Preachy about innocent people being destroyed in an alien attack. Not so preachy about human traffickers.
sage1000 It could be. I didn't say it was a prophetic dream, just Batman's paranoia. You're right that the parademons are too specific for it be a result of his paranoia.

 

Remember that whatever Lex did, it allowed him to hear very loudly that something (probably Darkseid) is coming. Bruce could be experiencing something similar, if much muted in volume. Echoes, if you will.

 

I probably enjoyed this film more than I was expecting I will, but it was very uneven. I would even go as far as saying that everything involving Batman was good or great even (with an exception of the killing he does) and everything involving Superman was mediocre at best, bad at worst.

I liked how Affleck played both Bruce and Batman, and Jeremy Irons may be my favourite Alfred yet. The bat costumes were the best we ever got, and the Dark Knight finally, and it was really long overdue, kick ass in combat.

On the other hand, while I like Henry Cavill's Superman, his Clark is not even trying to be different from the Man of Steel. And the only good thing I could say about Lex was his taste in assistants, but then he unnecessarily killed her.

Wonder Woman's inclusion, while not necessary for the film, was a nice addition that made me optimistic before her own movie.

 

I had no interest in seeing a WW movie until this movie. So they got that right.

Still not interested in Suicide Squad thoufg

 

Anyone know if there was a teaser at the end of the credits? I hadn't stuck around to see.

 

There wasn't.

 

I am probably the only person in the world who genuinely enjoyed this movie. It shouldn't surprise me, as I have a history of loving movies that fizzle in the box office, The Man from UNCLE and John Carter of Mars being chief among them.

That said, despite my enjoyment this was still an incredibly frustrating movie. I saw it another time today* to confirm my suspicions: the core of Batman v. Superman is sound, and it could have been a fantastic movie had certain changes been made. Warning: long rant ahead!

Spoiler

As I said, I believe the core of the movie to be sound. The general framework (Lex Luthor wants to kill Superman, manipulates Batman into fighting him, then they team up to take down his Kryptionian backup plan) works. There are a lot of elements in the movie as-is that are novel for DC movies, or even superhero movies in general. Batman as a veteran yet jaded crimefighter is wonderfully portrayed by Ben Affleck; the entire street point of view look at the Man of Steel Super-9/11; the concept of everyday people trying to grapple with god-like creatures in their midst; Wonder Woman's mysterious role in the movie, with one notable exception; and more. So what changes need to be made to make this a peer of The Winter Soldier, rather than of Fan4stic? Let me start with the two main things, then get into the smaller ones.


First off, I have no idea why Senator Holly Hunter is in this movie. Actually, I do: I read an article that said Snyder always liked her and wanted to work with her, so he wrote a role for her into the movie. He shouldn't have. She was awful every second she was in the movie ("I can wrestle a pig" is an actual line of hers), and her role served basically no purpose other than to play out the clock. The role of the congressional subplot was to demonstrate that there's skepticism about Superman and his intentions. The climax of this was the bomb going off in the Senate Hearing Room, which resulted in Superman retiring for, like, ten minutes. Seriously, did anyone even notice he retired? So here's our first fix for the script: cut the entire hearing subplot, from Lois Lane in Africa through to Superman talkin' to Pa on the mountainside. You can add in a few scenes to make it clear there are normal people who are mistrustful of Superman, and a couple of him with Lois where he wonders if he's doing the right thing by always playing the hero like Space Dad wants him to.

(As an aside, Senator Holly Hunter is the junior senator from Kentucky. Try imagining Superman testifying to Rand Paul)

Lois Lane's character is a drag on the movie as well. I'm not saying she needs to be cut, but her screentime definitely needs to be trimmed down. She should be more like Alfred in that regard: we really shouldn't see her in many scenes without Superman. It's Batman v. Superman, not Batman v. Superman Plus Superman's Love Interest/Intrepid Reporter. With her role already minimized by cutting out the congressional subplot, we should only add in a few scenes with her--the aforementioned ones with Superman, and maybe a couple with her doing investigations that lead to Lex Luthor's (new and improved) machinations. Her motivations should also be clearer: she loves Clark, and it should show. She seemed like she was scared of him in a few scenes, to my eyes. Her entire purpose in the movie, though, would be to clarify his motivations, which need to be unabashedly Truth, Justice, and the American Way, rather than to be an angst machine who constantly second guesses himself.

This brings us to the second, and perhaps more obvious, major change: Lex Luthor. He's all over the place. Jesse Eisenberg portrays him as insane in a performance that was painful to watch. His stated motivations change several times throughout the movie, and his plans make as much sense as his motivation. We need a complete overhaul of this character.

First off, change the actor. Snyder went for a Zuckerberg/Facebook thing with Luthor and LexCorp, but this is immediately undermined by the fact that Lex didn't build his own company, his daddy did. Something is also off about the fact that Superman is in his mid-thirties, Batman in his mid-forties, but Luthor is in his late twenties. So we need an older actor, at least as old as Ben Affleck but preferably 10 years older than him. He needs to be someone who's got gravitas and looks good bald. I'm not a Breaking Bad fan, but the rumored actor Brian Cranston would be as good as any, though it really doesn't matter so long as he's older and believable as both an industrialist and secret evil villain.

Now that we have a new actor for Luthor, we need the movie character to be truer to the comics. At his heart, Lex Luthor isn't Joker-lite, he's a genius who has very big plans--whatever they happen to be--and the very existence of Superman puts these plans in jeopardy. That is why Luthor want to kill him. Maybe he even teams up with either Batman or Bruce Wayne in the first half of the movie to do it, with Batman's reasoning still being that Superman is too powerful to be allowed to live, given the threat he could destroy the world.

With Luthor's different (and understandable!) motivations, his mannerisms and actions should all be very different. A blueprint for such a Luthor could be found in any number of Action Comics, though mine comes from the excellent fanfic The Metropolitan Man, which explores people's reactions if a Superman really did suddenly appear in 1930s Metropolis (which is essentially NYC). Let's have a Luthor that is a wealthy genius industrialist, not a Zuckerberg; maybe he was a criminal who went "legit" but is still secretly bad. The movie might portray him as a dark parallel to Bruce Wayne in this regard. Since Senator Holly Hunter is gone, if you need Luthor to discuss his plans or motivations, have him speak with his assistant Mercy Graves in another language (Superman has super hearing, but can he understand Japanese or French?).

With a proper Lex Luthor, we can begin shifting the movie around to work. The Congressional Subplot has been cut, freeing up a lot of time. We should replace its early scenes with Superman doing his crime-fighting thing, only he disrupts Lex Luthor's criminal operations (though there's no evidence for Superman to tie it to him directly). This is why he wants to kill Superman. The removal of most of the Holly Hunter, Lois Lane, and Car Chase (see below) scenes moves the Batman/Superman fight forward from two-thirds of the way through the movie to about halfway. I'd then have them have to team up to save Martha, rather than splitting up. Then they can go back to confront Lex.

But Lex has a surprise! Not Doomsday, but even better: Zod! Seriously, he was in a "regeneration chamber," or whatever. Luthor should have his backup plan be to Search for Spock him back to life if Superman and Batman don't kill each other. It could be either a direct copy--he destroyed your plan to rebuild Krypton, you gonna let that fly?!--or he could Come Back Wrong, but the key thing is that it definitely needs to be some iteration of Zod, making the motivations of the second most important bad guy make sense as well, and giving the enemy an emotional resonance rather than be mindless laser monster. Of course, the Kryptonian ship needs to be destroyed during the fight so that we don't have the possibility to revive Superman.

Those were the big changes. Here are some minor ones:

• Gal Gadot was perfectly cast as Wonder Woman, and her portrayal in the movie was executed almost flawlessly. The mysterious woman at high-society gatherings, the old picture on the hard drive, the brief conversations with Bruce Wayne. I'd make one big change here, though: she shouldn't fight in the final battle. This is still a setup movie, the payoff is underwhelming when it comes too soon. So we see her at the parties, then she gets the email from Bruce, then we see her at Clark Kent's funeral (and maybe not even then).
• The constant weird waking-dream sequences were too much. No, Bruce, there isn't actually blood pouring from your mother's grave. You are not actually being lifted by the bats in the first scene. Etc., etc.
• Too many god damn cameos from real-life pundits and anchors. It's gotten to be fourth-wall breaking to me. Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, and more. Andrew freaking Sullivan saying "On this Earth, every act is a political act!" seems like something that so self-evidently has no place in a comic book movie; this is supposed to be an escape, but instead he wants to cram in real life pundits to go with his congressional hearings. You want news anchors? Here is your model: quick, easy generic news anchor. Done.
• Why was Martha Kent working as a waitress? She owns and runs a farm. I'm convinced it's so that she could get kidnapped in an alley, because Zack Snyder gets off on filming scenes in alleys. Cut that. Have the kidnapping be a home invasion on the farm, and maybe she gets a couple with her double-barrel before she goes down. She's a Kansas farmer, after all.
• Batman doesn't kill people. Period. End of sentence. Not by throwing them on grenades, not by stabbing them, not by shooting them with other mooks' guns. Not even, as the movie implies, post-Jason Todd Robin's death Batman.
• Batman's car chase for the Kryptonium was unnecessary. It showed him probably killing lots of people and in the end not getting the Kryptonium. Cool shot of him running into Superman, but unnecessary. Have Superman confront him some other way.
• Batman's turn-face from enemy of Superman should have taken a bit longer. Clark saying "Martha" can be the first step, but don't have it be all of it. Seriously, their moms having the same name was all it took for Batman to go from caveman with a spear to "I'm a friend of your son."
• The last second of the movie. If you're going to kill Superman (which is a bold move that I appreciate), don't undermine it at the end! Of course Superman is going to come back, but Snyder didn't have the balls to let it hang at the end of the movie. As I've heard someone say, he Star Trek Into Darkness'ed it.

In conclusion, the changes we need are:

1. Cut the Congressional subplot
2. Lex Luthor overhaul: casting, motivations, actions
3. Zod, not Doomsday
4. Other minor changes

Whew! Think that's it. With that, you've got a DC movie to rival any in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

*Repeated viewings being another thing I'm probably alone in the world for.

 

It could be overkill for a film, but Luthor inventing a whole new secret language for himself and his most trusted would be cool. Shows both that he's a genius and that he surrounds himself with people just as talented.

As for Zod replacing Doomsday, they probably should go with Bizarro!Zod just like the old rumours said.

 

I... enjoyed this movie.

I mean, sure, I don't have the comic-book grounding to actually understand all the references being thrown around, it was only after watching a lot of explanatory YouTube videos that the larger picture started to make sense. I had fun though. The 'Should there be a Superman' plot thread was poorly served, it seems that it only existed to get Superman to doubt himself and go and stand on a mountain for a few minutes.

Batman was good, but I dislike how we was so completely played by Luthor. I thought this guy was supposed to be the World's Greatest Detective? Walking into a server room at some guy's house (and being seen while doing so) hardly shouts 'I'm the motherfucking Batman' to me.

Luthor didn't at any time give me the impression of a virtuoso genius, he tried to play to the unhinged genius shtick, but he came off as merely criminally unhinged. What, exactly, was his endgame with Doomsday? If Superman hadn't been there he would have been squished immediately. Luthor just didn't seem to have a plan, and there's only so much threat you can get from a mad guy who's seemingly intent on destroying the world for no real reason. More subtlety, an actual plan, would have made him much less grating.

Wonder Woman was, for the brief time she was on screen, very good indeed. Probably my favourite part of the movie, as she didn't come close to outstaying her welcome. I left the movie really wanting to see more of her. The moment when they're all fighting Doomsday and she takes a hit and goes crashing through buildings, and concrete and cutting a furrow through the earth, only to look up, grin, then jump right back into the fight had me giggling like a school-girl.

In fact, given how she was seemingly doing pretty well against Doomsday in the final battle, one of the first things I said was 'why not just let her deal with him'. She didn't seem to have taken any damage, and she'd shown that she could chop bits off Doomsday. Just let her do that until Doomsday is a giant spikey ball of bony bits. Good luck destroying the world like that.

Anyway, was it as good as it could have been? No. Not even close. I saw an interview with Snyder when he said something along the lines of, "We were always asking ourselves, 'wouldn't it be cool if?' you know?"

It comes out in the movie. What it needed was less. Less of everything. Less meaningless spectacle, so that the meaningful spectacle can stand out. Fewer interweaving plot threads, so that the important ones can breathe.

I'll probably buy the extended edition DVD when it comes out. It was a fun movie, for what it was.

 

Luthor is being affected by Darkseid. The end scene confirmed that for me, at least. There's no other reason for him to be fucking with Superman. Disagree with Batman killing. He kills in TDKR which is what this film was based on.

Need a solo Batman movie set 15 years ago. They could deage Affleck suitably for that. A prequel trilogy and a sequel trilogy. But the ball has to get rolling extremely quickly for that to happen.

 

Eh.... I liked it. I'll figure out how exactly and write something up later, it's too late.

 

Just saw the movie. YMMV, but I felt it tried too hard to set up the DC movie universe, and can't stand alone as a film.

 

BvS isn't doing that great in his second weekend. -68.4% is about 10% worse than is a norm for a superhero film. Right now it's pretty much assured it will not cross $400m in the US, something that was pretty much given before its release, but if it keeps bleeding out that quickly it may not even beat Deadpool ($355m). Worldwide it will probably cross $1b, but just about.

I'm pretty sure that WB will wait for Suicide Squad before they make any corrections to their plans. Though apparently they're doing some extensive reshoots to add more humour and make it more like the second trailer (with Queen's song) which won over many fans. Makes you wonder how different it would be otherwise (probably a lot closer to SDCC trailer) and how disappointed would be the viewers when once again there was a big dissonance between what was promised and what actually was in the film. While the decision could be right, it's going to make the film's budged even bigger than it was and rumours put it close to $250m.

Wonder Woman is safe since it's almost done and people liked her in BvS, but I suspect WB will fast track another Batman film before doing any other solo one. Justice League is rather tricky. If they want it out in 2017 they need to film it soon enough with Snyder as its director and any change would be like admitting their disappointment with BvS, something they're trying hard not to do. Something needs to be done though because if "Batman meets Superman meets Wonder Woman for the first time on the big screen" has such a hard time in the box office and doesn't build up an anticipation for their another team-up, Justice League will definitely make even less money.

To sum it up, WB/DC wanted Avengers and got Amazing Spider-Man 2 instead.

 

Hmm ... I wouldn't equate BvS to Avengers. Justice League will be that.

If anything, BvS attempted to be ALL of Marvel's post-credit scenes combined.

 

I agree it's not the best comparison, which is why I compare it to ASM2 too, because somewhere between these is the film it wanted to be.

It's a meeting of three core members of JL for the first time on the big screen making it their Avengers in how much excitement it should create and how much money it should make (well, maybe closer to AoU). The difference is that there wasn't any build-up to it, but unlike Iron Man, Thor and Captain America in Phase One, Superman and Batman didn't really needed one.

On the other hand though it wanted to tease a lot of future films like ASM2 did and similarly didn't meet the expectation.

Justice League, while will have all members meeting, already lost its novelty since we got three (four) of them in the previous film (Flash could be counted too since he meets Batman).

 

I just wish they hadn't added the video clips of the the other Leaguers. It just felt too heavy handed. I think that without those few minutes of video, there would be far fewer cries of 'TOO MUCH MUCH SETUP'. Just ... namedrop them, leave their logos there for attentive fans to find, but don't actually show the videos.

The Flash time travel is fine. Great, even. The video clips, not so much.

 

I think having Diana see these clips in a post-credit scene would already make people silent about too much setup, even if some would laugh that DC is desperately copying Marvel. As it was, it was indeed too heavy handed.

 

I finally got round to seeing this. Going in with rock-bottom expectations meant that I didn't find it too bad at all. The opening sequence with wayne, seeing Superman's battle from the side, really did convey that feeling of powerlessness that drove the whole film.

In fact, overall it wasn't that bad at all, Affleck, Cavil, even Eissenberg. All fine, until after the titular Batman Vs. Superman action. As per the trailer, the actual climax came against Doomsday and then it segued into my least favourite superman story. And Doomsday looked pretty shit, the CGI when he was flinging Superman around became really noticeable. Sigh.

And of course, like other, the 'a break from our regularly scheduled viewing for some trailers' was pretty egregious.

Still, a solidly average film with some standard Snyder visuals, if you like that sorta thing (which I do).

 

All I can say is thankyou to this thread, you all sufficiently lowered my expectations enough that I couldn't not enjoy it.

Sure it had it's problems, but with such low expectations I enjoyed it anyway.

10/10 would read thread again.


Maybe we should open a thread just to complain about movies so when we see them we can't help but be content?

 

Huh, I personally often make the opposite experience. I often enjoy a movie a lot more if I didn't read too much negative stuff about it before I watched it.

Instead of lowering my expectations discussions like this often make a lot more sensitive to the weaknesses of a movie, especially when it comes to plot(holes) and other logical failures. I find it much harder to ignore them when I "know" of them beforehand which for example made watching this movie quite difficult for me because it had so many of them...