The Boys - An Amazon Prime adaptation of the Ennis comic series

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Mongolian Artisan said:
It would be interesting if they went with Homelander actually being way less powerful than everyone thought, but now being too dangerous to kill because of the havoc his followers would cause if they took him out. That's way too smart for this writing staff though; they'll handwave V24 next season and go right back to "Homelander is an untouchable god who can kill us all in 3 seconds."
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And if they actually go with Homelander's followers being the main antagonistic force, they'll just be stand-ins for Trump fans. There is no nuance here.

BetterFuckChuck said:
DUDE, what if superman... was bad?!

Video essayists: omg so deeeeeeep

Isnt the whole point of superman that the idea of an all powerful being being evil was already passe, and he was something new? the thing with superhero parody is like any impression you have to love the thing you're doing a pastiche off
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It's not that deep at all. It's a trope that's been beaten to death by 2020. It's just that the normie geek sphere is slow as fuck in recognizing shit like this. Them acting like super-beings being evil is a new thing makes me laugh my ass off:


It's especially funny when they compare the modern superhero to the Greek gods, and say that Homelander is more akin to a Greek god than Superman is, when the point of Superman was that he's a good old Christian boy with superpowers. The old Justice League of America wasn't a modernized version of Mount Olympus, they're heavy-hitters who fought for and represented 1950s Christian America and its values against foes like Darkseid, who is more akin to a Greek god as he seeks to subjugate anyone who defies him.

This craze over evil super-beings isn't original at all. People get amazed at guys like Homelander and Omni-Man being evil copies of Superman, and the modern geekspace is easily awed at the threat of evil supermen, yet anyone who grew up from the 90s to the early 2010s had no shortage of evil supes and ruthless, grey-area supermen who may kill bad guys, but aren't saints themselves:



Homelander wouldn't stand a chance against Regime Superman or Vegeta. And he's nowhere near as ruthless as they were. One guy outright took over the world because of his power, and the other burned worlds and ruthlessly killed other super-beings without mercy. Jeice and Shazam are bigger threats than Homelander ever was, and look at how easy they died here.
 
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Holy shit you weren't kidding about the preachiness being dialed to 11. Finished up season 2 and it watches like some twitterspergs wet dream on how to 'take down da man' and 'there are totes nazis still around guiz!'

The 110% yenta playing the evil neon nazi spewing what said twitterspergs imagine they are fighting on a daily basis got pretty old pretty fast. Still enjoyed the Deep stuff though, like a Always Sunny Sketch.
 
AcidityLiquidity said:
Holy shit you weren't kidding about the preachiness being dialed to 11. Finished up season 2 and it watches like some twitterspergs wet dream on how to 'take down da man' and 'there are totes nazis still around guiz!'

The 110% yenta playing the evil neon nazi spewing what said twitterspergs imagine they are fighting on a daily basis got pretty old pretty fast. Still enjoyed the Deep stuff though, like a Always Sunny Sketch.
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And it's that preachiness that holds the show back. Just as the comic's blind hatred of supes held it back from being substantial. If the show was just about corrupt supes battling for power and influence, it'd be far better than a show dropping anvils about Nazism while forgetting WHO put the Nazis six feet under in the first place.
 
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People told me Season 3 was good, so I started watching it.

Episode 1, I saw a guy shrink down and jump inside someone's dick.
Episode 2, Homelander basically becomes Donald Trump (or what Twitter says Donald Trump is)

Yeah, I'm out.

BetterFuckChuck said:
DUDE, what if superman... was bad?!
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Okay man, seriously, I had this discussion with someone last week. We've gotten to a point with cape shit being so overdone that even the adult oriented subversions of the genre feel like old hat. The whole "What if Superman was a murdering psychopath" has been do so many times, that its become downright cliche.

I finally watched Invincible a couple of weeks back and the entire time, I couldn't help but think I would have loved this 10 years ago, but now? Its just more capeshit content in a world that already has too much of it. And yes, Omni Man being a murdering madman was about as predictable and unshocking as anything could possibly be.

I mean Homelander, Omni Man, the kid from Brightburn, and even many versions of DC's Superman (Red Son, Injustice, etc.) have tackled this idea. YES, I know what it would be like if Superman was evil. I've seen it enough times!

We have gotten to a point where making the Superman character a good natured dude and wanting to help people (what the character was always intended to be) is the freaking subversion.
 
RumblyTumbly said:
Episode 1, I saw a guy shrink down and jump inside someone's dick.
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This right here made me shitcan the entire season until I read the ending here in this thread, so I just watched the last couple of episodes. Holy hell that's a turn off so far past the mark of "in bad taste" I couldn't even believe it. Someone on that writing team must have a sounding fetish or something.
 
RumblyTumbly said:
Okay man, seriously, I had this discussion with someone last week. We've gotten to a point with cape shit being so overdone that even the adult oriented subversions of the genre feel like old hat. The whole "What if Superman was a murdering psychopath" has been do so many times, that its become downright cliche.
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The Boys is basically as dumb as any moronic capeshit movie or show at this point. The plot armor, the stupid catchphrases, pointless action sequences, identity politics dictating plotlines and story, spinoffs and cartoons. It no longer is subverting what it was parodying but is embracing them. Just with edgelord material like guys crawling into another's dick or ten gallon jizz scenes to shock the audience and make the 14-year-olds and funkopop redditors laugh. The show even has its own universe now and will have crossover events from both shows.

Who is this show even for anymore? Capeshit fans? They will just watch more DC or Marvel stuff. Adults that dislike capeshit movies? Now that the show is essentially capeshit you lose them. People who just want escapism? The jammed in politics ruins that. 14-year-olds watching their first R-rated show? I guess this is the new audience based on how the show is written.

On a side note, I just saw more recent pictures of the actress who plays Starlight. Her plastic surgery could go down as one of the worst of all time considering she is in her 20s. She now looks like a 50-year-old who got botox to look 40. Ridiculous. And the whole point of her character was to fight against the "sexy female" trope of superheroes and she does the exact opposite in real life. They will need to dial up the airbrushing hardcore this season.
 
Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed said:
Welp, the writer has not opted to shit on people who watch The Boys now. Just insult your customers, why don't you?

‘The Boys’ Creator Eric Kripke Slams Trolls Harassing Erin Moriarty, Says “Don’t Watch” & “We Don’t Want You”​

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These articles always, without fail, signal that the guys in charge have already chucked in the towel. They just want their excuse prepared for when it eventually tanks because the silly bastards drove away all their fucking fans. It's a shame because I loved the comic but the show has been really underwhelming. I knew expecting a 1:1 of the comic plot would be stupid and that they were going to have to tone it down but it's just been a very "meh" experience. I haven't even started season 3 yet because season 2 was so filled with obvious political sperging it detracted from the main idea of what the show should be about.
 
I've always felt that this whole shtick of "deconstructing" super heroes has always been an intellectually vapid exercise in making yourself seem smart when doing the bare minimum. It's the liberal media version of those edgy teens in the 2000s writing fanfiction with lots of sex, violence, and gore to make themselves stand out. I mean, an evil "superhero" isn't really a superhero, he's just a villain with good publicity, which was already a trope explored by shows and comics in the 2000s and beyond. Homelander isn't a cautionary tale about how evil Superman can be; he's just a mentally stunted Zod wrapped in an American flag with a decent PR team covering his ass. They act like this is groundbreaking stuff when really, this isn't anything new.

This whole culture of Vought and its superheroes being allowed to get away with doing shitty things to people because of how people worship superheroes rings hollow in an age where A) you have a government with a near-omnipresent surveillance state and B) your average idiot has a mobile computer in his pocket that can take photos and footage at realtime and upload it to the internet within minutes. I don't care how good Vought's PR department is in scrubbing inconvenient footage of the Seven or other Vought heroes doing bad things, eventually, the Feds will catch up to it and tell Vought to knock it off. Either that, or they'll nationalize Vought and take Compound V for themselves. Even in the show, the guy they're supporting for president ("Dakota" Bob Singer) tells Stan Edgar that "Supes in the army are an unmitigated shitshow!" If some rando politician knows that, then there's no question that the peons who vote for him know it as well.

It just seems that both Garth Ennis and the show-writers are angry at the superhero fans for being superhero fans and tried to make something to tell them that the superhero culture they foster is toxic, but outside of autistic debate forums on who's stronger than who, having superheroes doesn't seem all that toxic to begin with. Superheroes were made with the intention of having someone for kids to look up to; someone that the kids can look at as their role model. "Deconstructing" them and turning them into psychopaths does nothing outside of just being mean to a form of media that was made for kids. Of course many superhero stories are childish and black-and-white; they were made that way on purpose!

If you want a deeper look at superheroes in a modern setting and the nuances involved in their day-to-day lives, you're better off looking at cartoons like the DCAU shows (Batman, Superman, Justice League) or shows like the 90s Spider Man and X-Men cartoons. The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is also another good show to hit up. They actually look at heroes with a critical lens, without making it into a mean-spirited parody. Shit, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super are better shows to hit up, and those shows lag behind their prequel, Dragon Ball, in terms of story quality and humor. But hey, they do the capeshit genre well, far better than any show seeking to "deconstruct" superheroes.

And at least they don't fucking hate their audience.

The Boys comic is a mean-spirited parody of superheroes. The show had some potential in being a better form of media, until they turned Homelander into Trump with superpowers and made Starlight into a clear goody-goody two-shoe instead of a flawed character that people can either root for or boo at. Gone is the supposed nuance of the show; replaced by the same black-and-white dichotomy present in the very same superhero media they decried. Except unlike Iron Man, Goku, Superman, or Spider Man, the Boys are nowhere near as inspiring as those heroes are.
 
Season 1 was some of the best television I've ever seen and a masterpiece of subversive parody, season 2 rapidly started losing steam and walking the tightrope hinging everything on season 3 being good to justify itself and season three is a record breaker for how fast a fantastic show managing to go to shit so fast. Season 3 has many problems, but I'll just focus on the ending and the issues surrounding it.

First of all soldier boy is probably the best character on the show at this point and one of the most fun/intresting characters in superhero television. He has a similar charisma as robert downy jr did in the ironman movies, except the boys is 18+ instead of pg, and he is supposed to be a "villain" so he can take it even further.

The actor is fantastic and the character is amusing to watch all around for all the wrong reasons, where everywhere else retarded writers make the show worse, here they actually work in his favour, the writers were clearly trying to use him as an example of "toxic masculinity" which spectacularily backfired because it turns out nobody likes cucks and everyone likes macho men.

They made an old timey racist/homophobic war hero (gus fring confirms this when he says soldier boy was ripping germans appart, everything else about him being "a fake" is a literal retcon after the writers realized soldier boy was too likable) who's rough around the edges and a little frat boy-ish while being unapologetic about it because he knows he can back up his mouth with his fists.

Ontop of that he's quite possibly the most honest character in the whole show (not being a rat makes him even more likable). He makes a promise to butcher and attempts to follow through to the end.

And this is also why the ending is a disaster and probably ruins the whole show. First of all, the best scene in all of season 3:


Soldier boy is the only one who can kill homelander by using his "Herogasm" beam attack (writers must be 12 years old), which drains a superhero of their V making them mortal again.

Unfortunately Butcher's wife's son is in the way. At this point butcher can:

A.) Pull him out of the way.

B.) Let him get hit by the attack which won't harm him but will turn him mortal. (And remember butcher hates supes)

C.) Not care because its his wife's boyfriend's son.

So what does butcher do?

Ally himself with homelander, the demented mass murderer who fucked his wife that he's been trying to kill since before season 1, to take soldier boy down, because he doesn't want his wife's son (and said murderer's son) to lose his superpowers.

In case anyone missed it, the finally is literally butcher trying to rescue his wife's son and his wife's boyfriend.

This is the point where any non retards in the audience should lose intrest in the show because its made abundantly clear that homelander basically has plot armour. Everything was lined up for him to die right then and there and he doesn't because... reasons.

How can I give a shit about the plot when the writers can just swoop in and rescue homelander everything he's in danger?

And knowing what they tried to do, if homelander doesn't swoop in and literally tear the boys appart since he KNOWS they're a threat, he's also a retard not worth caring about at all.
 
So I finally caved, started watching this, Season 1 was alright, half-way to Season 2 and it's kinda plodding along. I don't dislike it, I'm guessing the /pol/ shit is gonna be cranked up in the coming episodes.

My biggest critique is Butcher turns into just as much of a pussy as Hughie when he tries to spirit his wife away and she starts sputtering and talking bullshit.

You're telling me that the local Superman parody raped you and you... went to his bosses, and they just gave you a "settlement" where you'd live the rest of your life in some Stepford suburb with your every need taken care of?

Tell me, how the fuck did you survive a guy that can tear a commercial plane like it's paper-mache taking you by force?

Butcher spent 8 years looking for revenge thinking his wife was murdered when the truth is he just got cucked.
 
LORD IMPERATOR said:
If you want a deeper look at superheroes in a modern setting and the nuances involved in their day-to-day lives, you're better off looking at cartoons like the DCAU shows (Batman, Superman, Justice League) or shows like the 90s Spider Man and X-Men cartoons. The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is also another good show to hit up. They actually look at heroes with a critical lens, without making it into a mean-spirited parody. Shit, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super are better shows to hit up, and those shows lag behind their prequel, Dragon Ball, in terms of story quality and humor. But hey, they do the capeshit genre well, far better than any show seeking to "deconstruct" superheroes.
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Batman Beyond the cartoon has to be up there for taking a darker, more critical tone of the superhero. There are a lot of episodes in that show where the lines between the hero and the villains are blurred that really make the audience ponder who's good and who's bad.
 
Welp, it happened, took them until Ep.7 to blow their load but they went all-in from the very first second; the fat neckbeard, that lives with his mom, listens to Not-Alex Jones, gets a gun from a gumball machine and kills the 7/11 pajeet because... ah fuck it, I don't care. I laughed because it really does look like a parody, but
[THIS IS WHAT ERIC KRIPKE ACTUALLY BELIEVES] :story:
LORD IMPERATOR said:
If you want a deeper look at superheroes in a modern setting and the nuances involved in their day-to-day lives, you're better off looking at cartoons like the DCAU shows (Batman, Superman, Justice League) or shows like the 90s Spider Man and X-Men cartoons. The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is also another good show to hit up. They actually look at heroes with a critical lens, without making it into a mean-spirited parody. Shit, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super are better shows to hit up, and those shows lag behind their prequel, Dragon Ball, in terms of story quality and humor. But hey, they do the capeshit genre well, far better than any show seeking to "deconstruct" superheroes.
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Car Won't Crank said:
Batman Beyond the cartoon has to be up there for taking a darker, more critical tone of the superhero. There are a lot of episodes in that show where the lines between the hero and the villains are blurred that really make the audience ponder who's good and who's bad.
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It's silly how cartoons from when I was a kid could easily air right now and not just be entertaining, but you wouldn't really notice they're two decades old. Barring small details like smartphones not being everywhere, they're pretty much timeless.
 
Car Won't Crank said:
Batman Beyond the cartoon has to be up there for taking a darker, more critical tone of the superhero. There are a lot of episodes in that show where the lines between the hero and the villains are blurred that really make the audience ponder who's good and who's bad.
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Mad Stan is the hero we need.
 
batman tas, specially mask of the phantom is better than this shit. ennis legit should be on some fbi watchlist and the writers from this show are just some faggots
 
I've mentioned before on here that I am a fan of The Boys - both the show and the comic. I don't have Amazon Prime, though, so I've only recently watched season three.

What I liked, I really, really liked, to the point where I genuinely think it's the best the show's ever been. What I didn't like, I HATED. It doesn't quite ruin the whole experience, but it starts off really strong, then goes downhill rapidly from about the fifth episode onwards.

I generally don't really mind an adaptation diverging from the source material, so long as they do something interesting with that source material (The character of The Deep is a great example of this - in the comic he's quite a minor, inconsequential element, in the show he's genuinely one of my favourite characters!), but I think it's telling that, if I'm really being honest with myself, the moments I enjoy the show the most are when it comes the closest to aping the tone and sensibilities of the comic.

I have a lot of thoughts, but I won't get too drawn on the subject, because I'm bumping an old thread as it is and I rather suspect everybody's moved on by now, but I will say that I feel that the character of Homelander is a million times more compelling when he's an egotistical overgrown little boy who thinks himself better than everybody else, while simultaneously being desperate for everyone to like him than when he's a shallow, ham-fisted Trump analogue that ALREADY feels dated.

The fact that the latter characterisation appeals to odious Twitter liberal bugmen like Jessie Gender is just salt in the wound, really.
 
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Miriam Margoyles said:
The fact that the latter characterisation appeals to odious Twitter liberal bugmen like Jessie Gender is just salt in the wound, really.
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People who go "omg you're not supposed to like homelander" are steadily becoming more and more of the reason I like homelander.

Smug shitlibs who think the only reason people don't interpret stories the same way they do is because of "media illiteracy" are the worst. They are literally physically incapable of conceiving the fact that opposing viewpoints exist.
 
Oilspill Battery said:
People who go "omg you're not supposed to like homelander" are steadily becoming more and more of the reason I like homelander.
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There seems to be this peculiar notion now that if a character is a villain or does morally dubious things, you're somehow a bad person for enjoying that character. You see it in places like fanfiction and such. It's a very juvenile way of consuming media, I think. Hooray for the heroes, boo for the baddies! 🙄

Homelander is, unironically, the best character in the TV show. Largely, I think, due to an incredible performance by Antony Starr. I remember seeing him for the first time in season one and just having this big dopey grin on my face throughout his first scene because he. Was. PERFECT.
 
Miriam Margoyles said:
There seems to be this peculiar notion now that if a character is a villain or does morally dubious things, you're somehow a bad person for enjoying that character. You see it in places like fanfiction and such. It's a very juvenile way of consuming media, I think. Hooray for the heroes, boo for the baddies! 🙄

Homelander is, unironically, the best character in the TV show. Largely, I think, due to an incredible performance by Antony Starr. I remember seeing him for the first time in season one and just having this big dopey grin on my face throughout his first scene because he. Was. PERFECT.
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I think its a close race between Homelander and Soldier Boy. The writers did their best to turn homelander into a crybaby in the three seasons the show has been out but haven't had enough time to ruin soldier boy yet.

I will say though, between homelander telling that attention whore to kill herself and soldier boy calling butcher a hypocritical cuck its hard to pick my favourite.
 
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