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Review of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Just finished watching Zack Snyder's Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice courtesy of On-Demand, was about $4.45, so cheaper than the movie theaters by about ten bucks. It's about $15 dollars in Brooklyn.
Anywho...it surprised me. Not at all what I'd expected. Probably helped that I went in with very low expectations. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was watching a video game, well maybe for about two minutes, but even then? Not so much. Felt more like watching a painting. Say what you will about Zack Snyder, but he is a great cinematographer. His visuals are quite striking, and not quite as busy as other directors. Also, it didn't give me a headache like the action sequences in Man of Steel, The Avengers Part II - Age of Ultron, and Deadpool, so kudos.
A bit lacking in the dialogue department, though. I'm not even sure there was more than maybe a half hour's worth of dialogue in what amounted to a three hour movie. Snyder is not into dialogue, much more into visuals and cinematography. Not that superhero movies strike me as dialogue heavy movies to begin with. Let's face it, people do not go to these films for the dialogue. That said, the Nolan Batman films had good dialogue, as did the Iron man films, Deadpool, and Days of Future Past. So it is possible. But I've yet to see a Zack Snyder flick with good dialogue. (The 300, The Watchman, and Man of Steel had crappy dialogue too.)
It also, felt more "archetypal" in characterization. Not really providing anything new -- although let's face it, is there really anything new that can be said about Superman and Batman? Or for that matter the super-hero genre? I mean all three have been DONE by now. Possibly overdone. I think they may be slightly crispy.
As far as the visuals went, it reminded me a great deal of Frank Miller's Dark Knight comics in the 1980s, and Alan Moore's Sin City, V for Vendetta, and The Killing Joke. Both men took over the Batman comics, along Tim Sale, back in the 1980s and 1990s, and their decisively noirish take on the comics sort of bled into the verse as a whole. I remember writing my senior thesis in the bowels of a computer room next to a guy who was writing his on the death of superhero in comics, or rather the reimaging of the hero as vigilante and what that means. It was a controversial thesis - because academics, especially in the 80s, tended to frown on graphic novels, in particular action and pulpy noir graphic novels. Which I never really understood, a story is a story is a story...after all. And who's to say my thesis on Joyce's Molly Bloom and Faulkner's Caddy Thompson (aka their Mommy issues), was any more or less valid than this guy's thesis on the post-modern hero? In some respects I think his thesis was more interesting, because it commented, if indirectly, on our need for a hero, but romanticization of the vigilante. Or America's pop culture love affair with the powerful bad-boy, much to our own detriment (see Trump, Christian Grey, Walter White, Soprano, Hannibal Lector, Spike/Angel, Iron Man, various characters on Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, etc.). Oh, should mention, the guy writing his thesis on the death of the superhero in comics - had bleach blond hair, a leather jacket, rings, black boots, and steel rimmed glasses. We had some great conversations at 1 am in that computer room. (I half wish I saw the film with that guy. And I can't help but wonder what would have happened if we had merged our theses, mother goddess/mommy issues vs. death of superman/rise of the vigilante?)
I admit I'm partial to the Frank Miller/Alan Moore take on the superhero genre, along with Neil Gaiman, who was riding on their tail-feathers and doing his own twisty take on the genre. Even though, back in the day, I found Chris Claremount, Jim Lee, Louise and Walt Simonson take on the X-men to be a bit more well-rounded and lot more fun. If not quite as "cool". This may explain why I preferred Chris Nolan's three Batman films to the Marvel superhero flicks, or the Superman flicks.
The only Superman flicks that worked for me, oddly enough, were the animated films. (If you are at all curious - the best of the bunch is Superman: Doomsday. It also features James Marsters best performance outside of Spike and Harry Dresden to date - as the voice behind Lex Luthor.)
I preferred the darker take for two reasons: 1) it examined and critiqued physical or masculaine power as a means to an end, 2) violence rarely results in a positive result, and critiqued the use of violence to resolve problems, and 3) showed how the hero by fighting the villain on his own terms, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, ended up doing little more than blurring the lines between the two.
At the end of both Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, it's hard to know who is more destructive? Batman and Superman level the city long before Doomsday pops up. And Lex the blithering fool, much like the Joker, seems to be as much their creation as they are theirs. Both use violence to solve their problems. Except Batman and Superman use it on a much broader scale.
Batman doesn't have to use violence, he's a bright man. As Alfred points out throughout the film - you can do this without beating people up. OR for that matter, Lois Lane demonstrates with her reporting, digging up more information and being more effective than Clark, who stumbles about like a blustering elephant leaving wreakage in his wake. I kept thinking throughout, how dumb he was. So focused on Batman's vigilantism, that he seemed blind to his own, and worse, blind to what Batman and Wonderwoman were investigating under his nose.
Superman, much as Nietzche states, is all ego. Might. And the film depicts this - man as god. But what is God? The Nietzchian God...of the ego? Where the world is violent. And the world of man is not worth saving, still knee-deep in Mommy issues? The irony is not lost on me that I wrote my thesis on Joyce and Faulkner's take on Mommy Issues next to a guy discussing the death of the male hero and birth of the vigilante. The two are linked. A patriachial world with no room for the feminine, cannot survive. It becomes a wasteland. Lex tries to kill the mother, Batman stops fighting Superman to save Clark's Mom, because he couldn't save his own. Yet, he fails Superman/Clark himself, unable to save him. So instead of Clark/Superman, the Might of Man standing by his side and helping him gather the heroes, it's Superman's female counterpart, Wonderwoman, Diana Prince who is and does agree to help. The Goddess aids him, and agrees to come back after turning her back on humanity, thinking it to be little more than a lost cause. Superman dies, long live Wonder Woman. (Not that I believe for a moment that Superman is going to stay dead. Well, unless Caville has no interest in reprising the role. But they can always recast, not like they haven't before.)
It's an interesting commentary on our shifting times...shown in pictures.
The pacing could have been better of course. And I'd admit that if you don't think metaphorically, some of it might have been confusing or muddled. Batman has a lot of rather jarring dreams in the film, foreshadowing a future world that is bleak and where Superman destroys him. They do however explain why Batman feels the need to defeat Superman. It's slow in places, due to the film-maker relying on the visuals to tell his story, not dialogue. And there are spots that dialogue is required. I got a little lost in the Holly Hunter scenes and found them a bit hard to follow - because the emphasis was more on visuals than dialogue.
From an acting perspective? I'm not a fan of Henry Caville, who various friends of mine adore. Because he has a great chest. He does. And nice square jaw. He does. And a pretty face. He does.
But he's not much of an actor. Affleck on the other hand handles the role well enough. Not quite as good as Bale, but no one is. The best Batman in my view was Bale, even if Affleck physically fits the role better.
All in all not a bad film. Not sure it's worth $15 bucks. But I enjoyed it for $5.
I'd give it a B or a solid three stars.
Anywho...it surprised me. Not at all what I'd expected. Probably helped that I went in with very low expectations. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was watching a video game, well maybe for about two minutes, but even then? Not so much. Felt more like watching a painting. Say what you will about Zack Snyder, but he is a great cinematographer. His visuals are quite striking, and not quite as busy as other directors. Also, it didn't give me a headache like the action sequences in Man of Steel, The Avengers Part II - Age of Ultron, and Deadpool, so kudos.
A bit lacking in the dialogue department, though. I'm not even sure there was more than maybe a half hour's worth of dialogue in what amounted to a three hour movie. Snyder is not into dialogue, much more into visuals and cinematography. Not that superhero movies strike me as dialogue heavy movies to begin with. Let's face it, people do not go to these films for the dialogue. That said, the Nolan Batman films had good dialogue, as did the Iron man films, Deadpool, and Days of Future Past. So it is possible. But I've yet to see a Zack Snyder flick with good dialogue. (The 300, The Watchman, and Man of Steel had crappy dialogue too.)
It also, felt more "archetypal" in characterization. Not really providing anything new -- although let's face it, is there really anything new that can be said about Superman and Batman? Or for that matter the super-hero genre? I mean all three have been DONE by now. Possibly overdone. I think they may be slightly crispy.
As far as the visuals went, it reminded me a great deal of Frank Miller's Dark Knight comics in the 1980s, and Alan Moore's Sin City, V for Vendetta, and The Killing Joke. Both men took over the Batman comics, along Tim Sale, back in the 1980s and 1990s, and their decisively noirish take on the comics sort of bled into the verse as a whole. I remember writing my senior thesis in the bowels of a computer room next to a guy who was writing his on the death of superhero in comics, or rather the reimaging of the hero as vigilante and what that means. It was a controversial thesis - because academics, especially in the 80s, tended to frown on graphic novels, in particular action and pulpy noir graphic novels. Which I never really understood, a story is a story is a story...after all. And who's to say my thesis on Joyce's Molly Bloom and Faulkner's Caddy Thompson (aka their Mommy issues), was any more or less valid than this guy's thesis on the post-modern hero? In some respects I think his thesis was more interesting, because it commented, if indirectly, on our need for a hero, but romanticization of the vigilante. Or America's pop culture love affair with the powerful bad-boy, much to our own detriment (see Trump, Christian Grey, Walter White, Soprano, Hannibal Lector, Spike/Angel, Iron Man, various characters on Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, etc.). Oh, should mention, the guy writing his thesis on the death of the superhero in comics - had bleach blond hair, a leather jacket, rings, black boots, and steel rimmed glasses. We had some great conversations at 1 am in that computer room. (I half wish I saw the film with that guy. And I can't help but wonder what would have happened if we had merged our theses, mother goddess/mommy issues vs. death of superman/rise of the vigilante?)
I admit I'm partial to the Frank Miller/Alan Moore take on the superhero genre, along with Neil Gaiman, who was riding on their tail-feathers and doing his own twisty take on the genre. Even though, back in the day, I found Chris Claremount, Jim Lee, Louise and Walt Simonson take on the X-men to be a bit more well-rounded and lot more fun. If not quite as "cool". This may explain why I preferred Chris Nolan's three Batman films to the Marvel superhero flicks, or the Superman flicks.
The only Superman flicks that worked for me, oddly enough, were the animated films. (If you are at all curious - the best of the bunch is Superman: Doomsday. It also features James Marsters best performance outside of Spike and Harry Dresden to date - as the voice behind Lex Luthor.)
I preferred the darker take for two reasons: 1) it examined and critiqued physical or masculaine power as a means to an end, 2) violence rarely results in a positive result, and critiqued the use of violence to resolve problems, and 3) showed how the hero by fighting the villain on his own terms, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, ended up doing little more than blurring the lines between the two.
At the end of both Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, it's hard to know who is more destructive? Batman and Superman level the city long before Doomsday pops up. And Lex the blithering fool, much like the Joker, seems to be as much their creation as they are theirs. Both use violence to solve their problems. Except Batman and Superman use it on a much broader scale.
Batman doesn't have to use violence, he's a bright man. As Alfred points out throughout the film - you can do this without beating people up. OR for that matter, Lois Lane demonstrates with her reporting, digging up more information and being more effective than Clark, who stumbles about like a blustering elephant leaving wreakage in his wake. I kept thinking throughout, how dumb he was. So focused on Batman's vigilantism, that he seemed blind to his own, and worse, blind to what Batman and Wonderwoman were investigating under his nose.
Superman, much as Nietzche states, is all ego. Might. And the film depicts this - man as god. But what is God? The Nietzchian God...of the ego? Where the world is violent. And the world of man is not worth saving, still knee-deep in Mommy issues? The irony is not lost on me that I wrote my thesis on Joyce and Faulkner's take on Mommy Issues next to a guy discussing the death of the male hero and birth of the vigilante. The two are linked. A patriachial world with no room for the feminine, cannot survive. It becomes a wasteland. Lex tries to kill the mother, Batman stops fighting Superman to save Clark's Mom, because he couldn't save his own. Yet, he fails Superman/Clark himself, unable to save him. So instead of Clark/Superman, the Might of Man standing by his side and helping him gather the heroes, it's Superman's female counterpart, Wonderwoman, Diana Prince who is and does agree to help. The Goddess aids him, and agrees to come back after turning her back on humanity, thinking it to be little more than a lost cause. Superman dies, long live Wonder Woman. (Not that I believe for a moment that Superman is going to stay dead. Well, unless Caville has no interest in reprising the role. But they can always recast, not like they haven't before.)
It's an interesting commentary on our shifting times...shown in pictures.
The pacing could have been better of course. And I'd admit that if you don't think metaphorically, some of it might have been confusing or muddled. Batman has a lot of rather jarring dreams in the film, foreshadowing a future world that is bleak and where Superman destroys him. They do however explain why Batman feels the need to defeat Superman. It's slow in places, due to the film-maker relying on the visuals to tell his story, not dialogue. And there are spots that dialogue is required. I got a little lost in the Holly Hunter scenes and found them a bit hard to follow - because the emphasis was more on visuals than dialogue.
From an acting perspective? I'm not a fan of Henry Caville, who various friends of mine adore. Because he has a great chest. He does. And nice square jaw. He does. And a pretty face. He does.
But he's not much of an actor. Affleck on the other hand handles the role well enough. Not quite as good as Bale, but no one is. The best Batman in my view was Bale, even if Affleck physically fits the role better.
All in all not a bad film. Not sure it's worth $15 bucks. But I enjoyed it for $5.
I'd give it a B or a solid three stars.
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This just said Batman vs. Superman - HD.
There were scenes between Superman and his father, Superman and Lane in the bathroom, Superman attempting to talk Bruce down, and one with his mother. But that was about it.