Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) (1 Viewer)

[Colin Jacobson]

Dawn of the Dead

I did like Snyder's "Dawn..." - it may be heresy, but I prefer it to Romero's.

I also liked "Watchmen".

The rest of Snyder's films?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I did like Snyder's "Dawn..." - it may be heresy, but I prefer it to Romero's.

I also liked "Watchmen".

Speaking of heresy, I think i liked the Watchmen movie more than the comic book. (I didn't enjoy the comic book and felt the movie was a mostly faithful adaptation of the book that made a few improvements.)

 

[TravisR]

I did like Snyder's "Dawn..." - it may be heresy, but I prefer it to Romero's.

Speaking of heresy, I think i liked the Watchmen movie more than the comic book. (I didn't enjoy the comic book and felt the movie was a mostly faithful adaptation of the book that made a few improvements.)

I've been on the internet for nearly twenty years and I've never read two more disgusting things than that.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I've been on the internet for nearly twenty years and I've never read two more disgusting things than that.

What do Colin and I win????

 

[PaulDA]

Just finished reading this take on Superman's character arc in the two films. It mostly conveys why I love this approach as much as I do.

http://screenrant.com/batman-v-supe...dium=Social-Distribution&utm_campaign=SR-FB-P


And while I was ignoring your posts Tony, the Tapatalk app still allows me to see it. Let's just say that I 100% think the EXACT OPPOSITE of EVERY point you make. It's amazing, but true!

You see a Superman that "doesn't save the world at all", while I see Snyder presenting a Superman that saved 7 billion lives by destroying the World Engine.

I see a Superman that specifically learns the MAN part through the course of the two films (see the article I linked to), when you say the exact opposite.

You can LITERALLY take every point you made, inverse it, and that's my exact argument back, lol!

Thanks for linking to the article. Perfectly encapsulates what I like about the films, especially the Superman character arc--will definitely add to my already considerable appreciation for the approach to the character. Not perfect movies by a long shot (nothing is, really) but I always like to see people take creative chances, even at the risk of not pleasing the crowd.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

What do Colin and I win????

And which one of us is the most disgusting???

 

[Oliver Ravencrest]

Just finished reading this take on Superman's character arc in the two films. It mostly conveys why I love this approach as much as I do.

http://screenrant.com/batman-v-supe...dium=Social-Distribution&utm_campaign=SR-FB-P

That's an interesting article. I can see what they're saying but I think I think the execution of those ideas was weak. The best scenes involving Clark/Superman in the movie were the ones featuring Clark and Lois. It wasn't the destruction and the neck snapping that bothered me in MoS, it was that by that point I didn't care. The movie lost me early on. I did like MoS more on the second viewing and I'm certain BvS, which I liked more than MoS, will be better too.

I'd like to add that I thought both the Watchmen comic and movie were just okay and I preferred the movie. Not much of a Snyder fan but still looking forward to the Justice league.

 

[Brandon Conway]

And if one doesn't like the way those concepts are conveyed I can totally understand that. What I don't get is when people say those concepts aren't there, as though those of us who enjoy them and the way they are conveyed are somehow making it all up.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Let’s compare Superman in Man of Steel to Captain America. Captain America acknowledges that lives will be lost in wars; he’s not an idiot. But he does everything in his power to be a shield for the people, even at the cost of his own body. He actively goes after civilians in danger. In Man of Steel, Superman almost never pays attention to the collateral damage. He won’t stop a truck thrown at him; he’ll just jump over it and ignore the building it blows up behind him. He won’t attempt to lure Zod away; he’ll just fight him in the heart of the city. In Avengers, people die, but Iron Man stops a nuke from blowing up New York City. In Man of Steel, Superman doesn’t really save the day at all.

I see what Marvel does with their characters and... it works. I was never much of a Captain America fan, but I adore his movies because I’m given a character with such a strong moral center, one who never compromises his beliefs, and who always stands for what he thinks is right, all while never losing sight of his humble origins. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I just don’t like bullies... I don’t care where they come from.” Oddly enough, I get more “Superman” from those movies than I do from the last two Superman movies - a hero of humble beginnings who uncompromisingly stands by the virtues of truth, justice and the American way, who goes out of his way to save every life he can, no matter the odds, no matter the cost. A hero other heroes look up to.

Is it “realistic” to fail to save the day? Is it realistic for tragedies to wipe out hundreds, if not thousands, of people? Is it “realistic” to decide to kill someone to save others? Sure.

. . . But Superman was created as an alien from another world powered by our sun with the fortune of being raised by the most pure-hearted parents in Kansas ever who throw on a cape, CHOSE to be a hero, and proceeded to fight crime with heat vision, flight, super strength, freeze breath, and super-ventriloquism. Superman was never the hero I asked to be “grounded”, anymore than I wish to see a dark and gritty version of Squirrel Girl or Booster Gold. It’s also, plain and simple, not fun to pay to see a Superman movie where Superman not only fails to save the day, but he’s the direct and indirect cause of mass death and destruction... and he’ll ignore it to make out with Lois on the ashes of a ruined city with hundreds still buried beneath it.

It’s a Superman film with the color literally sucked out of it, the joy sucked out of it, the optimism and inherent good of humanity sucked out of it.

Which, again, would have been fine... if a better writer had written it so that Superman could OVERCOME this and, by his example, inspire change in the hearts and minds of the world, instead of creating a world of paranoia, fear, death, and misery. The enemy of the Snyder films isn’t Zod or Doomsday or Lex Luthor; it’s the world, the people who fear him. And in Snyder’s universe, the villains of fear and despair ultimately win, and Snyder quite figuratively and literally buries whatever “hope” Superman claims his symbol represents.

The real world can be ugly. But that’s why Superman was there. In one great Grant Morrison story, the question of “does the world NEED a Superman” was answered. No. The world does not need a Superman. But because of the character of Clark, the world WANTED a Superman. His job was never to fix the problems of humanity, but to help guide us, steer us as a species, to better ourselves, and to catch us when we fell.

That’s the reason he was created. That’s the reason his two Jewish creators made him a Moses analogue (NOT a Jesus one, as Snyder and others believe). He’s a shepherd leading us by example and power through the dark times to a better tomorrow.

The portrayal in Man of Steel and BvS is offensive at how badly it misunderstands who he is. But it wasn’t just Superman; it misunderstood Batman as well. And Lex Luthor. And Ma and Pa Kent. And so many others.

This is a universe where evil just plain won. Where our heroes have lost their morals and their ethics and their belief that humanity is worth saving. Even Batman’s awful speech at the end, about how Superman’s sacrifice has “restored his faith in men” is nonsense, because Superman was an alien, who died fighting another alien, who was created by a truly evil MAN. Nothing about Superman should restore Batman’s faith in people. Zod didn’t defeat Superman; Batman didn’t; Lex Luthor didn’t. The world itself broke him, and half the planet will be glad he’s gone too.

The thing is... they’re right. At this point, the world would have been better off without him.

Snyder absolutely “grounded” Superman in the WORST traits of humanity - fear, paranoia, cynicism, distrust, self-interest, alienation, self-loathing, etc. Yes, we all feel these things. Yes, the world would probably not quickly accept a god-like being in our midst. That’s FINE... if it became an arc to overcome. If, through his good nature, his kindness, his HUMANITY, he could turn the tide of the world in his favor.

I’ve read the interviews with Zack Snyder. He’s not doing that. He’s not making some deeper commentary about him. He looks at Superman being disconnected from the human race, of being arrogant and violent, of being cold and distant, of being unrelatable and even a bully, of being self-centered and morose and angsty, and he says that, no, those other versions are too silly; THIS is the correct Superman. This is right. This is how he SHOULD be.

He legitimately believes Superman should willfully take lives. That he should let his father die to protect his own selfish secrets. That he should consider letting children die to keep his security. Because Zack Snyder himself is an objectivist, one that is passionately in love with the harsher and more cynical works of Watchmen (another film he mimicked from page to screen but failed to actually comprehend the deeper meaning of). He outright stated in those interviews he wants comics like Superman and Batman to just simply be Watchmen - for Superman to be the unrelatable Dr. Manhattan, for Batman to be the brutal killer that Rorschach was - and that society should never thank them but fear them and distrust them. There is no “winning” he says, and there is no such thing as real “heroes”. He views Superman’s entire existence as something that causes mass death and destruction and says that in the real world, Superman wouldn’t “save” Metropolis; he’d merely lower the body count.

I have no problem with a Superman who kills or sucks at his job or a world where heroes suck and everyone hates them and nobody can be happy and thousands of people die left and right. . . so long as the people behind it understand that it is a SUBVERSION of the natural state of the character, to make a commentary on it that ultimately is used as a mirror to showcase why the traditional version that has stood the test of time is still revered for NOT succumbing to misery, despair, and self-loathing. But every single interview I’ve read from the crew responsible instead paints a creative force that openly RESENTS the Superman of old, that views “old-fashioned” views such as mercy, kindness, and compassion as fallacies and weakness, and to go a step further and even insist that anyone who likes those portrayals “aren’t really Superman fans” (to paraphrase his own words).

When Zack Snyder takes away everything that made Superman the character he was - his moral compass, his ethics, his codes of conduct, truth, justice, and the American way - and renders him just a terrifying alien force of nature, you rob him of the things that made him unique, because there are DOZENS of violent, superpowered beings that share Superman’s look and powers - Sentry, Supreme, Prime, Apollo, Hyperion, Ultraman, etc. - and without the moral center that made him the hero OTHER heroes aspired to be, Superman just becomes another generic, violent guy who can fly and punch guys to death.

Mark Waid put it best in Kingdom Come. This is what happens when you make the Super more important than the Man.

Just wanted to comment on a couple of things regarding Man of Steel.

Superman couldn't "lure" Zod away from the city because Zod wouldn't have followed.

Zod didn't care about fighting Kal-El, he wanted to punish him by killing as many people as possible. There is no luring away in this situation.

And Superman did save the day, the entire planet actually, in Man of Steel by stoping the world engine that was in the process of .... destroying the world.

 

[TravisR]

And Superman did save the day, the entire planet actually, in Man of Steel by stoping the world engine that was in the process of .... destroying the world.

Not to mention that he killed someone that would have been a global threat as long as he lived. There was no jail to securely hold Zod so killing him was the only way for Superman to protect people. I would would say that Zach Snyder came up with the idea of Superman killing the bad guy because he thought it was "cool" & "dark" and that that's lame but given the situation in the movie, Superman 100% made the right decision to kill Zod. Anything less could have easily resulted in the deaths of a massive amount of people at any time in the future.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Not to mention that he killed someone that would have been a global threat as long as he lived. There was no jail to securely hold Zod so killing him was the only way for Superman to protect people. I would would say that Zach Snyder came up with the idea of Superman killing the bad guy because he thought it was "cool" & "dark" and that that's lame but given the situation in the movie, Superman 100% made the right decision to kill Zod. Anything less could have easily resulted in the deaths of a massive amount of people at any time in the future.

I think my issue with how that movie presents that scene is that it's set up so that Superman kills Zod to save that one family, not to ensure the safety of all mankind. If it's about making the planet safe, there's a very reasonable argument to be made for Superman doing the "right" thing, as much as I personally hate the brutality of it. But the scene doesn't present it as being Superman killing Zod to save the planet; the scene presents it as Superman killing Zod to save a single family. A single family, who, frankly, could have run out of the direction of Zod's heat vision, or who Superman could have moved out of the way. It's badly staged, because it gives the appearance that Superman didn't 100% have to do what he did. I think the filmmakers intended it to come across that he literally had no choice and had a split second to make a decision to save the family, but it doesn't play that way for me onscreen.

I had a similar staging issue with the end of BvS:

Spoiler

Superman's death in the final battle just seems completely unnecessary to me, based on how the fight scene is staged. Like MoS, I believe the filmmakers intended to convey that the only way to stop Doomsday was for Superman to sacrifice himself, but to me, it plays like a dumb death because I can see other ways out of the problem. Starting with the fact that Superman is weakened by holding the kryptonite spear. But there's no reason he has to be the one holding it. Why doesn't he simply swap with Wonder Woman, so that he's holding the lasso, and she's wielding the spear? Or have Batman hold the lasso or wield the spear? Wonder Woman seems the better option because of her powers, of course. But they make no attempt to do that. It didn't feel like an honest, necessary death for Superman. It felt like a contrivance. If it had been staged better, it might have been easier for me to accept. As it's presented in the movie, there seemed a bunch of alternate ways to defeat the bad guy without a good guy having to die. There even could have been an opportunity to fix it with writing. Let Superman have a few lines about how he feels it's his responsibility to be the one to stop Doomsday. "When my father sent me to this world, he didn't know that his enemies would follow me, and now their sins have become Earth's suffering. I have to stop it, no matter the cost." But they don't even do that much. So its a cool visual, but not one that seems very motivated or logical in terms of the world we're in. When you kill off characters in deaths that seem unnecessary or not totally logical in the context of the abilities of those heroes, it cheapens the whole thing for me.

 

[TravisR]

^ I can see your point (especially about the brutality with a character like Superman) but however it's presented, it's fair to look at the bigger picture and see the family as a stand-in for the billions of people that Zod will kill when he gets a chance.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

^ I can see your point (especially about the brutality with a character like Superman) but however it's presented, it's fair to look at the bigger picture and see the family as a stand-in for the billions of people that Zod will kill when he gets a chance.

I wish they would have better spelled it out. They were able to use dialogue to explain some things really well (just maybe a little too late), for instance, after Superman destroys the World Engine, Zod has a great speech about how his one purpose in life was to protect Krypton, and how that was the motivation and driving factor behind everything he did. I wish they could have given him that speech earlier in the film instead of after the evil plot has been foiled, when the information could have better shaped our impressions of the character and the action onscreen, but the speech was well-done when it finally happened.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Zod pretty much says that the family in front of him is representative of what he'll do to every human on the planet. "If you love these people so much, you can mourn for them." Superman has no idea who these random people are, so Zod clearly means "these people" = all people, not the specific people in front of him. This is after specifically telling Superman that his whole intention from this moment forward is to kill everyone.

I don't see how they could spell it out much more plainly.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Zod pretty much says that the family in front of him is representative of what he'll do to every human on the planet. "If you love these people so much, you can mourn for them." Superman has no idea who these random people are, so Zod clearly means "these people" = all people, not the specific people in front of him. This is after specifically telling Superman that his whole intention from this moment forward is to kill everyone.

I don't see how they could spell it out much more plainly.

The dialogue wasn't my issue with that scene. Like I said, the staging of the scene made it seem that those random people could have easily gotten out of the way of Zod's heat vision. The staging made it appear that they could have run in another direction, or that Superman could have gotten in between them, pushed Zod out of the way, or any number of other solutions. The subtext to the writing might be that that this was the climactic moment of their battle and he has no other choice; the visuals in the film presented other choices. On paper, the moment might have worked for me, but the way it was staged was not effective in my opinion.

 

[Brandon Conway]

I don't know. I think 99% of people do exactly what that family does, which is to not run towards the heat beam being shot at you. They can't go back, or to their right (beams) or to the left (blocked off by debris), and going forward is also death (beams). Seems rather natural to me.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don't know. I think 99% of people do exactly what that family does, which is to not run towards the heat beam being shot at you. They can't go back, or to their right (beams) or to the left (blocked off by debris), and going forward is also death (beams). Seems rather natural to me.

I think we can just agree to disagree on this point - it doesn't seem like I'm going to change your mind, nor you mine, and that's okay

The way it was staged was not effective to me, but it worked for others. (To me, it looked like they had more movement options than you wrote. Did you see the movie in 2D or 3D? I've only seen it in 3D, maybe the 3D conversion is exaggerating the spatial layout?) Man Of Steel is a movie I wanted to love and expected to love, and I didn't come into it with an agenda. I didn't sit in the theater with the anticipation of picking it apart. It was more that I just wasn't able to connect with it, and there were things in the movie that I just didn't believe, and this was one of those moments. The staging of the scene was unbelievable to me. I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't hate watching the movie and looking for things that didn't work; this was just my natural reaction to the moment. I had the exact same feeling during the climax of BvS, as I described in my earlier post. I wish these things didn't stick out to me like they do and that I could just enjoy the movie as it is. There is enough about Man Of Steel that I do enjoy that I'm glad I own it, and will continue to revisit it, just not as often as some other movies I like more.

 

[TheBat]

when man of steel was released. I saw it first in 3d. there was something wrong with the 3d part of it. color scheme or something. I did not like it. I saw it in 2d and it was night and day difference. I would highly recommend the 2d of man of steel. the 3d on batman vs superman was much better.

Jacob

 

[Josh Steinberg]

when man of steel was released. I saw it first in 3d. there was something wrong with the 3d part of it. color scheme or something. I did not like it. I saw it in 2d and it was night and day difference. I would highly recommend the 2d of man of steel. the 3d on batman vs superman was much better.

Jacob

I appreciate the recommendation but will probably not do so. I generally don't watch 3D movies in 2D if at all possible, and when I'm forced to, if I see the 2D version after seeing the 3D version, it feels like something is missing. The color scheme on the 3D version I saw (both in theaters and at home) seemed to match the color scheme as seen in 2D trailers and clips. There might have been an issue at the specific theater that was showing it that caused a problem with the colors for your viewing.

As for BvS, I actually was not able to see that in 3D. I had a tough call to make, because the IMAX theater near me showing the movie at its OAR of 1.44:1 was only showing it in 2D. So I had to pick between OAR 1.44:1 in 2D, or non-OAR 2.35:1 in 3D. I went with the original aspect ratio in 2D. But I have the 3D Blu-ray pre-ordered, so I'll get to see it in 3D at home (since it won't be OAR one way or the other).

 

[TheBat]

I appreciate the recommendation but will probably not do so. I generally don't watch 3D movies in 2D if at all possible, and when I'm forced to, if I see the 2D version after seeing the 3D version, it feels like something is missing. The color scheme on the 3D version I saw (both in theaters and at home) seemed to match the color scheme as seen in 2D trailers and clips. There might have been an issue at the specific theater that was showing it that caused a problem with the colors for your viewing.

As for BvS, I actually was not able to see that in 3D. I had a tough call to make, because the IMAX theater near me showing the movie at its OAR of 1.44:1 was only showing it in 2D. So I had to pick between OAR 1.44:1 in 2D, or non-OAR 2.35:1 in 3D. I went with the original aspect ratio in 2D. But I have the 3D Blu-ray pre-ordered, so I'll get to see it in 3D at home (since it won't be OAR one way or the other).

I saw batman vs superman. in 2d with atmos, 3d/dbox and 2d imax in 1.44.
that imax was huge. saw it at the san jose tech imax. it was awesome.
I wonder if they will show the imax 70mm on blu ray? I am interested in the ultimate edition.

there are only a few movies that I have seen in 3d only.
tron legacy and gravity. I mostly watch 2d movies. I had a chance to see mad max 4 in 3d/dbox. that was awesome.

Jacob