You don’t know how tempted I was to make a
reference to God Hand for this
subtitle. But since this title’s more fitting,
I might as well do it now.
You know what, though? I remember once on this blog, someone was
under the impression that I don’t like God
Hand. That’s seriously not the case. It’s
not my favorite game ever -- and it’s not what I’d call a technical marvel --
but I like the combat, I like the customization, and I like the difficulty
level (which changes depending on how well/poorly you do throughout the
stages). But what really sets the game
apart from others is its sense of humor and spirit. It’s wacky and wild, and very few games have
captured that magic since. Very few
games have tried.
I’ve gone about this at length, but it bears
repeating: by and large, the AAA game space has done its best to do away with
(intentional) humor and charm. So many
titles are trying to be BIG and EPIC and SERIOUS and DEEP, yet so many of them
have collapsed under their own hubris.
How did Capcom, the company that made the unapologetically-goofy Resident Evil 4 (and God Hand, of course) go on to make the
embarrassingly-po-faced Resident Evil 6?
So in a lot of ways, I’ve built up a tolerance for
products that adopt a
“no jokes policy”. It’s no surprise,
then, that Batman v. Superman: Dawn of
Justice doesn’t leave much of an impression -- but trust me, the lack of
humor is the LEAST of this movie’s problems.
To the SPOILER-MOBILE, Robin!
Oh, wait. Oooof. Ohhhhh.
Ahhhh, that’s awkward.
So here’s the setup…is what I want to say. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m
at a loss. Or, alternatively, that it’s
a pointless endeavor.
In terms of the latter? You already know the story, whether or not
you watched a single trailer. It’s after
Man of Steel. Superman flies. Batman exists. They don’t like each other. The two of them fight. The two of them settle their differences to
take on a greater threat. Roll
credits. But that’s at once a suitable
and unsatisfactory version of what happens.
I said that there would be spoilers, and I meant it. So here’s a big one: Batman and Superman only
do about ten minutes of fighting. The
lead-up to it is poor, the circumstances behind it are poor, the actual
engagement is poor, the resolution of it is poor, and the aftermath of it is
poor. It’s almost as if building an
entire movie around an event with a blatantly-obvious outcome (and finished in
less time than it takes to eat a sandwich) is a bad idea.
Then again, you could say that about the whole
movie. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is overflowing with bad ideas.
I’ve heard the joke that Zack Snyder is actually a spy sent by Disney
and Marvel to sabotage the DC Cinematic Universe -- and honestly, I wouldn’t be
surprised if that was actually the truth.
I don’t want to throw all the blame on Snyder,
though, because it’s not as if he made the movie alone. (Granted I’ll probably throw shade at Snyder
the most throughout this post, but we’ll get there when we get there.) BvS is
a disjointed mess from the first five minutes on, to the point where I feel
like I need a wiki to understand what happened.
It’s as if no thought or care went into creating a stable structure for
the movie, especially since there’s at least one dream sequence that adds
virtually nothing to the plot, is never truly explained, and is such a marked
departure from everything else that it might as well have come from another
dimension…which it
technically did.
The more likely explanation is that it had been
too long since the last action scene, so Snyder and crew thought it’d be cool
to have Batman dream about going to Desert Dust-Up Zone -- because in the real
world, he falls asleep while watching the progress bar on a decryption job tick
upward. Yep. That happens.
Because it’s not like Batman is
well-known for doing his super-heroics at night, if only to give him something
to do.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s the plot of this movie? Why is it two and a half hours long when the
title fight is over and done in about ten minutes?
As far as I can tell, the movie is about building
up as much as it can in as short a period as it can. The rivalry between Bats and Supes is a key
component, of course; neither one approves of the other’s methods or past (or
present) actions. Bruce Wayne and Clark
Kent don’t like each other, whether it’s in-costume or out of it. Fair enough, I suppose, but the movie also
has to build up Lex Luthor -- his son Alexander, to be specific -- as well as
Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, as well as the world DC hopes to raise an empire
from, as well as deal with the ramifications of Man of Steel (which didn’t have to be there if that movie wasn’t a
kerosene-soaked landfill), as well as introduce sociopolitical discussions…
Did I get them all? I think I got them all. But -- oh, wait, I forgot. The movie also has to build up Lex’s master
plan involving a globe-spanning conspiracy, which is partly there to build up
the birth of Doomsday for the good guys to eventually punch, and all of that
hinges on -- wait for it -- Lex’s ongoing conflict with a Kentucky senator to
get an import permit.
I want to embed a video of a Picard facepalm, but
there are so many things to facepalm about I’m not sure if just one video is
enough. So just take this and replay it
as many times as you see fit.
Okay, sure.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with spinning a few plates in terms of
adding plot points or threads. It’s
accepted, if not expected, of a lot of stories.
But it takes a sharp mind and a steady hand to keep those plates
spinning, and the task gets harder every time there’s a new plate added to the
mix. BvS
has plates in the form of its characters -- Bats, Supes, Wondy, and Lex, at
a base level, but there’s also Martha Kent, Senator Finch (played by Holly
Hunter in a largely-thankless role), Lois Lane, and Wallace Keefe (a
handicapped survivor of the Metropolis battle).
There’s even more if you decide to count Alfred
and Perry White -- though I wouldn’t, since they’re out of the way most of the
time. So basically, that means there are
eight plates to keep spinning. At a base
level. Before you even get to the plot
and themes of the movie. And to be sure,
the plot and themes are so important that they might as well be plates the size
of tables. There needs to be skill and
wit on tap, but there also needs to be focus.
The movie needed to keep its eyes on the prize -- either strategically
weave its way through the plates, or give itself a hand by having fewer
plates. But it didn’t.
So is it any wonder that the movie’s sitting at
something near a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes?
I guess the best way to think about this movie is
to take a good, hard look at its characters -- mostly because they’re the
reason this movie will make any money (and yes, there’s a big part of me that
regrets being part of the first-weekend audience). So if we view it from that perspective, there
are two questions that need to be answered: is this character good, and what
does he/she contribute to the story?
Granted I’m not going to go through everyone in this movie, because that
would mean spending more time with Lois Lane, but we have to start somewhere. So it might as well be with Superman.
The immediate question that needs to be answered
is whether or not this Supes is better than the one in Man of Steel. And yeah, he
is by default; he’s not quite the mindless automaton bounced between two
borderline-psychotic fathers. But make
no mistake: he’s still not a good character, and nowhere near the iconic hero
that the world deserves to see in a modern blockbuster. I don’t know if I agree with the sentiment
that he only saves Lois throughout the whole movie, because there’s a scene
with him saving a little girl, as well as a montage of him doing some heavy
lifting to help others. It’s
appreciable, knowing that he’s doing the right thing without someone aggrandizing
him every step of the way.
Well, that’s what I want to say. But like Man
of Steel before it, BvS can’t
hold off on the proselytizing for very long -- and this time, it makes the
whole production seriously muddled.
This movie keeps talking about what it means to be
Superman, and what Superman’s presence means for a modern day world -- and it’s
at the expense of actually showing what
Supes is all about without turning his good deeds into what comes off as
begrudging lip service. But the movie
can’t shut up about gods and demons -- complete with lingering shots of
paintings and windows and such with the symbolism stapled onto your face. And it can’t shut up about it in dialogue
either, whether it’s Lex ranting like a loon to anyone within earshot, or other
characters doing their best to remind the audience of THE CRUSHING WEIGHT OF THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE THEY ARE WATCHING.
They can’t even show Supes just doing something
simple without making a big deal out of it.
Tugging or lifting heavy stuff is done lavishly, but it gets really
excessive if and when it’s time to interact with others. He can’t just save a girl from a burning
building; he has to be fawned over by a massive crowd during a Day of the Dead
festival, and heralded as a savior. He
can’t just swoop in and help people during a flood; he has to drift downward in
slow motion while being bathed in light from above. I know it’s cliché, but would it be so wrong
to have Supes just pull a cat from a tree, smile, and be on his way?
I don’t really understand why there’s a debate about
Superman in this movie. Okay, sure,
there’s a question about whether or not he’s really a hero in the wake of
Metropolis, but the scenes presented in BvS
contradict each other from moment to moment. You can’t have scenes where he’s basically
heaven-sent (including a repeat of Supes drifting through space with a blatant
Christ analogy), and then have other scenes where protestors are lined up to
shoo him off the face of the earth.
I get that there’s supposed to be a difference in
opinions, but the problem is that both opinions are so polarized that they’re
basically invalidated. Superman isn’t a
god, and he’s not a demon; he’s just a guy from space who could bench-press a
skyscraper. Would he do that? No, of course not. He proves that pretty much every day (albeit
mostly off-screen, much to my dismay) by being a hero who helps people and
tackles problems that would be impossible for a normal man.
That’s what
makes him iconic. He doesn’t need
labels, he doesn’t need hype, he doesn’t need doubt, and he doesn’t need
mistrust. He may have handled the Metropolis situation
poorly, but in the eighteen months since he’s travelled across the globe in an
instant to resolve a problem. Superman
is Superman, and I’m shocked that a $250 million movie with at least three
years of production time is so bad at grasping the character.
The movie gets dragged to the pace of a half-dead
snail thanks to all the Super-pondering -- and it didn’t have to be like
that. You can address these societal
issues and say something meaningful without sniffing your own farts. And really, what’s gained throughout all
this? Does anyone learn anything? Are there any major takeaways from society as
a whole? Well, there are, but it ties into the ending and
I’ll have to get into that later. But
the crux of the thematic heft is built upon something that’s both overdone and
treated as window dressing. Why? Because there’s a fatal flaw with this
version of Superman -- on top of the flaws he already had in Man of Steel.
As far as I can tell, Superman doesn’t talk to
anyone. He doesn’t cooperate, he doesn’t
communicate, and he doesn’t make a case for himself. He just swoops in wherever Lois has gotten
into trouble thanks to being shoehorned into the plot there’s danger, resolves
the problem, and then bails. You can’t
even count on him for that, really, since the pieces of Zod’s ship are still
lying around, ready to get taken advantage of by Lex. (Even though Man of Steel didn't really set up kryptonite's existence, let alone its ability to coalesce into rock form OR be weaponized, but whatever) But the more time you spend with the movie,
the more you realize that Superman hasn’t argued his case, explained who he is,
or done anything worthwhile in terms of public relations. As far as I can tell, some people are afraid
of him -- and he hasn’t done anything to lay their fears to rest.
How can you be a symbol of hope if nobody even
knows what you’re all about?
The only person he meaningfully converses with is
Lois. Technically he’s also got his mom,
but true to Kent Parenting 101 form, she instills some of the most
ass-backwards mentalities into her son (basically boiling the conversation down
to “you don’t owe this planet anything” and “do whatever you want, because
you’re too good for them”). If Superman
is committed to being a global force of good, then he needs to be clear about
his intentions to the world he’s lording over.
But he doesn’t. The 18-month time
skip in-universe implies that he’s basically a rogue, which is incredibly
irresponsible, and moreover creates a lot of conflicts that don’t need to
happen.
But what really kills this movie -- basically the
moment where I checked out -- is the one scene where something amazing could have happened. Lex’s plan ends up pinning Supes with the
blame for a killing spree in Africa (done with bullets, because that’s exactly
what Supes is known for using). It leads
to the big blue Boy Scout appearing in a senate meeting, on trial and basically
primed to be held accountable for his actions.
So he heads into the building and stands at the podium in full costume,
ready to plead his case…and more importantly, ready to establish his character
more firmly than any moment in the past two movies put together. At long last, Superman is finally going to
take a hardline stance on what he is, and prove
that he’s all about truth, justice, and the American way! He’ll finally be an active participant in the
movie!
Then the building blows up before he can say a
single word. Fucking perfect.
Superman started off in this cinematic universe as
a charmless, gormless chunk of wood, and he ends it as a charmless, gormless
chunk of wood. And I say “ends”, because
Supes sacrifices himself to stop Lex’s new pet monster, Doomsday. Because of course he does. Setting aside the fact that he does it in the
most senseless way possible -- he has to personally jam a kryptonite javelin
into Doomsday’s heart, because it’s not like he can just throw that shit or punch
the baddie onto it from above -- the movie doesn’t earn that sacrifice. It just doesn’t.
This movie made me, a guy who loves the idea of
Superman, not care about Superman. That’s an accomplishment. And I’m not saying that this character is bad
because he doesn’t conform to the ideals I have in mind; he’s bad because
in-universe, in the context of his story, he’s such a nothing character that he doesn’t deserve a fraction of the concern
thrown his way. He’s stoic and brooding
most of the time, still uncertain about what he should be/wants to do, and the
chief emotion you get out of him is anger -- either that, or a sense of smug
superiority.
The only time he cracks a smile is when he decides
to have sex with Lois in a bathtub (oh God, I hope they’re not laying the
groundwork for a Superson plot thread).
Even when he’s Clark Kent, he’s a confrontational asshole -- though to
be fair, he’s trying to sell a sizzling Batman story to Perry White, who
insists on him covering sports instead. That’s not how newspapers work, guys.
If Snyder and crew wanted the world to hate
Superman, then they succeeded. And even
though this movie is so eager to jump the gun that it has to show the start of
Superman’s inevitable resurrection at the very end -- invalidating the emotional
non-heft of a minutes-long mourning sequence -- it almost feels as if they went
“There. We put Superman in our
movie. Now that that’s out of the way,
we can focus on all the cool guys, like Aquaman!”
But enough about Supes. How does Batman fare?
I’ll be upfront.
I was worried that this movie would be heavily skewed toward Batman --
because I don’t think I’m off the mark when I say he’s a lot more
marketable. (Fun fact: I got a teaser
trailer for The Lego Batman Movie at
my screening.) To be fair, you kind of
need to have a high Bat-percentage when you’re establishing a new
character…which begs the question why he’s showing up in a team-up movie
instead of a solo outing first, but whatever.
The important thing is that Bats should prove why he -- and Ben Affleck
by extension -- should get top billing in what’s ostensibly a Superman movie
sequel.
How does he do?
Uh, not great.
Like
I said last time, it’s not that Ben Affleck does a poor job donning the
cowl (or Bruce Wayne’s suits). It’s just
that he’s being guided by a script, director, and movie that turn the caped
crusader into a joke. You could say the
same about Supes, in the sense that they both suffer from a major problem:
they’re not really heroes in this movie.
They have their moments (Supes more than Bats, I’d say), but by and
large the two pillars of DC Comics are portrayed as assholes. More pressingly, they’re portrayed as
idiots. And I can kind of see the movie
getting away with Supes being a dunce, but Batman? The world’s greatest detective gets duped by Lex, Riddler Arrange?
As Bruce Wayne, he heads to Metropolis personally
during the fight with Zod, as if he’ll somehow accomplish something besides get
crushed by rubble. He waltzes into
off-limits areas during Lex Luthor’s party to steal some plot-relevant
information (twice). When it’s time to
steal the kryptonite that Lex harvests from his ship, he throws down a Batarang
just to make sure there’s a trail to
follow. He can’t put two and two
together and reason that maybe Lexcorp-branded trucks are heading towards a
Lexcorp research facility, so he decides he has to destroy everything in his
path in a big dumb chase scene.
Critically, Batman should have won his “fight”
with Superman in an instant; he sets up a bunch of traps beforehand, but despite
having access to kryptonite, he thinks that it’d be better to create limited
gas canisters instead of loading up automated turrets with kryptonite
bullets? And why the fuck did he make a kryptonite-tipped
spear? Did he just want to turn his Super-murder
into a ceremony? I mean, the obvious
answer is that it’s to facilitate the plot (i.e. create a way to kill Doomsday
in the final brawl), but how often is “because then there would be no plot” a
good answer?
There’s more, of course, but I’m willing to leave
it at “Batman and Superman are idiots” for now.
There are more important things to tackle -- namely, that Batman is
really, really angry for some reason.
I’d tell you what that reason is, but I have yet to find it. What’s his motivation in the movie? Why does he think that Superman is a
menace? Why does it reach a point where
the only “logical” conclusion is to harpoon him like he’s Moby Dick?
If you squint really hard, you can kind of follow
his train of thought. Yes, Superman was
involved in the destruction of Metropolis (which, rather frustratingly, was
rebuilt entirely off-screen with no struggle whatsoever). Yes, innocent people died, including the
people working under Bruce Wayne’s umbrella.
But you know what? Superman
didn’t do it alone. He lived among
humans for more than thirty years in peace, and only rocked the boat when Zod
tried to turn Earth into a crusty brown wasteland. Does that not mean anything? Does every good deed that he’s done since his
mistake of a battle not count?
It seems like Batman’s just angry for the sake of
being angry. I understand that that’s
kind of the point, in the sense that the movie portrays both sides of the dark
knight as someone who’s clearly unhinged and broken-down. But A) it doesn’t make for an interesting
movie, B) it’s confusing when there’s no genuine motivation behind his actions,
and C) it’s handled in a half-assed way.
If the idea is to prove that Batman is someone you
shouldn’t buy into wholesale -- or idealize, or like, or whatever -- then why
do the majority of his action scenes portray him as the de rigueur badass
people expect of him? Why is it so
important to see Batman beat up goons that stand no chance against him, or shooting
guns, or blowing up people, or murdering at length with zero consequences
besides a stern talking-to from Supes?
I think it’s safe to say that Batman -- and
Superman, and the movie at large -- is a hypocrite. He’s mad at Superman for Metropolis, and the
“potential” “threat” he poses, and being a reckless vigilante that can hurt
people…but superpowers aside, how is that so far-removed from the guy who
dresses like a winged rat and brands people with his insignia? Superman let people get killed by accident
via collateral damage, but he’s supposed to just shrug it off when you blow
people up? You have no moral high
ground, you moron.
That’s not to say that Supes can be absolved of
guilt, either -- his action and inaction alike are creating problems that
didn’t have to be there -- but the takeaway here is that they both hate each
other because they both hate each other.
Neither one of them has the self-awareness to take a step back and
realize that they’re kind of screwing up their respective cities (and beyond),
and would rather point fingers at others instead of work on their
problems. (Why is Batman’s count of
people saved lower than his body count?)
But the resolution to the conflict is somehow more
embarrassing than the “reasoning” behind it.
Lex manages to kidnap Martha Kent and use her as a bargaining chip -- a
way to get Supes to fight Bats to the death.
So Supes heads over to talk with Batman and maybe get his help, but
rather than fully explain the circumstances, Supes escalates the talk into the
straight up slugfest that the title promises, because reasons. Ten minutes later, just when Batman’s about
to run an obvious ally of justice through with his big dumb spear (because of course Batman has to gain the upper
hand), Supes tells him to save Martha.
And since that’s also the name of the late Martha Wayne, Bats decides to
let bygones be bygones and work with Supes from then on as a
loyaHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH
Sorry. I
think my brain just broke for a second.
I get what they were going for. It’s not so much that “Your mom’s named like
my mom! We should be friends!” It’s that Batman finally realizes that
Superman, for all his power, is still almost as human as anyone else on
Earth. Fair enough…but it’s not enough. As much as I would love to do away with this
stupid-ass conflict, the reason why it ends doesn’t line up with what’s been
established throughout the movie. Bats
realizes that Supes has a human mother.
So what? How does that make him
any different from the other criminals you’ve killed just to make it to that
point?
How does having a mother absolve him of the crimes
you were ready to stab him to death over?
Are you willing to forget the fact that he’s responsible for the death
of hundreds, if not thousands of your employees (who really should have done more besides stand inside a skyscraper
during a battle between Kryptonian powerhouses)? Are you going to vouch for him from that
moment on, and act as his PR guy in his stead?
I guess we’ll never know the answer to that question and others, like
how the two of them are supposed to bond.
Superman’s fucking dead.
*sigh* You know, I admit that I’m not the biggest
Superman fan, or Batman fan, or DC fan, or even movie fan. But seeing Superman die because of a fight with a generic rock monster made one thought come
to mind:
“Movies were a mistake. They’re nothing but trash.”
I’ve said this before, but I’ll go ahead and say
it again: if there’s one trope I hate
in fiction, it’s the heroic sacrifice. It’s
noble, sure, but it’s long since been played out. It’s a surefire way to deny a lot of
opportunities in a story, and substitutes it for a more basic outcome: “wow,
look at this hero be a hero”, as if that wasn’t obvious already. And whether it’s in BvS or out of it, I could do without the religious allusions.
Killing off Superman in this movie -- only his second movie in this universe, with his
character as foggy as the Swiss Alps in winter -- was a major misstep. That’s ignoring the fact that his sacrifice
is only temporary, and basically a way to avoid having the hero do anything
substantive with anyone besides Lois or Bats.
It’s so stupidly obvious and easy to see coming. And what purpose does it serve? It’s supposed to convince Batman, the
clearly-unstable, clearly-hypocritical, clearly-incompetent “hero” to become
the founder of the Justice League?
No. No. No, no, and no. You guys have already lost the game.
This movie acts like it wants to explore deep
themes. It acts like it wants to be
taken seriously. It acts like it’s
intelligent, and full of meaning -- something to be digested, with the power to
shake its viewers to its core. And it is
something to be digested, and dissected…but only to help explain why a $250
million movie could turn into such a shitshow.
It acted like it had something to offer, but didn’t; it was more
concerned with cool shots, big dumb action, and setting the stage for more
terrible movies.
Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg are all set up in
this movie, but I can’t begin to imagine how badly the DC studios are going to
screw up their characters. To wit: based
on their mock teasers in this movie (basically downloaded by Bats and shared
with Wondy), Aquaman is a crabby hermit, Flash is a schlub just looking to get
a drink, and Cyborg is…powered by magic?
I don’t even know what happened in his scene.
But I guess I shouldn’t think about it too
much. There’s still the matter of Wonder
Woman.
*sigh*
We’ve still got a ways to go…
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