Thanks Longo!

So I saw it again today, the final cut and I take everything back that I said about it. Seeing the finished version with the score and the sound mix this is an unrelenting film from beginning to end. It's like Snyder saw all the complaints and said "Fuck everyone! I'm putting in even more destruction and mayhem".

Batman's theme is so badly bombastic, that I was hoping they wouldn't play it whenever he popped up on screen. Good news is Ben as Bats/Bruce is incredible.

Jesse is playing Lex like Eddie Redmaye in Jupiter Ascending. Add to that his theme is awful. Lex's plans are so convoluted and hinges on so many things coming together PERFECTLY.

And all the "surprises" are in the title of the fucking movie sadly. They're done so sloppy and that's putting it nicely.

I'll post more in the morning I'm tired. Just know I walked out with a headache as this was on the AMC Prime screen.

This a movie that should not be the foundation of a whole cinematic universe. In fact, this the type of shit you build up to three or four movies in.

I'll be back in the morning.

.
.
.

<<<--- FREE RGIII --->>>

...

my thoughts,

peace.

At least I can chalk up a PTP W for being the only one who was not only cool with him being cast for the role but actually requested him specifically. I'd rather have a dope movie but I'll settle for that lol.

As an aside I loved MOS. Does that help this movie at all for those of us who genuinely love that one?

But, I will say that a majority of MoS fans will lose their shit over DoJ.

I have a soft spot for Affleck and I'm hoping he does a good Batman.

It's clear that Snyder is a gifted visualist but as a storyteller he sucks.

It's also clear that he fundamentally does not understand these characters. Batman is asshole. And one who kills. Superman is not to likable either. To be honest Superman kinda shuffles around scene to scene brooding that the world hates him without giving us, the audience, any real emotion to convey his thoughts.

Speaking of a mopey Superman, can we please for fucks sake have him smile when he rescues a girl from burning building.

The conflict between Batman and Superman feels so forced and not at all genuine. As a matter of fact, Batman makes a lot of bush-league mistakes.

Another problem is this is doing not enough and too much at the same time:

It's a Man of Steel sequel

A Batman movie

A Justice League set up (makes Iron Man 2 look like a work of art by comparison).

And just for shits and giggles the climax is from a popular Superman story that the way it's executed here feels like an afterthought.

Too add to that Doomsday looks like a shit I took 2 days ago. It's bad, bad CG work with no imagination to the design. It's a shame they blew their load on him so early and this badly.

I'll have some more thoughts later today.

you've posted twice about how bad it is and you're saying you've got more? Whew this must blow. I might go hate watch this.

I suppose we could argue that the core versions of Batman don’t, but I’m actually ready for a screen version who does.

I have a feeling I won’t hate this as much as you do but some of it does sound like the worst possible outcome based on the number of elements crammed in.

Talked again to my co-workers about it and while one hated it and one thought it was not at all good but not terrible, they maintain that Batman is great and there are a handful of scenes that are top notch, which may be enough for many audience members.

They did echo a lot of Bwood's complaints, especially how Superman was just kind of there. There's the Senate hearing scene that has been in all of the ads, which you'd think would make for a great monologue or something but Supes doesn't speak at all. It sounds like the basically punted on Superman in order to fit everything else in.

Go in with low expectations and hoping for the best from Bats, readied the stupidest of motivations for every plot point, and I think you'll be happy enough. I'm very interested in the Cinemascore; I could see it doing better with the general public than critics. But maybe not.

Snyder is basically Michael Bay; expect some amazing visuals and some laughably bad storytelling. Hollywood needs another Don Simpson, in terms of a big budget exec who gives a shit about story. (Simpson-Bruckheimer >>>> Bruck alone.)

Ben was my #1 pick to play Batman but also to write and direct the entire thing and lead the charge for the JLU going forward.

I read back through our old exchange about him in the previous post and I wonder how involved he wound up in the creative process. I read rumors that he actually wound up doing some rewrites but I think he denied that. He’s a WB guy so I can see him not wanting to throw Zach or Goyer under the bus like that but who knows.

I was also one of the few who really championed the approach taken in MOS and it does appear that they built on that foundation by dealing with the aftermath BUT if Superman is essentially a background player in this then that hurts MOS if you ask me. I loved the idea of Clark struggling with his power, his place in this world and making a shit ton of mistakes in his first real test as a hero. The problem is THIS movie needs to make good on that in terms of his development and I’m not reading any of that at all.

I haven’t seen it yet but frankly I’m a little pissed at the mere idea that this movie might actually manage to retroactively fuck up a movie I love.

Which might be why it swung more towards Batman than Superman. Supposedly Affleck and Terrio are going to head up the Batman standalone film but Affleck just said there needs to be more time between Nolan's Batman and another Batman standalone.

I'm happy that Affleck seems to have knocked it out of the park. He's just a guy who takes me out of films and I'm not sure why.

He looks like the sort of privileged date raping frat boy with rich parents who gets handed nepotism fueled opportunities like breath mints that most of us love to hate. He’s the guy on all the SVU episodes who heads up that high school club that tracks all the virgins they bang. Like, he calls his dad “father” and has talked down to maids an nannies and landscapers since he was four years old.

Something about O’Banion in Dazed and Confused seems natural for him.

Between that and his earlier run of weak movies (Daredevil, Paycheck), horrendous flops (Gigli) and shit like Bennifer and the fact that he ultimately married Jennifer Garner in the “Well That Figures” hollywood marriage of the decade I’d say there’s some elements of this that creep into people’s general perception of him as an actor. He doesn’t have the outsized, old school charm and swagger of Clooney, Pitt, or Cruise that make even the most macho, consciously hetero male swoon in admiration and he doesn’t have the boyishly unassuming, small town likability of his BFF.

I think there are a lot of factors that play into so many people just flat out disliking him. Personally I think he’s got serious chops in multiple facets of filmmaking and he had a nice little run until that bullshit with Timberlake.

Does Zack Snyder pose serious threat to destroying all of WB & DC's best laid plans?

I guess "Suicide Squad" is still coming, but does this really kill Wonder Woman/Aquaman/future Superman films?

the money this makes will be reason enough to continue. Folk greedy, mayne.

Most critics and people I know who've seen it are fans of Batfleck and think Wonder Woman came across good enough that they're interested in a standalone of hers. Fans of the film will want to see their films; critics will want to see the characters freed from Zack Snyder.

Superman takes the biggest hit.

I can’t imagine he’ll be tapped again for Batman. Hopefully they let Ben run the show for JL and Batman.

>Hopefully they let Ben run the show for JL and Batman.


JL starts shooting in a couple weeks, so as of now WB is pushing ahead with Snyder at the helm of that franchise.

http://news.yahoo.com/zack-snyder-teases-intense-gigantic-seven-164828113.html?nf=1


Affleck's involvement on the Batman solo film/franchise has not been confirmed but the rumor is that he is working on the script with Geoff Johns and will direct as well.

http://movieweb.com/batman-solo-movie-ben-affleck-director-writer/

At least not under this current regime.

I'd imagine if this meets or exceeds expectations (400+ mil domestic, a billion worldwide-- the latter of which is more doable than the former, imo), everything will proceed according to plan, regardless of the critical or even audience response. If it comes in below expectations, I'd imagine WB hands the reins to Affleck, pronto.

-Hire people who care and understand the characters, but bring a unique vision to it. Guardians and Winter Solider are perfect example of how to do different tones in the same universe and make them work.

-Get rid of Zack Snyder. Period.

-Lighten the tone of the films. Jesus Christ, let's have fun with the next Superman movie and make sure to get a director who can get a decent performance out of Henry Cavill. Let's be real as great as those Nolan Batman films were, they changed and influenced the game in the exact wrong ways. Enough grimdark shit.

-Push back the Justice League films and continue developing this universe.

...that if this comes in below expectations, it kills Geoff Johns involvement too. Which would suck, because he's the guy who does understand these characters, and has been re-positioning the DC character in the comic books to more "cinematically adaptable" since like 2003.

As long as he sticks around, I figure there's going to be some hope.

EDIT: This also serves as a response to Cold Truth and Longo.

Also, assuming the critical response holds relatively steady, I disagree slightly with Frank in that if this thing succeeds financially it will do so in spite of generally negative press and unless it really kills domestically I think Snyder stands a good chance of getting the boot. I can’t imagine they’re willing to take the same tact Paramount has taken with Bay and Transformers/Turtles, though I could be wrong.
I imagine there’s more than a little envy of the critical success and cache built by Marvel, who has built themselves into a good old fashioned American institution and the mere announcement of a project generally elicits a response of “whatever, just take my money” from most people.

Further, WB isn’t far removed from another money machine with similar prestige-so far as big budget tent pole blockbusters go, that is- with Harry Potter. There’s something to be said for having commercial success and eating critical raves too, because that combination is how you manage to get 15 films deep with fans at a fever pitch for the next round.

Otherwise you become Sony and Spiderman.

I have to believe Warner Bros. is watching all this with a very critical eye.

And him and Snyder (and Goyer) have been positioned as the guys who in charge of DC cinematic universe. He mostly does TV stuff, but he's already been tabbed to work with Affleck on the next Batman film and is one of the guys in charge of the Aquaman film.

So, like if this a massive flop (which it won't be, but whatever), I worry that WB says, "Well, obviously this whole vision isn't going to work" and cuts bait on all three.

I doubt it will happen, but I still worry.

At least that's what I heard. Anything less than $800 overseas and they said that's a HUGE disappointment.

From what I understand the budget is $215 million with an additional $200 million for marketing. That's a $415 million budget. Which also explains why they been able to advertise this thing to death ever since it was announced to the point where after this weekend, I don't ever want to hear about it again.

>Let's be
>real as great as those Nolan Batman films were, they changed
>and influenced the game in the exact wrong ways. Enough
>grimdark shit.

oh really?

The most uninspiring, cheesy, schlocky comicbook hero just doesn't make for compelling movie material in the 21st century.

I think lighten the tone a bit and you'd have a great place to start. If anything starring looking at Superman: The Animated Series for inspiration.

Find a director and write who truly loves the character.

They could literally film best scenes from Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman and they would be straight.

>They could literally film best scenes from Grant Morrison's
>All-Star Superman and they would be straight.

Or they could adapt "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" a story explicitly about whether or not Superman's more "wholesome" methods are out of touch.

who never fights other Gods in his films.

his archvillain are a mineral and a businessman.

Its like Zeus vs the accountant

w

i've had enough of marvel's humor for kids.

i want my comic book movies to look different from each other...this grimdark universe is perfectly fine

Almost anyone for the past 3 years who haven't said anything remotely short of praise for this movie was a target of a vicious campagin by the DC fans. Myself included.

I'm glad you enjoyed the movie, but c'mon man grow the fuck up. Are you 15?

this is "worse than the schumacher movies combined" any better?

>this is "worse than the schumacher movies combined" any
>better?

Seriously though, some are saying exactly that. This movie was not a great film, but it was highly entertaining and enjoyable. As it stands, "Superman Returns" is ranking at 76% on Rotten Tomatoes when that was a total fail and boring beyond belief. B"atman v Superman" does not deserve to be rated as low as it is now, at 31%. The movie did suffer from some pacing issues and a few scenes were repetitive. But there are so many positive aspects and holy shit moments to this movie that critics don't seem to understand. If anything, one can knock Snyder for being such a fan, that he forgot that some parts were inaccessible to the non-DC fan. As for the lack of humor, I like the dark aspect personally. It could stand to get a little lighter, but I'm over the goof ball days of Hackman's version of Lex.

why would anything change?

i'm sure they would love the critical acclaim the mcu gets, but that's probably not driving any decisions

I really like the "Knightmare" sequence. It's honestly the best scene in the film. Too bad it has no bearing really on the overall plot. Same with the dream that immediately follows it, which is so poorly done that 90% of most audiences won't understand what transpired. The hero featured in the 2nd dream sequences is wearing such a piss poor suit, that I'm still scratching my head to the point of blisters.

I also really like the last Senate sequence that's featured in the trailers. It has great writing and tension that the rest of the film sorely lacks (Mostly this movie is dour and boring as fuck). I'm going to go deeper later in this post for those trying to avoid spoilers.

Jeremy Irons is a GREAT Alfred Pennyworth. He has a great wit and sensible knowledge that brings much to the table including great chemistry with Ben Affleck. Alfred makes a great sidekick assisting Bruce from the Batcave. I'd believe that if Alfred is out with Batman he'd be able to hold his own in those fights.

God bless the person who walks out of this shit wanting to see the 30 minute longer R-Rated (A movie with Superman and Wonder Woman should not be R in any shape or form, but Snyder is gonna continue his fuckery) Director's Cut. This shit is already 20 minutes too long and would have greatly benefited with a few less characters and more simplification of the plot overall.

Keep in mind that Zack has gone on record to say that they didn't come up with idea until 2 or 3 days before it was announced at Comic Con. Which explains alot.

SPOILERS!!!

As I said the last Senate scene is great. It's just too bad Lex decides to kill his assistant Mercy Graves. For those familiar with the comics, Mercy would always beat the shit out people trying to attack Lex and take part in his plans. Here, she relegated to doing absolutely nothing. And worse off is the decision to kill her. Like in the first season of Daredevil that eventually came back to bite them in the ass by having Karen filling in Ben Urich's role by becoming a reporter despite having no writing skills and building to that. I'm afraid this might come back to bite them in the ass as well.

Honestly, I'd scrap Goyer before Snyder.

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I used to love "JSA" Goyer, but he's been horrible in the movie 'verse......

>I really like the "Knightmare" sequence. It's honestly the
>best scene in the film. Too bad it has no bearing really on
>the overall plot.

first wrong, it's completely unnecessary, but uhh yeah it does have bearing in the plot in terms its giving the audience insight into the fear the character has of Sups, but that's already established so it was unneeded

Same with the dream that immediately follows
>it, which is so poorly done that 90% of most audiences won't
>understand what transpired. The hero featured in the 2nd dream
>sequences is wearing such a piss poor suit, that I'm still
>scratching my head to the point of blisters.
>
what just say it. stay using no spoiler language

>I also really like the last Senate sequence that's featured in
>the trailers. It has great writing and tension that the rest
>of the film sorely lacks (Mostly this movie is dour and boring
>as fuck). I'm going to go deeper later in this post for those
>trying to avoid spoilers.
>
you thought this shit was boring? i think you just want those corny jokes Marvel litters all in the films for levity, but that's not this

>Jeremy Irons is a GREAT Alfred Pennyworth. He has a great wit
>and sensible knowledge that brings much to the table including
>great chemistry with Ben Affleck. Alfred makes a great
>sidekick assisting Bruce from the Batcave. I'd believe that if
>Alfred is out with Batman he'd be able to hold his own in
>those fights.
>

>SPOILERS!!!
>
>As I said the last Senate scene is great. It's just too bad
>Lex decides to kill his assistant Mercy Graves. For those
>familiar with the comics, Mercy would always beat the shit out
>people trying to attack Lex and take part in his plans. Here,
>she relegated to doing absolutely nothing. And worse off is
>the decision to kill her. Like in the first season of
>Daredevil that eventually came back to bite them in the ass by
>having Karen filling in Ben Urich's role by becoming a
>reporter despite having no writing skills and building to
>that. I'm afraid this might come back to bite them in the ass
>as well.

agreed. can't argue that

>>I really like the "Knightmare" sequence. It's honestly the
>>best scene in the film. Too bad it has no bearing really on
>>the overall plot.
>
>first wrong, it's completely unnecessary, but uhh yeah it does
>have bearing in the plot in terms its giving the audience
>insight into the fear the character has of Sups, but that's
>already established so it was unneeded

I'm so confused. Are you agreeing with me or not?

>
> Same with the dream that immediately follows
>>it, which is so poorly done that 90% of most audiences won't
>>understand what transpired. The hero featured in the 2nd
>dream
>>sequences is wearing such a piss poor suit, that I'm still
>>scratching my head to the point of blisters.
>>
>what just say it. stay using no spoiler language

If I say it's a spoiler, but I guess not since the two reviews I posted below do reveal the identity of the hero in that dream sequence.

And obviously it failed if you're asking who it is.

>
>>I also really like the last Senate sequence that's featured
>in
>>the trailers. It has great writing and tension that the rest
>>of the film sorely lacks (Mostly this movie is dour and
>boring
>>as fuck). I'm going to go deeper later in this post for
>those
>>trying to avoid spoilers.
>>
>you thought this shit was boring? i think you just want those
>corny jokes Marvel litters all in the films for levity, but
>that's not this
>


I wanted to really like this movie. I hope you know it's okay that I hate this and you like it. But tell me where's the narraitve tissue in this film. The first hour is bunch of random scenes. Lex's plan was awful and that's what most of the plot was hinged on. YUCK!!!

But since you like the movie please, please answer these questions:

10 Questions BATMAN V SUPERMAN Left Me Asking
Help me understand this movie.

By Devin Faraci Mar. 24, 2016

Plot holes on their own are not interesting. Most movies have leaps or lapses in logic, and when the film is otherwise entertaining, diverting and well-made you barely notice them. The momentum of a well-told story is able to get you over these small bumps.

But when a movie is poorly made, when the script is shoddy, when the characters lack motivation - all of these things, taken in totality, can outline the failures of a film in a very specific, tactile way. The failure of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is monumental, but it is also granular. It isn't that there's one particular thing wrong with the movie, it's that many things are wrong in many different ways. Some of those things are technical - the editing of the first half of the film is very bad, in an almost objective way - and some of these things are bigger picture, like mismanagement of tone or mutilating of characters. But when it comes to storytelling, BvS fails on multiple levels in many small ways, from lazy story construction to characters whose behavior makes no sense to beats that occur without cause and that are seemingly disconnected from the larger story.

Below are ten questions the film left me asking that outline the shape of some of the storytelling failure on display. There are major spoilers ahead. Some of these questions may be answerable, and not just in an apologetics way (ie, any explanation that begins "Maybe" is an apologia drawing from outside the text to fill gaps in the text), but I suspect most are not. At any rate, consider the comment thread below your spoiler-heavy post-release discussion zone.

Why didn’t Superman clean up the World Engine?
One of the most surprising things we learn in Batman v Superman is that the Indian Ocean World Engine is… just sitting in the Indian Ocean. 18 months after destroying, it’s just sitting there. It’s hard to imagine that a giant alien spaceship, powered by god-knows-what that is leaking into the water, is good for the local ecosystem. And it’s hard to imagine that Superman believes leaving the alien tech to be scavenged by just anybody is a very good idea. So why doesn’t he clean it up? Hell, if he had cleaned it up the whole movie might not happen, since the Kryptonite would never have been an issue.

Why is Lex Luthor equipping his death squads with ‘experimental bullets’?
Lex has an overly complex and largely nonsensical plan to lure Superman into action in Africa, and he would have gotten away with it, too… if it wasn’t for the experimental bullets with which he equipped his mercenaries. What? Why would he do that? Even setting aside the fact that he basically left behind bullets that he all but personally signed, why go to the expense? These guys were never supposed to be in contact with Superman anyway, as if the bullets would even have stopped him. And don’t get me started on the fact that Jimmy Olsen, war atrocity victim, has a giant beeping tracking device in his camera like this was a 1960s spy caper.

Why does anyone think Superman shot a whole bunch of people in Africa?
Lex’s plan involves creating an international incident by having Superman show up in this African village. For one thing, why would he expect that to even work? But let’s assume he pulls enough strings to make it happen - he bribes UN officials, he complains to senators, he hires ‘crisis actors’ to give testimony - why the hell would anyone think Superman shot all these guys? They’re all clearly shot dead. Superman, while no stranger to cold-blooded murder, definitely doesn’t need to use a gun to get the job done. No one even questions this? Like, it’s quite clear Superman had nothing to do with shooting a whole bunch of people.

Why does Lex Luthor blow up the Senate hearing and kill his assistant?
At least I think Mercy Graves is killed in the explosion. It’s hard to be sure, but she seems to disappear out of the film after that sequence.

At any rate, the important question is “What does Lex hope to gain by blowing the place up?” He already has the kryptonite in the country, so he doesn’t need to eliminate Senator Jar of Piss immediately or in a particularly grand manner. And everybody knows it was a suicide bombing as soon as it happens - it isn’t like people believe Superman went berserk in the Senate hearing. I’m not even sure why the bombing would turn public sentiment THAT starkly against Superman, which I guess is what Lex was trying to do? I’m not entirely sure what the point of THAT would be, either.

Why does Superman stop Batman in the middle of clearly chasing bad guys and let the bad guys get away?
As Batman is about to get the kryptonite from Lex’s goons Superman shows up, totals the Batmobile, threatens Batman and then flies away. Is Superman stupid? Did he not notice the running gun battle raging around him? Even if he thinks Batman is a menace he must understand the other dudes are also menaces, as they are firing automatic weapons. And yet Superman is way more concerned with chastising Batman. Again, the whole movie could have been wrapped up faster if Superman had stopped Lex’s goons and taken the kryptonite himself and thrown it into the sun or something.

Why is the Knightmare in this movie at all?
I know that BvS is setting up future films in the DC movieverse, but this sequence is so egregiously out of place and has so little bearing on the events of the film that its inclusion is nonsensical and pointless. It also makes no sense - Flash travels back in time to warn Batman in a dream? Huh?

Flash is hard to hear in this sequence, but he warns Batman that he was right all along, and that if Lois dies Superman goes bad. But that doesn’t come into play in the film ever; Batman never is concerned about Lois’ safety - he doesn’t even know she’s ever in danger. Batman never brings the incident up again. It has no impact on the story at all. If you removed it from the film nothing would change beyond the running time.

Why does Superman fight Batman if he doesn’t want to fight Batman?
Superman goes to Gotham to get Batman to help him rescue Martha. I’m not entirely sure what he thinks Batman can do that he, a man with powers of flight, super speed, X-ray vision and super-hearing can’t, but that’s the plan. The problem is that Batman isn’t there to talk - he’s there to fight.

So why does Superman fight him? Why does he keep advancing towards him after he sets off the first trap? Why does he flick him across the lot where they meet? Why throw Batman? Superman could just hold Batman down if he needed to and speak to him. Why is Superman such an asshole?

Addendum: why does Clark Kent follow Bruce Wayne downstairs at the Luthor fundraiser if he has X-ray vision and could watch him from anywhere in the house?

Why does Lois Lane go back for the spear?
I mean, I know why they need the spear, but how does Lois know that? What tells her that Doomsday is Kryptonian? How does she possibly know that the weapon will now be needed?

Addendum: why does Batman lead Doomsday to Gotham? Why not just get the spear and come back to the uninhabited Stryker’s Island, where Doomsday can shoot off his undefined energy powers to his heart’s content? It's especially weird that Batman draws Doomsday to Gotham when his entire story begins with being angry at Superman fighting a massive battle among civilians.

Why does Lex Luthor create Doomsday, and why does he put his blood in the Matrix?
Lex Luthor has little to no motivation beyond the fact that Lex Luthor always hates Superman in all media. I can, grudgingly, accept that. What I can’t wrap my head around is why this Lex Luthor would make an unstoppable killing machine and unleash it on the world. What’s his endgame in this scenario? What does tech billionaire Lex Luthor hope to gain from destroying Metropolis and who knows what else?

Furthermore - why does he put his blood in the Matrix with Zod’s body? Humans, last I checked, didn’t have any special powers that you might want to add to a Kryptonian’s already impressive array of abilities. Is this just Luthor homaging the time the members of the band KISS put their blood into the ink of their Marvel comic book?

Why didn’t Wonder Woman kill Doomsday?
In a moment of heroic self-sacrifice Superman picks up the spear (of destiny. Yay, another shitty Christ allusion for a character who isn’t Christlike) and flies it right into the heart of Doomsday. Weakened, Superman is impaled on Doomsday’s spike, and he pulls himself further up the spike in order to drive the spear into the beast’s heart. Both die.

But they didn’t have to, at least not as presented in the film. Wonder Woman could have done it, or at least given it a shot. We saw that she could take a full blast from Doomsday and get up smiling, so why not let the person who will not be automatically weakened by proximity to the weapon give it a try? Instead she stands around watching, her lasso fairly ineffectual on Doomsday who manages to still impale Superman.

In the original Death of Superman story all of the other heroes were defeated by Doomsday, leaving Superman and the behemoth alone to go toe-to-toe in an epic slugfest where they basically beat each other to death. Superman had no other option but to take it all the way - there was no one left to help him. In BvS an unwounded Wonder Woman stands to the side gawking as Superman pointlessly gives up his life.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/03/24/10-questions-batman-v-superman-left-me-asking

>>>I really like the "Knightmare" sequence. It's honestly the
>>>best scene in the film. Too bad it has no bearing really on
>>>the overall plot.
>>
>>first wrong, it's completely unnecessary, but uhh yeah it
>does
>>have bearing in the plot in terms its giving the audience
>>insight into the fear the character has of Sups, but that's
>>already established so it was unneeded
>
>I'm so confused. Are you agreeing with me or not?
>

both. it was a dope scene (not the best tho); but I am saying it had bearing: it was articulating Bat's fears

>>
>> Same with the dream that immediately follows
>>>it, which is so poorly done that 90% of most audiences
>won't
>>>understand what transpired. The hero featured in the 2nd
>>dream
>>>sequences is wearing such a piss poor suit, that I'm still
>>>scratching my head to the point of blisters.
>>>
>>what just say it. stay using no spoiler language
>
>If I say it's a spoiler, but I guess not since the two reviews
>I posted below do reveal the identity of the hero in that
>dream sequence.
>And obviously it failed if you're asking who it is.
>
breh, i knew it was the Flash, but your coded language had me lost as to what scene you was talkin' about

>>
>>>I also really like the last Senate sequence that's featured
>>in
>>>the trailers. It has great writing and tension that the
>rest
>>>of the film sorely lacks (Mostly this movie is dour and
>>boring
>>>as fuck). I'm going to go deeper later in this post for
>>those
>>>trying to avoid spoilers.
>>>
>>you thought this shit was boring? i think you just want
>those
>>corny jokes Marvel litters all in the films for levity, but
>>that's not this
>>

>I wanted to really like this movie. I hope you know it's okay
>that I hate this and you like it. But tell me where's the
>narraitve tissue in this film. The first hour is bunch of
>random scenes. Lex's plan was awful and that's what most of
>the plot was hinged on. YUCK!!!
>
my G you better than this. you one of the last one's to pull the "you know I can hate it and you can like it" out the bag. full disclosure. Synder sucks. I hate most of his movies. Sups and this are not one's i hate tho. yes I hated 300. at best Synder is a mediocre director, which means he can make an enjoyable film, like this one

to your question the narrative tissue: it's easy:
-forlorn hyper masculine 1 percenter is critical of the new advanced-humanoid species "protecting his planet" and is thinking of ways to stop him

-advanced-humanoid species is growing tired of a planet that mistakes his idea of good as fascism. all advanced-humanoid species wants to do is fuck his bella con el pelo rojo

-in between them is a possibly big-brained techy hipster-dweed with a overly convoluted plan to end both of them

>>>>I really like the "Knightmare" sequence. It's honestly
>the
>>>>best scene in the film. Too bad it has no bearing really
>on
>>>>the overall plot.
>>>
>>>first wrong, it's completely unnecessary, but uhh yeah it
>>does
>>>have bearing in the plot in terms its giving the audience
>>>insight into the fear the character has of Sups, but that's
>>>already established so it was unneeded
>>
>>I'm so confused. Are you agreeing with me or not?
>>
>
>both. it was a dope scene (not the best tho); but I am saying
>it had bearing: it was articulating Bat's fears

The dream sequences seek to trowel spackling paste over the cracks left in his character’s foundation; on the whole, they can (at best) be considered attractive wastes of time. They always give us more “what he fears” and never any “why he fears it.”

>>>
>>> Same with the dream that immediately follows
>>>>it, which is so poorly done that 90% of most audiences
>>won't
>>>>understand what transpired. The hero featured in the 2nd
>>>dream
>>>>sequences is wearing such a piss poor suit, that I'm still
>>>>scratching my head to the point of blisters.
>>>>
>>>what just say it. stay using no spoiler language
>>
>>If I say it's a spoiler, but I guess not since the two
>reviews
>>I posted below do reveal the identity of the hero in that
>>dream sequence.
>>And obviously it failed if you're asking who it is.
>>
>breh, i knew it was the Flash, but your coded language had me
>lost as to what scene you was talkin' about

Yea, I wasn't trying to reveal the identity of the character.



>
>>>
>>>>I also really like the last Senate sequence that's
>featured
>>>in
>>>>the trailers. It has great writing and tension that the
>>rest
>>>>of the film sorely lacks (Mostly this movie is dour and
>>>boring
>>>>as fuck). I'm going to go deeper later in this post for
>>>those
>>>>trying to avoid spoilers.
>>>>
>>>you thought this shit was boring? i think you just want
>>those
>>>corny jokes Marvel litters all in the films for levity, but
>>>that's not this
>>>
>
>>I wanted to really like this movie. I hope you know it's
>okay
>>that I hate this and you like it. But tell me where's the
>>narraitve tissue in this film. The first hour is bunch of
>>random scenes. Lex's plan was awful and that's what most of
>>the plot was hinged on. YUCK!!!
>>
>my G you better than this. you one of the last one's to pull
>the "you know I can hate it and you can like it" out the bag.
>full disclosure. Synder sucks. I hate most of his movies. Sups
>and this are not one's i hate tho. yes I hated 300. at best
>Synder is a mediocre director, which means he can make an
>enjoyable film, like this one
>


Dude you like the movie. GREAT!!! I've learned that it's okay love something most people hate. There's stuff to like about this movie, it's just the negative outweighs the good here.

I don't know why you're upset that I don't like this.


>to your question the narrative tissue: it's easy:
>-forlorn hyper masculine 1 percenter is critical of the new
>advanced-humanoid species "protecting his planet" and is
>thinking of ways to stop him
>
>-advanced-humanoid species is growing tired of a planet that
>mistakes his idea of good as fascism. all advanced-humanoid
>species wants to do is fuck his bella con el pelo rojo
>
>-in between them is a possibly big-brained techy hipster-dweed
>with a overly convoluted plan to end both of them
>
>

Why couldn't they make that simpler then? It was so much shit that muddled all that.

>The dream sequences seek to trowel spackling paste over the
>cracks left in his character’s foundation; on the whole,
>they can (at best) be considered attractive wastes of time.
>They always give us more “what he fears” and never any
>“why he fears it.”
>
it was a wasted scene / waste of time

>>my G you better than this. you one of the last one's to pull
>>the "you know I can hate it and you can like it" out the
>bag.
>>full disclosure. Synder sucks. I hate most of his movies.
>Sups
>>and this are not one's i hate tho. yes I hated 300. at best
>>Synder is a mediocre director, which means he can make an
>>enjoyable film, like this one
>>
>
>Dude you like the movie. GREAT!!! I've learned that it's okay
>love something most people hate. There's stuff to like about
>this movie, it's just the negative outweighs the good here.
>
>I don't know why you're upset that I don't like this.
>
DUDE. that's what I'm saying about you. lol. i don't give a shit you don't like it. after your 45 posts in here i'm wondering why you think we don't get that you don't like it. i'm juss answering your questions
>
>>to your question the narrative tissue: it's easy:
>>-forlorn hyper masculine 1 percenter is critical of the new
>>advanced-humanoid species "protecting his planet" and is
>>thinking of ways to stop him
>>
>>-advanced-humanoid species is growing tired of a planet that
>>mistakes his idea of good as fascism. all advanced-humanoid
>>species wants to do is fuck his bella con el pelo rojo
>>
>>-in between them is a possibly big-brained techy
>hipster-dweed
>>with a overly convoluted plan to end both of them
>>
>>
>
>Why couldn't they make that simpler then? It was so much shit
>that muddled all that.

cause he sucks as a film maker fam. that's why

>By Devin Faraci Mar. 24, 2016

>Why didn’t Superman clean up the World Engine?
>One of the most surprising things we learn in Batman v
>Superman is that the Indian Ocean World Engine is… just
>sitting in the Indian Ocean. 18 months after destroying,
>it’s just sitting there. It’s hard to imagine that a giant
>alien spaceship, powered by god-knows-what that is leaking
>into the water, is good for the local ecosystem. And it’s
>hard to imagine that Superman believes leaving the alien tech
>to be scavenged by just anybody is a very good idea. So why
>doesn’t he clean it up? Hell, if he had cleaned it up the
>whole movie might not happen, since the Kryptonite would never
>have been an issue.
>
Superman is a scientist now? His character goes searching for environmental degradation? LOL. this is just a silly question. We also see what the kyptonite does to him, so he would just go scavengering for all the debris of it?

>Why is Lex Luthor equipping his death squads with
>‘experimental bullets’?

who fucn knows. I still don't get it...

>Lex has an overly complex and largely nonsensical plan to lure
>Superman into action in Africa, and he would have gotten away
>with it, too… if it wasn’t for the experimental bullets
>with which he equipped his mercenaries. What? Why would he do
>that? Even setting aside the fact that he basically left
>behind bullets that he all but personally signed, why go to
>the expense? These guys were never supposed to be in contact
>with Superman anyway, as if the bullets would even have
>stopped him. And don’t get me started on the fact that Jimmy
>Olsen, war atrocity victim, has a giant beeping tracking
>device in his camera like this was a 1960s spy caper.
>
it is such a stupid scene and I have no idea why it was the premise of the film in terms of why the pub hates Sups. just bad. L taken

>Why does anyone think Superman shot a whole bunch of people in
>Africa?

uhh, do they think this... aren't they just afraid he can take over their world?

>Lex’s plan involves creating an international incident by
>having Superman show up in this African village. For one
>thing, why would he expect that to even work? But let’s
>assume he pulls enough strings to make it happen - he bribes
>UN officials, he complains to senators, he hires ‘crisis
>actors’ to give testimony - why the hell would anyone think
>Superman shot all these guys? They’re all clearly shot dead.
>Superman, while no stranger to cold-blooded murder, definitely
>doesn’t need to use a gun to get the job done. No one even
>questions this? Like, it’s quite clear Superman had nothing
>to do with shooting a whole bunch of people.
>
>Why does Lex Luthor blow up the Senate hearing and kill his
>assistant?
>At least I think Mercy Graves is killed in the explosion.
>It’s hard to be sure, but she seems to disappear out of the
>film after that sequence.
>
cause the idea is that Sups puts people in danger and BANG. again WTF kinda question is this?

but yes, why the fuck did they kill off Mercy. up until that point in the film they were foreshadowing that she was important and has bwood has already explained, in the comics she's very important.

>At any rate, the important question is “What does Lex hope
>to gain by blowing the place up?” He already has the
>kryptonite in the country, so he doesn’t need to eliminate
>Senator Jar of Piss immediately or in a particularly grand
>manner. And everybody knows it was a suicide bombing as soon
>as it happens - it isn’t like people believe Superman went
>berserk in the Senate hearing. I’m not even sure why the
>bombing would turn public sentiment THAT starkly against
>Superman, which I guess is what Lex was trying to do? I’m
>not entirely sure what the point of THAT would be, either.
>
>Why does Superman stop Batman in the middle of clearly chasing
>bad guys and let the bad guys get away?
>As Batman is about to get the kryptonite from Lex’s goons
>Superman shows up, totals the Batmobile, threatens Batman and
>then flies away. Is Superman stupid? Did he not notice the
>running gun battle raging around him? Even if he thinks Batman
>is a menace he must understand the other dudes are also
>menaces, as they are firing automatic weapons. And yet
>Superman is way more concerned with chastising Batman. Again,
>the whole movie could have been wrapped up faster if Superman
>had stopped Lex’s goons and taken the kryptonite himself and
>thrown it into the sun or something.
>
again i'll take another L. during the film i let out an audible what.the.fuck. mad not one bit of sense. look at this common enemy we have Batman, but your vigilantism bothers me more! stupid earth-human!

>Why is the Knightmare in this movie at all?
>I know that BvS is setting up future films in the DC
>movieverse, but this sequence is so egregiously out of place
>and has so little bearing on the events of the film that its
>inclusion is nonsensical and pointless. It also makes no sense
>- Flash travels back in time to warn Batman in a dream? Huh?
>
yup as I stated, for as cool as it was and looked, not needed. another L

>Flash is hard to hear in this sequence, but he warns Batman
>that he was right all along, and that if Lois dies Superman
>goes bad. But that doesn’t come into play in the film ever;
>Batman never is concerned about Lois’ safety - he doesn’t
>even know she’s ever in danger. Batman never brings the
>incident up again. It has no impact on the story at all. If
>you removed it from the film nothing would change beyond the
>running time.
>
great point. i didn't even put those two together. L

>Why does Superman fight Batman if he doesn’t want to fight
>Batman?
>Superman goes to Gotham to get Batman to help him rescue
>Martha. I’m not entirely sure what he thinks Batman can do
>that he, a man with powers of flight, super speed, X-ray
>vision and super-hearing can’t, but that’s the plan. The
>problem is that Batman isn’t there to talk - he’s there to
>fight.
>
>So why does Superman fight him? Why does he keep advancing
>towards him after he sets off the first trap? Why does he
>flick him across the lot where they meet? Why throw Batman?
>Superman could just hold Batman down if he needed to and speak
>to him. Why is Superman such an asshole?
>
this is an incredibly nitpicky and dweeby question and pretty much means even in the comics they should have never fought. but in this movie, Bats outsmarts him and wants to quell Sups power; he is beyond talkin' at that point. also Sups is hella emotional, his momma is on the line

>Addendum: why does Clark Kent follow Bruce Wayne downstairs at
>the Luthor fundraiser if he has X-ray vision and could watch
>him from anywhere in the house?
>
yo! we know this is a power of Sups, but is it established in these two films that he has x-ray vision. but still another good catch

>Why does Lois Lane go back for the spear?
>I mean, I know why they need the spear, but how does Lois know
>that? What tells her that Doomsday is Kryptonian? How does she
>possibly know that the weapon will now be needed?
>
lol. another one I caught while watching. I was like yo she don't know they need it... smdh. her whole wack ass i could die drowning was completely unnecessary too

>Addendum: why does Batman lead Doomsday to Gotham? Why not
>just get the spear and come back to the uninhabited
>Stryker’s Island, where Doomsday can shoot off his undefined
>energy powers to his heart’s content? It's especially weird
>that Batman draws Doomsday to Gotham when his entire story
>begins with being angry at Superman fighting a massive battle
>among civilians.
>
Doomsday gunna follow him anyway right? not that big of plot hole

>Why does Lex Luthor create Doomsday, and why does he put his
>blood in the Matrix?
isn't his live human blood what creates Doomsday?

>Lex Luthor has little to no motivation beyond the fact that
>Lex Luthor always hates Superman in all media. I can,
>grudgingly, accept that. What I can’t wrap my head around is
>why this Lex Luthor would make an unstoppable killing machine
>and unleash it on the world. What’s his endgame in this
>scenario? What does tech billionaire Lex Luthor hope to gain
>from destroying Metropolis and who knows what else?
>
good question


>Why didn’t Wonder Woman kill Doomsday?
>In a moment of heroic self-sacrifice Superman picks up the
>spear (of destiny. Yay, another shitty Christ allusion for a
>character who isn’t Christlike) and flies it right into the
>heart of Doomsday. Weakened, Superman is impaled on
>Doomsday’s spike, and he pulls himself further up the spike
>in order to drive the spear into the beast’s heart. Both
>die.
>
another great question. after she cut dude's hand off i was like "hey Sups just give the fine ass woman who is as indestructible as you the spear. she seems to be able to get him now and then and you get all weak and shit

>But they didn’t have to, at least not as presented in the
>film. Wonder Woman could have done it, or at least given it a
>shot. We saw that she could take a full blast from Doomsday
>and get up smiling, so why not let the person who will not be
>automatically weakened by proximity to the weapon give it a
>try? Instead she stands around watching, her lasso fairly
>ineffectual on Doomsday who manages to still impale Superman.
>
agreed

>In the original Death of Superman story all of the other
>heroes were defeated by Doomsday, leaving Superman and the
>behemoth alone to go toe-to-toe in an epic slugfest where they
>basically beat each other to death. Superman had no other
>option but to take it all the way - there was no one left to
>help him. In BvS an unwounded Wonder Woman stands to the side
>gawking as Superman pointlessly gives up his life.
>
Longo made a great point somewhere in here that Sups death was utterly pointless and the wedding ring in the mail shit made me roll my eyes hard

dunno why, but i have the feeling you're just being a bandwagoner here. could be wrong tho. but still...

Also more than half the dream sequences were not in it. Neither was the score.

Cotdamn have you never watched a movie for a second time only to see how hollow it and rearranged to the point incoherent frustration.

Why are you so mad? It's wild funny how mad you are at people not liking this movie.

Longo is saying that he likes JUPITER ASCENDING and the first thing you do is jump on him and shit on him. Imagine if people started coming at you sideways for like this. You'd cry bloody murder.

>Longo is saying that he likes JUPITER ASCENDING and the first
>thing you do is jump on him and shit on him. Imagine if people
>started coming at you sideways for like this. You'd cry bloody
>murder.

i'm calling him out for saying ITS BETTER THAN BVS. not because he likes it.

don't play the victim with me boy

... but the latter statement is not cool, because it's my opinion.

Got it!

Watch your motherfucking mouth calling boy nigga.

>don't play the victim with me boy

There's snark and then there's whatever the fuck this is.

Ease up off of that.

Me stretching trying to make sense (answers)out of some of these questions...

>Why does Lex Luthor blow up the Senate hearing and kill his
>assistant?
>At least I think Mercy Graves is killed in the explosion.
>It’s hard to be sure, but she seems to disappear out of the
>film after that sequence.

To get rid of the Senator opposing his import of the Kryptonite. Extreme, but because he can. And any kind of violence remotely involving Superman I imagine would start to make people turn against Supe, regardless of it it was his fault, trouble follows him.

>At any rate, the important question is “What does Lex hope
>to gain by blowing the place up?” He already has the
>kryptonite in the country, so he doesn’t need to eliminate
>Senator Jar of Piss immediately or in a particularly grand
>manner.

Because he wants to be able to weaponize it for all including armed forces to have against Superman?


>- Flash travels back in time to warn Batman in a dream? Huh?
>
>Flash is hard to hear in this sequence, but he warns Batman
>that he was right all along, and that if Lois dies Superman
>goes bad. But that doesn’t come into play in the film ever;
>Batman never is concerned about Lois’ safety - he doesn’t
>even know she’s ever in danger. Batman never brings the
>incident up again. It has no impact on the story at all. If
>you removed it from the film nothing would change beyond the
>running time.

I don't think it was a dream, I think Flash actually jumped multiverses to warn him and that is what woke him from the dream.

Did he mean that Lois was the key to getting Supermans attention?

>Furthermore - why does he put his blood in the Matrix with
>Zod’s body? Humans, last I checked, didn’t have any
>special powers that you might want to add to a Kryptonian’s
>already impressive array of abilities. Is this just Luthor
>homaging the time the members of the band KISS put their blood
>into the ink of their Marvel comic book?

Maybe placing his blood in the matrix allows him to command Doomsday to do whatever Lex says?

Made zero sense here

>SPOILERS!!!
>
>As I said the last Senate scene is great. It's just too bad
>Lex decides to kill his assistant Mercy Graves. For those
>familiar with the comics, Mercy would always beat the shit out
>people trying to attack Lex and take part in his plans. Here,
>she relegated to doing absolutely nothing. And worse off is
>the decision to kill her. Like in the first season of
>Daredevil that eventually came back to bite them in the ass by
>having Karen filling in Ben Urich's role by becoming a
>reporter despite having no writing skills and building to
>that. I'm afraid this might come back to bite them in the ass
>as well.



Yeah, that was something else that confused me. They gave her fine as a good amount of screen time and hints overall just to have her blow up...it even made no sense considering she was Lex's right hand man and the movie made sure you knew that.

...who Jimmy Olsen is. Once you guys see it, you'll be baffeled as much as I am over this bizarre choice. It makes not a lick of sense.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/03/25/zack-snyder-explains-the-shocking-thing-he-did-to-a-beloved-dc-character

Zack Snyder Explains The Shocking Thing He Did To A Beloved DC Character
Spoilers ahead.

By Devin Faraci

What follows is maybe a spoiler? The events in question happen in the first fifteen minutes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the person to whom they happen is only named in the credits - ie, I had to go home and look up the actor to make sure it was the right guy.

Here's the spoiler:

In BvS Jimmy Olsen is executed by terrorists/freedom fighters in Africa. He is shot in the head. He is also a secret CIA agent.

I want that to sink in. The character known as Superman's Pal, a character whose delightfully bizarre Silver Age comic covers are among some of the weirdest to ever be printed, the character who is usually portrayed as a bumbling but well-meaning kid sidekick to Superman, is ruthlessly executed.

But maybe there's a reason. Sometimes fans get upset at changes to canon or to characters despite there being a strong storytelling reason behind it. Clearly Zack Snyder wouldn't have Jimmy Olsen's brains blown out of the back of his head just for a laugh, right?

“We just did it as this little aside because we had been tracking where we thought the movies were gonna go, and we don’t have room for Jimmy Olsen in our big pantheon of characters, but we can have fun with him, right?”

Remind me to never have fun with Zack Snyder.

The weird part is that this brazen display of disrespect for the DC Comics characters is actually half-brazen. Olsen never identifies himself. His name only appears in the credits. In the longer R-rated director's cut he apparently comes out and says his name, but it's like Snyder hedged his bets here by hiding the war atrocity he committed upon the guy who, in the comics, wears a special watch that can emit a frequency only Superman can hear.

Originally Snyder wanted Jesse Eisenberg for this role. He wanted to do a Psycho fake out, killing off a well-known actor so that the audience would be off their guard. But that meeting made a change in the movie.

“I said, ‘I want to do this misdirect and you’d be great. You’d be a great Jimmy Olsen,’” the director says. “And he’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ and he was being very Jesse in the meeting. Introverted but constantly going, ‘Okay, I see, uh-huh. So it’s sort of a pop-culture redirect, you’re gonna do, because of the certain status of an actor…”

“I was like, ‘Wow, that guy is crazy… Debbie, what about Jesse as Lex?”

And out of that meeting Snyder, who had previously been meeting with Bryan Cranston, decided to make Lex Luthor younger. The rest is history. Says Snyder:

“Bryan Cranston would have been great, right? And by the way, he’s an amazing actor. Can you imagine how different the movie would be?”

Yeah, it might have been good.

Frankly I never understood the affection for him.

He's Superman's best friend.

I'm not saying that to be cute or snarky toward you, but I've never felt anything for this character.

JFC

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/10294522_10154000740770429_1016849552870859612_n.jpg?oh=3dfb44948366168871c2def762216d3c&oe=5788EE7D

https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/post/141606956421/henry-cavill-fan-response-to-batman-v-superman-is

Hard hitting journalism there.

batfleck killed it, cavill improved big time, gal gadot was fantastic as WW, eisemberg as luthor was a bit over the top but i enjoyed this version of the character...

this thing had me on the edge of my seat the whole time and the soundtrack is totally bonkers...hans zimmer & junkie xl did one hell of a job

my only complaints are that there were too many storylines condensed in a 2 hours+ movie and seeing batman using guns just doesn't feel right..

other than that this is a 9/10 to me. easily

oh and there's obviously an agenda against this movie. some of the reviews of the so called critics on RT are laughable to say the least.
they've been patiently waiting 3 years to shit on this movie.

http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captured/review-batman-v-superman-throws-lots-of-punches-but-with-no-impact-at-all

Review: 'Batman v Superman' throws lots of punches, but with no impact at all

If this is ground zero for the Justice League, we're not sure we want to join

By Drew McWeeny @DrewatHitFix

I live less than two minutes from Warner Bros., and to get anywhere, I have to drive by the studio, and every single poster spot on the side of the studio, normally occupied by four different movies and four different TV shows, is currently taken by Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. From my living room window, I can see the water tower at the center of the lot, which currently features the shield-and-cowl combination logo for Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. In fact, it is impossible to look anywhere in that general direction or be in my car or be outside my house in Los Angeles without feeling like I’m being bludgeoned by the oh-so-urgent existence of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice.

Speaking as a fan of Man Of Steel and of Zack Snyder’s work in general, I am baffled by what I saw tonight. In one regard, it certainly feels like they delivered on the promise of that incredibly awkward and franchise-minded title. But I’m not sure how a filmmaker whose work normally speaks to me as clearly as Snyder’s does could deliver something that feels this confused, this impersonal, and this corporate. It is a confounding mess of a movie, and while there are individual sequences that I enjoyed as isolated moments, it is almost breathtakingly incoherent storytelling. Characters do what they do because the movie requires them to do it, not because they are behaving like characters at all. There’s no sense of voice to the film. I have no idea what I should think about Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman based on what I see here. They are all apparently blanks who simply exist to react without thought or purpose to whatever stimuli is presented to them. Structurally, there’s something fundamentally broken about the way this thing’s been built, and I have a feeling it’s going to take some time to really pull apart all of the mistakes that were made.

One thing’s clear: I don’t want the Justice League this movie promises.

Simply put, I don’t care. I don’t have any reason to care about what’s being promised here. This is the least compelling franchise come-on since The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and as the closing credits concluded, I was relieved to see there was no post-credits scene. The entire movie feels like a closing credits scene already, winking and elbowing us to let us know we’ve got so many more movies coming. It’s hard to call something an Easter Egg when the movie stops cold to spotlight it, so it feels more appropriate to call these digressions outright previews. As previews go, though, they left me less interested than ever in what they’re selling, so I guess I’d have to call this a failure.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t hate the movie while I was watching it. More than anything, I was indifferent to it. I found myself looking at it more as an exercise than as a movie, and that’s a problem. At no point did I get drawn into it as a movie. If anything, I’d love to hear someone who has no history with comics try to describe the story of this film after they watch it, because I’m going to guess they would be absolutely baffled by it. I can tell you that as someone who is intimately familiar with all of the source material they’re drawing on here, I am still baffled, but at least I can tell you what they’re doing. I can’t tell you why they’re doing it at any given point, and that’s a major problem. Or rather, I can, but it’s not because of anything that you see onscreen. This is, more than any movie I’ve ever seen, a response to the responses to the film that came before it, and in answering his critics, Snyder has undone everything genuine about Man Of Steel, selling out his characters and undermining the point of that movie. Before I went to the press screening tonight, I revisited Man Of Steel, and I walked into Batman v Superman with that film’s tone fresh in my head. Maybe that’s why I’m so confused by what I saw. It felt like the work of two radically different filmmakers, and it felt like the second filmmaker didn’t like the work of the first filmmaker at all. It’s like Batman Begins was followed up by Batman and Robin.

Beyond that, this movie feels like the work of someone who doesn’t particularly like either Batman or Superman very much. If you were upset because Superman broke General Zod’s neck in Man Of Steel, you will most likely burst a blood vessel when you see Batman, Serial Murderer as he gleefully destroys criminals in this film, often with high caliber firearms. One of the sequences in which he guns down a batch of people is a dream… maybe… but there’s another where there’s a huge body count that he is directly overtly responsible for, and by the time it ended, I was really confused about what I was watching. This is supposedly a film in which the two greatest heroes of the DC universe end up fighting, but I don’t see how either Batman or Superman is meant to be the hero of this film. Snyder’s Batman is already burnt out and cynical, heartbroken by what we have to presume was the death of Robin at some point. He’s graduated from just capturing bad guys to branding them so that people in prison know they’re supposed to kill them. Seriously.

Meanwhile, things do not seem to have improved at all for Superman since the ending of Man of Steel, which we see again here from Bruce Wayne’s point of view, making Superman seem like a horrifying public menace. In an early scene, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) ends up in the middle of a bad situation while interviewing a terrorist in Africa, and Superman swoops in to save her, which somehow triggers an international situation for reasons that are unclear. Superman mopes a bit. He takes some PR hits on television. He finally gets bullied into showing up for a Congressional hearing, and then things get even worse, so he disappears for a while.

By the time Batman and Superman finally get around to the title fight, they both seem to be menaces driven entirely by reactionary emotional impulse. It’s never clear why Superman thinks he has any particular leg up on Batman, morally speaking, and the same is true of Batman’s rage towards Superman. Sure, we are shown that final Metropolis fight from a perspective that makes it clear that it’s meant to be 9/11, but Batman’s behavior in the film is childlike in the sort of unwavering and single-minded anger he feels towards Superman. This isn’t someone who has spent 20 years battling evil in all its forms in Gotham City; this is a petulant six-year-old who wants what he wants when he wants it.

I haven’t even touched on my story issues or on the other characters that the film muddles, like the entirely unconvincing take on Lex Luthor as played by Jesse Eisenberg. Considering how many ways they could have approached Luthor, it’s mystifying to see what they chose. He is omnipotent, evidently, and has already identified all the future members of the Justice League. He’s got files on all of them, and those files each contain a perfectly-crafted little glimpse of these characters who otherwise have absolutely no impact on the story being told. I could accept that if Luthor was given some sort of driving reason to fear meta-humans or to even know of them, but the closest they come to explaining his rage is a hint that his dad hit him, leading him to not believe in God. And if that entire paragraph leaves you wondering what the hell I’m talking about, welcome to my world.

Whatever you think of Man Of Steel, I can tell you, scene after scene after scene, exactly why characters are doing what they’re doing. One of the things I love about that movie is that they made big choices about the characters. Lois Lane, for example, is incredibly competent. For once, she’s ahead of everything. She figures out who Clark is before he’s ever put on the Superman suit, and she’s never presented as a dummy. In this film, she goes from being a good journalist to being supernatural. She appears at random when it is convenient for the plot, and then does both very smart things and very stupid things depending on the moment. There’s a certain weapon in the film that she ends up with, and what she does with it, plus what she then has to do about it, is a perfect example of wasted pages. Nothing she does advances the plot or helps in any significant way, with one exception, and that one exception is my least favorite moment in the entire film.

With Luthor, he’s written with no consistency from scene to scene. Sometimes he’s playful and sly. Sometimes he’s twitchy and disconnected. There comes a point where it starts to seem like he’s actually being controlled and informed by something external, and that may well turn out to be a story thread for the future. But as it’s handled here, it just doesn’t work.

Eisenberg and Adams are both very good actors left scrambling because their parts are essentially unplayable. In Man Of Steel, Zod was literally programmed from birth to do one thing and one thing only, and because of that genetic programming, every action of his makes a horrible kind of sense. He truly believes that his actions will help him retrieve and preserve the Codex, the key to the genetic rebirth of the Kryptonian race. He is understandable and motivated, and it makes his battle with Kal-El matter because the stakes for each of them are crystal clear. Meanwhile, this film ends with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman fighting against a giant CGI creature that looks like about a hundred other generic CGI monsters, and I have no idea what the creature’s powers are, what it wants, why it’s rampaging, or even why it exists. Lex Luthor helps create it, but it’s never clear how he knows what to do to create it, or what he thinks he’s going to do once it finishes its rampage. How invested can we be in a fight when one major part of that sequence means so little to the overall story?

The script is credited to Chris Terrio and David Goyer, but here’s where I find myself most frustrated. I don’t want to lay all the blame on them, because I can’t believe they are the architects of the film’s problems. It feels like Zack Snyder was forced to shoot the notes he got from the studio, like they had an outline that they all agreed looked like the right version of the film. But it never moved past the outline stage, and so there are several building blocks that appear to be in the right general place, but they don’t work because there’s nothing connecting them. I’m sure Kevin Tsujihara likes the scene where we stop and watch previews for proposed movies with Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg, and it must delight him when characters stand around and talk about working together in the future, but I can’t for the life of me imagine how anyone could think any of this legwork actually connects as storytelling.

That is doubly true of the way they shoehorn Wonder Woman into the movie. She is a person who appears in the film. I can say that much. And she says words that are in sentences. In several scenes, she moves and does things. She’s in focus and her costume appears to generally fit in with the world. Beyond that… what can people really say about her? She’s not really given a role here. Gal Godot looks good. She swallows a few lines of dialogue with her accent, which is more a problem with the film’s almost relentlessly bombastic sound mix, but it doesn’t matter. Everything she says here is meant as a bread crumb for her film, and it’s so clumsy that you almost expect her to turn to the camera and say, “In theaters June 23, 2017.” She’s in pursuit of a photograph that Lex Luthor has in his digital archives, and that photograph is a direct tie to her stand-alone movie, confirming that the majority of it will apparently be set during WWI. She mentions something about that photo, and it’s meant to be provocative, but with no other context, it doesn’t connect. There was only one moment of hers where I actually reacted. It’s during the big final fight of the film, with the big CGI beastie who is the final boss level, and it’s a brief moment. Wonder Woman gets punched hard enough to send her flying. When she rolls over, still smarting from the punch, she smiles, and that smile says, “Oh, so it’s gonna be like that, is it?” She’s still smiling as she gets up, and as she runs back into the fray, and it makes her feel in that moment like a veteran warrior enjoying that familiar rising of the blood. She’s interesting for that brief moment, and then the film goes back into steamroller mode. I suppose if I were to list the things I like the most about the film, she would be on that short list, but that’s only compared to the things the film does more dramatically wrong. She is fine, but just looking at her appearance here, in the context of the film, I don’t feel any urgent need to ever see the character in action again. Is “fine” as much as I should expect of these characters?

I’m not even sure I’d say that the rest of the League is fine. Ezra Miller’s Flash features in two moments, and one of those may or may not be part of a dream. The way Snyder presents it, The Flash appears to Batman to warn him about Superman in the far distant future, telling Batman that he was right before he vanishes again. But then Batman wakes up, and we’re left to wonder if it was a real vision or just another of Batman’s symbolic dreams? Batman spends much of the movie doing things based on dreams he’s had, and it just makes him seem like a big psycho in a mask instead of the World’s Greatest Detective. The other piece of Flash footage is from a convenience store surveillance camera, and it’s okay, I guess. The Cyborg footage looks like it’s from some cheap online YouTube show, not like a teaser for an upcoming giant franchise film, and the Aquaman footage is meant to suggest that Aquaman has enormous power, but it doesn’t explain anything at all. Not one of the glimpses actually puts any bait on the hook. I don’t inherently love these characters, and neither does a huge chunk of the mainstream. If you expect the audience to be excited about the promise you’re making in this film, you have to give them a reason, and oddly, they don’t even try here. They just parade the characters past, and while some comic book fans will flip out simply to see these characters in live-action, it’s not enough for anyone else.

How about the fight itself? The main event, after all, is what the title of the film promises us. It’s a fairly perfunctory affair once it arrives, and it ends quickly. The way it ends, though, is meant to be the film’s most emotional moment, and when I rolled my eyes instead of actually feeling the weight of that moment, it felt like the film’s last chance to work. I would imagine that whoever came up with the beat felt very clever, but it’s all built around the very facile surface level connection that Bruce and Clark share. Simply noticing that connection doesn’t make it a profound insight.

The final half-hour of the film is all built around another big moment, and while Warner Bros. has been begging everyone to avoid printing any spoilers, it seems like they’re going overboard. Comic book fans will not be terribly surprised by the film’s conclusion, and mainstream audiences won’t believe the ending for a moment, especially not when Warner is being so vocal about their ongoing plans for Justice League and the various heroes in the films. The big spoiler is more annoying than anything else, because it means the end of the film has to play out on an even more dour note than the rest of the film, and it’s a lot of time and energy spent on something that will simply be undone within the first fifteen minutes of the next film. The very last shot of the film makes it explicit; this is not so much a conclusion as it is a pause button. “But didn’t The Force Awakens end on a moment that will literally begin the next film as it picks up seconds later?” Yes, but it didn’t spend twenty minutes setting up this big misdirect before the cliffhanger. I don’t mind if DC decides to lean on the serialization, but I do mind when a story tries to force me to have an emotional reaction without earning it, and especially when they’re asking you to get emotional over something that will be reversed immediately.

Much of the blame for this film will be laid at Zack Snyder’s feet, but that feels unfair to some degree. I think he made exactly the film Warner Bros. asked him to make; that’s the problem. The film they asked him to make wasn’t developed from an organic place. It’s not the logical next step in a story being told. It is an informercial. It is slick, and it is frequently very pretty, and from scene to scene, from moment to moment, it looks like a real movie. But without a beating heart, this is a wax figure, lifeless and frozen, a simulation. The studio asked Snyder to make them a 150-minute trailer for their entire slate of superhero films, and he certainly did. Sadly, like most infomercials, this one promises more than it delivers, and two-and-a-half hours of being hustled left me cold. Whatever it’s selling, I’m not buying.

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice opens in theaters everywhere this week.

...and everyone SHITTED on him.

now, he's sipping tea like Kermit.
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his opinion is irrelevant

Like, some movies are bad but entertainingly so which many people have a hard time wrapping their minds around; I like critics who can do this

But there's nothing worse then a boring bad movie, which this is shaping up to be

Even if you hated it, it has clear character motivations and narrative competence from scene to scene.

jesus christ

Even if you think the characters fucking suck, they are characters with actual consistent motivations.

Even if you think the script is fucking garbage, scenes narratively connect with one another to form a story.

Both of these things are things not found in Batman V Superman. Both of these things are things required for a movie to be coherent.

Yikes.

... it's not an opinion that Batman v Superman doesn't have narrative scene-to-scene competence and that Jupiter Ascending does. You can think Jupiter Ascending has shit characters, shit story, shit world, shit everything... but at least its shitty scenes are ARRANGED IN AN ORDER THAT MAKES NARRATIVE SENSE. That's what irritated me most about BvS, and that's my point.

BVS is a disjointed mess, that much we agree on. Calling JA "50 times better" is overstating things in a big way.

BVS actually has some things going for it.

Jupiter Ascending? The best we can say is they took an awful recipe with awful ingredients and did a good enough job cooking aninevitably awful meal. So, hey, we'll give them points for doing a better job of making every awful course in that awful meal fit together more cohesively.

Calling that horrendous mess "50 times better" than anything except perhaps 50 Shades Of Gray is a statement with zero objectivity. None. I don't care if it's structurally better than BVS, the whole of it is still one of the worst movies of it's kind in years.

I'll take the movie with at least a few good scenes and some solid characters in a piece of cinematic fuck pie in terms of execution over the creative abortion that was JA.

And we agree that the movie is a mess.

LOL. you guys are NUTS.

but with statements like this one you're ready to become a top movie critic.

I want to understand what I'm watching and enjoy it. This movie failed on both levels, personally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgeAgyZRlhE

BATMAN V SUPERMAN Review: Zack Snyder’s Doomsday
This is a very bad movie.

By Devin Faraci

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice* contains a major revelation: it isn’t that Zack Snyder misunderstands Superman, it’s that he actually hates the character.

But let us set aside such geekiness for later in this review. Let us approach BvS as a movie first. With all preconceived notions of how Batman and Superman should be portrayed put aside, I can say with complete certainty that Batman v Superman is not a particularly well made film. It is, in fact, the film that finally drives home to me the reality that Zack Snyder is not particularly great at storytelling. I have spent many years defending Snyder, who I think is a first rate visual stylist (and who conjures up some excellent images in this film), but even I have to put down my sword. Zack Snyder, left to his own devices, cannot tell a story.

It’s almost crazy how flimsy and poorly constructed the first hour of the film is. Snyder and his editors seem to have inserted scenes haphazardly; while most take place in what seem to be chronological order there is no flow from one scene to another. The movie hops around from Batman to Superman to Lex Luthor to Lois Lane willy nilly, with no regard for the pacing or with building any kind of momentum.

Here’s a specific example: we cut to a scene of Perry White in the Daily Planet offices, and he’s looking for Clark Kent. “Where does Kent disappear to?” White asks. “Does he click his heels three times and show up back home in Kansas?”

You can probably guess what the next cut will show us - Clark (or Superman) in Kansas. But not in BvS. Not in a movie that seems to aspire to anti-cinema. That scene is immediately followed by Lois meeting a secret source. I think the next scene after that is about Lex and then there’s one about Batman and then we come back to Superman. This lack of a structure makes the entire first half of the film feel like a bloated montage; everything is disjointed, nothing is clearly connected to anything else. It’s doubly deadly because the whole first half is astoundingly dull, and every time a scene builds some momentum we cut away to something not interesting. Half the film feels like deleted scenes that were added back for no reason. The Knightmare sequence, the scene featured in all the trailers where Batman is wearing a desert coat, has no bearing on the film, its events are never mentioned again and it goes nowhere. People complain about Marvel’s servicing of its connected universe, but the Justice League set-up in this film makes Iron Man 2 look like a strongly structured work of a single vision.

That disjointed, uninteresting first half rolls into a lengthy succession of battle sequences that range from the silly (Batman hits Superman over the head with a bathroom sink) to boring (the Doomsday battle is so straight-forward and generic that it melts away like cotton candy in your mind). The film is too long by half and yet it never finds time to do any character work, focusing instead on relentlessly moving forward its over-complicated, unmotivated plot.

The plot trudges along weighed down not just by the stupidity of it all - half the plot points make no logical sense, like Lex Luthor supplying his henchmen with experimental military bullets - but by the apocalyptic self-seriousness of it all. Each scene is ponderous in its attempt to be meaningful and iconic, rendering every moment in the movie a phony pose. Heavy, overbearing score thunders above it all, reinforcing the po-faced absurdity. The film reaches for an operatic thunder and ends up with a wet, limp raspberry.

The one bright spot in the film is Batman, played by Ben Affleck as the one character who has any sort of character at all. To be fair Affleck’s face is too genial to be believable as the ‘broken’ Batman at the beginning of the film - the guy going too far and branding criminals - but when Bruce finds himself an obsession in the form of Superman, Affleck morphs into what may be the best screen Batman of our time. HIs version of Batman reminds me of the classic Jim Aparo years, even if he’s modeled on the Frank Miller end-of-career take; this Batman is equally adept at spycraft as he is at beating in faces, and this Bruce Wayne feels like an adventurer and a bit of a scoundrel. When Affleck’s Wayne gets distracted by a pretty face you don’t feel like he’s just putting on a show to hide his identity - he’s a man of appetites, not the driven ascetic played by Christian Bale. There’s a lot of James Bond in this Batman.

His relationship with Jeremy Irons’ Alfred is delightful. You kind of have to feel bad for Irons, as many of his scenes have him speaking into a radio, directing Batman in the heat of the moment, but even in these glorified telephone sequences Affleck and Irons have real chemistry. I hope that whatever damage this film does to the DC Movieverse we still get a Ben Affleck Batman film, and I hope Irons has an ironclad contract to come back.

If Affleck is the high point every other performance is a sliding scale. Gal Gadot is fine as Wonder Woman, playing a character without any depth. She seems cool in battle? That’s about the big takeaway from this character in this movie. I look forward to seeing what Gadot can do in a film that perhaps has a script featuring humans in it.

Henry Cavill is a wooden log throughout most of the film, giving a performance so lifeless and dull that it feels like a protest. His Superman alternates between being a mopey bore and a real asshole, two qualities for which the character is not usually known. The film keeps Superman at a distance (if you had guessed “They turn the Superman sequel into a Batman movie,” come on up and collect your winnings), and as such this doesn’t give Cavill much to do. The character is, textually, struggling with the weight of his responsibility to the world, but the film doesn’t dramatize it much and it doesn’t give Cavill many scenes in which to portray it beyond brooding. The film is too busy moving along to the next tedious plot element to give Superman any time to shine, or really any time to do much of anything. Everybody in this movie is running around talking about what Superman means or what they’re going to do to Superman, but Superman himself has no goals, has no desires, has no role in the story except to stir everybody else up.

If Superman has no goals Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor has plenty of them - none of which make any sense. Luthor’s machinations in the film are, essentially, nonsense (one of his dastardly plans involves a jar of piss), and they are largely unmotivated. There’s a scene where Luthor sets up a suicide bombing that has no impact on the story, and to me that scene exemplifies the storytelling problems with the entire film - lots of scenes that are cool in the moment but that have no place in a larger tale.

Eisenberg is next-level terrible as Luthor. He’s a twitchy lunatic pretty much from the start, and if there are any events in the story that lead to him escalating his plot to the point of creating an unstoppable monster I missed them. Eisenberg delivers every line like he thinks the villains on the 1966 Batman show were too nuanced. His face is a collection of tics, and his eyes burn with the power of a thousand ham actors. Not only is his performance unmodulated, he’s generally irritating at all times - while I don’t understand why Lex Luthor wants to unleash an unstoppable monster on the world, I do fully understand why Batman wants to fucking hit him.

All of the bombast and monotony lead to a third act battle that is egregious in its crumminess. Doomsday was, in the original Death of Superman story, a total nothing… and yet this film managed to make him even less interesting. His design reminds you of the Cave Troll in Fellowship of the Ring and the CGI on display seems to also be from 2001. Is Doomsday ugly because his design sucks or because the FX work is garbage? We can never truly know - we can only say that he is ugly and uninteresting.

‘Uninteresting’ extends to the final battle. It’s weird, but there’s not much cool happening in the battle. The three heroes pummel Doomsday a bit (even though it has been established that hitting him makes him stronger) amid the charred remains of Gotham. It’s a lot of straight on hitting, heat vision shooting, sword chopping stuff. There’s nothing inventive - which comes with the Doomsday territory of course - but for all the money spent no one could have come up with a visual more interesting than the heroes standing in a crater pounding on the villain?

Doomsday is a mistake on many levels beyond aesthetic. He’s a villain ex machina, an element alien to the story that exists only to force a punch-up at the end. He’s an intruder in the film, but I guess that goes along with the rest of the movie, as his inclusion at the end is just as disjointed as the editing at the beginning.

To say that Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice is a bad movie doesn’t go far enough. This film feels like Zack Snyder hobbling the entire upcoming DC Movieverse before it gets started. It’s small things, like revealing that Lex Luthor names all the members of the Justice League and gives them their symbols. It’s big things, like where the film leaves the story at the end. And it’s things in between, because the first two movies in this universe have been all about why heroism is essentially bad.

This is where I have come to believe that Zack Snyder hates Superman. It’s there in our faces in Man of Steel, a Superman who can’t quite come to grips with the idea of being a hero. He takes 30 plus years to come to that, and he comes to it over the objections of his father. Pa Kent shows up again in BvS, in a nonsensical and jarring hallucination/dream/whatever in which Pa tells a story about how he once saved the Kent family farm from drowning, but in the process he flooded the next farm over. Pa heard the screams of the drowning horses in his sleep every night.

Instead of walking back Man of Steel’s wishy-washiness about heroism, BvS doubles down on it. This Superman is not a man of the people - he doesn’t seem to ever grant interviews, for instance - and he is constantly aloof. While the movie gives Batman and Lex Luthor a very particular (and well argued) point of view about this god among us, it offers no counterpoint for Superman. Superman himself doesn’t even seem to be very invested in being a hero or saving people. He never has a scene where he puts forth any kind of philosophy (and every character in this movie gets a scene where they are allowed to pontificate on sophomore-level philosophy).

It’s because Snyder doesn’t believe in what Superman stands for. He doesn’t believe in the idea that he’s just a guy trying to do right by the world, and that he doesn’t have to learn to do right or be convinced not to quit, that this just is how Superman is. It’s as integral to him as his Kryptonian powers.

Because Snyder can’t understand that aspect of Superman he undermines it at all times. His Superman engages in the bare minimum amount of heroism. We see Batman taking care of more business than Superman, who mostly helps the people closest to him (we also see Bruce Wayne save more people during the Battle of Metropolis than Superman did in Man of Steel). His Superman is an asshole, a pompous and condescending jerk who makes threats. Even the scene where Superman might have a chance to deliver a heartfelt explanation of himself in front of a Senate committee hearing is cut short - the film robs Superman of the chance to deliver the sort of speech that belongs in a Frank Capra film.

But Snyder wouldn’t want to have a Capra moment. That shit is old fashioned. How deeply does Snyder think Superman is a relic of the past? He has Perry White all but say so, telling Clark Kent that it isn’t 1938 anymore, that apples don’t cost a nickel anymore, that it’s time to live in the modern world. 1938, of course, was the year Action Comics #1 was published - the first appearance of Superman.

* I'll be straight with you - the title is the least of this film's problems.

Wonder Woman crushed it.

Supes still a miserable cornball.

I wanted to like him, but I was not sold on Luthor. He was like a little boy in a man's game.

I don't think it's as bad as everyone is saying, but this fool and his big, dumb loud noises and explosions gotta go.


What did they change from the first cut you saw?

.

Zack Snyder is like the rabid dog who I've defended for so long.

People loved the dog. The dog was friendly and we have great memories with it. Then it went rabid an started to attack. I defend it saying he's sick he'll get better. Until you realize the dog is doing more harm than good. It hurts, but you gotta put him down.

This movie has opened my eyes to what people have been saving about Zack Snyder since WATCHMEN. I can't cop pleas for him anymore.

But as emotionally dead those movies are, at least they have a general plot idea (one last heist to see the fam, suicide mission to find a new home for humankind) and generally try to work within the insane premise even if its full of holes.

Snider's most coherent films were his comic adaptations of stories (300, Watchmen) that were basically storyboarded in relatively concise forms. Sucker Punch remains one of the most incoherent action movies of all times(but damn does it look good)

I'm doing the Lord's work.

I'm doing the Lord's work.

I'm doing the Lord's work.






talking about egos.....smh

i agree with the reviews that bwood posted just above. there's so many things that just didn't make any sense or you don't really get the motivation behind them. lex and everything about him is terrible. superman is not given much to do but sulk around mostly. wonder woman is wasted. even in the fight scene all she does is take a couple sword swipes, or just getting knocked back 200 feet. the whole fight scene at the end was so repetitive. shit, i'm just gonna stop because bwood and those reviews covered it, but man this movie was not good.

No, I live South now so I saw it in an XD theater. Still a large screen and decent sound.

It's going to be very interesting to see how they can rescue this franchise.

Can't believe I walked out of a Batman vs Superman movie not caring about either one of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwXfv25xJUw

WB is putting his next Oscar-Bait film (which I'm very much looking forward to) and he'll probably end up directing the Batman film whenever it comes out.

unscathed.

Everyone will run to see the Wonder Woman movie and everyone will go see the new Batman movie when it's time.

WB just needs to boot Goyer and Snyder.

I worry Johns will get the boot too.

I mean, probably not, since he's already hitched himself to Affleck's wagon, and he's always in just about all of the DC TV shows. But it would suck if he became a casualty if this bombs.

Geoff Johns is their geek shield. Even though the Snyders are in charge of the universe and they are touting this filmmaker-driven nonsense but they need someone with comic book cred that they can throw him out there.

The fact that he's working with Affleck on the Batman solo flick probably keeps him safe.

https://youtu.be/3-ZUDtaGf3I

Good:

There's a GREAT Batman movie in here with Bats+Alfred. Excellent interpretation of the characters.

Wonder Woman did the most she could with what she got. She looked great and was believable in a pretty fucking unbelievable movie, lol.

I liked the way it built off the Man of Steel (specifically how the world deals with the new forms of superpowered mayhem)and arguably made that movie better after the fact...

Bad:

...but it's a worse movie.

Lex Luger should be a great universe tentpole badguy, similar to Loki, but they just wasted him here as a generic psychotic. Don't know why the character can't seem to make the transition to celluloid (like, imagine if Kevin Spacey played him House Of Cards style instead of Elmer Fudd when he had his crack at it?)

Lots of nagging little plot/character holes to move the plot which leads to no sense of character and flow of the movie. I felt the specific plot device to make Superman Bat's fight was stupid particularly since the movie already built up enough beef between them(probably the only solid character motivation/plot point they executed perfectly)...lots of shit like this needed to be trimmed.

The Doomsday storyline was also wasted. He was never a great character but that storyline had genuine gravitas...where all this movie had was people moping. Which made the epilogue unbearable since the feels they tried to hit you with felt like a bad soap opera since it was unearned.

Marvel got some of y'all by the balls it seems

the tone and look where cold as shit and that's ok, doesn't make it emotionless

Bats and Wonder Woman were dope. The fight scenes were really well done

i also really loved how the movie opened with the "ground" perspective of Sups v Zod

also Iron's Alfred was hella good

Jessie was wack/dumb as Luther. really clownish take on a character that could've fit in their universe and resonated like KingPin in Marvel/DD

the dream sequences could've been cut, Bat's shit with his parents could've been cut, and some scenes dragged a bit.

and lastly, they made Doomsday so powerful I felt they almost painted themselves into a corner

but I liked this shit.

1. Faraci pointed out the thing that irritated me the most: the utter lack of narrative cohesion between scenes. That Perry scene in which he yells "Where is Kent?" has no function, because it has no narrative payoff. They set up the Bat/Supes fight... only to interrupt it with Wonder Woman watching Quicktime videos on her computer for eight minutes. I was genuinely confused by the storytelling on display.

2. The characters show no consistency. Luthor as Max Landis is fun, but it's not good character development. The tone of the performances alters vastly from scene to scene. Speaking of which...

3. The tone is also crazy inconsistent. They want things to be deathly serious some scenes, then you get hammy Lex Luthor dropping fun monologues, then back to deathly seriousness, then you get horrible awful Fantastic Four level comic book one-liners ("I thought she was with you!" "I thought she was with you!").

4. There are fifteen full minutes of dream sequences here. Maybe more.

5. The action is either incomprehensibly edited (the Batmobile chase) or repetitive (heavy punch, recipient crashes through some shit, gets up, another heavy punch, wash, rinse, repeat).

6. The movie spends a good hour and a half on Luthor's plan to "frame Superman for killing all these people," but that completely goes away in the final hour, when Luthor's plan consists of "make a bad CGI abomination, shove Lois off a building for some reason, force Superman to kill Batman or Martha dies." The brilliant Lex Luthor I'm familiar with would've come up with a waaaaaaaay smarter and more coherent plan than this. But coherence isn't this film's strong suit.

7. Doomsday.

8. I hate when comic book movies kill someone that you *know* is coming back. This movie has the same ending as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Don't spend twenty minutes trying to get me to care about Clark's death when I know he'll be back next movie.

There are individual scenes that are good, but the first two hours is just a random smattering of scenes with little to no narrative connection. The movie's problem isn't that it's dark, and it isn't that "this type of hero doesn't work" or whatever bullshit gets trotted out. It's not a DC thing: it's a Snyder thing. He's engaging in buckshot filmmaking here-- toss literally everything at the wall, hope some things stick. It simply doesn't work.

I was staring at the screen going "What is happening?" way more often than I care to admit. I was honestly trying to figure out what was going on, where we were, why characters were doing things, etc., and I was genuinely perplexed.

bruce had while sittin in the bat cave. dunno who that character was warining him about some shit and i don't care.

None of it makes any sense whatsoever.

collect the kryptonite to kill sups after he finds what a little bit does to Zod's dead body. He wants to kills Sups cause he's a threat to Luthor's own global power as a human?

in that process the senator woman lets him know she won't let him develop the weapon(s) to off Sups, Luthor mad!

Bats spoils Luthor's plan by stealing the kryp to his own work to Sups

Luthor then switches up plans and figures their must be some info on the ship and some how knows Zod's body will be transformed by his human blodd/dna, and this thing will kill Sups

cause he's an evil villain he gets some insurance. uses Wally to further get the public riled up who hates Sups, offs senator woman who was already a block on his plans, and kidnaps Sups' momma to make sure he has him fight Bats. Why he needs Sups to kill Bats when he will have a monster to do it in an hour, who knows?

all plans go to shit when Bats doesn't off Sups and Wonder Woman helps them beat the monster

did i do ok?

please don't ask me what that shit was in the deserts of Africa. I still don't know

it was fucking jarring. so wack.

Right down to the hipstery suits. It was pretty fascinating to behold, honestly.

I would've been okay with this depiction of Luthor had they actually given him a coherent plan and actually let him be *smart.* Luthor's always been a chess-not-checkers guy. Here, he's not even checkers-- he would've flipped the checkers board after three minutes.

We were getting actual dialogue about character, interestingly written, that seemed to imply two smart characters locked in a political chess match. It set up the potential for wonderful conflict throughout.

Then, of course, that storyline gets blown up (tee hee), and we realize that literally all of that was pointless and could've been cut with zero impact on the "story." And Luthor's character changes from scene to scene and certainly doesn't behave intelligently.

But hey! Good scene tho!

It felt lifted from a Kick-Ass movie.

I actually pictured hearing Clancy Brown's Luthor saying "Ahhhh, just pissed in a jar. Take that, Seantor!" It made me sad.

who was that supposed to be yelling at Bruce during the future dream sequence(where some sort of portal opens up and dude reaches for Bruce) Robin? wtf at this whole movie!!!..lol
_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

It's supposed to be The Flash.

That's the nicest way I can put it.

Affleck (and Jeremys Iron, too) was good, and while I wish they would have given her more to do, I'm in on a WW film.

But what a complete waste of Lex Luthor. Kevin Spacey's got to be so happy right now. Seriously, this is one of the two most iconic DC villains. They could have taken Sam Jackson's character from Kingsman, put him in this movie, named him Lex Luthor and it would have been a better version of the character (lisp and all.)

How does the Flash's suit look cheaper than the one they use on the CW show?

And why does a guy who straight up does not like Superman get to keep making Superman movies?

>How does the Flash's suit look cheaper than the one they use
>on the CW show?

please point me where you've seen the flash suit in full...cause i didn't see shit

Man I had the same thought. Whoever wrote this was a Batman fan and a fan of nothing else.

Even the script was sharper when it came to Irons and Affleck. Then you have that Eisenberg dork and his *thud* lines...

There were some positive elements. I'm actually still holding out hope we're getting a good Wonder Woman story next summer.

This isn't anti-DC bias. The movie is just a mess.

Sucker Punch bad, but it wasn't

but like i've said above, many of the critiques Longo and bwood are bringing up are very valid

Way too much crammed in there. Way too boring. Way too many scenes that had little to do with anything. Like others I was just kinda scratching my head at Lex's plan. And I was TRYING to go in there with little regard for the plot and it still thoroughly confused me.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/03/27/kingdom-come-the-comic-that-foretold-batman-v-superman

But that never imagined Superman as Magog.

By Devin Faraci

In 1994 artist Alex Ross and writer Kurt Busiek created a prestige comic book series that had an enormous impact on how everyone who followed would look at the world of comic book characters. That series was Marvels, and it told the early history of the Marvel Universe through the eyes of a regular man, a guy on the street, a guy who would be walking through New York City only to look up and see Galactus towering over him or super people duking it out. The series relocated our point of view of the Marvel Universe to the street level, and from that point of view the majesty, the awesomeness (in the most traditional sense) of these characters became clear. It is one thing to be inside Peter Parker’s head, knowing his money and financial woes, as he swings through the city. It is another thing altogether to just see Spider-Man from a distance, an impossible figure flitting through your experience.

Having told the story of men in the Marvel Universe, Ross turned his attention to gods in the DC Universe. Working with the legendary Mark Waid - a man who understands the characters of DC better than almost anyone else alive - he created Kingdom Come, a near-future story that was one part cautionary tale and one part reaffirmation of the greatness of the DC pantheon.

Kingdom Come was a story of its time, a tale of ‘corny’ old heroes confronted with a new generation of violent metahumans, but it turns out that Kingdom Come foresaw the world that led us to Batman v Superman - except that even in its darkest moments, Kingdom Come couldn’t have fully foretold the current apocalyptic vision of these characters.

Kingdom Come is set 10 years after Superman has quit and turned his back on humanity. The streets of the world are filled with constantly brawling metahumans, super-powered people who are less interested in saving the world than in battling for their piece of it. Humanity finds itself reduced to the role of collateral damage as the new generation of ‘heroes’ work out their internecine strife. There are no heroes and villains, just mobs of supers knocking down monuments and buildings.

In this world lives a pastor who has been ministering to Wesley Dodds, the Golden Age Sandman, in his final days. Wesley passes on to him a vision of the end of the world, one brought about by the brawling brutes, and then the Spectre shows up to take the pastor on a mystical trip through the brewing war between the superhumans.

Kingdom Come is very much taking to task the then-current crop of ‘X-Treme’ characters. Magog, the murderous superhero whose actions drive Superman to exile, is clearly modeled on Cable from X-Force. Ross’ gorgeous realistic painting style brings to life a whole new crop of ultra-violent, totally ‘badass’ superheroes outfitted with guns and spikes and chains, but his true genius is the way he makes all of those ‘heroes’ look slight and crummy in comparison to the true icons of DC. There is a page in issue 1 where Superman hovers, holding two warring next gen heroes in his hands, and they seem ludicrous and cheap in comparison to his classical majesty. It’s a wonderful commentary that is done without a word on the page.

But the words themselves do add an extraordinary richness to the book’s central argument. At the heart of Kingdom Come is a series of questions: what is a hero? How does a hero behave? And who are the heroes serving - themselves or the world? Who, as they say, watches the watchmen? The brilliance of Mark Waid is that he is able to tackle these philosophical questions again and again in the book while also capturing the quintessence of the characters involved in the argument.

In the book it all stems from one moment: the Joker is on a rampage in Metropolis and he commits a massacre in the offices of the Daily Planet. Among the dead: Lois Lane. As Batman and Superman try to find The Joker to hold him accountable for his crimes, one of the new generation of heroes, Magog, brutally kills the Clown Prince of Crime in broad daylight. Superman brings Magog in for murder, and even testifies against him, but the jury acquits the killer. Perhaps Superman could have taken the loss of Lois, but the loss of his sense of justice - the idea that the people want a killer like Magog as a hero - is too much for him. “The world changed… but you wouldn’t,” Magog tells Superman. “So they chose me.” Superman retreats to the Fortress of Solitude, where he recreates a Kansas farm and throws himself into field work.

But by letting Magog be the face of the new generation of heroes Superman has set off a terrible chain reaction that culminates in a superbrawl in Kansas in which the nuclear-powered Captain Atom is killed. When he dies a wave of radiation billows across the midwest, killing a million and destroying America’s breadbasket. The tragedy lures Superman out of retirement, determined to clean up the mess he allowed to happen. He gathers together the remaining members of the Justice League and tries to convince - or force - the new generation to come under his leadership and be heroes in the traditional mold. It doesn’t go well.

Kingdom Come has an essential grimness to it, and its Kansas disaster is a story point from a pre-9/11 world that feels prescient in our post-9/11 world. But that grimness is there for a purpose, and it’s to underline the importance of hope in the stories of super people. Very early in the story Norman, the pastor who narrates the tale, ruminates on some of Wesley Dodds’ thoughts about what the original heroes meant, that they ‘inspired human achievement… not belittled it.’

That ends up being the crux of all the philosophical questions the book asks about superheroes - the idea that they should exist to show us our better selves, not to allow us to wallow in our worst impulses. By being grim itself the book inherently allows for a mode of superhero storytelling that isn’t all sweetness and light, but at the same time it stresses that the grimness must be in service of something that is ultimately uplifting. Kingdom Come puts Superman’s basic tenets - his commitment to decency, his refusal to take a life, his desire for peace, not superiority - and puts them to the test again and again. This is the point of darker stories like this, to reaffirm the things that make heroes special, not to break them. Superman’s morals become all the clearer when contrasted with a world of selfish, violent buffoons. That’s how you use a dark story.

The world that Superman faces in Kingdom Come is, frankly, not dissimilar from the one Superman created in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Rereading Kingdom Come I was stunned by how clearly Waid and Ross called the future DC movieverse - a dark place full of destruction and populated by superheroes who care less about the world around them and more about their own grievances and issues. But what they couldn’t have seen is that it’s Batman and Superman behaving like Magog and N-I-L-8.

“Ordinary folks decided you and I were too gentle and old-fashioned to face the challenges of the 21st century,” Batman tells Superman. “They wanted their ‘heroes’ stronger and more ruthless.” When Mark Waid wrote those words he couldn’t have known he was describing a future screen version of Superman.

It’s possible that at some point in the production of Batman v Superman someone involved in the movie flipped through a copy of the trade paperback of Kingdom Come. After all, the essential disagreement between Batman and Superman in the movie mirrors the one in the comic - Superman is distrustful of the police state that Bruce runs in Gotham while Bruce in turn fears the totalitarian reign of the Justice League. What the filmmakers missed is that Kingdom Come examines the paradoxes at the heart of both men (and especially at the heart of Wonder Woman, a warrior whose mission is to bring peace to Man’s World) and how that fuels the decisions and mistakes each makes. And what the filmmakers missed is that each man comes at their opinion from the same place - a desire to help people.

“The deliberate taking of human - even superhuman - like goes against every belief I have -- and that you have,” Superman tells Batman at one point. “More than anyone in the world, when you scratch everything else away from Batman, you’re left with someone who doesn’t want to see anyone die.”

That’s a powerful take on Batman, a take that posits Bruce Wayne watched his parents die and was then driven not just by a desire for revenge but by a need to stop something like that from ever happening again. It isn’t just that Batman doesn’t kill - it’s that every death on Batman’s watch is a failure for him. When all is said and done this is what connects Batman and Superman, the desire to save lives. Even as they may disagree and argue and occasionally come to blows about how to accomplish that, at the core the two are eternally connected by a base of idealistic heroism.

But if the filmmakers did flip through Kingdom Come they missed that scene between Batman and Superman, and they missed the way that Superman holds fast to his principles even in the face of certain doom. They missed the things that made these characters shine against the darkness of Kingdom Come.

I do wish David Goyer, Chris Terrio and Zack Snyder had read Kingdom Come (either at all or more closely). The book wrestles with many of the same philosophical themes with which Batman v Superman fumbles - themes of man’s relationship with gods and vice versa, themes of responsibility and control, questions of who is best suited to save the world, questions of the tactics that are allowable in doing that - but it finds profound meaning within them. At the end of Kingdom Come the darkness has been endured and a new hope dawns. What’s more, these iconic characters are more whole than ever, more clearly redefined in their decency and their heroism, having proven why these qualities matter just as much in the 21st century as they did in 1938.

that's all i got...lol

SS and CA:CW trailers both better than this movie.

This is basically a Transformers movie. Not quite as bad as, say, T2, but they're heading in that direction.

I'm good with a lot of things:

-The darker tone.
-Batman. I think it was smart to center this around him.
-Wonder Woman. Gal owns this in a big way.
-The way they introduced the other metas and kept it moving.

-The supporting cast. Like, big time. Irons and Hunter in particular. Lane works well with what she has.

-The reaction to Supermans existence being rather mercurial.

-I genuinely love this Superman. Frankly he deserved a proper follow up leading into this movie.

-Batman killing. Don't care. Further, I think that shit just plain made sense. He also wasn't murking people left and right all movie with some sense of glee. He showed up to save Martha and took no prisoners.

Things I'm ambivalent about:

-All the dream sequences. Take or leave. It's whatever. I see how and why they don't work for a lot of people. I'm just plain not bothered by them.

-Batman killing. Don't care. Further, I think that shit just plain made sense. He also wasn't murking people left and right all movie with some sense of glee. He showed up to save Martha and took no prisoners.

-Jimmy Olson. Don't give a rats ass about the character and I could care less about how they played him here. Whatever.

-Martha. I'm good with how they weaved her into this.

-The decision for things to go down with Doomsday the way they did in the end. SPOILER, I'm not so sure Wonder Woman would necessarily know about Kryptonite. It's possible she knew but it's forgivable and I can easily assume she didn't and not lose sleep over it. Batman would have easily been killed trying to throw that shit at that point so I'm good with that too.

-The explosion people are so bent out of shape about.

-Lex. Sorry. Shit fell flat. Didn't work. I was willing to see how that played out. Shit was a fail. Sadly, he seems like he could have played a dope riddler at some point but he's too hammy for this. This was a great time to give us an imposing Lex but nope.

-Too many boneheaded choices. Too much that just doesn't make sense and even if it does, so what? Lex cutting his hand? Shit the ENTIRE Doomsday shit. All of it. Just bad. At best it's a forgivable generic mad scientist and his Frankenstein monster, but they should have much higher standards then that and this was unacceptable.

-Too many stylistic moments that were just plain dumb. So this family is flooded and superman shows up. This old woman holds her hand out for her savior and Superman just fucking floats there. No wonder people hate him. I like that people hate him, but that hate should come without good reason. That was perhaps the worst moment of the entire film to me. Just plain dumb.

All in all this is a mess and Snyder can't be trusted. I get a lot of the criticism. I think the whole of this works well enough because Batfleck carries it. I think it was wise to make him the focal point going forward. I think they better kill it with Wonder Woman though.

Aquaman ain't never looked that cool.

Montage sequence.

The CGI for Cyborg's part looked really really bad. I was like huh whats happening.

Imagine being a child seeing that hanging half-torso as the introduction to a "superhero"

That's scary as shit!!!!

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I usually see all these big comic book disasters to have an opinion, but buying a ticket here is a direct endorsement for more Zack Snyder movies. that I cannot do.

Oh-so-many spoiler-filled gripes...

1. Rush, rush, rush... I honestly believe they could have achieved so much more if they had taken their time. They're so keen to establish their universe to rival MCU, they're just not taking their time: they couldn't wait to have Batman Vs Superman, they couldn't wait to feature Wonder Woman, Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman, they couldn't wait to feature Doomsday; they couldn't wait to feature Supes' death... and they couldn't wait to reveal that he's coming back.

The impact this film could have had after another Superman movie and a standalone Batman one would have been so much stronger than rushing into it.

2. Supes' "death"... They have a franchise planned which includes standalone movies for WW, Aquaman, Cyborg, Flash, Batman and two JL movies... so how you going to "kill" Superman in the SECOND movie?!?! Surely, him dying in the JL movie would have meant so much more? RDJ has been Iron Man in nearly 6 movies - if he dies in Civil War, I'll be crying like a baby because I've lived with him in that role for 8 years.

3. Clark's fascination with "the vigilante Batman" was ridiculous. Wayne says himself he's been doing this for 20 years. Surely Clark even asking why The Daily Planet isn't covering Batman is like asking why the media isn't covering the Y2K disaster?! During their first meeting he says "When they shine your light in the sky, don't go to it"... the "they" he's talking about is the GCPD. He's clearly not that much of a rogue trouble-making vigilante if the police are asking for his help.

4. No one else seems to have mentioned it but I thought there was a serious lack of action in the movie. It really doesn't ramp up til the end.

5. Lex Luthor. As everyone has said, his plans made no sense. On screen, the only Lex I've ever seen is one who wants to inexplicably destroy Superman regardless of what may happen as a result and I was hoping for a Lex with an MO I could finally understand but this may be the worst one yet. Grossly miscast too.

"I have many, many gripes but I think I mostly liked it..."

i have most of the same complaints as the people who hated it, but they weren't enough to make me hate it, if that makes sense.

nowhere close to great, but entertaining enough. definitely still in on DCEU and excited to see what's next.

A solid C-.

Not Fantastic Four bad. But I won't re-watch this as much as I do other superhero flicks.

I was looking forward to the rest of the movies, but I'm now concerned.

I'd be on board!

Batman should have been Honey Badger because he didn't GAF and was actually killing people. He was like The Punisher in this movie, hell, he almost killed Superman! I dozed off twice, I know one sleep was during Bruce's molly induced dream sequences back to back. How does a news reporter not know about Bruce Wayne? Especially since they made Metropolis like NYC and Gotham like NJ. There's a Wayne Tech building IN Metropolis that gets destroyed in the 1st act but you don't know Bruce Wayne? The average citizen knows him let alone someone working for a newspaper should. Lex Luthor was not the meticulous mastermind he is. Joe Morton is still with worst scientist in movies, I don't like Aquaman's look, or Flash's look. Wonder Woman was BAWSE!

I said, "Where's Joe Morton? That's his thing... HE does secret meeting on the bench."

Then he shows up, being a bad scientist. And I was like, "He does that too!"

giving his speech, makes sense now

Gal Gadot, out of all of this lopsided craziness WW is really the one we got a good look at her power, but don't know really much about. Despite not being sexy or imposing, she did well.

If they do her movie right, this might be a great look for Gal Gadot.

when it comes to women they'll never meet.

Tried to remember if we were talking about the same Gal Gadot.

Thought, "Maybe his iPhone auto corrected "Holly Hunter" to "Gal Gadot".

Nah....

Gal is stunning.

>Gal is stunning.

she really is. gorgeous.

about randomly meeting beautiful women in the industry. i believe i spoke about Densie Vasi in some sweets pushing around her newborn and how I could not keep my eyes off her with my ex hitting me with them eye daggers

i don't think these dudes know how fucn beautiful some of these women would be in person.

I'm not sure why it confuses you so much?

like she did well in spite of her obvious non-sexiness.

Way to turn a thread about a movie into a critique of his opinion on women.

He could easily have meant that the wasn't sexy in terms of presentation, not that she isn't sexy in general.

Either way people shouldn't have to throw out the "just my opinion" qualifier every time they express an opinion. That should be the universal assumption.

Hell even if he'd have given the qualifier you guys would have jumped on it anyway.

People on this board stay pressed as hell on the subject of what the next man finds attractive.

that's not an "imo" statement. he said she overcame her lack of sexiness.

>Way to turn a thread about a movie into a critique of his
>opinion on women.

he brought it up dude. for a guy who's all "why can't you discuss the things i said"... well that's what i was doing.

>Either way people shouldn't have to throw out the "just my
>opinion" qualifier

"Despite not being sexy or imposing, she did well."

Just say that next time.

"Yeah he didn't really make a universal statement, I just used a whole lot of hyperbole."

Just, you know, say that next time.

>that's not an "imo" statement. he said she overcame her lack
>of sexiness.

No, "IMO" is exactly what it was. Beauty, sexiness, etc, all that shit is completely subjective. How is this lost on you?

Does every guy who says "damn she's fine" have to run a disclaimer by you to make sure you know that it's totally just his opinion and in no way the opinions of every other human being in existence?

>>Way to turn a thread about a movie into a critique of his
>>opinion on women.
>
>he brought it up dude. for a guy who's all "why can't you
>discuss the things i said"... well that's what i was doing.

LMAO... so you respond to what he actually said by running to an absurd conclusion. Great job.

For a guy who consistently argues shit that isn't even fucking present in someone's statement, you're doing a great job of doubling down on doing it more.

>>Either way people shouldn't have to throw out the "just my
>>opinion" qualifier
>
>"Despite not being sexy or imposing, she did well."

So... you still can't explain how his comment on something everyone with any sense at all completely understands is 100% subjective is a universal statement.

I'm shocked.

and they let her on the set. Lol.

ALWAYS.

If someone says they don't find (insert generally accepted dime piece here) attractive, it will always generate the following replies:

1. EVERYONE HAS SUCH HIGH STANDARDS OF BEAUTY. This is usually accompanied by the "BUT IN REAL LIFE THEY'D FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES!"

2. Just plain old WHAT? YOU CRAZY!

3. The obvious "that's just your opinion" nonsense

Off top I've seen it in PTP regarding the blonde from Glee and Kelly McGillis.

This will always generates a handful of those dumbass responses.

all the other shit I typed to defend Gal Gadot!!

TRBO is the king of “this got weird” “this is so weird” type comments and pretentious username stays trying to be the polite police even as he spews passive aggressive jabs. If a post is derailed into some bullshit they’ll both be in the mix but act like they’re just bystanders.

Yet here they are trying to press you because your dick doesn’t jump at the sight of Gal the way theirs does to the point of adding additional spin to your comment.

Watch. They’ll either ignore it from here or have like 10 more responses on the subject and then blame me for it.

up until the not sexy part.

So I agree with what he said, except the not sexy part.

You here breaking down how people can have a difference opinions of attractiveness like that's what we're arguing.

You are the derailment.

This is a message board bro. We argue things all the time. Movies. Tv shows. Actors. Broads. Basketball Players.

When cats wanna turn this shit into a freedom of speech talking point, miss me with that.

>up until the not sexy part.
>
>So I agree with what he said, except the not sexy part.

No shit. That’s what we’re talking about.

>You here breaking down how people can have a difference
>opinions of attractiveness like that's what we're arguing.

Meanwhile PU had two posts in quick succession…. arguing just that…..and you cosigned both of them and like him, added additional meaning to his words to…..argue his personal opinion of Gal’s attractiveness.

>You are the derailment.

False. That began with you and PU taking the detour into his his personal opinion of Gal’s attractiveness. I observed and commented on your derailment.

>This is a message board bro. We argue things all the time.
>Movies. Tv shows. Actors. Broads. Basketball Players.

Cool story. I agree. Thing is, people are pretty selective when they want to live and let live. You and PU are always so taken aback when posts take such detours, yet quite often you’re contributors in your own right.

This is one such occasion.

>When cats wanna turn this shit into a freedom of speech
>talking point, miss me with that.

I have no idea what you’re talking about here.

Reply some more so you can pretend that you're not a participant in this.

The argue that other people are pressed.

Bye.

See you again real soon I'm sure

She steals a hard drive, returns it, goes to an ATM, checks her emails, watches QuickTime videos, and holds Doomsday with her lasso while Superman kills him... and that's it. So it's hard to tell if she'll be good or bad or anything in between.

(Also, why didn't *she* wield the Kryptonite spear again? Oh, because we needed to kill Superman for some dumb reason so we can bring him back for some dumb reason and then tease his insanely obvious return with the exact same ending as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen GOD THIS MOVIE IS FRUSTRATING)

It made sense to me that She'd have the spear, but it didn't play out that way.

DO WE GIVE THE KRYPTONITE JOB

TO THE ONLY MOTHERFUCKER IN THE WORLD

WITH A KRYPTONITE ALLERGY

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

That score is all kinds of hype-ness, hope they keep it for her solo film.

This flick has the best Batman related fight sequence committed to film. The last rampage against those 183 dudes was the shit.

Anyway. Movie was boring. I was quite bothered by Zach Snyder's commitment to throw shit together and expect people to get his shitty sense of storytelling. It was basically 'Sucker Punch'.

Am I nuts or am I the only one that didn't realize that Gotham City and Metropolis were just across the bay/lake/ocean from each other? Maybe I didn't pay attention. But this movie lacked establishing shots to let us know if we were in Gotham or Metropolis. Then Lois Lane is like...able to see Gotham City from Metropolis (GET HER A CHOPPER!) and I almost yelled "C'mon!" out loud.

Meh.

i'm out.
_____________________
"WHOLESALE REUSABLE GROCERY BAGS!!"
@etfp

.

THEY'D BOTH BE ALIVE TODAY

_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

>

>THEY'D BOTH BE ALIVE TODAY

I went in with 100% no preconceived notions, it was a mess.

What the fuck was that 1st 45 minutes?

Martha Waynes pearls are becoming the Detective Munch of the big screen.

movie of the batman inmeshed in a primal rage, titled, "the bat: man transgressed". oh, the ubermensch has yet to recieve his close-up.

however afterwards start thinking of all the plotholes. Kinda similar to Dark Knight Rises but this had even more just head scratching stuff, most in one of bwoods swipes above. The damn "experimental bullets" just makes no freaking sense at all. Luthor's plot in general makes no sense. The fight scenes looked cool, Batman looked cool. The actors were fine for what they were given but Snyder should be nowhere near any more of these. And take Goyer with him. As much as I liked Dark Knight Trilogy (well first 2) and Blade 2 he totally sucks at writing Superman stuff apparently.

I like Begins, I LOVE Dark Knight. Dark Knight Rises was a good theater movie but it completely fell apart for me when I saw it for a second time at home. It's one of the most baffling movies I've ever seen, really.


I had fun watching this movie, though some of that likely had to do with knowing the source material and having a childhood revolving around Batman. My girlfriend very clearly did not, and actually nodded off a few minutes before the climactic fight between the two heroes.


WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?!?! is the NOOOOOOO! of this franchise, though. Just because Superman's mother's name is the same as Batman's doesn't discount all the gripes Batman had against Superman's continued existence. Like, our moms have the same name, so now I'm not so worried about that time three minutes ago I punched you in the jaw and your head didn't even move before you threw me through two floors of solid brick...WHAT?!


If I'm a brilliant vigilante justice man who's comfortable in the knowledge that if I went too far a regular human being COULD potentially take me out with the right amount of planning and resources, and equally UNcomfortable in the knowledge that the same can't be said of Superman, his mom's name is not stopping me from dropping a spear in his chest.


Lastly, Lois Lane...why was she transformed into such a dummy? Dropping that spear made no sense. Also, did Perry know who Clark was in Man of Steel? Because he clearly knows who Clark is by the end of this movie despite appearing to pretend he doesn't. What's up with that?


I liked Eisenberg, maybe I just enjoyed his monologues but he was cool to me. It's just a shame he's more of a Scarecrow/Riddler amalgamation than Lex Luthor. Also, it's dumb they shoehorned Doomsday into THIS film especially since they didn't have time to explain to the audience how Lex came about that creature. They obviously could have never told Doomsday's full origin story and he's certainly a deus ex machina to the problem of Superman having a nemesis by default, but this was an awkward way to present that.


At least they didn't blow their load and drop Darkseid into things immediately. Doomsday's existence is good for that if nothing else.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Sure there are holes and there are a few parts that I was like ?word? But on a whole, I really enjoyed it. Dark, antiheroes are the rage now and though Supes is no anti-hero, to me the reality is he's still a flawed cat with issues. Daddy issues, abandonment issues etc so I get it. Overall a B.

I am so glad I went with my gut and went to see it, because I enjoyed the hell out of it. Maybe I napped a little in the final battle scene and ending scenes. Really could have been way shorter and cut down. But it was engaging.

And my biggest fear didn't come true: That Supes and Bats battle would last too long with the audience knowing what happens...

fired for real. The 3-4 biggest points in the film were ruined by the trailer.

First the fact that the trailer SHOWED Batman and Superman teaming up took all the tension out of both the buildup to them fighting and the actual fight itself. We KNEW it was gonna be all good by the end, which is bad since the name of the film is Batman V Superman.

Second it showed us Wonderwoman, which ruined her reveal coming to save them. The whole movie when she was investigating as Diana we already knew who she was so the reveal fell flat.

Third, the trailer spoiled Doomsday. Honestly the film itself just wasted Doomsday by having him tagged on the end and killed when it should have been BVS, but the fact that he was in the trailer made it worse.

Hey - I'm with YOU on this one.

Imagine seeing Terminator 2 and not having any idea that Arnold is a good guy. Ruined by the trailer

they know the entire movie from the trailer but have it be deceptive with it. I think a good trailer shows you what you think is a plot twist but is actually just part of the early setup of the film.

>they know the entire movie from the trailer but have it be
>deceptive with it. I think a good trailer shows you what you
>think is a plot twist but is actually just part of the early
>setup of the film.

this has been brought up before and somebody mentioned that in studies it has been shown that general audiences actually LIKE TO KNOW what going to happen in a movie with trailers like that.

>Imagine seeing Terminator 2 and not having any idea that
>Arnold is a good guy. Ruined by the trailer

i mean Arnold as a good guy was revealed in the first 1/3 of the movie...Doomsday reveal and Bat and Supes team up reveal completely change the tone of the movie. We should have gone in thinking it was about the two of them battling it out. Of course we would know that they wouldn't kill each other but we shouldn't have known that much detail.

everyone wanted to see the shit because of the trailer. irons' VO was incredible. then, the set up for the fight. if that trailer ain't do the job, this shit woulda got bad reviews AND bombed.

Seriosly though, what was Bats positive contribution to that last fight?

I musta missed it..... he just kinda bowed out once the big gun enemies showed up.....

and how did Lex KNOW to slice off Zod's fingerprints? I don't remember him going into the ship at all until AFTER he did that first....

Why were Batman and Superman only concerned with fighting each other when the news beforehand had said that this huge "doomsday" device had been activated.....I mean, Supes was being blackmailed by Luthor, but Batman was just sitting in some empty lot, waiting on Superman...based off what info would he think Supes would be there THEN??

How did Supes even know where Bats was?

How did bats INSTANTLY know where Martha was?

Did lex know Bruce's identity the whole movie?

Does Perry know Clark's? I got the impression at the end of MoS that Perry knows Clark's identity, but in BvS, he goes back and forth with the hints that he might know....

This movie DID bring up the more interesting question of why hasn't Lex Luthor in the comics figured out BW is Batman and use that info..... It's really not that hard of a deduction, especially for a genius.....

last one...was Clark hallucinating when he saw his dad? what was the point of that again?

while Wonder Woman had him roped, and he zipped around on his batclaw a bit to distract Doomsday's lasers.


pretty negligible and if they're really going to make the focus of these Justice League movies about DC's cast of alien villains rather than Batman's rogue's gallery (which makes sense, unless maybe you bring back Ra's) I wonder how they make Batman useful going forward (I'm not too familiar with Batman outside of his own series', I'm sure various comics figured this out).


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I just remember the other two really coming at "Doomsday"

they can figure out ways to make him useful in these battles...Batman often saves the day despite not having any powers.

After that it's pretty much just Bats trying to survive... which is why I love it.

I will (and did) watch that cartoon again before watching BvS. Though I may be interested in the directors cut in seeing if some of the unresolved plot points make a little more sense, I much rather see Bats and Supes in the DCAU

The joke a minute approach of Marvel's movies have become tired and it lowers the stakes (TV versions of Daredevil and Jessica Jones are another story) Things feel bigger and deadlier in the DC universe to me. Everyone reviewing these first 2 DC flicks like they action/comedy when that's not even what they've set out to do here. I agree not being Marvel isn't enough on it's own but the talk of lightening the tone goes right at what I've liked most about MOS & BvS.

they make movies where you actually give a damn about the characters and what's happening.

>The joke a minute approach of Marvel's movies have become
>tired and it lowers the stakes (TV versions of Daredevil and
>Jessica Jones are another story) Things feel bigger and
>deadlier in the DC universe to me. Everyone reviewing these
>first 2 DC flicks like they action/comedy when that's not even
>what they've set out to do here. I agree not being Marvel
>isn't enough on it's own but the talk of lightening the tone
>goes right at what I've liked most about MOS & BvS.

Movies like Ant-Man GOTG, and Deadpool are SUPPOSED to be funny, but that's JUST those three movie that are filled with jokes....That said, they are each fairly well written, acted, and directed action movies.... They each have interesting character dilemmas and people simply trying to do the best they can in bad situations and steep odds....

really looking at these DC movies like they should be action comedies? People are simply asking that they have better storytelling and nuance....Making the entire universe and every interaction "dark" both literally and figuratively does not make for a better movie..... Say what you want about the Marvel movies, but the antagonists and protagonists have valid reasons for basically hating each other.... There are real reasons for the conflict, and the STORY makes sense and is true to the characters.... I actually like MOS as an alternate take on Supes, but building on that darker universe for an even darker one, with characters that are supposed to represent hope, in a movie that doesn't have any hope or positive energy in it, is a mistake....

The movie has myriad problems, but "being dark" isn't one of them. At all. It may not be my personal tonal preference, but if a movie has good characters and competent storytelling, it can be a successful "dark" comic book movie.

The problems for this movie rest entirely upon the storytelling, the characters, and Snyder's seeming indifference toward consistent character behavior. (Also giving the women less than nothing to do doesn't help at all.)

So yeah, I agree that DC can make a "dark" universe that works... but they have to get Snyder out of there.

Of course, now all anyone is saying from the WB camp is that Suicide Squad is being reshot to add more jokes, James Wan keeps mentioning how "fun" Aquaman is going to be, and the WB people keep putting out in the press that Justice League will be non-stop kinetic action stuff... so they may just be learning the wrong lesson. I'm all for levity, but if they focus on "fun" without fixing the storytelling, shit won't change one bit.

How is any wrong with that complaint? 85% of people say that's a problem.

I think the tone doesn't help currently, but I have way more problems with storytelling, character development, character arcs, and editing than I do with the tone. I think they could've made a "darker" BvS movie and made it just fine, had there been competent storytelling and character logic.

IMO, the tone just exacerbates the much much bigger problems. A dark "Dark Knight Returns" live action movie could def work... again, if all of the above problems were fixed. I have much more faith in the dark Wonder Woman film, for instance, because the person at the helm is a strong storyteller. (Though it remains to be seen if the studio will allow a person to tell a story without much interference/insistence from the suits, I reckon.)

And as I said above, if Justice League is lighter in tone, jokier, and more fun, but it's still full of bad storytelling, incomprehensible characters, etc., it's still gonna absolutely blow chunks.

Alot of people have said this shit was just too dour.

DKR works because by the time Batman and Superman fight in that story, the world has gone to shit and they're friends who've come to major (& logical) blows.

This is a film by someone who's only read two DC stories and got not a fucking thing about them that made it great in the first place.

The storytelling is clearly the main problem.

I was just responding to OldPro's comment that he felt people were primarily complaining that the dark tone was the reason why the movie doesn't work, that they should try to emulate Marvel's tone more. And my point was merely that if Zack Snyder or a storyteller of Snyder's meager caliber had done a BvS movie perfectly nailing Marvel's tone, it *still* would've sucked, because the storytelling and characters would've been shit. The tone is really only a problem because if you're watching a movie with shitty storytelling, shitty characters, and mediocre action, a tone that takes the awful proceedings very seriously is the icing on the cake.

Or, to put it another way, if DC's execs and filmmakers put the same love and attention into the characters and stories in their dark movies that Marvel's do in their light movies, no one would complain about the tone at all.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across antagonistic above. I just think whenever people tweet about how making DC movies more "fun" and jokey would immediate solve the problem, they're missing that you can still have a movie with a light tone that super sucks.

But, I think everyone can agree with the fact that doing the Nolan-esque, Uber serious tone is a no-no.

The shit doesn't need wall to wall jokes and yucks, but fuck man, we have grown ass adults celebrating an unpleasant, violent film with characters who are unmotivated and unlikeable who were created for children during World WAR II.

And all the Christ imagery with Supes has got to stop as well. Superman was created by two Jewish dudes.

>But, I think everyone can agree with the fact that doing the
>Nolan-esque, Uber serious tone is a no-no.

Just the people you choose to agree with.

if you're gonna give us 2.5 hours that's overloaded and confusing, at least make it a little fun.

>if you're gonna give us 2.5 hours that's overloaded and
>confusing, at least make it a little fun.

People shouldn't focus on the tone. They should focus on making the movie less overloaded and less confusing. More coherent in general.

I think an incoherent movie with bad storytelling and nonsensical character actions would still be bad with a light Marvel tone. I think a coherent movie with good storytelling and strong characters could be great with a dark DC tone.

I agree that the tone doesn't help... but lightening the tone wouldn't help either if the story still sucks and the editing still sucks and the characters still suck and etc.

I don't need every superhero movie to be a "let's just have a goofy fun time!" jam. But I do need basic storytelling shit to work.

It just so happens that the studio currently making the "goofy fun time" superhero movies are also the ones who are putting character first and storytelling first (for the most part). If Marvel said they were making a movie with a pitch-black tone-- let's say they said Dr. Strange will be that way-- I would trust them, because of their track record with character and storytelling. If DC said they were making a movie with a super-light-goofy tone? I'm not sure that would give me a sense of relief, unless I felt the movie was in the hands of a good storyteller.

>I don't need every superhero movie to be a "let's just have a
>goofy fun time!" jam. But I do need basic storytelling shit to
>work.
>
>It just so happens that the studio currently making the "goofy
>fun time" superhero movies are also the ones who are putting
>character first and storytelling first (for the most part). If
>Marvel said they were making a movie with a pitch-black tone--
>let's say they said Dr. Strange will be that way-- I would
>trust them, because of their track record with character and
>storytelling. If DC said they were making a movie with a
>super-light-goofy tone? I'm not sure that would give me a
>sense of relief, unless I felt the movie was in the hands of a
>good storyteller.

but there are ONLY 2 "goofy fun time" movies in Marvel Studios vault though... GOTG and Ant-Man.... The rest of the movies, even those two, deal with some very dark themes and elements....It's a superhero movie... Unless it's Watchmen or MAYBE Batman, there should be a balance of light and dark (and before THAT argument even starts, I'd point to Tim Burton's Batman for an example of such)... It SHOULD be a fun watch that makes you think, and when I say "think" I don't mean leaves you confused.... Nolan's Bat movies work for the most part because he explores themes to make the audience think in this Dark World that Gotham SHOULD be... A "dark" Superman movie has never gone over well, and it shouldn't... parts of it can be dark, but to make the whole affair a dreary one means the people involved really don't know or care about the character...it can be done in the comics, but not the movies...

"A "dark" Superman movie has never gone over well, and it shouldn't... parts of it can be dark, but to make the whole affair a dreary one means the people involved really don't know or care about the character...it can be done in the comics, but not the movies..."

While I prefer the lighter Superman personally, I think a smart and gifted storyteller could make a darker Superman story from the comics work. Snyder just isn't that. At all.

...just that it's never gone over well on screen....he can be dark for a period, but not overall.... Every time it happens, critics and fans complain about the "tone", which off for any kind of traditional Supes story

... I agree that the right filmmaker could make a darker Superman film and it could work, but I doubt it'd ever go over well with audiences...

>People shouldn't focus on the tone. They should focus on
>making the movie less overloaded and less confusing. More
>coherent in general.


>I don't need every superhero movie to be a "let's just have a
>goofy fun time!" jam. But I do need basic storytelling shit to
>work.

cmon frank, everyone's made the point to say it doesn't have to mimic the Marvel humor, we're just saying adding some levity would help.

The first Fantastic Four movie was mighty light. Amazing Spider-Man 2 was bright colors and one liners. I'm not convinced either was better than BvS.

I don't think DC needs to emulate Marvel tonally. They just need to emulate Marvel's respect for characters, smart storytelling, and careful pre-meditated universe construction.

We all said it doesn't need to have Marvel's tone nor should it. And we all said it doesn't need wall to wall jokes cause it doesn't. But as PU said above it needs levity and a sense of fun.

Even dark, serious films can be fun. Nolan's Bat films. BOOGIE NIGHTS. PULP FICTION. Shit even NIGHTCRAWLER and that film's main character is a psychopath.

>The first Fantastic Four movie was mighty light. Amazing
>Spider-Man 2 was bright colors and one liners. I'm not
>convinced either was better than BvS.

sure, but I'm slightly more likely to rewatch the other two (probably won't rewatch any of them tbh)

as a counterpoint I'd offer up The Leftovers. Not a movie, but I think it's a good example of something that is objectively well-written/acted and looks like it'd be right up my alley, but jesus christ could it use a joke every now and again.

It's just not for you.

Just because a thing doesn't include a degree of levity that you personally enjoy doesn't mean that's a flaw of the thing. Just means the thing ain't for you.

BvS' problem was not at all its tone. It was its poorly told story. Jokes may have papered over those cracks for some people, but the cracks would still exist.

>But, I think everyone can agree with the fact that doing the
>Nolan-esque, Uber serious tone is a no-no.

The execution of the tone was a no-no. Not the tone itself.
If there’s any ultimate conclusion to draw here it’s that the totality of this isn’t quite working and they need to make some changes, but the tone is hardly the prime offender. The biggest changes that need to be made are in the storytelling department.

For what it’s worth your own plan for this looks like a homerun, but I think all of that could have easily been accomplished with a similar tone.

>The shit doesn't need wall to wall jokes and yucks, but fuck
>man, we have grown ass adults celebrating an unpleasant,
>violent film with characters who are unmotivated and
>unlikeable who were created for children during World WAR II.

If we have grown ass adults celebrating the unpleasantness and violence of the film, isn’t that a pretty clear indication that *everyone* definitively doesn’t agree that the tone was a non-no?

>And all the Christ imagery with Supes has got to stop as well.
>Superman was created by two Jewish dudes.

I’m having a hard time understanding what the former has to do with the latter.

I completely understand if you’re not a fan of the imagery but I just don’t see what that has to do with the creators. Especially with comic book-based material, where damn near everything is open to reinterpretation.

https://twitter.com/devincf/status/719375975373340672

Goyer gotta be stopped

During Mark Gruenwald's lengthy tenure on Captain America, he often ***did*** make the villains more interesting than the main character. The "Captain America walks away" storyline was excellent for the character, but a lot of that period was defined by the work Gruenwald did on Cap's rogue gallery. Hell, for a chunk of his period on the title having a hardcore Republican as Cap.

Over this shit.


Please stay mad. It's always entertaining.

browsing faraci's site isn't doing you any favours.

you idiot.

You must be really young.

If not you are a moron.

mr. "go light some kush while watching the jungle book movie"

you man-child idiot. i'm done here.

Immature child.

It's hilarious how mad you are.

and since it's still up, where can one find the total budget for this movie? I'm really wondering how much profit this movie is bringing in

http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets/

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Production Budget: $250,000,000 Domestic Gross: $329,619,773 Worldwide Gross: $867,419,773

And probably higher.

They needed to make $920 to make a profit so...

I'm amazed at all of the negative talk and crying. But hey I went to be entertained and at the same time talking a deeper look at humanity in crisis as well as false world's that many erect within their setting in life.
.
.
.

>I'm amazed at all of the negative talk and crying. But hey I
>went to be entertained and at the same time talking a deeper
>look at humanity in crisis as well as false world's that many
>erect within their setting in life.


yep, lots enjoyed it but aren't as vocal and obsessed like its detractors.

that being said, can't wait to buy the directors cut on blu ray. it will be glorious.

The only issue that I have is that the movie should have been longer to help with the deeper development of Luther's character and what drove him over to the Crazy villain side instead of the cerebral villain .
.
.
.

Finally got a chance to watch BvS at a $2 theatre today with my Dad and sister.

It wasn't great, but it is a good launching pad into the series of movies that will come after. I think the best way to describe the negative feedback about the movie is that with a little more work tightening up the script, this could have been a really great movie.

The rush to give so many characters an introduction and a sense of resolution at the end of the film without allowing for the emotional connections of the characters to gel, undermine what is a decent start at a franchise.

Like some of the posters here have mentioned above, the motivations of the characters and their actions were not described in any detail that really grounded the film emotionally.

I can see how Wayne could be threatened at the sight of watching his new 'family', the employees at Wayne Enterprizes, killed by the actions of Superman in an indirect way, but that was never really given any meaningful impact. As were the reasons why the CIA operative used Lois Lane's journalism as a way into that terrorist cell or Lex's reasons for being evil.

Also, the movie never described how Lex managed to be one step ahead during his manipulation of Bats and Supes. Or *why* he wanted to manipulate them in the first place. Was it just for his own satisfaction and if so why did he need to destroy the both of them? He also was part of the government's covert operations, but never really described the reasons why the government used LexCorp's technology or why it was a secret in the first place.

The pacing was also off. I liked that the movie 'humanized' the emotional and political consequences of a world in which a god lived, but it was kind of ponderous. I think there were ways that the film could used a greater efficiency to hit those beats.

The acting was good enough, although if a director who was better skilled at getting high craftsmanship from their actors, the acting could have been more convincing.

I liked some of Affleck's acting, but something seemed missing. Eisenberg was good, although he wasn't able to stick the landing of his 'eccentric' version of Lex. He needed to find another gear to his performance, but it didn't seem like he was able to sustain the intensity, but nonetheless, I enjoyed watching him.

I want to say that the acting was hamstrung by the dialogue which was clunky at some points. The line where Lex throws the psychotic line, it was a nice line, but it wasn't delivered well. I think that needed work and also the Bats and Supes exchange about their mothers. That was legitimately cringeworthy and really made that scene flaccid.

That being said, the action really was well realized and the battles between Doomsday, WW, Bats and Superman was well done. The superhero battle scenes usually seem a waste of time to me, but for whatever reason, I was engaged with this scene.

Since this movie is just the launching pad for a bunch of other movies, my sense is that the film is intentionally spare in details because as the films go on, the details will be fleshed out as those narratives continue. That was something that stuck out to me while watching this.

Also, I also sense that the focal point of the DC / WB movies is going to be the Justice League, kind of how Fox has handled the X-Men movies. Most of the posters here have compared the DC-verse to Marvel Studios's approach to their universe and have lamented the cynicism WB has shown by jumping so quickly to the Justice League rather than building up the narrative among the individual superheroes until it builds into a climax during the movies featuring multiple superheroes. I know nothing about the comics these movies are based upon or much about WB's strategy for these movies, but maybe these DC movies will be more self-contained than the Marvel's movies.

All in all, I'd give the film a B-. Solid summer entertainment, but I felt a bit cheated by the movie's structure.

https://youtu.be/8AO19XY2rqc

Featuring even more characters and more violence.

Enjoy!

NM

"It should be rated M for Martha"

"It's if Stanley Kubrick would have made a comic book movie, BvS is that movie."

> "It should be rated M for Martha"
>
>"It's if Stanley Kubrick would have made a comic book movie,
>BvS is that movie."


Wow...

better...sounds like they completely chopped the movie up in cutting it from 3 hours to 2.5. I'm not sure a movie that seemed WAY too long is better by making it longer, but if the reviews are accurate whoever edited the theatrical cut did a hack job.

Here's one example of a review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSI2w1Q_PXk

He was one of the ones saying don't see it when it came out, so it
threw me to see him saying that

I'm not exactly sure how that is possible - I don't know if it's a case of lowered expectations from how bad the theatrical cut was, or if they really did just hack up the movie. If that's the case then I kinda feel bad for Snyder.

It still has third act problems such as:

-The motivation of the titular fight

-Lois and the spear

-Martha

Also, killing Jimmy is still cruel and Lex's super bullets still don't make any sense.

But, they do flesh out almost every plot point that helps explain a ton and I mean a ton of problems. It also has much needed character moments.

But, the problems still exist.

Also, the R-rated violence was so unnecessary and over the top. It was almost like watching a fifteen year old jack off to hardcore violence. And the F-bomb was unneeded as well.

What was an abomination became a deeply flawed watchable film.

I can believe that. Not to decide whether I feel like coping once it comes on vider

The Ultimate Edition works and flows better as a movie, but a lot of the problems are still there.

I guess it just speaks to how bad the theatrical cut was. I'm not tough to please when I go see a film like this - I'm okay with some writing issues or a few plot points that don't make sense. But what we got was a straight up MESS.

I also think that the complete mess of the first two acts in the theatrical cut made the big plot issues of the third act worse. It was so difficult to stay with and felt so drawn out with no motivation that by the time we got to the Martha scene I was straight up ANGRY.

It is exactly two hours, 54 minutes, and 51 seconds long.

Where in the shit does the director get another five minutes and nine seconds from in the original version? I feel defeated after watching this long ass movie. Y'all sat through this in theaters and deserve purple hearts.

I know it's a comic movie but at least give me some form of realism with Lex going around bribing senators and killing them on live television. That's one of the more impossible moments in this movie.

First hipster Joker now emo Batman is a thing. This dude tortured someone but suddenly develops a conscience because one of Supes' relatives has the same name as his mom.... WAT? It makes less sense given the brutal nature in which he kills 30 criminals 10 minutes later. If Supes says Martha's name after he gets pissed then chop off 11 minutes from the film time.

The time travel and Lex scout ship ending moments do not make sense.

The director could've chopped off another 15 minutes easily if Lois doesn't take that weapon and throw it into the water after Supes flies off so the patriarchy wins again. Of course they needed the damsel in distress moment at the end of the film.

I'm glad we got the movie but the next one needs to be somewhat lighthearted. Bring in Damian and watch the hijinks.

Finally, on some agenda shit Marvel movies are sooooo much better than this DC film.

..it's REALLY BORING.....I watched the theatrical version, but this longer cut explains a bit better, but it's still a ridiculously dry movie....I might try again tonight to watch it....most of the things that don't make sense STILL don't make sense.... In fact, I'd argue that motivations make LESS sense after longer "explanations" (Supes is cool knowing Olsen and them villagers are getting murked, but hits his last straw when lois is in immediate danger.... he hears people calling for his head, but doesn't really try and address their concerns until he feels like it.... the heroes anger with each other is still dumb as all get out I don't think Supes is nice to ANYONE in this movie.... Alexander Jr is STILL outta character, the fact no one considered his insane after talking to him during the film is baffling)

....again....I'm trying to get through it....

Definite improvement but the biggest issues are still there.

A good deal of what was cut dug deeper into the motivations of Superman and Batman, and showing how Lex masterminded the events. The additional dialogue between Batman and Alfred, and between Superman and both his mother and ghost father really spoke to the motivation. The longer cut of the scene in Africa and the Senate hearing showed how Lex was setting everything up. I also feel like this longer cut flowed better to the point of it seeming shorter.

But all the issues in the third act are still there. You have Lex who was able to plot out everything - he got Batman to hate Superman, and was somewhat behind the public turning on Superman. He got the Kryptonite put it into position for Batman to steal it so he could kill Superman. But then for him to set up the final fight, his plan was to push Lois off of a building because he knew Superman would sense it and come save her. And that worked - Superman flies halfway across the world after being in hiding in his fortress and is able to save Lois in literally 2.5 seconds. And he HAD to for Lex's plan to work. But then then next part of his plan relies on Superman NOT being able to sense where his mother is, even after being TOLD that she has been taken and that he has an hour to find her.

Then you have the Batman v Superman fight. I don't have as big of a problem with this now since I can see a bit more why Batman was so convinced that he had to kill Superman. Even the Martha scene isn't AS bad now because it's clear that Superman was instantly humanized to Batman. They could have done that better so it wouldn't seem like "Oh my mom's name was Martha too!", but I can at least see what Snyder was trying to do there. My bigger problem is right after this - Superman goes to fight Doomsday while Batman goes to save his mom. First of all how was Batman and Alfred able to find her instantly when Superman couldn't at all? Was she in a lead building or something? Second, why wouldn't Superman be the one to go save his mom? He should be able to fly to her, take her out of the building, and come back to fight Doomsday with Batman in like 5 seconds flat.

Speaking of Doomsday, I REALLY don't get why he was created at all. Lex has a line saying "If man won't kill God, The Devil will do it" when Doomsday is unleashed. But he had already created Doomsday earlier in the film. It's not like he was under Lex's control. So if his original plan had worked and Superman was dead, would he have just told Doomsday "never mind, it's all good now"???

> First of
>all how was Batman and Alfred able to find her instantly when
>Superman couldn't at all? Was she in a lead building or
>something? Second, why wouldn't Superman be the one to go save
>his mom? He should be able to fly to her, take her out of the
>building, and come back to fight Doomsday with Batman in like
>5 seconds flat.
It didn't make sense why Supes couldn't locate his mother, but Alfred was able to trace KG Beast's phone to her location.

Because they NEEDED him to have to go fight Batman to save her. These are the type of plot issues that happen when the film is written backwards and you come up with scenes first and then try to make a story to get from one pre-planned scene to the next.

Why did Superman even talk to Lex at all? When he swooped in to save Lois he could have just flown her somewhere else and chilled. Why did he need to fly to the top of the building and talk to Lex so he could be presented with a "no win" situation?

revisited, scrutinized to no end.

not bad for such a "disaster" of a film.

anyway i've watched the TC a couple of times and it was a solid 3.5/5...my second viewing lowered my personal score a bit but i'm confident the UC will fix that. this is a movie i will watch many times in the future unlike many other popcorn superhero flicks who just came and went

just because people re-upped the thread when the movie is coming out in a recut version doesn't mean that it's not trash.



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

movies blogs every.single.day months after its release.

as far as i remember the same thing didn't happen to certified trash movies like f4ntastic, amazing spiderman 2 or wolverine-origins.

but hey,with that old man talk you clearly have more examples to bring to the table.

There was news about an extended cut coming, then that extended cut was released. That cut ended up actually being better than the theatrical release, (while being far from fixing all the issues), and that's something that is pretty rare so people are talking about it.

But more important than all this, this was one of the most anticipated films of the year, and the consensus is that it was a big disappointment. Those other films you mentioned had nowhere near the hype or anticipation. They also weren't tentpole films for an entire franchise. They couldn't afford to mess up BVS, but they did. That's pretty newsworthy and an interesting story, so you're gonna have blogs and critics and forums and everyone else talking about it.

especially if it gets re-edited for home release.

I'm not even saying dude (or anyone else) can't like the movie.

but it still caught a fucking brick and is widely judged to have sucked (I haven't seen it, I'll cop on ultra hd blu-ray)

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

thank you for clarifying the stupid opinion you've expressed.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

http://collider.com/batman-v-superman-ultimate-edition-review/

Spoilers follow for anyone who hasn’t seen any version of Batman v Superman.

Upon hearing the announcement in 2013 that Warner Bros. and DC Comics would be bringing Batman and Superman together on the big screen for the first time in Batman v Superman, I was just as excited as any other fan who’d grown up enjoying their stories in comic books, TV series, and films. Then came 2016, the year that Zack Snyder’s highly anticipated first installment of the DC Cinematic Universe would launch in earnest. The response to the film from critics was brutal; the fans, less so, but still divided. The movie began earning descriptors like “grim” and “dour,” so coupling that with a 151-minute runtime left me with the decision to pass on Batman v Superman during its theatrical run.

And now the Ultimate Edition has arrived, a three-hour cut with 30 minutes of additional footage that has many praising its clearer narrative and more cohesive overall structure. So I find myself with the rare opportunity of getting to watch the Ultimate Edition without ever having seen the theatrical version; the first time I watched the R-rated Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was just the way Snyder intended it to be seen. Or at least, that’s how it’s being marketed. (If you want a breakdown of the differences between the two cuts, check out Evan Valentine’s write-up here.) But rather than being impressed with a movie that was much better than reports have led me to believe, I’m left in a state of disbelief at just how convoluted the theatrical cut must have been and am amazed that a project that should have been a slam dunk was bungled so badly.

Let’s get a few things straight: This review isn’t about DC vs Marvel; I’ve long been a fan of both comic book companies (and others) and they each have their strengths and weaknesses as publishers and production companies. Neither is it about Warner Bros. vs Disney or any other movie studio; WB is the company behind the fantastic The Dark Knight trilogy, after all. And no, it doesn’t set out to bash Snyder out of turn; I’m probably more forgiving than most of Snyder’s work: I find 300 and Dawn of the Dead highly enjoyable, the extended cuts of Sucker Punch and Watchmen each have their merits, and Man of Steel was a solid film troubled by a few glaring oversights. Unfortunately, rather than eliminating the mistakes made in the Superman standalone, they’ve been magnified, amplified, and pumped full of alien steroids in this dark, psychotic ruination of the world’s finest heroes.

The Good:

Strong words, I know, but there is a surprising amount of good to be found amidst the clutter of capes and cowls. Here’s the best of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Ultimate Edition:

Ben Affleck as Batman – The plethora of guns and automatic weapons aside, I was quite impressed with Affleck’s performance as an aging, disgruntled, and singularly minded Batman. It’s a character tailor-made for Snyder & Co’s brand of the DC Cinematic Universe: he’s dark, brooding, and violent, willing to permanently eliminate villains of any shape and size (or at least brand them) if it means protecting innocents. We’ll let that particular hypocrisy slide for the moment since the outlook works for this version of Batman, one which brings the best elements of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic version of the character together with that of Frank Miller’s Batman from “The Dark Knight Returns.” And Affleck’s physicality brings a brutal and visceral gut-punch to the fantastic fight scenes and action set-pieces; the warehouse fight is one of the best I’ve ever seen and I wanted to see more like it. The decision to make Batman a force of terror among the criminal underworld of Gotham City was one of the strongest translations from script to screen in the entire film.

Gal Gadot as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman – It should come as no surprise to learn that Gadot pulled off both the “plain-clothes” and armored-up version of the Amazonian warrior princess, but it was nice to see her character so well-received by the fanbase nonetheless. Wonder Woman doesn’t get a huge amount of screentime, but she certainly makes the most of it, whether by playing the mysterious and capable antiques dealer Diana Prince, or the all-powerful Wonder Woman who saves the title heroes by movie’s end. This was a great introduction that bodes well for her standalone film next year.

Henry Cavill as Clark Kent – One of the highlights of the Ultimate Edition is the vastly expanded character work for Clark Kent. Cavil actually gets to play a range of emotions as the mild-mannered reporter: he flirts with his live-in girlfriend Lois Lane (Amy Adams), challenges his boss Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) for his defeatist attitude, and gets to follow his reporter’s instincts for once while investigating Gotham’s brutal masked vigilante, the Batman. Clark even gets to share intimate conversations with his mother (and father … more on that in a second) that focus squarely on the philosophical challenges of being a god among men. It’s fantastic. And I have no idea why a large portion of it was cut for the theatrical release, but the Ultimate Edition certainly makes Clark, and by extension Superman, a much more likable guy.

Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth – Irons is fantastic in most everything he does, but his capable and curmudgeonly caretaker of Master Bruce is one of my favorite iterations. He acts as a father figure, a voice of reason, and as a sort of stand-in for Commissioner Gordon; if only Bruce would actually listen to him.

Acknowledging human casualties – One of the biggest failings of Man of Steel was the wanton destruction of Metropolis that left literally thousands dead; Batman v Superman addressed both the fans’ complaints and the repercussions in the world of the movie itself by focusing the central conflict on this very issue. It’s literally the reason that Bruce Wayne, who channels fan rage in this movie, wants to take out Superman for good. While his ultimate goal may be misguided (and suicidal), his reasoning makes sense in light of this destruction. Happily, Batman v Superman takes pains to clarify that the superheroes and other “good guys” make sure that innocent civilians are moved to safety or tended to once destruction inevitably occurs … at least until the U.S. government detonates a nuke in the atmosphere… (Someone at Snyder & Co. should maybe Google how nuclear radiation works…)

Easter eggs – With three hours of runtime, you best believe there are some Easter eggs to be found. The best, in my humble opinion were the Man-Bat from Bruce’s nightmare about visiting his parents’ tomb, the Parademons and Darkseid’s symbol during his second dream sequence, a mention of the Lang family by Pa Kent, Glen Woodburn (a character introduced in Man of Steel as a stand-in for Jack Ryder, aka the Creeper), and the idea to introduce the rest of the Justice League. Unfortunately, the execution was lacking on this last part, but hey, A for effort.

Cameos – Vikram Gandhi, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Andrew Sullivan as talking heads, similar to those found in Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” arc. Though the real-life personalities take viewers out of the suspension of disbelief a bit, at least someone is debating the pros, cons, and philosophical arguments of what to do with a superhuman among mortals.

The Bad:

No movie is perfect, so here’s a look at some of the actors, characters, and plot points that just didn’t work for me in the broad scheme of Batman v Superman:

Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne – While Batman is expected to be unflinching in his delivery of swift and brutal justice to criminals, his alter ego Bruce Wayne needs to keep up appearances. If Gotham City’s most famous billionaire is just as brooding, aggressive, and unhinged as his costumed counterpart, the character loses some of the contrast that makes him so compelling and dynamic; it’s a common problem with Batman v Superman. Bruce does get up to a bit of sleuthing in this movie, which I enjoyed, but rather than being the face of his corporation, holding fundraisers for relief efforts or other philanthropic purposes, or even using his commercial pull to sway legislators (like Lex attempts to do), he’s attending underground bare-knuckle brawls, raiding his family’s wine cellar, and stalking women at Lex’s swanky party. To reference “The Dark Knight Returns” again, Wayne’s fortune is eventually wiped out in that story as he embraces becoming Batman in earnest, but Batman v Superman tried to have the best of both worlds and came up short.

Henry Cavill as Superman – Perhaps the most infuriating part of Batman v Superman that has nothing to do with obnoxious plot points or terrible writing is Snyder & Co.’s disdain for the Man of Steel. A common complaint is that Superman took second billing in what’s meant to be his sequel; a more specific complaint could be that Snyder & Co. seem to go out of their way to make Superman as unlikeable, incompetent, and dull as superhumanly possible. Cavill cannot elevate the script in which everything is set against his character, unlike Clark who gets a few moments of actual emotional expression. Even when saving children and being admired by onlookers, Superman seems almost super-incapable of joy. At this point, he should honestly be above all of this petty human bickering and focusing instead on greater evils in the world. This maturation period was the heart of Man of Steel, so with Superman stuck feeling sorry for himself and convinced that he-the world’s most powerful being-is helpless, there’s little room for the audience to feel anything but disinterest or outright disdain.

Amy Adams as Lois Lane – Though the Ultimate Edition allows Lois to “investigate” Lex Luthor’s ultimate (inept) plan to frame Superman for mass murder, she’s still reduced to sputtering out sentence fragments and aha moments of exposition to help keep the audience apace with the increasingly nonsensical plot. And when she’s not researching magic bullets or revealing Superman’s family tree to Batman, she’s aggressively complicating Superman’s attempts to save her or the world at large.

Additional Scenes – Not every scene found in the additional 30 minutes is beneficial to the movie itself. For example, do we really need to see a pair of Gotham City cops watching the football game between Gotham and Metropolis? Does the scene in which Steppenwolf and the Motherboxes are revealed do anything for the film beyond providing a fun Easter egg for comic book fans or teasing the next potential villain? There are still some deleted scenes here that were probably best suited for the actual Deleted Scenes category on the eventual Blu-ray and added little to nothing to the narrative.

Tao Okamoto as Mercy Graves – Not only does Mercy get only a couple of lines in this movie, we never get to see her in action as Lex Luthor’s very capable assistant and bodyguard. Her first live-action appearance was a waste. If you’d like to see a sample of what Mercy can actually be like, check out Superman: The Animated Series where she’s almost as beloved as Harley Quinn on the sister series, Batman: The Animated Series.


Dream Sequence – Although we got to see hints of Darkseid and some cool-looking Parademons in the dream sequence, it was a dream sequence nonetheless, and one that served mainly to further villainize Superman. Since this was so far outside of the bounds of the main narrative, which already had a number of sideplots going on, it probably could have been left in the deleted scenes or reworked as a post-credits scene. And don’t even get me started on the brief arrival of The Flash, which was as atrocious as Ezra Miller’s mustache.

Cameos – Jon Stewart, Soledad O’Brien, and Anderson Cooper … Why go through the trouble of creating fake cities in a fictional world if you’re just going to use real-world journalists? It really takes the viewer out of the experience, just like watching Superman smash through an IHOP in Man of Steel.

The Ugly:

If you’re wondering why I’ve barely skimmed the surface of the plot in Batman v Superman, it’s because it belongs right here in the ugly pile. But it’s definitely not alone since the villains of this film are some of the most laughably horrible aspects of the whole thing.

Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor – This was a mess from Day One. I’ve been wrong about casting in the past, but from the moment that Eisenberg’s look and voice for Luthor were revealed, you just knew that this thing was going to be a trainwreck. Look, actors make choices, and in the face of a bad script and, presumably, a director who lacked the confidence to say, “Hell no,” Eisenberg seemed to think the choices he made were good ones. They were not. in keeping with Snyder & Co.’s disdain for Superman, the theme extends to the character’s villains, as well; he’s more of a combination of Heath Ledger’s Joker and other Batman villains like The Riddler and the Mad Hatter. Eisenberg’s Luthor is much less like the billionaire business magnate who’s described as one of the most intelligent people in the world and more like a deranged spoiled brat with daddy issues and xenophobic sentiments. His sputtering stream of consciousness and childish antics were never threatening, not even when he was force-feeding Jolly Ranchers to Congressmen.

Luthor’s plan to rid the world of Superman includes: special bullets that are easily traced back to his company LexCorp, a team of mercenaries who are very recognizable, paying off an African woman to testify to Congress about Superman’s violent nature, and sending a jar of urine to a principled senator before blowing her up along the entire U.S. Capitol thanks to a bomb hidden away in a disabled man’s wheelchair. Oh, he also orchestrated the murder of prisoners branded by Batman, in the hope of pissing off Superman so much that the two of them would take each other down and clear the path to world domination for Luthor. When that didn’t work, Luthor used Plan B: a genetically engineered monstrosity that combined his DNA with that of the dead Kryptonian general, Zod. Is this all a mad plan of a deranged comic book supervillain? Sure! Is it the well-conceived, intricate, and coherent plan of a genius bent on outwitting the physically superior foes who oppose him? No, sir, it is not.

Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer’s Script – Granted, most everything I complained about regarding Luthor is actually from the script that forced him to act out such a bizarre plan. What I don’t fully understand is how Terrio and Goyer ended up with the mess that made its way into production; clearly there were more cooks in the kitchen than these two. Terrio has far fewer writing credits than Goyer, but his sole feature film credit won him an Oscar for Argo. Not bad, especially considering the thriller’s tense, well-paced story. Goyer, on the other hand, could churn out something on the level of The Dark Knight trilogy (which admittedly varies in writing quality from film to film) or something like Jumper, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Blade: Trinity.

Despite Christopher Nolan’s contribution to the film, we still ended up with dialogue like, “You’re digging up snakes, Lo.” Is this a Kryptonian phrase? Or the opening dialogue from the film itself when Bruce Wayne says, “There was a time above… a time before. There were perfect things… diamond absolutes. But things fall, things on Earth. And what falls… is fallen. In the dream, they took me to the light. A beautiful lie.” … We get it; Bruce is Emo, but this is just jibberish. Also, whoever was obsessed with the word “cake” (“hero cakes”/”let them eat cake”/pancake…) probably needed to do one more round of editing. And then there was Clark’s self-exile into the mountains where he just happened to have a father/son chat with the deceased Pa Kent. I’m astounded as to how this mess of a script on nearly all counts managed to make its way into production without anyone stopping to ask some hard questions. Perhaps all the shot-callers merely thought that any misunderstandings on their part would surely be picked up by the knowledgeable comic book fans or the competent director who had served them well so far. That would explain, in part, why anyone signed off on the decision to include the abomination/attempted fan-service that was Doomsday…

Zack Snyder’s Direction – Once you watch enough films by the same director, it becomes quite easy to spot their strengths and weaknesses. Snyder has a fantastic handle on spectacle, crafting some of the most epic and beautiful battle sequences in cinema history. His sense of tone is solid, and though you may not necessarily enjoy his dark take on the thematic material, he absolutely nails the emotional palette of his set pieces with the visual aesthetic to match. Snyder’s Batman v Superman featured some of the best Batman and Superman moments and sequences in the characters’ history when it came to comic book brawling, at least before the CG effects got too out of hand.

Where he falls apart is in the character department. Just because he has the vision to bring Batman and Superman together in an epic clash of wills and superpowers on screen doesn’t mean he can skimp on the reason behind their battle. This was the most frustrating part of the whole movie for me, “Martha” aside: I didn’t care about Batman’s “one man against a rogue god” outlook and I felt no sympathy for Superman’s sad-sack, pity party attitude. So when they eventually came to blows, there were no emotional stakes involved (and the kidnapping of Martha Kent by Luthor’s henchmen to force Superman’s hand was equal parts sadistic and laughable.)


Here’s the main question I have about Snyder: Does he truly hate Superman, does he merely misunderstand him, or is he setting the character up for something that, in Snyder’s mind, is even greater? The first answer could easily be the case considering that Superman is beaten down emotionally, psychologically and physically throughout the movie with little opportunity to stand up for himself in a satisfying way in any of those three arenas. And they sure do a number on any other Superman characters: Jimmy Olsen is executed (as a covert CIA operative…), Perry White is exhibiting signs of early onset dementia, Martha Kent is nearly beaten to death, and even the villainous Lex Luthor is a twisted, malformed version of his best self.

As for the second choice, I’d like to hope that Warner Bros. and DC Comics vetted the lead architect of their cinematic universe before handing over the keys to the kingdom, but perhaps WB setting Geoff Johns in that official role is more telling than not. I could still see a path where Snyder wanted to flip the script on “The Dark Knight Returns,” allying Batman with the authorities and painting Superman as the rogue rather than the maverick Dark Knight resisting the oppressive tactics of the government-sanctioned Superman. If that was the angle, it didn’t quite land.

So maybe it’s the third option after all and we’ve only seen the first two acts of Snyder’s magnum opus for Superman. We’ve seen his birth/reveal as a superhero in Man of Steel and his literal death in Batman v Superman. Snyder has said that Superman needs to go through a crucible and face mortal peril in order to truly understand what it’s like to be human, so perhaps Justice League will finally give us the enlightened superhero fans have loved for nearly 80s years? The end of Batman v Superman certainly suggests we’ll be seeing the completion of Snyder’s Christ-like treatment of Superman in his next film, but I don’t expect it to feel like the second-coming unless they address the whole range of issues mentioned above.

The general consensus is that the Ultimate Edition is superior to the theatrical cut, and that may very well be the case, but it does not mean that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice magically becomes a good movie because of a few extra scenes. In fact, it defies belief that the previously released version could be much worse. So if you’re like me and haven’t seen the theatrical cut, definitely go ahead and check out the Ultimate Edition if you’d like to see what the fuss is all about. The good news is that, now that the full version is available, some intrepid fan will cut together an edit that is well-paced, action-packed, coherent, and enjoyable. There’s a good movie in there somewhere.

Rating: D+

batman-v-superman-ultimate-edition-review

It's what I inadvertently did
Will be watching the ultimate version this weekend
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ozhw6UjMw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTKDtoBR-2M

...the most fundamental problems of this movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btYoSQ9ijf0

...before the very determined "It still sucks," backlash.

People are fun.

Don't get me wrong, its not a great movie by any stretch...but its decent and has some cool highs.

The Batman stuff worked great.

Not much new to add I suppose but I gotta ask

(not to get tinfoil hat)


Does Disney pay critics? Because straight up, this flick wasn't nearly as bad as it was made out to be.

And something hit me- a lot of problems this flick has (issues with plot, character motivations, motivations changing, etc)...the new Star Wars movie had.

Now, I'm not saying this movie is better or as good as that.


But its strange that that movie got like 99% or whatever and this got 30%.


Disney/Marvel flicks are pretty much critic-proof and I don't buy it, frankly.

This movie wasn't as bad as it was billed, and Star Wars wasn't nearly as good as advertised either.

temporarily explained because of the fact that film held out explaining a lot of back story that should eventually be explained in the next two films. I'm not a fan of how info like Rey's parentage or what Luke was doing or why certain people didn't know others was deliberately left in JJ Abrams mystery box, but it is posible that there are good explanations for all that stuff that hasn't been revealed yet.

With BVS on the other hand everything is right there in this movie and it doesn't make sense. Lex had a plan that needed Superman to instantly track Lois Lane from halfway around the world, get there and save her, but NOT be able to locate his mom in the same city when given a couple hours to find her. There's no way that can have a backstory explanation. There is no backstory explanation that could be revealed later to make the Martha scene okay.

But the biggest difference between the two films is the likability factor - there is nothing likable about ANYONE in BVS so you have noone to root for or to be invested in their story. In TFA the only unlikable character were the "bad guys" - Kylo, Snoke, Hux, etc. They did a GREAT job of making you care about Finn and Rey as new characters, which made the movie that much more enjoyable regardless of any plot issues you may have had. Civil War was another example - they built everything up perfectly so that in the ending fight you like both Iron Man and Captain America, and can see that BOTH of them have points and are "right", so the fight has that much more tension. You care about every punch and counter.

I feel the same way about Suicide Squad - I enjoyed that film WAY more than BVS so I didn't care as much about the issues in the third act or the lack of motivations. I had fun watching it, while I couldn't wait for BVS to be over.

>And something hit me- a lot of problems this flick has (issues
>with plot, character motivations, motivations changing,
>etc)...the new Star Wars movie had.

I didn't think I'd say that about any 3-hour director's cut. It's night and day as far as coherent storytelling goes. Lex Luthor's plan still makes little to no sense, but that flaw is easier to ignore when they do a better job of setting up the conflict between Clark and Bruce. The setup of the Justice League wasn't as rushed this time around and I'm not wondering why Wonder Woman was there. I'm actually looking forward to what they do with it.

Just a gigantic poop on everyone's intelligence.

Impossible to watch and think at the same time.

Snyder should be a DP and leave the storytelling to grownups.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Anything negative and he blows a blood vessel.

and i haven't even posted in this thread since july!...poor thing, i really hope one day you'll find something a bit more exciting to do than constantly hitting the refresh button on this forum section.

came after me like I fucked your girl. But do you. A dumbass is gonna be a dumbass.

Down to your sig is bout this movie. You were determined to hate it before it even dropped. Begrudgingly admitted whatever cut you saw was 'solid.' Then gleefully jumped into the dogpile waist deep when you saw how the wind was blowing.

Hellyeah just be calling you on it.

That axe you grinding sharp as shit.

I never want to waste my time on a bad movie. Shit I WANTED this to be good.

Sometimes the hype of seeing it (especially a earlier version) clouds judgement. Shit I swore up and down that Episode 1 is a good movie for weeks until I got to see it again and let that shit sink in.

shit this movie is bad.

even Wonder Woman is wasted

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I hadn't seen this before and what my and my friend both agree on:
1)It's too slow
2)I needs some humor - maybe 3 total jokes in 3 hours.
3)The director does not like Superman
4)The stupidity of Lex's plot
5)The news reports almost immediately after question if superman committed mass murder

I don't get the dream sequences fully - supposed The Flash coming back in time - but only in dreams?

Aquaman's "scene" was awful. Looked like dude was struggling to hold his breath while they wire-fu'd him underwater.

Still unclear how Lex identified Batman AND Superman PLUS the cyborg, Aquaman, Wonderowman.

Maybe Zack Snyder and Judd Apatow could co-direct a film? judd with Charater development and Zack with action. And it'd still be super long.

All that being said - I didn't hate it. And $9.99 in 4K (BF deal) made it easier than paying movie to see it in the theater.

I am not a fan of Superman but shit I respect there are certain rules with the dude you have to observe or it ain't Superman.

Funny thing for a long time I didn't get Snyder Hate and I actually thing his ending to Watchmen was superior to the comics, but after Sucker Punch and this now I get it.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I get he might have seen The Flash's symbol, but where'd he get the folder icons for the others?

I finally saw it, and I realized there's so many bad parts that I hadn't even heard of. at some point you just stop listing them

IF YOU SEEK HIS MONUMENT LOOK ABOUT YOU


literally every line lex luthor has in the movie is awful

this might be the worst written super hero movie of all time, including that fantastic 4 with mr fantastic dancing at the beginning.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

jeez you are harsh lol.

one of her employees swore it was better than Civil War. I told her he was a moron for making that statement and you should just fire him for being a moron. But she promised him she would watch it and I got pulled into that shit. FUCK it was a mess. The story was all over the fucking place. The end battle was horrible. Just everything about it was HORRIBLE. Fucking mess.

and it is as bad as everyone said it was. Awful, awful film. I couldn't believe how bad it was. If you told me 30 years ago there was going to be a Batman v. Superman movie and it was going to be awful, I would never have believed you. "How could you mess that up? It's the dream we all dream of!"

I keep an eye on anyone who thinks that it was a good movie.

along with suicide squad


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrjneJvS6dk

for the whole movie and at the end they told you it was a Riddler or Joker origin story would have anyone been shocked?

Actually that makes sense.

The issue still lies with Lex Luthor and Doomsday. VERY weak villains all around keep this one at arm's length in terms of being the comic book movie we wanted. Luthor is a crybaby pipsqueak in comparison to Batman and Superman. Doomsday is a worse version of the cave troll in LOTR and entirely too powerful for his own good.

The Ultimate Edition did expand on Luthor's plan, which made it make a little bit more sense. The whole Martha fiasco is still silly, but makes more sense with repeat viewings (it humanizes Superman in Batman's eyes who viewed him as the all-destroying threat the entire film).

Batman being a killer is still front-and-center, however it doesn't bother me as much as it did before. This is mostly due to that warehouse scene where he brutally beats those guys protecting Martha Kent. It's just too badass to completely hate.

The best part of the movie is still Wonder Woman. I never thought much of her until this movie, so I have to give credit where credit is due. Gal Gadot didn't have a ton to do, but she nailed the appearance. And I love that theme.