In describing his apathy for Francis Ford Copola's The Godfather, Peter Griffin in an episode of Family Guy say the film insists upon itself. This line perfectly describes my feeling towards the sequel of 2013's Man of Steel.
I saw Batman V Superman on Thursday night needless to say as many others, I was underwhelmed. The film begins with the killing of the Waynes which we saw 11 years ago in Batman Begins. This scene carried as much weight in the film as facts would in an argument with an imbecile. I bring this scene up because Christopher Nolan, producer of Batman V Superman, made that scene have impact in three films over 7 years whereas Zack Snyder couldn't make the same scene impact a film in almost 3 hours.
Much of the meat of the film seems long and drawn out. It spends too much time trying to make us care about a lot of things we don't care about such as; Lex Luthor's fascination over stopping Superman, Diana Prince showing up at random and ill-conceived moments, Lois Lane being a cartooned damsel, and the glutinous politics.
The crazy thing about this film is not the actors being bad in the roles, but the material they are given. Ben Affleck played a pretty good Batman, Jeremy Irons was quite underrated (and underused) as Alfred Pennyworth, Jesse Eisenberg was given Play-Doh in order to make Venus De Milo as far as his motivation as Lex Luthor. Kevin Costner was great in his small cameo and Diane Lane actually made you give a damn about the movie at certain points as Martha Kent.
This film suffers the fatality of doing too much that it doesn't build any connection with character and plot.
Lex Luthor was a poor excuse for the Joker instead of maniacal businessman or intelligent sociopath. Superman was an action figure yet again. In Man of Steel there was a final scene where Clark Kent was introduced to Lois Lane, I had thought this would introduce us to the man Kal-El pretends to be on a daily basis. The lovable bumbling geek that Christopher Reeve owned. Did he show up in this film? No. Because the film insists that it be about two superheroes having a disagreement.
Clark in this film is headstrong and has a grudge against a man in another city handling crime in ways that are different than his. This does a disservice to Henry Cavill because he never gets to actually act as the human disguise of the superhero thus driving home the theme of him clearly being an outsider.
Batman looks like he has been through a lot but how would the audience know? Throwaway lines about guys dressed like clowns? A Robin suit with a message spray painted on it? I guess so.
The set up for the Justice League lacked intrigue. They showed glimpses of Cyborg, Aquaman, and the Flash. They even showed one big glimpse of Wonder Woman because she seemed a little more of an extra than the female super-heroine.
I have tried hard to stay away from comparing this film to any of the Marvel films because I believe DC and Warner Bros should not copy Marvel's formula but conceive their own. Their Pepsi to Marvel's Coke. The DC model is rather shaping up right now to be store brand cola.
I have seen all but one Marvel film in the theater, that being Thor: Dark World. In my experience the theater was always packed and throughout the film the audience became invested. They cheered, applauded, and laughed. There was little to none of that in this film. It barely got you hooked in. At times it felt like when a friend is telling you a story and you are trying your damnedest to pay attention that by the time it gets to the payoff you can only give a morbid forced reaction.
I believe that the planning of this film was as contrived as it was for Green Latern and Superman Returns. Superman the Movie was Hollywood's first gamble with the superhero film and it paid off along with it's sequel but from then on Superman has not brought in the kind of money other titles in the genre has. DC and Warner have been trying to figure out why it is the character of which the term superhero was created has been outdrawn by other lesser known entities. The only character that has continually grossed for them has been the Dark Knight.
So simply, it must have been thought the only way to make Superman popular again was to place him alongside the much popular Batman. Which sounded nice at first, then you notice the Bat symbol looked quite different from those of the Dark Knight series. Leading to the news that a new Batman would be cast. The reasoning was that Superman could not exist in Nolan's universe.
But, wouldn't that have made for an interesting film? This Superman would literally and figuratively be an alien in the Dark Knight universe. The whole controversy of Man of Steel was that Superman like Batman does not kill. This point was evident in the Nolan films and would have benefitted the plot of this film rather than the whole "can we trust this alien to continue doing good" arc from the first film.
Another possibility in the case of creating a new Batman is to have delayed this film and make a solo Batman film to create familiarity for a team up film later on. Imagine how weak the Avengers would be if they had dug up Captain America out of ice midway through Iron Man 2.
This film was not Fantastic Four, in that it was bad enough to kill any future plans for a shared universe but it packed a very small punch thus creating little to no momentum for the future films in the DC Universe. With that being said they may make a great Wonder Woman film and restore or gain some enthusiasm for the Justice League film.
For now we can only hope that the second film that showcases a superhero beef this year (with characters that actually have history on the screen) Captain America: Civil War justifies the excitement for it.
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