First off: This conversational hyper-fixation on the issue of the R rating is tangential to the larger point that I and my partner both made about the film: That has major structural problems, that it is thematically offensive, that its characterization is incoherent, and that fundamentally does not cohere as a film. This movie is less than the sum of its parts.
The problem with BvS theatrical cut is that it makes no sense. They cut essential scenes.
I honestly don't agree. I don't consider any of the scenes I've read about from the extended cut to be vital. All they do is tell is plug some minor plot holes (that Luthor got an African woman to perjure herself before Congress, lined the new wheelchair he gave the anti-Superman guy with lead to hide the bomb, and briefly encountered Steppenwolf after Doomsday was defeated). None of these things were essential to the story.
The actual problems, the cut scenes and alternate takes don't fix. The extended cut doesn't tell us what, for instance, Lex Luthor actually
wanted out of his plans. It doesn't tell us why we should care about Bruce and Clark fighting since their conflict was a result of trickery and extortion and disappeared as soon as the word "Martha" was used. It doesn't fix the fact that the movie
keeps going for almost an hour after the actual conflict of the film has been resolved and all that remains is punching. It doesn't change the fact that
they stopped the plot to show us trailers of future movies. It doesn't solve the arbitrary creative choices (like Lois getting stuck in the well retrieving the spear she herself threw in there ten minutes earlier). It doesn't fix the fact that the whole thing feels, as my partner put it, someone took an "Ayn Rand Rewrites This Classic Story" parody for Superman but made it for real. It doesn't change the misogyny and toxic masculinity ingrained into the film from start to finish. It doesn't change the fact that the film uses the language of cinematic deconstructionism on Superman yet
has nothing new or original to say about Superman, no hidden truth to reveal. It doesn't change the fact that this is a movie about a meaningless disagreement between two powerful men about how to exert violence upon faceless people in a meaningless, nihilistic world.
Having said that, if your issue with the movie is anything but "hmmm why are people reacting like this" type of issue, the extended will not help. And yes, Snyder's style does make movies look like semi random clips. Flow is not something he has yet to master.
100% agreed. He's very bad a structure.
This video essay puts it well -- it's about moments vs. scenes.
You mean the people who make up the majority of the fanbase, have all the money which they spend on their products.
You got evidence to back that up? Some stats? How would you even measure such a thing?
Yeah, sorry, I will forever struggle with this concept. This isn't like a family relative who spouts off inappropriate things. This is taking a concept of a character and reinterpreting it in a different way.
I would argue that some characters come with certain ideas inherent and essential to them, and that diverging too far from those elements causes them to reach a point where they are no longer meaningfully themselves anymore.
Like you can do a version of Peter Pan where he goes through puberty, starts smoking, snorts cocaine, has unprotected sex with the mermaids, has his eye gouged out by Captain Hook, and then dies of syphilis. You could do that. But if you do, you're going to lose so many essential elements of the original story that your version of Peter Pan will not meaningfully bear any resemblance to the existing versions. It will for all practical purposes be an original character, and it will be quite frankly a perversion of what the existing character
ought to be.
Because while I agree that reinvention and reinterpretation are vital, I also argue that legacy characters ought to be certain things even as they evolve. And one of the things Batman and Superman ought to be, in addition to all the things we loved in, say, the Chris Nolan films or the DC Animated Universe, is, they ought to be something that children can watch. That doesn't mean that they can't be for adults, too. That doesn't mean they can't go to dark places. But they shouldn't be gorey, and they shouldn't be nihilistic, and they shouldn't be something an eight-year-old can't watch.
And again, I think it's pretty damn gross to spend eighty years putting a character on kids lunch boxes and then turn around and do a major motion picture with that character but say it's for adults and children shouldn't watch it. It's a betrayal of the child audience, it's a perversion of one of the essential elements of the characters, and it's incredibly cynical because you know full well there will be a huge child audience no matter what you say. It's gross to make a movie you know kids can't handle that you also know massive numbers of them will watch.
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