Batman v Superman

Sora's current avatar might be your expression if you watch this movie.
You'd be better off ignoring it, or watch it and let Civil War wash the bad taste from your mouth.

If you liked Man of Steel you might like it well enough. The few times the Man of Steel theme pops up in BvS did put a smile on my face even though I don't like Man of Steel much. Probably brought back happy memories of the Man of Steel trailers, and it is a good theme.

It's memorable at least. I'm not someone who pays attention to movie music, or even notices it most of the time, but when that piano chimed in it was just nice. Don't remember any other piece of music from either film.

Wait, I tell a lie. I remember this:



Because it's terrible and every time it played (for example, when Wonder Woman is reading her emails) it sounded completely inappropriate.

I remember when superhero themes weren't comprised of mindless drum smashing and grating, weird instrumentation. And speaking of inappropriate music, Lex's theme is ridiculous in this. Zimmer just shat out leftovers from Sherlock Holmes. As one wonderful review put it:

Quote :

Listening to it you can easily picture a demented cross between Liberace and Montgomery Burns sitting at a keyboard pounding it out (if you pardon the expression), saliva dripping from his jaws as the Village People are chased around the room by the hounds, half way through an old gypsy with a fiddle popping her head round the door before quickly leaving in bemusement.  It’s so utterly ludicrous, so hard to believe a professional film composer (or two) could write it for a $250m movie in 2016 (other than for something like Pirates of the Caribbean) it actually becomes really funny

How much was Zimmer and how much was Junkie XL? Because the Wonder Woman theme sounds like something that came straight out of Junkie's Mad Max score.

A lot of it seems like it was written together. Even the Batman side of the material was also co-composed by Zimmer at the end of the day, even though he had originally swore off the character and left Junkface to do it.

I really hated this film so very very much, it did everything so bad that if you tried to make it worse you'd probably end up improving it. I think the 'dream' sequence made me lose all hope that this was going to be even vaguely ok.

The most shocking thing is that after the critical mauling and dissappointing box office returns (the movie has made over 50% of its total profits in opening weekend before word of mouth could influence things), Warners just casually started production on Justice League with the same director and writers as BvS (and MoS) as if nothing's wrong.

I didn't hate it.  I - whisper it! - actually even enjoyed it in parts.

Ben Affleck made a very solid Bruce Wayne / Batman, and some of the fight scenes, particularly Batman taking on the warehouse to save Martha at the end, was terrific.  That said, the minute you engage your brain, it all starts to fall apart.

Firstly, Superman himself is really poorly represented.  Nothing against Henry Cavill, but he's given nothing to work with.  The character always seem unsure of himself, he doesn't seem to want to be the hero that the film keeps telling us he is.  Even his mother tells him he doesn't have to do anything, and between that and Pa Kent in MoS telling him to let school children drown, it's no wonder he's got little to motivate himself.  The only person he ever seems to want to actively save is Lois, otherwise all we see is a few second montage of him doing any kind of heroic deed and that doesn't come close to atoning for the thousands that died in MoS.

Secondly, Lex was godawful.  The casting was all wrong, the characters motivations and machiavellian scheming actually makes any sense.  Everything about the character in the film just failed to work in the way intended.  Rather than coming across like an intellectual striving to meet a great adversary, he's like a petulant teenager who thinks he knows everything.

The cameos from Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg were unnecessary and my Mrs had no idea who Cyborg or Aquaman were, so didn't understand the purpose of their inclusion.  Gal Gadot made a decent enough Wonder Woman, but had no reason to be part of the final battle other than "Woo, mini-Justice League!".  Speaking of which, Doomsday was just as poorly conceived as we'd all feared.  There's no build up for him, we've got no idea how strong he's meant to be other than being a big, dumb brute.  What was worse is that Batman contributes almost nothing to that fight, looking hugely out of his depth.

And, then WB shot their load early, metaphorically speaking with that ending.  It's meant to be shocking, but no one is going to be surprised when the miraculous happens and the whole thing is rendered pointless in the next film. Because, let's face it, no one expects them so not have Superman be part of Justice League, do they?  No.  So there's no shock, no suspense, in the decision because we know it isn't permanent.  Had they saved Doomsday for the Justice League film and had Superman meet the same fate there, it might have been more convincing.

Hopefully Civil War will give us the super hero in-fighting we all wanted from BvS.

the thing that confuses me still, well, maybe not confusing but I don't know the correct word... is what they're going to do with Clark Kent. is he going to stay dead or are they going to think of something stupid to bring him back as well...

If they are also bringing him back, it would be farfetched to believe that anyone in that universe would be so stupid to not realise both Clark Kent and Superman got back at around the same time and not put two and two together.


Unless Superman actually reveals he's been Clark Kent all the time....but the secret identity thing just wouldn't work anymore.

The newspaper article at the end suggested the Daily Planet had reported Clark was killed during the Doomsday fight. Given that no one had actually seem him for a few days prior to that (quite how Perry White hadn't just sacked him, I don't know!), I'd assume that was simply a story Lois cooked up.

A couple more things I forgot to mention in my earlier post; I mentioned this during the week, Buu, but the bit with the bats when kid Bruce finds the cave.  I know it's only a dream, but the fact that the bats levitate him towards the light was just ridiculous.

This is Batman.  The man who was so scared of those bats that they permanently etched themselves on his psyche to the point he uses them as his chosen avatar to strike that same terror into criminals.  The bats should not be lifting him towards the light, they should be driving him into the ground.  They represent his fear, not his hope or salvation.

The other thing was the Bruce "dream-within-a-dream" sequence.  Yes, the action sequence upon Batman finding the fake Kryptonite was pretty cool, but the fact is that using a dream-within-a-dream as a means of exposition is really, shitty writing.  Bruce is dreaming about things he can't possibly know about; we know they're likely related to an alternate timeline or possible future because the film tries to blunt-force that on us with the clumsy Flash cameo, but to throw those in there in that way is unbelievably crass story telling.

See, only people who know the comics know what all that was though. Or I guess maybe the Flash tv show or some of the cartoons might clue people in, but I really don't think this movie aimed at the cartoon audience. I had no clue what the fuck that dream was all about. The fact that it was all a reference to a specific thing was completely lost on me, but it still sort of worked because it was just a nightmare scenario of what Superman could do in Batman's mind.

However, the bit after where a robot guy comes out of a portal and starts yelling gibberish in Bruce's face was unbelievable. I found out later everyone was saying it was Flash, but I didn't recognise him, and I honestly couldn't understand a thing he was saying either. It was quite possibly the most confusing thing I've ever seen in a blockbuster.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

See, only people who know the comics know what all that was though. Or I guess maybe the Flash tv show or some of the cartoons might clue people in, but I really don't think this movie aimed at the cartoon audience. I had no clue what the fuck that dream was all about. The fact that it was all a reference to a specific thing was completely lost on me, but it still sort of worked because it was just a nightmare scenario of what Superman could do in Batman's mind.

However, the bit after where a robot guy comes out of a portal and starts yelling gibberish in Bruce's face was unbelievable. I found out later everyone was saying it was Flash, but I didn't recognise him, and I honestly couldn't understand a thing he was saying either. It was quite possibly the most confusing thing I've ever seen in a blockbuster.

That was kind of my point. It made no sense for anyone not already invested in the lore, (for reference The Flash TV show has no bearing on the cinematic universe, hence the Flash being recast.) I recognised Ezra Miller, hence I knew it was the Flash, but Bruce has never met him so it made no sense for him to be in a dream. It was just a lazy way of trying to fit in something that will no doubt be a plot point in a later film, though given all the hints they were not-so-subtly throwing around, I'd imagine they're potentially looking at going down the Injustice route.

SimianWonder wrote:

A couple more things I forgot to mention in my earlier post; I mentioned this during the week, Buu, but the bit with the bats when kid Bruce finds the cave.  I know it's only a dream, but the fact that the bats levitate him towards the light was just ridiculous.

This is Batman.  The man who was so scared of those bats that they permanently etched themselves on his psyche to the point he uses them as his chosen avatar to strike that same terror into criminals.  The bats should not be lifting him towards the light, they should be driving him into the ground.  They represent his fear, not his hope or salvation.

Don't forget the Jesus posing. Because in Zack Snyder movies, everyone is Jesus.

Wait wasn't flash supposed to be warning him of how to avoid the dream future?

I mean originally i thought it was some kind of robot and I thought this robot was trying to influence batmans dream so he could understand what would happen if he didn't save lois or whatever the message was about. That actually makes more sense then whatever crap happened.

I still think its really dumb lex used prototype bullets and everyone thought al the dead people with prototype bullets in them were killed by supes. When supes makes it clear he kills people in the messiest way possible aka the guy he splattered through about 5 walls at the beginning of the movie (or just left a superman shaped hole in).

Side note Flash is a fucking awesome TV show. Just going to watch that and ignore all further DC films no way they can tell flash's story better in film.

Yeah, The Flash TV show is great. Episode 15 of season one was one of the best things I've seen on TV for years.

The DC TV universe is generally great, though Arrow fell off a cliff after season 2 and just turned into a neverending disaster.

i'm debating if i should just drop arrow altogether i keep hoping it will get good again and it really hasn't

Arrow season 3 felt pretty "meh", it felt like they were running out of ideas and Oliver's back story was getting increasingly far-fetched. Oh, and Laurel is just awful.

SimianWonder wrote:

Arrow season 3 felt pretty "meh", it felt like they were running out of ideas and Oliver's back story was getting increasingly far-fetched.  Oh, and Laurel is just awful.

Olly repeatedly says "I was on that island for 5 years", suddenly in season 3 he's like "who said i was on that island for 5 years". Such godawful writing decisions the HK plot was possibly the worst and most boring dragged out flashback i've seen in anything. I think we saw Hal Jordan's jacket in season 3.

Laurel is awful, but Felicity might be the biggest monster of a character ever.