I saw it perfectly fine.
Not sure what you wanted to see exactly? I don't think any elaborate backstory is really needed to spell "megalomaniac", his behaviour and actions in the movie spoke volumes...
Spoilers Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - Grading & Discussion
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I saw it perfectly fine.
Not sure what you wanted to see exactly? I don't think any elaborate backstory is really needed to spell "megalomaniac", his behaviour and actions in the movie spoke volumes...
The smiley, colourful Super Friends version of DC is available in, literally, thousands of iterations already. The fact these films have taken a different tack is exactly what makes them compelling. I'm far more interested in an examination of Superman where he's NOT the universally admired boy scout with the perfect Rockwellian upbringing. That version has been done--over and over and over.
So Hyperion. Or Plutonian from Irredeemable. Or any other number of characters you just described but aren't named Superman for a reason. The movie did absolutely nothing new and there is nothing here that's compelling. People just seem to hate Superman and desperately want anybody else on the screen.
Why does a superhero movie need fun and humor? This movie is trying to show what Zack Snyder believes would happen if Superman was added to our real world where he wouldn't be perfect and neither are the people he is trying to help. This is something new - and probably the only way to add real drama to a Superman movie - after all the guy is almost indestructible.
Wrong, pretty much on all counts.
- You don't get to decide what I find compelling.
- I've been reading Superman comics since the early 1970s and still do so today. I own all the feature films since 1978 and while I don't like them all equally, I like something in each.
- On the one hand, I've never heard of these other characters and have zero interest in them. I do, on the other hand, have great interest in Superman. I've watched the 50s series, Smallville, Lois and Clark in their entirety. I've seen much, though not all, of the animation, from the Fleischman shorts to current releases.
- The MoS/BvS version of the character is, in fact, rather different from the other, highly numerous, iterations. Kinda the reason some people are disappointed by it--doesn't conform to expectations. If "nothing new" was on screen, then the only complaint might be that it's more of the same. It clearly isn't.
But just as I enjoy Adam West's Batman along side of Keaton, Bale and Affleck (primarily owing to their differences), I also enjoy Reeves, Reeve, Cain, Welling, Routh, Hoeckner (sp?) and Cavill--BECAUSE THEY ARE DIFFERENT. And the Cavill version has the merit of greater differentiation, which I find more compelling than take #3647 on the "classic" (though I'm sure I'd enjoy that one too).
No super relevant to the topic at hand I guess, but Bucky wasn't a "mass murdering monster". He was brainwashed, he was not responsible for a single person he killed during his time as the Winter Soldier. He could have done nothing to prevent the deaths, so calling him a mass murderer is ignoring the fact that he was just a tool that couldn't stop himself. If we count his kills in the 40s before brainwashing as kills during war time and not murders, then Superman in the DCEU has murdered more people then Bucky, and Batman probably kills more people in Batman v Superman then the Winter Soldier did in his entire time as an assassin.
As far as I know, the DCEU's Superman has deliberately killed two individuals - Zod, who was determined to kill those people inside that museum; and Doomsday. It's possible that he may have killed that terrorist who had Lois Lane as a hostage in North Africa, but I'm not sure.
As for the claim that Batman probably killed more people in "Batman v. Superman" than Bucky did during his career as the Winter Soldier . . . it just sounds like a claim to me. We really don't know how many times Bucky has been forced to kill others during the years he has been in operation. And be honest . . . who cares? For all we know, James Bond has killed more people than cholera. Tony Stark's creation of Ultron may have killed just as many. Who cares? What does it really matter? Is this some contest on which group of superheroes are more pure at heart . . . or some sort of crap like that?
Having other characters in it doesn't make it an Avengers movie, it still centered on Cap. This is how a Shared Universe works.
MCU's been having an uphill battle trying to get people to understand what it means to break away from the old standalone procedures.
Maybe it's a mistake to start playing the "which industry's laborers work harder?" Olympics.
The fact that many people have bad taste is not surprising. E.g., the Transformers films.
So... why did he create Doomsday, a Kryptonian destructo-monster with no real agency other than an unquenchable desire to kill, kill, kill everyone it possibly could (up to and including Lex)? How is that compatible with his megalomaniacal belief that no one should be more powerful than him?
And why is Lex so fixated on Superman in particular, when the movie trailers Bruce stops the film to make us watch in the middle of Act II show that he is aware of several other metahumans who are also far more powerful than him?
They don't--necessarily. It depends upon the creative conceits upon which the characters are built.
You don't really need fun and humor in, say, Watchmen. Snyder's Watchmen adaptation has a lot of problems, too -- mostly stemming from the fact that Snyder doesn't really understand the material -- but the lack of fun and humor aren't among them. His dour nihilism is relatively compatible with Alan Moore's existentialist take-down of the inherently pseudo-fascist undertones of the superhero genre.
But this is Batman v. Superman. These are characters people have grown up with and loved for over seventy years. There are certain traits that must be there in these characters, or else they are simply no longer Batman and Superman. Superman, in particular, is a character that doesn't really allow for a lot of variation before he becomes unrecognizable and thus alienating. You have to have something lighter in a Superman movie, or else the Superman ethos is lost.
Which is the problem: Superman should be damn near perfect. He's not supposed to be a realistic character; he is an inspirational, aspirational character who is first and foremost created for children.
What Snyder does is, he tries to appropriate him for cynical and nihilistic adults. Which is basically like taking Watchmen and turning it into a Saturday morning cartoon: It violates the basic creative conceits behind the characters.
1. It is not new. Brian Singer did another version of it already in Superman Returns, and numerous "like-Superman-but-dark-and-edgy" clones abound.
Edited to add: The one bit that is new to Snyder's Superman is the morally repugnant Randianism he adds to Clark through his parents -- the selfish, "You don't owe this world anything" concept from Batman v. Superman or Jonathan's whole "Maybe you should have let a bus full of children drown." This is new, but it violates the basic essence of the Kent characters, because all three of these characters are fundamentally based on altruism as their underlying philosophy. None of this Objectivist bullshit. End edit.
2. There is plenty of drama to be had from Superman -- but the key to remember is that the drama will feel familiar to you because you are an adult. Superman is not and ought not to be primarily for adults. That's something the Captain America films, which are based on the same basic archetype as Superman -- the impossibly morally upright do-gooder given superpowers who acts as an Apollonian figure against Dionysusean forces -- understands, and why they have such widespread acclaim.
This is not an intellectually honest engagement with the material. Bucky is hardly a "mass-murdering monster," because he clearly had been robbed of his moral agency during his time as a victim of Hydra's mind control technology.
Throughout the movie he gets progressively more unhinged, and in his insanity he believes he can control Doomsday.
Bullshit.
I found the movie to be hopeful and optimistic.
Ironically, some of the most cynical and nihilistic drivel I've read in a while came from its detractors...
Where is this delusion coming from? What causes it? What in the film even establishes that Lex thinks he can control Doomsday?
Really? Cos the only place where I can imagine seeing that is in Superman's decision to save the world by sacrificing himself, with the promise that he would then be resurrected.
But the problem is... Why did Superman think he needed to be the one to shove the Kryptonite spear into Doomsday? Wonder Woman could have done the job just as well and survived; it was like he wanted to die. It reminded me of nothing so much as Trip's overly-hastey "sacrifice" to save Archer in the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Doomsday exists to kill Superman specifically, not millions of random people. Lex, in his megolomania, plans for contingency upon ccontinency, and believes that he can impose his will upon Doomsday, which he created as one of said contingencies.
And it's not about Lex hating Superman for being more powerful than him specifically; it's about Lex believing that Superman shouldn't exist because he's more powerful than humanity.
Lex spells out his motivations - and their root cause (which is abuse and powerlessness, BTW) - several times throughout the film, primarily to female characters, which itself is an example of his megalomania (not to mention his misogyny).
And it's not about Lex hating Superman for being more powerful than him specifically; it's about Lex believing that Superman shouldn't exist because he's more powerful than humanity.
Lex spells out his motivations - and their root cause (which is abuse and powerlessness, BTW) - several times throughout the film, primarily to female characters, which itself is an example of his megalomania (not to mention his misogyny).
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Okay. It has been 10 months since I saw the film in cinemas -- maybe I am misremembering something. Where is it established that Lex believes he can control Doomsday? What causes him to believe this? What is causing his delusional breakdowns?
So... why didn't that same rage fixate on Wonder Woman, too? He knows she exists; he knows she is older than a Human could possibly be. Surely he would be upset that Wonder Woman is more powerful than humanity.
What was the Winter Soldiers kill count and reputation again?
@Sci As a result of the childhood abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, Lex sees the world as being godless and humanity as the "be-all, end-all". Superman exists as a direct threat to this philosophy for him, as well as an embodiment of the powerlessness he felt as a result of his father's abuses. This is conveyed, as noted, several times throughout the film, particularly in the scene/conversation between himself and Senator Finch in his father's study (the "you can take a bucket of piss and call it granny's peach tea for all I care" scene).
As for why he doesn't feel threatened by Wonder Woman, see the misogyny thing (embodied in the way he condescendingly talks down to both the aforementioned Senator Finch and to Lois Lane, whom he deliberately uses as a pawn in the film TWICE).
With regards to the question of when/where the film establishes that Lex believes he can control Doomsday, that is implicitly conveyed in the scene between himself and Superman right before he unleashes Doomsday, which is where he gloatingly reveals that he created Doomsday as a contingency in case Supes and Batman didn't destroy each other. Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out, especially if there are ways to implicitly convey something, which is what that scene does.
As for why he doesn't feel threatened by Wonder Woman, see the misogyny thing (embodied in the way he condescendingly talks down to both the aforementioned Senator Finch and to Lois Lane, whom he deliberately uses as a pawn in the film TWICE).
With regards to the question of when/where the film establishes that Lex believes he can control Doomsday, that is implicitly conveyed in the scene between himself and Superman right before he unleashes Doomsday, which is where he gloatingly reveals that he created Doomsday as a contingency in case Supes and Batman didn't destroy each other. Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out, especially if there are ways to implicitly convey something, which is what that scene does.
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There was actually a line where he explicitly says "Obeys only me!" that was cut(it's in one of the featurettes on the blu ray). I presume it was cut because moments later Doomsday tries to kill Lex and Superman saves him, so to have that line immediately prior would probably cause unnecessary confusion. It's also a matter of "show, don't tell", he doesn't have to explicitly voice his delusions for us to see he's delusional.
As to why he's delusional, that brings me to...
... your claim you don't see any optimism or hopefulness in the movie.
I see it everywhere, and this is just one example (of many).
A major theme in the movie is the matter of justice, and here within the narrative Lex serves as a foil for Clark.
Lex is an unjust, greedy evil person. However, he is perceived by the world as a philanthropist, innovator, he is trusted by government people, and overall is seen as a good guy. Consequently his view of the world is cynical, he thinks that everybody is like him, that if one can gain the upper hand through unjust means, and still keep the appearance of being good, one would do so.
Enter Superman, a just man who's only trying to do the right thing, he opposes this view through selfless action and the refusal to exploit his powers for personal gain.
Therefore Lex seeks to destroy Superman, both publicly and literally, he first creates all this confusion to blame Superman for things he didn't do, so the world would fear him, see him as untrustworthy, even evil, and that's why he ultimately pits him against Batman, and demands actual blood on his hands, to show everybody, but primarily himself, how given the right incentives even the just man will fall and become unjust. In his view unjust actions are rewarded and justice is a sham.
But he fails, and Superman's sacrifice disproves him. Superman remains just and doesn't hesitate to sacrifice himself. He doesn't do this for a reward, or for glory, he does it because it's his duty and purpose to protect the innocent. Justice isn't a sham, it's a purpose and a reward in itself.
What does this have to do with Lex going mad? Well, that's really one of the oldest questions in human history "If you act evil, but are still seen as good, where's the punishment? Where's justice?" and the oldest answer is "Evil deeds corrupt the soul and drive it to madness." Which is exactly what happens to Lex during the movie, his punishment isn't that he ends up in prison for his crimes, his punishment is going mad.
The movie reaffirms that doing good is a worthy thing to do, especially in the face of mistrust, criticism and overwhelming opposition, and that being evil carries greater penalties than prisontime and I think that's a very hopeful and optimistic message.