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

Grade the movie...


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Nobody ever complained about the Nolan movies being dark.
That's the first thing that a lot of people complained about when Batman Begins came out and that continued with The Dark Knight's release. A big chunk of the fan base does believe that comic book movies should be light and fun or at least shouldn't take themselves too seriously.
 
Defend the movie without attacking other movies. The points will be better made that way.
To be clear, I'm not complaining about the "bright tone" of the MCU movies. They're fine, in fact it's a positive feature. The innocence of the original Captain America movie is, for example, an underrated feature of that film. I just don't need everything to inhabit the same niche and I don't feel the need to complain about a superhero movie being "dark." Three decades on from The Dark Knight it seems something of a ludicrous complaint.

I don't have any compunction about comparing Snyder's action style to the MCU's, however. That's one area where Snyder consistently kicks ass and roundly deserves to be congratulated and learned from, not derided. Man of Steel, with its massively destructive Kryptonian throwdown that "disappointed" certain geeks, is a case in point. That was everything many of us have been waiting to see from a superhero brawl, and the complaining about it was absolutely bizarre to me. By contrast, the MCU's best efforts are cartoonish and frankly -- for all their spectacle -- a bit tepid and devoid of any real suspense. (Case in point: "Paper people." A violation of Drax's "literalism" trait but a frank and honest description of the hordes of disposable and unimpressive mooks that have turned up in at least three films to this point.) Even take BvS: I felt a genuine tension when Batfleck loomed over Superman with the Kryptonite spear that was entirely absent from the super-brawls of The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy or virtually any other MCU movies, and I don't think the effect of the "dark tone" is coincidental there.
 
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How is the 3D in this film, for those who saw it in 3D?

It was okay. I actually saw it in 3D by accident on the day it opened, as the cinema timetables in Flixster were a little confusing. I'd have preferred to see it in 2D but we couldn't be bothered waiting for another showing. It didn't annoy me, which 3D sometimes does but neither did it blow me away. I saw it in 2D the second time and didn't really notice an awful lot of difference. Some small details, like the rain and lights, impressed me more than the big sequences, TBH.
 
"It needs a brighter tone." Why, FFS? We don't have enough safe, cookie-cutter Superman-the-Boy-Scout stories in the can? The MCU isn't churning out half a dozen movies a year with a "bright tone"? Snyder is hooking into the gritty superhero ethos of the late eighties and early nineties and adapting that tone -- which could veer incredibly cheesy -- with a surprising amount of grace and intelligence. No, it doesn't need a "brighter tone." Everything on the big screen doesn't need to be the bloody MCU, some variety is a good thing.
What are you talking about? It doesn't need a 'brighter tone', it just needs to be interesting. I keep going back to them, but the Nolan Batman movies are the perfect examples of how to do dark movies right, unlike this insipid mess of a film. Bring on Civil War and Suicide Squad, two movies which are 'dark' but I'm still looking forward to because the characters bring something other than being grimdark carbon copies of each other. The more I think about it, the more of a wasted opportunity BvS was.
 
What are you talking about? It doesn't need a 'brighter tone', it just needs to be interesting. I keep going back to them, but the Nolan Batman movies are the perfect examples of how to do dark movies right, unlike this insipid mess of a film. Bring on Civil War and Suicide Squad, two movies which are 'dark' but I'm still looking forward to because the characters bring something other than being grimdark carbon copies of each other. The more I think about it, the more of a wasted opportunity BvS was.

Not to put words in others mouths, but I don' think BigJake thinks it needs a brighter tone. It is a complaint that I have heard before though.

In my viewing, I found the movie extremely interesting.

How was the opportunity of Batman versus Superman wasted?
 
How was the opportunity of Batman versus Superman wasted?

The two most popular superheroes on the planet met for the first time on film.
And it totally divided fans and viewers, with word of mouth not helping anything after it's huge opening weekend.
It should have been a no-brainer homerun for the studio (yes, it made tons of money, but it so very, very easily could be making more after that initial surge and it should be)

Wasted.
 
True, but even the biggest fans have to see that at least something went amiss for the amount of negativity and box office drop-off. Even if they don't agree with the reasons or understand them, it has to be acknowledged that there's something.

A movie with Superman and Batman should have shattered Jurassic World.
Instead, it can't even keep up (domestically) with Iron Man 3.
 
Especially coming after SUPERMAN RETURNS, with Supes' activity essentially limited to lifting superheavy objects again and again to the exclusion of almost anything else.

Even in the comics, the all out slug fests are less interesting than anything else. Raise your hand if you really thought "Death of Superman" was better done than "All-Star Superman" which basically had even less action than "lifting superheavy objects".

WATCHMEN had a roughly equivalent drop despite its better reviews. Younger moviegoers will see JURASSIC several times even though they're being offered nothing truly new.

Then why aren't the younger viewers seeing Superman v Batman several times over?
Same as Watchmen. Snyder can't tell a good enough story to warrant them coming back.
 
It's the critics and audience that are just too dumb to understand the brilliance and subtleties of the movie?

It's this sort of toxic responding to anything positive about the film that really puts me off of arguing its merits.

Nowhere have I said or implied that, I just think it's perfectly fine for a movie to be divisive, and not everything has to be universally loved to be good.
 
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It's this sort of toxic responding to anything positive about the film that really puts me off of arguing its merits.

Nowhere have I said or implied that, I just think it's perfectly fine for a movie to be divisive, and not everything has to be universally loved to be good.

Then my mistake for jumping to a conclusion and filling in a blank, I do apologize.

But then what would you think that "something" to be? Because it's undeniably there.
 
By contrast, the MCU's best efforts are cartoonish and frankly -- for all their spectacle -- a bit tepid and devoid of any real suspense. (Case in point: "Paper people." A violation of Drax's "literalism" trait but a frank and honest description of the hordes of disposable and unimpressive mooks that have turned up in at least three films to this point.)

Plus the MCU films did have a habit of ignoring the collateral damage inflicted by super hero fights and then when they do switch to acknowledging it they seem to go out of their way to limit as many people that get killed as possible.
 
But then what would you think that "something" to be? Because it's undeniably there.

I don't think it's any one "something", as you can see people have widely varying opinions on what worked and what didn't work in the film. I think it's just a matter of a well know property that many people have a strong preconceived idea of what it should be, so when BvS wasn't that people were disappointed, and because we live in the age of internet where something can only be the absolutely best or absolutely worst thing ever, compounded with the unfortunate tendency of the media to kick things when they are down and tearing them apart, it sort of snowballed into what it is now...
 
Man of Steel, with its massively destructive Kryptonian throwdown that "disappointed" certain geeks, is a case in point. That was everything many of us have been waiting to see from a superhero brawl, and the complaining about it was absolutely bizarre to me.

Not to mention hyperbolically inaccurate, specifically on the issue of how long Superman and Zod are actually fighting. I haven't timed it - yet - but whatever it is, it's a small fraction of any of the lengths of time alleged in all the foaming-at-the-mouth rants. People acted like the destruction went on for 45 minutes or something. After hearing all that, when I finally watched that portion of the film from beginning to end, I was shocked at how expeditiously the whole thing gets wrapped up.
 
One thing that struck me when I re-watched BvS - while I haven't seen MOS since seeing it in the cinema, I found the battle of Metropolis way more exciting when seen from the ground perspective. That scene was superbly done and Affleck really hit the ground running.
 
WATCHMEN had a roughly equivalent drop despite its better reviews. Younger moviegoers will see JURASSIC several times even though they're being offered nothing truly new.
BvS competition was Zootopia and Deadpool for it's third (or forth) week. Fine movies but it feels like they shouldn't have stood a chance against BvS.

Maybe DC didn't account for how many of their fans were furries. :devil:
 
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