Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by aikiMac, Apr 3, 2016.

  1. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    It’s much better than most reviewers give it credit for, but it’s not on par with any of the Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, or Avengers movies. I’d say at best it’s comparable to Thor 2.

    The Good
    1) Ben Affleck is an excellent Batman and Bruce Wayne, both. Until this movie Michael Keaton was the best movie Batman in my opinion, and Christian Bale was the best movie Bruce Wayne, but Ben Affleck is at least as good as both of them. In fairness though the other actors played young versions of Bruce/Batman, whereas this movie Batman is old, so it’s not quite an apples to apples comparison. This Bruce has grey in his hair and he moans when he fights, and it’s said in the movie that he’s been wearing the cowl and cape for 20 years, but the point is that I would cast Affleck in a sequel without any hesitation.

    2) The Batmobile and the Batplane are both very cool, and they both look so much better than their counterparts in the Christian Bale trilogy.

    3) The debates and newscast sound bites within the movie over whether Superman is good or bad, and whether he is doing good things or bad things, and what to do with him, was great. It could have and should have gone deeper, but within the movie it made sense and it drove the plot well. We understood why Batman picked a fight with the invincible alien.

    The Bad
    1) The music sucks. It was distracting for the entire movie minus about 1 minute (below). Music done right is either not even noticed, or it intensifies the beauty of the visual scene. This music fails both ways. It was outright distracting and actually often even wrong for the scenes.

    There is a very brief (as in less than a minute) exception: the drums for Wonder Woman, which came out of nowhere, was fabulous. It did not fit the rest of the music and thus it was very noticeable for its contrast, but wow, there should be a score built around her drums.

    2) All of the characters kept talking about “Lex Luxor” but he’s not actually in the movie. There’s this Joker character without clown makeup, though. He has a huge role in the movie, and for some reason everyone refers to him as “Lex Luxor,” but he’s clearly the Joker without makeup, and that was *extremely* annoying.

    Seriously -- the script needs to be rewritten with the traditional Lex Luxor in it. And fire the idiot who approved of this clown character because this version of Lex is horrible!!!! I don't mean the acting. I mean the way the character was written. Horrible!

    3) The nightmare of Bruce Wayne with the man-bat flying things and the soldiers with “S” patches made no sense. It is a confusing waste of screen time. For that matter all of his nightmares need to be rewritten, or just removed entirely. All of them were poorly done.

    4) The opening credits should not show the backstory of Batman. We know the backstory of Batman. And it wasn’t even done right. What’s up with him floating into the air, huh?! The fight between Superman and the other Kriptonians, shown from the point of view of humans on the ground, should have been shown over the opening credits.

    5) The implied resurrection of Superman was not handled right. If you’re going to say that Superman is coming back to life, don’t do it with a half-second of floating dirt. Have him standing in a dark room talking with someone.

    6) There was no explanation for why Joker Lex would know anything about a Doomsday, let alone how to make one, nor was there any explanation for why he would want to create Doomsday. The Lex we know from the comics and cartoons and Gene Hackman wants to take over the world. You can’t take over the world if Doomsday is in it, so what was this guy’s motivation? I have no idea!

    In short: Nice effort, and it's a "good" movie, but it could have easily been a "great" movie.
     
  2. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Out of curiosity, what did you think of Man of Steel?
     
  3. raaeoh

    raaeoh never tell me the odds

    My only question was why didn't wonder woman use the krptonite spear?

    I mean come on!
     
  4. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    She uses magical weapons...Supes was always a bit vulnerable to them
     
  5. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    Beautifully done, but when it ended I didn't know what it was about. Did I just watch a movie? I didn't know. It was pretty pictures without substance.

    The Henry Cavil guy was a terrific Clark Kent, though, in that movie. (In the new one he's not given enough screen time as either Clark or Superman.)
     
  6. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    And he's not vulnerable to Kriptonite?!
    It's not that magical stuff is death to him. It's that he has no defense to it anymore than a regular human does.

    WW was using her lasso at the time, so her hands were occupied. I was thinking to myself, why didn't Batman use it? It was even his spear, for that matter! He brought it to the party!

    Stupid writers. :bang:
     
  7. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    The DC heroes, excepting Batman, are just not as good as the Marvel heroes.

    Same for the bad guys.

    The DC films have mastered being po-faced, preachy and humourless in a way that even the Marvel films involving deities haven't managed. Thor had a light touch and plenty of humour, for example, DC films just don't.

    As another example, I have never been interested in Captain America as a comic character. If he was in a DC film you could bet he would be a jingoistic cliché of a decimals-of-a-dimension character, wrapped in a flag and spouting sub-Rambo nonsense.

    But in the hands of Marvel he's great; sympathetic, funny, fallible yet fully worth his place between Iron Man and Thor.

    Marvel will jump the shark sooner or later, and they have had false starts in the past, but right now they make the DC franchise look silly.

    I'm sure DC will take my comments on board and compare them to the massive figures for BM vs SM :D

    Mitch
     
  8. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Yeah, I mean, I think Snyder has his talents. I enjoyed 300 and Dawn of the Dead. But anytime you give him a script with more substance than "FAST ZOMBIES" and I think you're just done. He doesn't seem to know how to get characters to actually work. I think that he hasn't really made a Superman film so much as regurgitate Dr. Manhattan in three hour format.

    The thing is I'm sympathetic to the themes of how do we trust power, what would it mean on a personal level to be this powerful, the unintended consequences of heroism, etc., etc. it's just that Snyder doesn't seem able to make a coherent movie out of them.
     
  9. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    It was more like watching an unplayable superhero beat-em-up video game demo than watching an actual movie.
     
  10. AndrewTheAndroid

    AndrewTheAndroid A hero for fun.

    I don't blame Snyder for this movie. I enjoyed it but it was apparent to me that the studio wanted something different that Snyder did. I am going to check out the Ultimate Edition when it comes out. It's going to have 37 more minutes that may make the movie more coherent.
     
  11. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    I watched it last night. Got a bit to sat but just really quickly Lex Luther is not the joker because a) Jared Leto and b) they hinted that Batman already had dealings with the joker. Such as the painted Robin outfit and "Gotham has had its fair share of psychos dressed like clowns".
     
  12. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    Silly you, I know he's not the Joker character! I was making a comparison to how this version of Lex Luxor talks and gestures!

    But anyway, the dead Robin's costume on display in the Batcave -- that was way cool. That goes in the "plus" column for this movie.
     
  13. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Silly you for poorly explaining yourself :p
     
  14. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    I feel like a ton of comic book movies rely on these clever little asides rather than focussing on cohesive storytelling.
     
  15. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Care to elaborate? Mind spoiler tags for any films you might be talking about.
     
  16. bigreddog

    bigreddog Valued Member

    I agree - my 13 year old son thought it was 'awesome' and gave it 9.5/10 - Avengers got 10/10. He may be the target audience

    But overall the action sequence were gloomy with lots of explosions that didn't really do anything for me, and ultimately I just didn't care about any of it. (By comparison the Nolan/Bale Dark Knight trilogy was imho, very good)

    Oh and Lex Luthor was thoroughly annoying, entirely incomprehensible for his motives and didn't get punched in the face. So overall, very disappointing as a film.
     
  17. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Yeah, I'm trying to think to a specific movie that really captures that and all I'm coming up with is the scene from Attack of the Clones (I know that's not a comic book movie) where Obi Wan and Anakin are riding the elevator and one of them says something along the lines of "Remember that time you fell into a nest of gun darks? Boy that was a hoot!" Movies like The Watchmen or Origins: Wolverine rely on extensive back story to create their characters, betting that you've already read the comics enough that you don't necessarily NEED classical characterization - they represent an archetype such that we already know who The Wolverine is and establishing his character is work that doesn't need to be done. I disagree with this; you can see the folly of not doing that work most explicitly in Man of Steel. Although we know Cavill is playing Superman, Snyder doesn't show us what kind of a person Superman is, he relies upon our knowledge that he is heroic rather than showing us his heroism. In fact it gets to the point where Supes has become something entirely non-heroic in that film.

    General plot structure operates in much the same way - rather than try to create the coolest movie they can, directors just try to make a Wolverine movie, such that the opening sequence of Wolverine Origins becomes its most interesting sequence - did we really need to see this absurd vendetta story play out? How much cooler would it be to have seen "Wolverine: D-day" or "Wolverine: Vietnam"? There are some very, very good superhero movies out there that pursue conventional storytelling, that pursue good characterization and then there are folks like Snyder who just can't seem to figure out the foundations of a good movie.

    My personal theory for that is that Snyder is a visual director, capable of creating great cinematography and great action shots. During his early days he was likely restrained by studio execs, resulting in very good movies like Dawn of the Dead and 300, but as he acquired more power he started really screwing things up. Witness Sucker Punch, The Watchmen, Man of Steel, etc. I don't have any actual insight here, I'm just spitballing. He's become something of a Michael Bay with an even more transparent id; all the violence, sexism and racism present in Bay's movies can be found in Snyder's but Bay seems to have a core optimism, a core belief in America that, if not sincere, is omnipresent in his work. Snyder seems more nihilistic, aggressively so, and his movies are founded on nothing more than a textural grit.
     
  18. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Pixar is a great company whose every movie demonstrates incredibly well crafted storytelling. Think about the opening scene from UP. With no words and four minutes, they create a more beautiful, touching and tragic romance than most movies can create in two hours.

    Edit: Seriously, I have trouble making it through that scene without crying. I challenge you to do the same!

    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2bk_9T482g"]Favorite Pixar's Up scene ever - Ellie and Carl's relationship through time, Sad scene - YouTube[/ame]
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2016
  19. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    I'm with you now.
     
  20. bigreddog

    bigreddog Valued Member

    Luckily I'm too much of a badass to cry at movies, otherwise I would have had to agree with you about Up!
     

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