understaffed as well.

On to the article.



Right off the bat, you can see this guy has an agenda. He doesn't like the Digital IMAX, and he doesn't like the extra fee. And, granted, in both cases, he's correct; Digital IMAX sucks (everywhere but my theater, actually), and $6 is too much to charge. Do you know what we charge additionally for the IMAX? Sometimes, it's a whopping 50 cents. (Which IMO is too far in the other direction, but at least it ain't six bucks.)



Again, did anyone get off their ass and go mention it to someone?

As for what happened, I'm not sure. There's really no way to do that AFAIK (get the heads cut off). Digital projectors are fairly idiot-proof, and IMAX Digitals more so; I can't even control the IMAX Digital's position on screen, really. There's no more "framing knob" (which, in 35mm, literally allowed you to just move the gate and raise/lower the image on screen. There's no way to accidentally put the wrong lens in place (Scope vs. Flat), and even that doesn't result in chopped heads, it makes the picture look squished from side-to-side. How the heads were getting cut off, I don't know, unless that theater was literally built improperly... which makes little sense.



Yes, you tool. Theater chains assume the customers are too dumb to notice anything wrong, so we don't care. What an asshat. If we find problems, we fix them.

As for his last sentence, you can tell he also has an issue and an agenda with 3D films and pricing. Which, again, may or may not be justified, but really doesn't have an argument here. It's like saying, "I paid to go to a Chief game, and Matt Cassel threw an interception, so I think the beer prices are ridiculous and, you know, while we're at it, the parking lot attendants are mean!"

How to fix this? Easy. Put dedicated projectionists back watching the projectors. Pay them more. But neither of those things will happen. How many of you, in your jobs, are finding yourselves doing more work for less money with less help? How many work in a job where you had 8 coworkers doing your job with you but now you have 4? It's the way America is now, which sucks. It's a microcosm of the bigger picture, sadly.

I hate all the lazy people that won't get up and let the theater know about problems early on so they can be fixed before the film itself starts. They all have the "I'm sure somebody else will get up and tell them". That somebody almost always ends up being me. People around me always thank me for taking the initiative and I just say welcome. What I really want to say "why don't you get off your lazy butt and take care of it yourself instead of bitching and moaning until somebody else does it."

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Bowser

Since we're on a comic tangent at the moment -

The one series from both DC and Marvel I wish they'd make - Secret Wars and Kingdom Come. They'd have to be animated, or course, but I'd really like to see both in movie or short series form.

Even though I'm a Marvel fan Kingdom Come was a much better story.

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by Rausch

Even though I'm a Marvel fan Kingdom Come was a much better story.

True. Kingdom Come pretty much blows everything else out of the water, DC or Marvel.

A closer comparison to Secret Wars would be Crisis on Infinite Earths. And the good thing about Secret Wars is that it led to the Infinity Wars storyline, which I liked.

[beach tribe]

Originally Posted by Bowser

True. Kingdom Come pretty much blows everything else out of the water, DC or Marvel.

A closer comparison to Secret Wars would be Crisis on Infinite Earths. And the good thing about Secret Wars is that it led to the Infinity Wars storyline, which I liked.

The Infinity Gauntlet story was by Far the best ever.
Avengers Assemble was just the beginning. The Gauntlet was in Oden's vault in Thor. It's just a matter of time.
Loki, and the cube are child's play compared to Thanos the Titan.

[Valiant]

Originally Posted by beach tribe

The Infinity Gauntlet story was by Far the best ever.
Avengers Assemble was just the beginning. The Gauntlet was in Oden's vault in Thor. It's just a matter of time.
Loki, and the cube are child's play compared to Thanos the Titan.

Spoiler!

Which, was that a skrull or thanos at the end of avengers??

[Buck]

Originally Posted by Valiant

Spoiler!

Which, was that a skrull or thanos at the end of avengers??

Spoiler!

Thanos

[-King-]

Went to go see it last night in the Plaza. Pretty good movie. It takes a while to set up, but once it did, it was pretty epic.


They did a great job on the Hulk. His parts were pretty ****ing awesome.

[Deberg_1990]

Just got back from watching it. My knee-jerk: Whedon knocked it out the park. 2 1/2 hours of pure awesome. Each character had a "moment" and Whedon did a wonderful job of building character moments as much as could possibly allow. The end battle really did a nice job of building and building and creating real tension.

Michael Bay and several other action directors could learn a few lessons here. Nobody cares about nonstop CGI action for non stop CGI actions sake. Make the characters, situations and people seem real and the action will have real value and stakes.

Just a really fun, all around well written action flick. Great fun.

[Sucky]

Damn this is making a LOT of money. 200 million dollar weekend. Wow

As a said before, overall a good movie but I basically just consider it an appetizer to The Dark Knight Rises (The Avengers is just the salad, while The Dark Knight Rises is the filet mignon).

This isnt a diss at The Avengers(its an enjoyable popcorn filck) but lets face it.... Nolan's Batman is just on a different level.