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Best casting since Christopher Reeve.
I waited patiently to hear their thoughts, because they are fans of the same parts of the Batman mythos/canon that I am. Needless to say, Ralph and I had almost identical issues with this film, if not spot on, and Kevin was slightly more open to the positives, as he always is, god love him.
They too didn't like the characterizations of Batman and Superman, or the super dour tone that contained not even a slight joke or moment of levity.
One comment of Kevin's that I really liked was when he mentioned that he didn't know what the moral of this film was. I was just as confused, as I didn't think there was really any positive message contained in this film or a moment of inspiration that made you feel good. What we learn, over and over in this film and in parts of Man of Steel, often from Pa Kent, funnily enough, is that doing good things ends badly. We're constantly told to keep our abilities secret, no matter how many people we could help with them, even if it means we have to let innocents die to keep them hidden (the bus crash in MoS), and that by doing good acts, we only serve to harm others down the road (Pa Kent's story of the flood at the farm in BvS). Not the sort of message any film about people who are supposed to be protecting innocents should convey, but that's just me.
I just wanted to share Ralph and Kevin's thoughts to kind of close out my presence on this thread. I hate when Negative Nellies harp on and on about how they don't like a film, and I feel I'm nearing the danger of doing just that now. Everyone knows how I feel about the film, what my issues were and what little things I liked, and so, my time is done here. I don't mean to whack anyone senseless over the head with the same thoughts or analyses over and over again, and those that like this film should be given a spot to share that love without people like me routinely coming in and dampering the mood.
I will return briefly to share my second thoughts if I ever do return to theaters to see it once more, but until then, I shall see you all around.
Yes and after watching it for a second time, he completely switched his mind and accepted the movie for what it was instead of bitching about it, here is his full one hour review, it is really good.
I fully agree with him, by the way. Having watched the film a second time yesterday, I'm really REALLY positive. :D
Green Lantern either. :D
True, Green Lantern is so much better too :D
Any movie featuring Ryan Reynolds in tight suits is a classic
:D
" Don't make my superhero suit, Green or animated "
Deadpool is in so many ways better than BvS as well.
He would for sure kick that dreary wuss Supes' ass :))
Of course the amount of Life events that happened during the Craig Era (Graduating College and getting my Masters falling in love with one woman to get my heart broken then resurrecting as it were and finding meeting and marrying my wife starting not just 1 but 2 jobs in my IT career astounding how much things can change in a decade) ...
And again people keep talking about a lack of humor am I the only one who was laughing with all the zingers from Perry White "Gotham has crime can be today's headline tomorrow 'Water is wet'" I thought it was hilarious.
Maybe people were either not paying attention or getting popcorn during those scenes lol
Seeing Batman V Superman tomorrow with the wife (and possibly seeing my big fat greek wedding 2 with my wife and her friend) tomorrow nervous about a second viewing because what if I suddenly see the "flaws" like the first time I saw the Dark knight rises it was fantastic the second time i realized it was actually quite bad.
People might just have been already too depressed by the movie to laugh once that funny dialogue happened. ;)
My second viewing was even better and a lot of people say the same thing. The movie gets clearer and there is still enough spectacle to keep you fully engaged
I usually hate to rank an actor after just one film but if the rest of Affleck's Tenure can be as good as this Affleck may be the best batman ever.
As thankfully Snyder/Goyer/Terrio have nothing to do with the solo Batfleck movies this will indeed be a possibility. Batfleck already showed he can be the best Batsy.
I really wish Affleck would already have made BvS. Snyder has failed with MoS and now again as the public reaction proves.
This movie should have been a triumph, instead it is deeply dividing people. Fail.
I didn't see MoS more than once, and once was more than enough for that one.
I've seen it once too. I will re-watch it this week, I have it on Blu-ray, I'm a fanboy I probably would buy a Blu-ray showing Bruce Wayne or any other of the Justice League doing the laundry :P
It will be interesting to see how MoS will "impact" me after I've seen BvS.
Thanks for that, @BondJasonBond006. Very interesting.
@BondJasonBond006
I think you might want to slow down a bit here. :-)
I disagree that Snyder has failed with MoS or with BvS. He went for a certain style and that's always risky. Donner made Superman epic, the Salkinds made Superman 'funny', Canon made Superman stupid, Burton made Batman goofy, Schumacher made Batman fluorescent, Nolan made Batman cold, dark and with an increased sense of realism, Singer made Superman emo, Snyder made Superman violent, angry and insecure... and all of these styles have their own comic book roots. The Snyder version of Supes comes pretty close IMO to the Earth One comic. It's "just" another take on the Superman story and character.
Perhaps this is a good moment for us all to realise one thing. Since I often hear arguments against Snyder's JLA coming from the Avengers-did-it-better phrasebook, it should be said that unlike the Avengers, Batman and Superman have already gotten their share of incarnations on television, in movies, in comics and even in video games. In an attempt to remain fresh a new aesthetic, tone, universe etcetera had to be found. We may still have profound respect for Superman The Movie but that epic couldn't be released today as the "next" film. Bond got edgier, Batman got edgier, Superman must follow. Superman Returns was practically a direct sequel to the Donner cut of Superman 2 and a lot of people hated it for being bland, uninteresting, ... That's what you get when you release a 70s film in the mid 2000s, despite your best intentions to honour the great masterpiece we all love. Unless you're Star Wars, you don't get away with that any more. This is obvious in the comics too. Some of that N52 stuff is very bleak and has its heroes suffer from anxieties and insecurity to the point even of mental instability. But then people scream and shout that BvS should have been more like Batman '89 or Batman Begins. Look, those days are over. The power of comic book adaptations is they can be taken in a multitude of directions, and not a single one stands out as being 'the only true way to do things.' The Avengers films have the benefit of never having done this before (unless you include some of those obscure 70s / 80s TV movies). But if Avengers has run its course and the love has died, what will happen next? Marvel too will have to re-invent Iron Man, Thor, Cap, ... and some people will get angry because they won't like the new take because they still haven't gotten over the death of the old Evans-Downey universe.
Frankly I don't see what Snyder could have done otherwise. He didn't make the call to scratch MoS 2, WW, The Flash, ... from the list of movies working towards JLA and to go for a Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman team-up straight away. He didn't make the call to release the film now rather than give it another 6 months or so in post. But Snyder understands how you make something look good, "comic booky" even. From 300, over Watchmen and especially Sucker Punch, this is what he excels at. The visuals in the film are stunning, I have to say. If people want this thing to look like the Shanghai segment of SF or like The Revenant, they may be mixing up their film genres here. Technically, it works.
And what's with the Eisenberg bashing? We loved Hackman (in those first two Superman films at least) because, well, Gene Hackman was one of the coolest men around in the 60s and 70s. Then we got Spacey, who did a slightly updated version of Hackman and people went ballistic. "Can't you give us something new?", they asked. Now we turn 180° from the Hackman model and suddenly this young, neurotic, slightly "off" version of Luthor is out-of-touch with the Supes legacy? I didn't hear anyone complain when Ledger's Joker gave us a Clown Prince that's perhaps the farthest away from anything we ever got in a comic book version. And even if you don't like this Luthor, Affleck, Gadot, Irons, Cavill (yes, Cavill), Adams (yes, Adams) are all pretty good. I mean, what's wrong with Cavill? Did we really want that Nick Cage Superman? He looks a bit like Reeves yet brings his own touch to the game. I quite frankly love what Cavill does here: he's my second favourite Superman, replacing Roth in that spot. And in Cavill's defence, Superman may be one of the characters with the least "flexibility" in how he gets depicted and played. I mean, if this is a hard pill to swallow for people, I don't envy the guy who takes over Wolverine from Jackman or Iron Man from Downey Jr.
I will stick by my earlier assessment about the narrative structure of the film. Especially during the first half of it, scenes are forced upon us in a linear sequence but without a lot of cohesion between them. So maybe a few more months of editing could have solved a lot. Yet then we get into the climax of the film, where people have called Lex' plot a bit stupid. True. It is, however, also a perfect occasion for our heroes to come together and show off, which they do, I might add. Seeing Diana swing herself at
Last time, with MoS, people complained about the many deaths caused by Supes and Zod. BvS does two things: A) it actually builds part of the plot around that so it doesn't try to makes us forget that ever happened (like Jar-Jar in Ep. II and Ep. III); instead they make it a part of the conflict between Batman and Superman, B) BvS does what it can to clear out and evacuate areas where the big fights take place. And still people complain. Some people just want to complain or bash on Snyder. News flash: even Zack Snyder, Michael Bay and George Lucas can make very good films in their own genres.
People complain because they don't get "their" preferred version of Batman or Superman, but they fail to realise that there is no "one" version of Batman or Superman. Even for James Bond a more solid, objective and fine-tuned frame exists. But if you read Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Detective Comics #27 (1939), The Doom that came to Gotham, Red Son, Batman Earth One, ... you're going to have to change your thoughts about Batman more frequently than you change your undies. DC reboots things faster than we reboot a PC; writers put a new spin on the story the minute they get the freedom to do that. Morrison, Miller, Moore, Finger, Dini, ... they all bring something new - in some cases radically new - to the table.
MoS took a false start for some people because that wasn't the Superman they grew up with. Sadly, it won't be the last time this happens so get used to it. BvS at least stays on that course, which I admire. And this could lead to great things and eventually become part of a big event. I'm glad they don't try to ape Avengers, I'm glad they don't try to stay within the Nolanverse. Incidentally, it should be said that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises were also rather polarizing films; The Dark Knight seems to be the only more or less consensus reaching one.
Lastly, though a weak argument, let's talk BO. BvS already made more money than Batman Begins ever did. It leaves that recent Fantastic Four and Ant-Man behind. But those two Marvel flicks were bad films, you say. Well, whether I agree or not, money and quality don't always find each other in superhero films. One of the least profitable X-Men films is also arguably the best: First Class. My favourite Nolan Batman film, Batman Begins, hardly made money compared to its sequels, the second of which I find far inferior to it. Iron Man 3 was, at least IMO, a serious step-down from Avengers, yet it did gangbusters at the BO. Studios want to kiss the hands that feed them. However polarizing BvS may be amongst us, fans, it's bringing in the cash, securing more JLA films as it does so. That's part of the deal. I, as a fan, would love to see a BvS written by Kevin Smith, Mark Millar and Bruce Timm, based on material by Alan Moore and Grant Morrisson and directed by either Matthew Vaughn or Neveldine & Taylor. But such an unholy marriage would be incredibly "niche" and couldn't possibly make anyone rich. WB wants big hits because they pay back for the 300 million investment and you can't make a superhero film nowadays for less - except when you're Deadpool - because audiences want spectacle, loud special effects and a cast to drool over. So they hire people to make a compromised version, to give mass audiences - not the die hard fans - the cheap thrills they want out of a big blockbuster. In that sense I think Snyder did not fail, rather he succeeded. In fact, I'm glad his two JLA films so far have been steering away from the current Marvel template. I'm proud that WB and DC are sticking to the style they endorsed with MoS. Only in time will we be able to tell if it has worked or not. I know one thing though: whenever I'm seeing that Suicide Squad trailer, I know we're on to something. If we're hoping for the Shawshank Redemption or Blade Runner version of Batman and Superman, think again, because beloved though they are, those were notorious BO failures at the time. Sometimes a little less steak and a little more fries is what people want, so we must all deal with it. And in they end, I'm sure in so rich a comic book legacy as both Bats and Supes have already left us, we're all sure to find stuff to love if the OTT spectacle films with clumsy plot twists don't do it for us. Maybe one day people will be screaming for a toned-down, quiet, heavy-on-dialogue David Lynch or Tarantino directed Batman and Superman film, but I doubt it.
So in conclusion, I know what they did here and why. I accept that some people don't like the new 'brand' but they must learn to likewise accept that others do and that this is anything but uncommon in the comic book world. I'm not saying people have to like this film, I'm saying I do and I'm not going to shy away from that. I'm not saying this is the optimal take on the subject, I'm saying it's one take on it and a perfectly legitimate one. I'm not saying they can experiment into extremes on Batman and Superman, I'm saying they haven't and that this new direction was bold in some parts, but true to tradition in others, and that's a good thing at least IMO. Lastly, I'm not saying I'm completely in love with BvS, I'm saying I found a lot in there that I like, even more so upon my second viewing yesterday, and so far I haven't been disappointed by either MoS or BvS. Some people hate the Tim Dalton Bond, I love the Tim Dalton Bond. Some people hate the Star Wars special editions and I don't. Some people hate Snyder but since I saw his Dawn Of The Dead remake, I called myself a fan. And I like what the man has done so far.
And that, is not a joke.