• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - Grading & Discussion

Grade the movie...


  • Total voters
    224
I just remembered that Disney owns Indiana Jones now. Captain America and Indiana Jones can have an adventure together!

TkT9a1o.gif
 
Snyder not only takes what he does seriously - as do many of the Marvel directors - he's generally permitted to express himself by the people who hire him. Possibly even encouraged. For the most part, not true at Marvel.
Sure, he expresses himself with tons of slo-mo shots, very artful compositions, disturbing dream sequences, and extended sequences of violence that mainly revolve focus on people punching and throwing each other, with some monsters thrown in for good measure. BvS is a more recognizably Zack Snyder movie than any MCU movie is for its directors, partly because Snyder, along with Bay, is one of the most distinctive tentpole action directors working. All this is fairly indisputable.

However, unusually distinctive visuals are not the only metric of "real movies", to use your term. You say Snyder takes his films seriously, but shouldn't that extend to character motivations as well as striking images? I have no idea what he was going for with Luthor. He's a guy who's obviously deeply odd and highly mannered, and puts candy in government officials' mouths (huh?), yet said official also respects him enough to hand him an alien spaceship? Why, because he's a genius of some kind? But the movie clearly states it was his father who went from rags to riches, not him; we have no idea what his specialty is at all.

That's not even the biggest issue with the character, however. He wants to torment and/or kill Superman because... he doesn't think anyone should be that powerful - I think? But in his last scene, he warns that there are more and bigger alien threats coming. How long has he known that? Does he think the world is safer with Superman dead before said threats arrive? And what was he planning to do with Doomsday if it did kill Superman without being killed in the process? Did he have enough Kryptonite to put it down, or did he think unleashing an unstoppable monster was worth killing Superman over, and that he'd figure out what to do with it later? And why not wait to see if Batman killed Superman before cooking Doomsday? What was the rush?

MCU movie villains have been fairly criticized for being one-note and banal, but I could easily tell you what each of their plans and motivations where, despite not having seen several of the movies in years. But I saw BvS yesterday, and I have no idea what its villain was up to. It may be a "real movie", whatever that means, but it definitely isn't a good one.
 
I do like the Cavill version of Superman, but I wonder if TPTB (including JMS) kind of took the easy way out in following the trend of making the character darker like just about all the other heroes these days, instead of deliberately keeping him old-fashioned.
"Grimdark" was a notable period in superhero comics, and I'd argue it's legitimate to bring that kind of story to the big screen for at least a couple of movies.
The writers purposely wrote the story so that Superman would be a murderer. They wanted him to do it, ... It was 100% a conscious effort on their part to do it.
Which is true of every time Superman has taken life.
Zack Snyder said:
I kind of like the idea that he’s taught himself not to look because if he looks it’s just neverending, right? You have to know when, as Superman, when to intervene and when not to. Or not when not to, you can’t be everywhere at once, literally you can’t be everywhere at once, so he has to be really selective in a weird way about where he chooses to interfere.
Evidence that Snyder has actually considered Superman's moral position. Does the "real" Superman stop every one of the thousands of murders that happen every day?
The only "ideal" that seems to actually be violated in the MoS story is "the story wasn't written to allow Superman to win a completely straightforward victory that has no down-sides or moral complication." Nobody can explain why what Superman does is actually wrong except to tell me that the writers were wrong and should have written the story so that he didn't have to face that choice, which seems to me to be a complete cop-out.
Yup.
I loved Xmen when it first came out, but looking at it now, its a bad movie.
I wonder if you could explain that. I think X-Men is the best superhero movie I've seen. It's the most involving and believable in terms of human emotion (Wolverine/Rogue, Magneto to a lesser extent).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kor
What darker Superheroes do we have on screen for this to be a copy of them or influenced by them????? you are never more than 30 seconds from a wise-crack in a marvel film - I am trying to think what of the current crop I'd legitimately describe as 'dark'.
 
Is it sad that I saw this for the third time this weekend? I actually appreciate Eisenberg's take on Luthor more after the third time, though the odd, undermining acting tics still annoyed me. But there was a coldness, darkness there behind the eyes and I did enjoy some of his exchanges with Senator Finch, Lois, and Superman.

And I still loved the Batman action scenes and the big battle at the end. That's not saying the film is perfect, from from it, but it is good, or good enough.
 
To the people who say BvS is bad but Battfleck is good, remember that Battfleck is Affleck PLUS Snyder plus whoever wrote the script (Terrio?). Team effort.
 
To the people who say BvS is bad but Battfleck is good, remember that Battfleck is Affleck PLUS Snyder plus whoever wrote the script (Terrio?). Team effort.
For all we know, Battfleck could very well work despite Snyder, not because of him.

There's really no way of knowing.
 
For all we know, Battfleck could very well work despite Snyder, not because of him.

There's really no way of knowing.
Snyder who shot the actual footage, directed the actual actor, picked the costume and set designs, and oversaw the edit (if he didn't do it himself, not sure)? Nothing to do with the end result, I'm sure.

EDIT: And of course Snyder cast the guy as well.
 
Last edited:
^^
Snyder is the equivalent of Satan to some people so he can't be responsible for anything good.
 
Evidence that Snyder has actually considered Superman's moral position. Does the "real" Superman stop every one of the thousands of murders that happen every day?
Except for one thing. Snyder is using this as an excuse for why Superman can't just go find Martha himself...even though he does keep tabs on these things at other times, otherwise Lois would be dead three times over. So it's good enough for Lois, but not Martha.
 
In the talk about how the DCCU needs to change its style, I look to the Transformers franchise:
TF1 $710M. TF2 $836M. TF3 $1.12B. TF4 $1.10B.
TF1 57% RT. TF2 19%. TF3 35%. TF4 18%.
Now, TF2 was critically and internet-ally reviled. Did they change anything for 3? Not really. And look how much more it made. TF4 was even more reviled than 2, but it did just a smidge less than its predecessor. And they're not changing #$%. They're actually doubling down with an entire new franchise of movies and spin-offs. Money talks. :ouch:
 
In the talk about how the DCCU needs to change its style, I look to the Transformers franchise:
TF1 $710M. TF2 $836M. TF3 $1.12B. TF4 $1.10B.
TF1 57% RT. TF2 19%. TF3 35%. TF4 18%.
Now, TF2 was critically and internet-ally reviled. Did they change anything for 3? Not really. And look how much more it made. TF4 was even more reviled than 2, but it did just a smidge less than its predecessor. And they're not changing #$%. They're actually doubling down with an entire new franchise of movies and spin-offs. Money talks. :ouch:
The quality of the movies has progressively gone down, while the profits went up, big time.

Almost as if we live in the world where people enjoy spending their hard earned money on shit. Myself included.

Paramount found a way of making huge bucks off of pure cinematic diarrhoea.
 
Ah, but quality is subjective. ;) The studios make these movies to make money. Therefore, the quality of the Transformers movies, for the studios, is only increasing :beer:
 
Ah, but quality is subjective. ;) The studios make these movies to make money. Therefore, the quality of the Transformers movies, for the studios, is only increasing :beer:
Profitability IS the quality they seek in their products, therefore Transformers movies are definitely improving.

I'll watch the shit out of that Bumblebee spinoff movie. Pun intended.

I'll most likely hate it, too. And come back for more.

Is this real life?
 
Which is true of every time Superman has taken life.
Yep, and usually when they do (certainly when it's happened anytime in the last 30 or so years), it's always been for actual, compelling reasons which affect him for a long, long time. Not utterly ignored thirty seconds after it happens because the writers didn't understand the characters at all, as they've shown time and time again just in the these two movies.
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top