Batman v. Superman: A God's Gamble
So, I'm fresh from watching Batman V. Superman, and I gotta say, there are lot of things going right and wrong with it. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading, because it's going to be spoilerific as hell.
The first thing off the bat is... Well, it's a DC movie. People always say the difference between DC and Marvel is that DC is darker, grittier, and less kind to its heroes, while upholding this debatable morality that murder is not the way, while Marvel tends to be more fun, destroy monsters, piss off the gods and have giant corporate picnics in space. BvS does not go against type, in this manner -- it's dark, it's gritty, it's dystopian in the purest sense of the world, with Bats being inordinately paranoid about Supes, and even Kent is getting snoopy about Bats. One of the first problems, however, is this weird ambiguity about where we are in the timeline. To reference, Bats and Alfred refer to the Bat fighting crime in Gotham for "twenty years" on more than one ocassion, and not only does Lane know about Kent being Supes, it's common enough knowledge that Luthor can use her as Supes bait. How Luthor knows about Supes and Kent is never established, just given to us and accepted, which is kind of bullshit. Supes even has his statue already up at the beginning of the movie, and it's part of the plot to defile it more than once. There are a number of weird flashbacks/visions that they give to Bats that kind of fucks around with the idea that Bats is going cuckoo, without even the comfort of a condom or fun hair pulling. Bet he didn't even say thank you ma'am, either. Kent spends his part of the movie whining to his editor that the Bat of Gotham should be the target of his next exposition piece, citing that the cops are helping this vigilante. To which the editor replies, "Crime Spree in Gotham! In other news, water is wet." Sadly, this is one of the ONLY jokes in the movie, and the other ones are just as thin and more a snarky reply than an actual joke.
We get work out porn for Bats, though, including his lab inventions for all manner of kryptonite-based weaponry. Most of which he wastes on a not-so-subtle trap for Supes. Then there's some spear at the bottom of a flooded well that screams "AQUAMAN WILL COME AND SAVE THE DAY, BUT IF WE SET IT UP RIGHT, IT'S NOT A DEUX EX MACHINA", but instead becomes another damsel in distress trap for Lois. While I admire Amy Adams, and I think she could be great for the role, I am disappointed at how they wrote her. Lois can be an absolute badass when she gets the chance, and instead she ends up being bait on something like three or five different ocassions. Yowch. Diana is slipped in carefully as a rather attractive, yet elusive woman that you almost think is going to be a Bruce Wayne love interest at first, until you acknowledge the shamelessly Greek dresses and realise it's just Wonder Woman. She even has this whole little plot thing where she "gave up on humanity" for a decade during the first World War, without addressing why she came back. We just cheer because this is a precursor to a Justice League movie, and watch anyway, which is ridiculously stupid.
Speaking of which. There's moments of brilliance and foreshadowing that are good, but this movie is just trying to do so much, it gets caught up with the housekeeping so you can't really enjoy the film. Bruce is following leads and needs to hit Luthor's place for intel. He happens to get stopped by Clark, who can hear everything Alfred is telling him because super hearing, and that's a very well done piece. But then Diana shows up and ruins it a bit by stealing the intel before he could get to it. And then she gives it back because she can steal from Batman but she can't decode military grade incryption? What, you pickpocketed a thief but you don't know how to pick the lock? Tacky. Very tacky. The intel gives us a lot of information, and for that I commend it, but it reads more like video game exposition (we'll keep clicking folders and learning new things as you level up so as not to burden you with too much too soon) and we get a nice folder for META HUMANS. I'm glad Hollywood is stepping up their game with more accurate depictions of computer hacking (I say MORE accurate, reminding you that this is Hollywood we're talking about), but the icons on the folders are shamelessly unlabeled, but for a logo. Actually, I picked up the WW for Wonder Woman, the electricity bolt for the Flash, and the Atlantean A for Aquaman, but it took for Bruce to click on the C for me to get Cyborg, and that was admittedly a fun surprise. The teasers were... strangely unsatisfying. Flash isn't even in costume, he's just being a vigilante at a convenience store, and he looks like a hippie high schooler mutant rather than the physicist I would expect. Aquaman is lurking in some boat, and spends way too long staring at the camera, as if waiting for it to blink and act like he vanished (sorry, do you have a malfunctioning invisibility cloak, Khal?) and then a stabby. Kind of lame. Cyborg gets points for medical horror, but they're all just... They feel superfluous and unnecessary. Even Bruce seems completely baffled as to why it's wasting screen time. There's a line between cleverly written exposition and a glaring example of how not to be subtle.
And then there's Luthor. Oh, Luthor. Now, I'm more a Batman fan than a Superman fan, but even I know that Luthor is supposed to be a suave villain. He's slippery like a snake, charming, charismatic, and so well loved by society that people don't believe you when you say he's a villain. It's like saying Bruce Wayne is Batman, it's such a ridiculous thought no on ewould believe you. This guy, however, is not Lex Luthor. Or maybe he's Lex Luthor's son, which would almost make more sense, except that they don't exactly explain this. Instead of charming, well-spoken, politically virtuous Luthor, we get this mid-to-late twenties fellow, fresh out of pretending to pay attention in college, allegedly making money off of guns on the black market, plotting to overthrow Superman for... atheist problems? Using the metaphor for gods and devils and etc. is not an unheard of poetic angle for DC, and in theory, I rather like the comparison. But they took a sharp-minded, carefully orchestrated villain and made him a psychotic. He rambles, he talks in loosely reinterpreted metaphors and references -- there's was this whole Friend of the Library thing going on, and he is waxing on and on about Prometheus and Zeus, then calls another Icarus, all while being creepy and feeding grown men candy and playing with alien spaceships as if he knows what the hell he's doing, and arranging BvS as his own personal grudge match. It -is- Luthor's style to hire other people to do his dirty work and dispose of them, but the way he does it is all wrong. The only thing I can imagine is some expectation that prison will "harden" him. But even then, it was a thing that Luthor got away with his crimes all the time -- you could never pin them on him, and he got away with it, and came back. I mean, the guy got elected President for Chrissakes, he's not some rambling nutjob. You want someone sputtering nonsense, you get Joker, or the Mad Hatter or something. Luthor is supposed to be SMOOTH, GOD DAMN IT.
*sighs* Diana was bad ass, though. Watching her fight was awesome. Most of the fight sequences... ehh. The one with Bruce in the warehouse to get Martha was admittedly just the sort of thing I was wanting to see, and it brought to mind the Tower scene in the Dark Knight, or the myriad ways of dealing with multiple goons that you have to do in the Arkham games. Watching him grapple between buildings was pretty cool, too. But it bothered me how much they tried to paint Bats AND Supes as these heartless monsters (apparently Bruce has taken to branding sexual predators, be they pedophilic or human traffickers, and letting the inmates extend their version of justice for him, which is as bad as sentencing them to death himself; Supes is recklessly destroying Metropolis and orphaning little girls, killing Wayne Enterprises personnel, and even costing one man legs). And there's a conspiracy about Supes starting a fight in the Middle East! It's all rather ridiculous, and it spends so much time mud slinging everyone that no one shines, and no one feels like a hero. Lois tries, but when you make her bait so much... Well, I'm not a boy scout fan, so it does me no good. I would have loved more witty banter than "I was looking for the bathroom" and "I thought she was with you." Especially in the Bats/Alfred scenes -- that's one of the things that I loved about Nolanverse, and Diniverse: the Alfred/Bruce dynamic. Bruce has a dry wit, but he can be very funny at times if you let him.
On a practicality side, though, I was pleased at the deteroration of Bruce's costumes during the initial Bats/Supes fight. I ESPECIALLY loved how much damage the Batmobile took, and I particularly enjoyed the idea of a voice distorter being on the suit to make him some more intimidating. I'm sure that's something he would actually have done -- it disguises his voice, terrifies his victims, and is definitely a hell of a lot easier on the actor's vocal cords to not have to do that ridiculous put on voice that Keaton and Bale did. I mean... I know we all can't be Kevin Conroy, so... I will give you that. And was that a Robin suit that Joker had defiled, or a Bat suit? I spent so much time reading what it said, so I missed what it was.
Altogether I think there were a lot of misses here. Bats/Alfred could use help, that scene with Bruce/Clark/Lex should have lasted longer than 2 minutes, and would be rife with opportunities of veiled threats, exposition on exactly who knows what, and answer some questions on continuity. Where are we? Bats has been doing this a long while, so has Supes. Is Lex a new player, or one that's been out of the spotlight forever and is just now coming out? What about Diana? Clark Kent not knowing Bruce Wayne on sight is funny in an origin story, but ridiculous if they've been at this as long as they insist they have. Pick one. Be clear about it. This scene should have done that. I REALLY didn't like Batman using guns, even in a dream sequence. The whole Martha/Martha thing came off as a low blow, and a crudely done one at that. And is there a NICE Wayne manor as well as an abandoned one? I really didn't get that. And the ending was crap. When Diana says, "Why do you think there'll be a fight?" You don't say, "Gut feeling." Even if it's true, Bruce's thing is to always be prepared (which makes him a kind of boy scout as well, I suppose) and he likes to be prepared for the worse. WHICH IS WHY THROWING A SPEAR OF SOLID KRYPTONITE WAS STUPID, and a poorly written excuse to hide the plot device for dramatic effect and throw Lois into another damsel in distress chap NOT-SO-CLEVERLY DISGUISED as her attempts to assist. It was just stupid. He might put it down, but throwing it away is just stupid. You don't throw a loaded gun away so someone else can use it, dumb dumb.
...But yeah. That's my opinion. I'm excited about Suicide Squad regardless, and I hope they take some of this crticism from the fans and reviewers into consideration while they do their reshoots. No, it doesn't have to be Deadpool, but Batman: Assault On Arkham was AMAZING, and if you can just make a film as good as THAT in live action, you would be absolutely solid.
Otherwise... I'm going to have to just keep in mind that most DC movies suck, unless they're animated. Which is sad. The Dark Knight was one of the best films I've ever seen, so it can be done.
The first thing off the bat is... Well, it's a DC movie. People always say the difference between DC and Marvel is that DC is darker, grittier, and less kind to its heroes, while upholding this debatable morality that murder is not the way, while Marvel tends to be more fun, destroy monsters, piss off the gods and have giant corporate picnics in space. BvS does not go against type, in this manner -- it's dark, it's gritty, it's dystopian in the purest sense of the world, with Bats being inordinately paranoid about Supes, and even Kent is getting snoopy about Bats. One of the first problems, however, is this weird ambiguity about where we are in the timeline. To reference, Bats and Alfred refer to the Bat fighting crime in Gotham for "twenty years" on more than one ocassion, and not only does Lane know about Kent being Supes, it's common enough knowledge that Luthor can use her as Supes bait. How Luthor knows about Supes and Kent is never established, just given to us and accepted, which is kind of bullshit. Supes even has his statue already up at the beginning of the movie, and it's part of the plot to defile it more than once. There are a number of weird flashbacks/visions that they give to Bats that kind of fucks around with the idea that Bats is going cuckoo, without even the comfort of a condom or fun hair pulling. Bet he didn't even say thank you ma'am, either. Kent spends his part of the movie whining to his editor that the Bat of Gotham should be the target of his next exposition piece, citing that the cops are helping this vigilante. To which the editor replies, "Crime Spree in Gotham! In other news, water is wet." Sadly, this is one of the ONLY jokes in the movie, and the other ones are just as thin and more a snarky reply than an actual joke.
We get work out porn for Bats, though, including his lab inventions for all manner of kryptonite-based weaponry. Most of which he wastes on a not-so-subtle trap for Supes. Then there's some spear at the bottom of a flooded well that screams "AQUAMAN WILL COME AND SAVE THE DAY, BUT IF WE SET IT UP RIGHT, IT'S NOT A DEUX EX MACHINA", but instead becomes another damsel in distress trap for Lois. While I admire Amy Adams, and I think she could be great for the role, I am disappointed at how they wrote her. Lois can be an absolute badass when she gets the chance, and instead she ends up being bait on something like three or five different ocassions. Yowch. Diana is slipped in carefully as a rather attractive, yet elusive woman that you almost think is going to be a Bruce Wayne love interest at first, until you acknowledge the shamelessly Greek dresses and realise it's just Wonder Woman. She even has this whole little plot thing where she "gave up on humanity" for a decade during the first World War, without addressing why she came back. We just cheer because this is a precursor to a Justice League movie, and watch anyway, which is ridiculously stupid.
Speaking of which. There's moments of brilliance and foreshadowing that are good, but this movie is just trying to do so much, it gets caught up with the housekeeping so you can't really enjoy the film. Bruce is following leads and needs to hit Luthor's place for intel. He happens to get stopped by Clark, who can hear everything Alfred is telling him because super hearing, and that's a very well done piece. But then Diana shows up and ruins it a bit by stealing the intel before he could get to it. And then she gives it back because she can steal from Batman but she can't decode military grade incryption? What, you pickpocketed a thief but you don't know how to pick the lock? Tacky. Very tacky. The intel gives us a lot of information, and for that I commend it, but it reads more like video game exposition (we'll keep clicking folders and learning new things as you level up so as not to burden you with too much too soon) and we get a nice folder for META HUMANS. I'm glad Hollywood is stepping up their game with more accurate depictions of computer hacking (I say MORE accurate, reminding you that this is Hollywood we're talking about), but the icons on the folders are shamelessly unlabeled, but for a logo. Actually, I picked up the WW for Wonder Woman, the electricity bolt for the Flash, and the Atlantean A for Aquaman, but it took for Bruce to click on the C for me to get Cyborg, and that was admittedly a fun surprise. The teasers were... strangely unsatisfying. Flash isn't even in costume, he's just being a vigilante at a convenience store, and he looks like a hippie high schooler mutant rather than the physicist I would expect. Aquaman is lurking in some boat, and spends way too long staring at the camera, as if waiting for it to blink and act like he vanished (sorry, do you have a malfunctioning invisibility cloak, Khal?) and then a stabby. Kind of lame. Cyborg gets points for medical horror, but they're all just... They feel superfluous and unnecessary. Even Bruce seems completely baffled as to why it's wasting screen time. There's a line between cleverly written exposition and a glaring example of how not to be subtle.
And then there's Luthor. Oh, Luthor. Now, I'm more a Batman fan than a Superman fan, but even I know that Luthor is supposed to be a suave villain. He's slippery like a snake, charming, charismatic, and so well loved by society that people don't believe you when you say he's a villain. It's like saying Bruce Wayne is Batman, it's such a ridiculous thought no on ewould believe you. This guy, however, is not Lex Luthor. Or maybe he's Lex Luthor's son, which would almost make more sense, except that they don't exactly explain this. Instead of charming, well-spoken, politically virtuous Luthor, we get this mid-to-late twenties fellow, fresh out of pretending to pay attention in college, allegedly making money off of guns on the black market, plotting to overthrow Superman for... atheist problems? Using the metaphor for gods and devils and etc. is not an unheard of poetic angle for DC, and in theory, I rather like the comparison. But they took a sharp-minded, carefully orchestrated villain and made him a psychotic. He rambles, he talks in loosely reinterpreted metaphors and references -- there's was this whole Friend of the Library thing going on, and he is waxing on and on about Prometheus and Zeus, then calls another Icarus, all while being creepy and feeding grown men candy and playing with alien spaceships as if he knows what the hell he's doing, and arranging BvS as his own personal grudge match. It -is- Luthor's style to hire other people to do his dirty work and dispose of them, but the way he does it is all wrong. The only thing I can imagine is some expectation that prison will "harden" him. But even then, it was a thing that Luthor got away with his crimes all the time -- you could never pin them on him, and he got away with it, and came back. I mean, the guy got elected President for Chrissakes, he's not some rambling nutjob. You want someone sputtering nonsense, you get Joker, or the Mad Hatter or something. Luthor is supposed to be SMOOTH, GOD DAMN IT.
*sighs* Diana was bad ass, though. Watching her fight was awesome. Most of the fight sequences... ehh. The one with Bruce in the warehouse to get Martha was admittedly just the sort of thing I was wanting to see, and it brought to mind the Tower scene in the Dark Knight, or the myriad ways of dealing with multiple goons that you have to do in the Arkham games. Watching him grapple between buildings was pretty cool, too. But it bothered me how much they tried to paint Bats AND Supes as these heartless monsters (apparently Bruce has taken to branding sexual predators, be they pedophilic or human traffickers, and letting the inmates extend their version of justice for him, which is as bad as sentencing them to death himself; Supes is recklessly destroying Metropolis and orphaning little girls, killing Wayne Enterprises personnel, and even costing one man legs). And there's a conspiracy about Supes starting a fight in the Middle East! It's all rather ridiculous, and it spends so much time mud slinging everyone that no one shines, and no one feels like a hero. Lois tries, but when you make her bait so much... Well, I'm not a boy scout fan, so it does me no good. I would have loved more witty banter than "I was looking for the bathroom" and "I thought she was with you." Especially in the Bats/Alfred scenes -- that's one of the things that I loved about Nolanverse, and Diniverse: the Alfred/Bruce dynamic. Bruce has a dry wit, but he can be very funny at times if you let him.
On a practicality side, though, I was pleased at the deteroration of Bruce's costumes during the initial Bats/Supes fight. I ESPECIALLY loved how much damage the Batmobile took, and I particularly enjoyed the idea of a voice distorter being on the suit to make him some more intimidating. I'm sure that's something he would actually have done -- it disguises his voice, terrifies his victims, and is definitely a hell of a lot easier on the actor's vocal cords to not have to do that ridiculous put on voice that Keaton and Bale did. I mean... I know we all can't be Kevin Conroy, so... I will give you that. And was that a Robin suit that Joker had defiled, or a Bat suit? I spent so much time reading what it said, so I missed what it was.
Altogether I think there were a lot of misses here. Bats/Alfred could use help, that scene with Bruce/Clark/Lex should have lasted longer than 2 minutes, and would be rife with opportunities of veiled threats, exposition on exactly who knows what, and answer some questions on continuity. Where are we? Bats has been doing this a long while, so has Supes. Is Lex a new player, or one that's been out of the spotlight forever and is just now coming out? What about Diana? Clark Kent not knowing Bruce Wayne on sight is funny in an origin story, but ridiculous if they've been at this as long as they insist they have. Pick one. Be clear about it. This scene should have done that. I REALLY didn't like Batman using guns, even in a dream sequence. The whole Martha/Martha thing came off as a low blow, and a crudely done one at that. And is there a NICE Wayne manor as well as an abandoned one? I really didn't get that. And the ending was crap. When Diana says, "Why do you think there'll be a fight?" You don't say, "Gut feeling." Even if it's true, Bruce's thing is to always be prepared (which makes him a kind of boy scout as well, I suppose) and he likes to be prepared for the worse. WHICH IS WHY THROWING A SPEAR OF SOLID KRYPTONITE WAS STUPID, and a poorly written excuse to hide the plot device for dramatic effect and throw Lois into another damsel in distress chap NOT-SO-CLEVERLY DISGUISED as her attempts to assist. It was just stupid. He might put it down, but throwing it away is just stupid. You don't throw a loaded gun away so someone else can use it, dumb dumb.
...But yeah. That's my opinion. I'm excited about Suicide Squad regardless, and I hope they take some of this crticism from the fans and reviewers into consideration while they do their reshoots. No, it doesn't have to be Deadpool, but Batman: Assault On Arkham was AMAZING, and if you can just make a film as good as THAT in live action, you would be absolutely solid.
Otherwise... I'm going to have to just keep in mind that most DC movies suck, unless they're animated. Which is sad. The Dark Knight was one of the best films I've ever seen, so it can be done.