Re: Movie: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Posted: Wed March 23, 2016 10:15 pm
This movie ruins everything.
Okay. I'll wait until I see it to judge it. But it sounds pretty fucking stupid.theplatypus wrote:But... I mean... God help me, I'm about to defend that stupid thing, but that's a very cynical and simplistic and deliberately dismissive reading of what happens in that scene.
- Spoiler: show
are there other things in the movie that are higher on the Stupid Scale than that?theplatypus wrote:It is, it is. There are levels of stupid though, and that review is misleading as to where it stands on the Stupid Scale.
They should have called it “Batmeh v Supermeh.”
Running 153 minutes, with a swollen budget of $250 million, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is pure overpriced, overproduced, overlong pulp. It is an interesting idea of a film created by people who have no earthly idea how to do it, a quasi-epic without a thimbleful of wit, style or rooting interest in either of its leads.
The respected Christopher Nolan is one of the producers, but this film is to his “Dark Knight” trilogy what a black velvet Elvis is to the Mona Lisa. This dour, dead-on-arrival film throws the feel-good glory days of American comic books on a funeral pyre.
It is largely a follow-up to director Zack Snyder’s 2013 smashfest “Man of Steel,” and you need a will of steel and a strong stomach to sit through it. The earlier film was a savage Superman demolition derby that left many fans pained by its illogical and repulsively grim body count. This rehash and reheat installment aims to clear up those unresolved issues with an even higher tally of fatalities. It also introduces Batman as his adversary, and name-checks several other superfolk scheduled to quickly have their own films. All of it is offered up with feverish seriousness. If you wonder what’s meant by the phrase “deadly dull,” this is it.
Hunky, shallow Henry Cavill emerges as the Taylor Kitsch of the moment. He returns as the red-caped alien, caroming across Metropolis and Gotham City (here set closer side by side than Minneapolis and St. Paul) in mighty leaps and bounds. He’s the sort of good guy who liquefies bad guys with laser beams from his eyes. Ben Affleck steps into the midnight black uniform of Batman, his chin resembling a cinder block beneath his mask. The actor delivers a concrete performance as Bruce Wayne, a vigilante billionaire so battle-weary that he retains a perpetual three-day stubble.
Each despises the other as a threat to humanity, and Snyder, who has a knack for violence, expends vast amounts of computer generated chaos and slow-motion acrobatics to drive home the point.
Warner Bros.
Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
Warner Bros. Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
The opening of the film returns us to Superman’s city-shattering battle in the previous film, explicitly resonating to the 9/11 terror attacks on Manhattan. It rushes to horror film scenes of Batman torturing criminals and sending them to prisons where their branding iron bat tattoos are a death sentence among other evildoers. The stars launch overheated sadomasochistic duels again and again before jointly facing a computer-generated alien warrior who literally disembowels his victims, just in case you skipped anatomy class.
Gal Gadot joins the brawl as Wonder Woman with a smirky, “I’m just warming up” expression. Amy Adams’ return as Lois Lane gives the film a rare nod to humanity. Jeremy Irons acts ever so adroitly as Batman’s butler Alfred. And Jesse Eisenberg is resourcefully artificial playing tech wizard Lex Luthor as a budding lunatic. It’s not all terrible.
The real villains here seem to be director Snyder, who believes that no duke-out is worth filming unless it runs 50 rounds, and the MPAA ratings board recommending this assaultive film to children with a PG-13.
Were cities never destroyed in film before 9/11 - or is it that they shouldn't now?explicitly resonating to the 9/11 terror attacks on Manhattan
theplatypus wrote:I love this review, even though I disagree with parts of it http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/201 ... stice.html
I think that's almost always a reference to the cloud of pulverized debris that we've seen so many movie characters run into in the past 15 years. Sure, buildings got blowed up before, but I don't ever remember seeing this in film before 9/11:Rangi Guy wrote:Why is it when there's a city being destroyed in a movie reviewers feel compelled to say some variation of...Were cities never destroyed in film before 9/11 - or is it that they shouldn't now?explicitly resonating to the 9/11 terror attacks on Manhattan