Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

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jmatt
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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by jmatt »

Phantom wrote:No need to take it down, but DMC has its reasons ~ its no movie or TV quality. I understand why a multi-million dollar movie production company does not want to be associated with it, people are fickle.
And corporations even more so. It's not their production, I can understand why they might be reluctant to let this stand as a representation of what they have in the works. They have a lot of money at stake.

Sure, I enjoyed it -- but then again I know all of these characters. The wider world might feel differently about it.

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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by ShadowTuga »

For a quick reminder of what Marvel also did when they tried to be edgy and dark in their movies, like "Howard, the Duck" (that has duck-human sex, how more dark can it be :lol: ). Undoubtely, one of the worst movies based on a comic book character- and now look at Castle's recognition level among non-readers.

That knife..."whoooo, he's THE Punisher, alright". :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umYvv7K4Z_I

And DC, while this being a thing from the freaking vault also did not care about flapping bat cowls, a middle aged looking Robin and fight scenes that only show how "strong"and brutish this character is... and how stupid and silly that cape was handled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wBqOMeGZgI

My point to add to what has been said before: even the Big 2 completely almost killed these valuable properties with these POS. And I'm used to see ALA versions of them that I just despise and ignore. This film has very rewatchable stuff if you like these characters. Nobody grabs Gilad's cape and it feels like its not on purpose, :D , and Valiant's "Punisher" (more like Wolverine-Punisher amalgam), Bloodshot kills turdheads with Bloodshot's nasty moves.
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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by David_Cody »

I'm a Valiant fan and prefer VH1 to VEI. With that known, I -LOVED- this Ninjak series. There were a few clunky scenes, but overall being a VALIANT fan foremost, it was beyond great. It was exactly as I expected it to be.

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Scarabus
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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by Scarabus »

If this is anyone's first introduction to the Valiant Universe, I am so, so, sorry. When you're a VH1 fan and have also read Harbinger 1-25, Imperium, Bloodshot Reborn, and Secret Weapons level storytelling, seeing this is just disappointing beyond belief and not a good translation of these characters from page to screen. Very simple things were clearly not paid attention to during the filming of this monstrosity. Where is Ninjak's English accent? Why does Bloodshot care so much about his motorcycle? Why are his one-liners as bad as Mr. Freeze's from Batman and Robin? Why is he always smiling? Why is Jason David Frank allowed to do anything he wants? Why does X-O Manowar have a hipster fade? Why is Roku's wig from the Spirit Halloween store? Why is every shot during the day? Why did Master Darque look like a meth addict hinting at a sequel series that will never happen? This was horrible in my opinion and have no idea how they plan on drawing people in with this endeavor. I love this universe, but having the Valiant characters on the screen at all just isn't enough.

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SwiftMann
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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by SwiftMann »

I just watched the whole thing in one sitting last night. It somehow ended up being better than, as cheesy as, and even worse than I expected from the trailers. And, yes, from a business perspective, I can absolutely see why DMG and/or Sony would want this thing burned from the 'net. I also have read the first 3 issues of the adaptation (#4 is in my to-read pile), so knew it wasn't quite our version of the Valiant heroes.

Positives
* The fx was generally very good
* Fight scenes were generally well done
* Livewire looked great. Not sure why the mucked with her power set just for the visual of the lightning.
* X-O - Especially when the sword came into play.
* Shadowman!!!! Seriously, everything about the visual and actor was perfect to me.

Neutral
* General direction and editing was mediocre. Not entirely bad, but there were some particularly bad moments.
* Michael Rowe - I liked following him around as a lead, but I didn't buy him as Ninjak
* X-O's costume was better than I expected in general, but the church scene lingered on it too long showing its "lesser" qualities
* Neville - Sometime he was fun. Sometimes he was eye-rolling in his delivery.
* Capshaw - Why was she the Baroness in the first ep? Glad to see her in military dress later on.
* Roku - Like a lot of people here, she grew on me, but there was just so much camera mugging early on.
* End cameo - I loved that they went there, just wanted it to look better since they had been doing a good fx job

Negatives
* The writing was atrocious - both overall plot and dialogue (although I knew this from the comic - which may be worse)
* Was anyone else surprised by Ninjak's potty mouth? It just caught me considering there's never been an adult line of Valiant.
* The violence level was sometimes brutally realistic and sometimes super-hero cartoonish. The inconsistency was troubling and along with the light language made this kid unfriendly when it didn't have to be.
* Ninjak costume - I get what they were going for but I didn't like the mask from the first time I saw it on variant covers
* Bloodshot - I came to loathe every second he was on screen. Terrible acting. Terrible dialogue. Terrible make-up. Tiny.
* Gilad - The second worst actor in the series. Delivery was awful. And most cosplay, although true-to-comics, costume. It didn't move with him at all. Also, no one could seem to pronounce his name the same twice. Gil-ad. Gill-lad. Gi-lad. Glad.
* A&A - I LOVE VEI A&A (except Roberts run). They kind of had me with Armstrong by the end, but Archer was terrible. Again, get what they were going for, but it did not work at all.
* Deadside - The fx was just really rough and more Mustafar than Deadside
* Bloodshot in the jet - I mean, seriously?! But again, by this point, I hated seeing him on screen even when it wasn't in a completely ludicrous, unexplained plot point and overly brutal ending (that poor pilot).

I've skimmed through the threads. I've seen the overly defensive stances, so have at me. And I've seen the comparisons to old Marvel movies and tv (which were absolutely worse than this) and CW shows (which I can't watch for more than a couple minutes, cause I don't like the Power Rangers looking effects or DC in general). And of course this shouldn't be compared to the MCU. I do think this was fun. It's been running around in my head since I watched it last night. And as a mild fan in the early 90s to a diehard today, I LOVED seeing X-O and Shadowman come to life. But this in no way was a genuinely good product and, as I said at the beginning, can see why any corporation, especially one that seems to only care about turning the Valiant IP into movie and tv properties, would not want this easy source of ridicule and troll bait to be out there.

So, like I said, it beat/met/failed my expectations all at once. I enjoyed the hour I spent watching it way more than any time I've spent with CW or SyFy shows.
"If you think any of these [older comics/shows/movies] do not carry a political content and is not using the medium of science fiction to explore real-world ideas, than you have not been paying attention." - Dan Abnett, VCR #246

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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by Joshua »

Can someone make me a DVD of this

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MoonChild
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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by MoonChild »

good!

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Re: Ninjak Vs is finally out!!

Post by Shadowman99 »

I know I'm way behind with this, but I just wanted to have my little say :P

So, my first viewing of the series was via a cinematic cut of the webseries, start to finish. Have to say, it was actually much better than I thought it'd be :lol: Ages ago I saw some early cut of Bloodshot's intro fight scene and was shocked at how appallingly bad it was. Looks as though however, it's scrubbed up at some point between early editing and final production, so that led to a fairly pleasant surprise.

I think that anyone who sees this needs to take it with a pinch of salt, given that it was produced by an amateur webseries organisation (Bat in the Sun) and put out online for free, so I'd like to hope people cut it some slack based on those two significant factors, because imo it was definitely good, but was no pro production by any means. Not an amazing plot, but delivered well enough to be entertaining and functioned successfully as a reason to jam a few of Valiant's biggest characters into a single narrative.

I was surprised at the quality of the sets and SFX in general. Thought the Deadside kicked *SQUEE*, and the Ninjak/Shadowman sequence was my favourite part of the whole endeavour :D Bloodshot's healing instances, XO's projectiles and energy sword and Livewire's electricity were way cool. For the most part the costumes were adequate at worst and good at best, such as Capshaw's 'field' outfit and Gilad's costume (even though his breastplate looked like severely beaten metal at best, and not really like real metal, which it obviously wasn't). Having said that, there were some crappy little touches like Livewire's 'gem' on her breast clearly being some *SQUEE* piece of grey plastic, and XO's suit looked a bit rubbery at times.

Biggest let down was the accents throughout, starting with the big one: as an English chap, it's brilliant that one of Valiant's strongest and coolest main characters is English; which is why, when something like this happens, it's incredibly disappointing to see that the actor hasn't even *tried* to adopt an English accent. Didn't. Even. Try. Well, *SQUEE* Michael Rowe, and everyone else who let that performance slip through the net. What happened to Armstrong anyway? In his first scene he was speaking in a kind of strange, upper class Shakespearean kind of manner, which whilst it was odd, was kind of appropriate to his well-cultured characterisation from the comics. Following this, he was just some American dude - bit weird :? American accents kept slipping through with the other actors as the series progressed, but at least they tried, even if they had all become fully-fledged Americans by the end of the series :lol: Come on. Gilad and Armstrong are from the Middle East. Aric's from Dacia (probably sounds ancient germanic). Ninjak's from England. At least Roku had a proper English accent.

The acting varied between 'Terrible' (Mostly looking at Roku here, and Neville to some degree - definitely Neville's assistant: he was the WORST! :lol: ) and 'Good' (Livewire holding that end single-handedly imo), but like I said, for a non-pro production I think we have to let this one slide, whether we want to or not.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Much, much better than anticipated, and 'as expected' at worst. Not sure I'd recommend friends check it out to be honest, in any kind of effort to get them on board with Valiant, but I think most big V-fans will be satisfied with it as a first production.




*Extra: Also read the comic series in full just before watching the webseries. Bit disappointing that there were very few differences between the two adaptions. Might've been nice if the comic added some kind of extra dimension to the story in some way, but I don't feel it really did in any significant way. Oh well.

*Also: I'm sure I read that
Quantum and Woody were going to feature in this. Did I miss them in the background somewhere or something? :?
Kurt Busiek wrote:Bull$#!t


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