Some nerds are really angry at
Batman vs Superman, but I'm not sure why - mind you, I liked
Iron Man 2 and
Thor 2: Through the Portal of Time, so possibly I am not a great judge of the quality of anything. Maybe
Batman vs Superman
is indeed a cinematic atrocity for which all the cast and crew should
be put on a plane and then that plane be 911ed into a prison full of
child molesters as has been suggested by the Guardian's online review in
a shocking but in retrospect probably inevitable decline in their usual
standards, but for me, I thought BvS was a middling affair punctuated
by some nice visuals but ultimately scuppered by a mechanical coldness
to an unfocused story, and a lack of likable characters underscored by
the only "civilians" in the film being fickle rabble.
These are my
thoughts, such as they are, and may make little sense without a
knowledge of the plot of the film, which can be found
HERE on Wikipedia.
The opening of BvS sees a recreation of the ending of
Man Of Steel,
an event known in-universe as "OMG Metropolis 911", and Bruce Wayne is
seen running headlong into the dust cloud rolling down the street that
you will likely remember from footage of 911 - don't worry, no-one
thinks this 911 reference stuff is tasteless anymore, they're putting it
in Superman films and everything. Bruce runs straight into 911 and
starts helping the victims of 911, including a security guard who will
later blow himself up for some reason in a suicide bombing like the
terrorists of 911 did, but again, don't worry, none of this is tasteless
anymore. There's a bit where Bruce Wayne saves a little girl wandering
around 911 - as little girls are wont to do - and then hugs the little
girl and watches the aliens falling to Earth in destructive fireballs,
and the stabbing music sounds just like Jeff "no relation" Wayne's
War Of The Worlds theme, which I thought was actually pretty neat.
When
Batman beats up a slave trafficker, he momentarily turns into the Alien
to run around some walls while being shot at by a cop - I also thought
this was pretty neat. Some people complain that this version of Batman
isn't one they recognise, but I don't think this is a fair criticism of
BvS because this is (/does nerd maths) the fifth distinct version of
Batman to hit movie screens (or the sixth/seventh if you count the
change of actors in the 1990s franchise as separate continuities) so
Snyder and his small army of writers can hardly be blamed for going a
different route in order to differentiate themselves.
I
like Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne and I like his Batman - particularly as
it doesn't look like his cowl is trying to eat Batman's tiny face like
what was the case with the Nolan Batflicks - but I am not sure what to
say about Jezza Irons' Alfred Pennyworth because the actor in real life
reckons people of the same sex shouldn't be allowed to marry because
that would be like a man marrying his own son to avoid paying taxes, and
whatever else you think of Batman vs Superman, I think that we should
all agree going forward that this is the worst thing about it and
nothing else. NOTHING ELSE.
I spotted an Asian in the
film so it's time for a racist rant WAIT COME BACK - I mean only to
comment upon the surge of late in seeing Chinese actors in American
films, as once you know that China is a ludicrously big market for
Hollywood movies, it's hard not to see where Chinese actors are
shoehorned with varying degrees of success into tiny roles in films like
Age Of Ultron, Iron Man 3 and Terminator: Genesys in a bit of
reverse-racism that I certainly understand as a business concept, but
cannot comprehend how it isn't just
regular racism, on account of
(1)
you're singling out someone on the basis of their ethnicity. Kind of
like those television producers who announced that they were open to
more diversity in their casting of Nancy Drew (commendable) by saying
they were excluding white actresses from the casting process (racism), and
(2) if Hollywood gave two fucks about diversity it would have done something about it by now.
Anyway, I'm noticing a lot more Chinese people in films now so clearly I can't throw stones at the racism of others.
Metropolis
has its own 911 memorial called "Heroes Park", and this is a concept I
have a problem with in the context of the fictional world that has been
created, mainly because it hasn't adequately been explained why people
think of Superman as heroic, or even why they see him as in any way
distinct from the other aliens who did Metropolis 911 - this is a guy,
after all, who leveled a city and killed thousands, and then topped it
off with a cold-blooded murder in front of a terrified family - so why
they would make a multi-story statue of him and then locate it
right next to the memorial to the thousands of people he killed
is something that needs a little clarification. I suppose it's most
probable that everyone is just so terrified of Superman that they've
built this mighty idol to appease the angry city-murdering god so that
he doesn't do something worse next time.
Perry White is
terrible at writing headlines going by his dialogue in this, but I am
going to go further and say that he is also terrible at his job period.
In
Man of Steel, Lois Lane comes to him with a story about an
invincible alien demigod who walks among men and indulges in terrifying
acts of destructive vandalism upon arbitrary targets of opportunity and
Perry's response is that Lois should bring him "some real news", while
in this very film, Clark Kent approaches White with a story about police
corruption, a vigilante that's a bit like the Alien who brutally brands
criminals in order to expedite their deaths in prison, and furthermore
it's already on the tv news and people are interested in it,
yet Perry White once again doesn't think it's news. This guy is the
reason newspapers are a dying medium. Although you could try a
different reading: in Man of Steel, the targets of Superman's wrath were
working class people (whom he stole clothes from, put out of their
jobs, destroyed their livelihoods, etc), while Batman pursues criminals
who prey on the working classes - Clark Kent even calls Perry White out
on it, asking "what - poor people don't buy newspapers?" White's reply
is "
people don't buy newspapers" and when those who edit them have an attitude like that is it any wonder?
White
is completely terrible at his job, and I get the idea that Zack
Snyder's inspiration for him came from ex-Sun editor and walking sack of
excrement in human form Kelvin McKenzie, because you can't tell me that
someone this terrible at their job didn't run headlines after the
events of Man Of Steel blaming the destruction of Metropolis on its own
citizens. Yes 911 and now a Hillsborough joke God help me I'm a
monster.
Bruce Wayne meets Wonder Woman at a party, and
he seems very hostile to this attractive and flirtatious woman. I made
a joke that it's probably because Ben Affleck knows that Batman is
traditionally portrayed as gay, but this spurious and borderline
homophobic reading is sadly quite plausible once you start asking
yourself why Zack Snyder thought "Jeremy Irons is the perfect guy to
play Alfred in this movie." Alfred goes beyond the traditional
portrayal of the character as a weary snark and is openly hostile
towards Bruce and the things he does, no matter how noble in intent or
contextually justified, often harping on about how there will never be
another generation of Wayne children, how Bruce should meet a nice girl -
Bruce even tentatively offers an explanation as to what his legacy
might be because kids - for some reason - will never be it.
Anyway,
hilarious as that "Batmin is teh ghey" thread is to pull upon, Bruce is
hostile towards Wonder Woman and the hostility doesn't feel earned in
the context of the story, so it's a bit odd. I have a theory, though:
Wonder Woman's part was originally written for Lois Lane. She
investigates Lex Luthor, Batman doesn't like her on their first meeting
(because she's Superman's cheerleader and rumored love interest), her
appearance coincides with that of Clark Kent at the party Lex is
hosting, Lois has sod-all else to do in the film, and Wonder Woman
barely appears in it apart from this one scene.
An alternate
theory is that Batman is not an Islamophobe and so he is simply outraged
by Gal Gadot's real-life comments supporting the bombing of Gaza,
though this theory is blown out of the water when Batman personally
bombs the living fuck out of a dockyard like his Batplane was Israel and
that dockyard was a children's hospital.
I like
the bit where Clark Kent confronts Bruce Wayne and they trade barbs,
mainly because it highlights what a simpleton Clark Kent is, as he has
by this point figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman - by accidentally
overhearing his communications with Alfred with his super-hearing - and
starts out by asking him about recent Batman sightings without ever
realising - because these comments are written for the audience rather
than for the characters in the scene - that these are only barbs if
Bruce is aware that Clark is actually Superman, and so he just looks
like a pretty rubbish journalist for asking random people about his
story, or at the very least he looks like that guy who says things like
"oh you're from New York? Then you must know my buddy--" Bruce doesn't
know that Kent has figured out who he is, so he responds in kind with
dismissive jibes about how people from Gotham know all about "clowns in
costumes" so it's supposed to be this cute meeting of two alter-egos but
all it does is demolish Superman, as Bruce is putting on a drunken
playboy act and Kent knows it but
still comes out looking like an idiot.
All
of Batman's legwork turns out to be his trying to find someone called
The White Portuguese, except it turns out to be the name of a boat.
Don't they have Google in this world? I have an in-universe
explanation: Lexcorp is a interwebz company and they scrubbed all
mention of the boat from the interweb to keep it hidden. Or something.
See, movie writers? It's that easy to think of things with your brain.
There's
a bit where a senator lady said Lex couldn't import Kryptonite into the
US for some reason, but here it is being imported anyway - on the White
Portuguese boat Batman has been pursuing since long before the
Kryptonite plot strand was even introduced. Batman pursues Lex's
cronies until Superman shows up and makes the Batmobile crash, then
flies off after telling Batman they can never be friends. Clark brought
up the fact that Batman only pursues the worst kinds of criminal with
Perry White earlier in the film, and must surely have seen or heard the
explosions and military-grade machine gun fire on the docks, yet he
confronts Batman by letting the people he's pursuing escape. At the
very least, they're domestic terrorists, yet Superman lets them get away
scot free.
Capitol Hill is suicide-bombed by the 911
security guard from the 911 bit at the start of the film - or possibly
it was Lex Luthor rigging the man's wheelchair in order to frame him as a
911 bomber. A senator lady twigs that she is about to be 911ed when
she sees a jar of Lex Luthor's urine on her desk. No really.
Americans
don't like 911 - except in their superhero movies when it's being
punched by someone in a fetish outfit - so they turn against Superman.
Why they didn't turn against him when he did that other 911 in the last
film is - again - not explored.
Lois finds Superman
stalking around the outside of her apartment, recreating the single
creepiest part of Superman Returns (if you ignore the fact - and you
should - that Superman super-roofied Lois at some point before the film
began so she's brought up her child believing him to be the product of
date-rape). Superman mopingly opines "all this time I've been living my
life as my father saw it - righting wrongs for a ghost" er... no,
that's the exact
opposite of what his dad taught him. This
character arc for Superman is confusing because when Superman talks
about his dad teaching him to do good things and be an aspirational
figure, he can only mean
the dad from Krypton played by Gladiator, but
when he actually sees his dad as a ghost later in the film, it's the dad
played by Robin
Hood Prince Of Thieves, who was always telling him that people were
fearful, not to be trusted, and that he had to hide from them and even
let them die to save himself if need be.
Batman
decrypts the information he stole from Lex Luthor earlier in the movie
and finds pictures of Wonder Woman in 1918 and footage of various
superhumans, which strikes me as the kind of thing Batman would already
be aware of in some fashion since his entire deal is that he's fearful
of superhuman potential. Lex has also apparently taken the time to
design logos and individual branding for each superhuman for some
reason.
Superman's ghost dad - as an actual ghost now -
told him he believed there was good in the world. This - again - is
somewhat at odds with what we saw in Man of Steel.
Lex
blackmails Superman by holding his mum hostage, saying that if Superman
kills Lex or flies away, his mum will be killed, and it never occurs to
Superman to say "I'll just bring her back to life with my spaceship's
resurrection machine when I get done shooting all your limbs off with my
laser vision."
Also: Superman's spaceship has a resurrection machine.
"Lois...
I have to go to Gotham to convince him to help me... or he has to
die." For some reason, this made me laugh. I don't know why.
Lois
demands a chopper to Gotham and Perry barks "A chopper? We can barely
afford a bicycle!" She looks him in the eye and reassures him that she
isn't doing it for a story so he gives her a chopper. Seriously, this
is what happens - he lets her use the helicopter only after she assures
him she will not be using it for journalism. This man is terrible at
his job.
Gotham can be seen from Metropolis, or at the
very least you can see a torch shone into the Gotham sky from a rooftop
in Metropolis.
Superman and Batman do a big fight and
it's
not
very
good.
There's
lots of CGI for Superman's powers, then they punch each other in the
head for a bit, then Batman realises that Superman's mum has the same
name as Batman's mum and they bond over this piece of comicbook trivia
to the point that they are totally bros now.
No really, ask anyone who's seen the film already, this is absolutely how this pans out.
One
thing that I find a bit off is that Superman doesn't seem to need much
convincing to murder Batman. He goes to meet up with him and Batman
shoots him with guns - which is a thing Batman does now - and Superman
shrugs it off like he usually does with bullets, and then it's murdering
time.
Batman's warehouse fight makes it clear that the director has been playing the Arkham games A LOT, and has seen Robocop.
It is really obvious that the CGI Hulk - sorry - the CGI
Doomsday's
animators - oh yeah, because Zod is Doomsday now - didn't give him a
CGI penis. Perhaps in the R-rated blu ray they'll fix that. Yes
there's an R-rated Superman movie coming out - such a wonderful time we
live in!
Doomsday also turns into the Destroyer from the end of
the first Thor movie, then Wonder Woman shows up because why not? She
was in the trailer, so there's probably a law that says they have to
have her in the actual film because of advertising rules or something.
Wonder Woman's theme is terrible and I hate it. It sounds like the BGM
from a PS1 room-clearing dungeon crawler dear God what do these words
even mean?
For some reason Doomsday looks like Boss Nass in some shots. Just saying.
This fight with Doomsday is unconvincing not just because of the CGI, but because
Doomsday is Zod, and Zod is
the biggest wimp
in the galaxy, most notably being beaten up in the opening scenes of
Man of Steel by Krypton's equivalent of a nerdy scientist, and ending
that same film being broken in two by a farmer who had literally never
been in a single fight in all his life. What Batman should do in this
fight is kneel down on all fours behind Doomsday when Doomsday is
looking at something else, and then Wonder Woman can push Doomsday and
he'll fall backwards and probably break his neck.
Superman is shooting lasers from his eyes at Doomsday and going
ARRRRRRRRGHHHH which I don't understand because isn't the process of
shooting lasers just him looking really hard at something? UGH just don't get me started on laser eyes in these fucking movies.
There's
some thing with Lois and a Kryptonite spear going on. At some point I
lost track of what was happening and I have no idea if the following
makes any sense, so I apologise: Lois finds a Kryptonite spear Batman
was going to use to kill Superman but he changed his mind and threw the
spear away. Lois went looking for it and then
threw it away again,
but then she came back and decided to get it back from the water where
she threw it for some reason, only it had moved for some reason, so she
swims around a bit and then a building collapses where she's swimming
but she's not squashed flat because concrete floats, but she does nearly
drown until Superman saves her, and then Superman jumps into the same
drowning pond to retrieve the Kryptonite spear - without at any moment
considering there may be a Basic Flaw in this Plan - and then Lois has
to save him from drowning because The Basic Flaw In That Plan. Maybe
there's some attempt to make this a sort of Arthurian analogy with the
magic weapon from the lady in the lake and that, and just to really
hammer it home there's a bit where Superman and Doomsday have run each
other through and Superman pulls himself along the weapon he's impaled
upon in order to push his own weapon deeper into his enemy, which was at
the end of that cinematic classic
Star Trek Nemesi - sorry,
Excalibur, and which of course makes Superman a murderer for two films in a row now.
Wonder
Woman's magic sword can chop pieces off Doomsday, which I am reasonably
sure makes the Kryptonite spear thing redundant as a story device. Why
don't they just cut off his head and run away with it?
Okay, I'm just going to say this: why is Wonder Woman even
in this
film? People keep saying OMG WONDER WOMAN IS AWESOME I CAN'T WAIT FOR
HER MOVIE but she has something like four or five minutes of screen time
in
a two and a half hour film and in all that time she does not prove useful in any way, or achieve any of the things she set out to do.
Lex
Luthor is in jail now - I literally blinked and missed where he got
caught by the popo. They shave his head, which I am pretty sure they
don't actually do in prisons, but you probably want it done if you're
going away for a spell as they do bad things in prison to dudes with
long hair. Yes a rape joke now - I think I have a problem.
Superman gets
Spock's funeral song
played on the bagpipes during the state funeral he receives from the
people who literally hated him about twenty minutes ago. Presumably he
won back their trust by leveling only a small part of the city this time
around, though if it were my decision, I suppose I'd want the occasion
marked just to reassure people that the unstoppable murder god was
actually dead.
People at a memorial event scrawl a message
along the lines of "if you want to see his legacy look around you" on
the ground, which I found funny because it's very similar to one of the
final lines in the (mostly dreadful)
Starship Troopers 2, only in
that film it was meant to be a satirical comment upon how even the
deaths of disgraced figures can be hijacked in order to further the
cause of fascism.
Superman does a Jesus right at the
end - returning to an unwelcome and stupid narrative theme from Man of
Steel that has been largely absent from Batman vs Superman in favor of
other mythic tropes - or as most people call them, "cliches".
Whatevs. That was the film.
