Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

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I watched this recently and he covers the main issue with Synder's directing.  For me, it was very obvious in Watchman:

 

 

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On 9/9/2016 at 1:45 PM, Michael* said:

 

Yeah, I mean the Nolan trilogy wasn't exactly canon, but it was a singular vision from start to finish and he understood the characters. Unlike Snyder, storytelling is his strong suit, he was given license to tell them the way he wanted and had the freedom to make sure that the narrative worked within the world he'd created.

 

I'd like to see DC take their time now and get themselves an in-house studio, where a producer can oversee each movie so that they don't totally contradict each other. It'd be a more effective way of opening the fans up to a wider universe.

 

what do you think of the decision to make batman a murderer?

 

This film is very expensive and visually stunning but it has a terrible story

[Michael*]

11 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

 

what do you think of the decision to make batman a murderer?

 

This film is very expensive and visually stunning but it has a terrible story

 

My issue with it wasn't so much that he killed people, because a story focussing on Wayne's guilt and his descent into antihero territory could have been interesting. It was more that it happened as this throwaway thing, without any mention of what killing actually means to Batman. If you're going to play fast and loose with one of the guy's defining characteristics, I'd expect to see it justified in some way or at the very least discussed. Snyder was just so far off-base with that.

 

I’ve read rumours that the standalone Batman film might cover the Red Hood storyline, but I’m at a loss as to how it would be handled because really, there’s nothing separating this Batman from the way the Red Hood operates at this point.

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Ben Affleck's batman is embarrassing to watch; he is so dreadful in his seriousness.  Not really his fault though.  I too thought that the killing was off-base and rather ruinous to the character.

 

The movie feels like Synder on steroids; to the point where his strengths/ flaws as a director magnify as the action setpieces and (like the video says) preoccupation of creating iconic yet unearned moments take over everything.  Pretty much all the characters sucked and the writing is terrible.  Lex Luthor is terrible.  Wonder woman and Batman are miscast.

 

I feel bad for Superman (Henry C) who I think has the potential to be a good superman.  I thought Man of Steel was decent but Synder has given him sub par material.  B vs S is much worse.  He supposedly dies but the coffin lids moves in the end.  

[Michael*]

3 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

 

Ben Affleck's batman is embarrassing to watch; he is so dreadful in his seriousness.  Not really his fault though.  I too thought that the killing was off-base and rather ruinous to the character.

 

The movie feels like Synder on steroids; to the point where his strengths/ flaws as a director magnify as the action setpieces and (like the video says) preoccupation of creating iconic yet unearned moments take over everything.  Pretty much all the characters sucked and the writing is terrible.  Lex Luthor is terrible.  Wonder woman and Batman are miscast.

 

I feel bad for Superman (Henry C) who I think has the potential to be a good superman.  I thought Man of Steel was decent but Synder has given him sub par material.  B vs S is much worse.  He supposedly dies but the coffin lids moves in the end.  

 

I find that in large-scale crossover pieces like this, the opposing ideologies of characters is almost always the main source of fun. Unfortunately, Batman and Superman weren't contrasting figures, just slightly different shades of grey. Saying that, Batman's arc could still have felt really moving if Snyder had spent more time on the conflict between his two leads. An embittered, broken Wayne pushed over the edge by Jason Todd’s death, only to have his soul saved by an alien with more humanity than him is a beautiful concept, and one that should really have been a slam dunk.

 

Wonder Woman's big introduction was something of a non-event in the end. Even her inclusion felt a bit superficial, like they were trying too hard to play catch-up with Marvel. Luthor operates mostly as a stopgap for plotholes, magically figuring out alien technology, Superman's entire backstory and genetic engineering as and when the script calls for it.

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A throwback (connected to  B Vs. S)

 

This trailer was so good

 

 

 

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21 hours ago, Michael* said:

 

I find that in large-scale crossover pieces like this, the opposing ideologies of characters is almost always the main source of fun. Unfortunately, Batman and Superman weren't contrasting figures, just slightly different shades of grey. Saying that, Batman's arc could still have felt really moving if Snyder had spent more time on the conflict between his two leads. An embittered, broken Wayne pushed over the edge by Jason Todd’s death, only to have his soul saved by an alien with more humanity than him is a beautiful concept, and one that should really have been a slam dunk.

 

Wonder Woman's big introduction was something of a non-event in the end. Even her inclusion felt a bit superficial, like they were trying too hard to play catch-up with Marvel. Luthor operates mostly as a stopgap for plotholes, magically figuring out alien technology, Superman's entire backstory and genetic engineering as and when the script calls for it.

 

The screenplay just doesn't...work.  It tried to do too much and the drama falls flat.  The story is just not believable or compelling.  The actors look awkward when they are speaking. I do get the sense that Syndor was influenced by the success of The Dark Knight.  Are you looking forward to Wonder Woman?

[Michael*]

On ‎07‎/‎01‎/‎2017 at 3:44 PM, Cult Icon said:

 

The screenplay just doesn't...work.  It tried to do too much and the drama falls flat.  The story is just not believable or compelling.  The actors look awkward when they are speaking. I do get the sense that Syndor was influenced by the success of The Dark Knight.  Are you looking forward to Wonder Woman?

 

My feeling is that Snyder plundered a lot of the visual cues from Frank Miller's Dark Knight and various other bits of the source material, but without ever really grasping the point of the stories or how it would all mesh together. The end product was more like a number of trailers laid out one after another than a single, coherent piece.

 

I'm still pulling for them to get it right with Wonder Woman, and from what we know so far, it does finally look like the story of a DCEU movie will be set up to serve its lead character, instead of the other way around. However, given their recent track record, I'll probably be going into it with some trepidation. How about you?

[Michael*]

On ‎07‎/‎01‎/‎2017 at 2:28 AM, Cult Icon said:

A throwback (connected to  B Vs. S)

 

This trailer was so good

 

 

 

I was particularly fond of the scenes in which Clark flew for the first time and broke the sound barrier. Faora was another highlight for me, far too little Antje Traue on our screens these days in my opinion.

 

The sad thing is, they could have easily produced a decent Man of Steel 2 using the nucleus of BvS's 'false god' storyline, a Luthor with clearer motivations and a little more thought put into how he controlled proceedings from behind the scenes. They could have ended it with a mid-credits Batman teaser, setting up Bruce's mistrust of Superman.

[Stromboli1]

I thought BvS wasn't a good movie, entertaining though.

 

The story wasn't good and the actor's performances were wooden.

 

DC made a mistake in hiring Snyder. I can't believe they're letting him do the Justice League.

[Michael*]

On ‎08‎/‎01‎/‎2017 at 2:13 AM, Stromboli1 said:

I thought BvS wasn't a good movie, entertaining though.

 

The story wasn't good and the actor's performances were wooden.

 

DC made a mistake in hiring Snyder. I can't believe they're letting him do the Justice League.

 

It certainly wasn't a total bust. When you take the best bits, rearrange them and fill in a few blanks, you can piece together a classic in your head. Depending on how generous you're feeling at the time, of course.

 

I would even say that the acting was generally of a decent standard. Affleck acquitted himself surprisingly well with Cavill mostly holding his own too, albeit in an underutilised part. Irons, Fishburne and Hunter were all fun in the limited roles allowed for them. Even the much maligned Eisenberg probably delivered what they wanted in terms of performance, the problem was that he was woefully miscast and the character was so appallingly conceived.

 

I've a feeling that Affleck and Johns will be calling the shots for Justice League, with Snyder very much reined in and Goyer presumably nowhere in sight. Whether or not the DCEU is salvageable is still up in the air, though. By the end of Man of Steel, they'd created a good foundation for the continuity, with DC openly stating that the emergence of Superman would lead to other superheroes gradually revealing themselves. Somewhere along the way, they did a complete about face and started trying to achieve in two movies what Marvel did in a dozen.

[Michael*]

Recently, Zack Snyder has been attempting to explain some of the subtext of Batman v Superman, and some of the results have been quite amusing.

 

Here's one of the scenes from the film, in which Wayne wakes up from a nightmare with a woman in his bed. A Robert Mapplethorpe painting can be seen on his wall while he takes painkillers.