Batman v Common Sense
***Warning: This blog post contains pretty much nothing but spoilers about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. While it hasn't been in theaters for all that long, I would still assume that most people who care have probably watched (or hate-watched) it already, and as such may no longer have the higher brain functions required to read after the the two and a half hour onslaught of mind-numbing absurdity that was this movie. Nonetheless, I still want to make it clear that if you haven't seen the film, and plan to do so at some point, you should probably stop reading now so that you too may enjoy the euphoria of delirious incomprehension with fresh, untainted eyes. Consider yourselves warned.***
Okay, I swear this blog isn't devolving into little more than outdated rants about the flaws in overblown children's movies. It's really not, promise. But I did want to say a few quick words about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice because...well, I lead an extremely boring life, and it's just about the only vaguely interesting thing that's happened to me lately. When most of your life consists of sitting at a desk working, and the rest is taken up by coming up with non-productive excuses to avoid talking to people, it's easy for badmouthing the fruits of someone else's hard labor to become the most exciting part of your week.
While my recent post on Star Wars may have been a decidedly minority opinion (which I highly recommend reading when you have a few hours to kill), it's a bit less controversial to say that that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Just-End-It-Now-Please was an exceptionally vapid collection of fire and noises, assault on the senses, crafted with all the intricate delicacy that Godzlla typically employs when conducting urban renewal. I've talked to some people who liked it with caveats, and even a couple people who genuinely loved the film. My own personal opinion was very similar to burning my mouth on a hot slice of pizza: once you've sat through it long enough that you've become totally numb, it's not exactly unpleasant, but does feel a little pointless.
And I know some people would say that you shouldn't be reading too much into a movie about a brooding rich kid whose rodent fascination leads him to invent things that are beyond the reach of the entire defense department, much less one in which his main adversary is an extraterrestrial GQ model who thinks that an ice palace is the perfect place to sit around in his pajamas. And I would agree that there isn't much point in trying to find reason in fantasy. Once you accept the premise that the impossible is perfectly normal, your rational mind should be able to just walk itself down to the pub and grab a couple of drinks while you aren't using it for a few hours.
Even so, my problem with Bat out of Hell v Superunknown wasn't simply a nitpicking search for rationality in an inherently irrational universe. It was that I had absolutely no idea what was happening on even the most basic level. One thing consistently fails to lead to another, but that doesn't stop another thing from happening of its own irrational accord. On an initial viewing, Sense v Sensibility seemed to be a series of unrelated vignettes, centered around some romantic comedy cliche of gargantuan egos fighting against the inevitability of their inexplicable attraction. And again, I'm not exactly expecting plausibility or realism from a movie about people who wear clothing that is both skin tight and indestructible, any more than I would expect a tasteful and character-driven nude scene from a horror film. Even so, I do expect them to follow at least some twisting path of logic that is simple enough for me to grasp without having a child handy to explain it. The real problem with Batman v Superman wasn't a lack of faithfulness to the source material, or a lack of realism. It was the staggering number of times that anything at all would happen on screen and my first thought would be, "Wait...what?" The story was so convoluted and absurd, it almost felt like the result of an Improv 101 class Yes-Anding each other until they realized that they needed to throw out about thirty pages of their script before submitting it in the morning.
Now, before I go too far down the rabbit hole of criticizing this movie, I want to establish my official Comic Book Geek Credentials right up front: I have none. I read plenty of comic books as a kid, of course. What else would a boy in the 80s do with his time between episodes of Ninja Turtles and Duck Tales? However, I was never much of a superhero guy when it came to comics. I got my Marvel and DC fixes through pretty much every other means you could imagine: toys, cartoons, movies, trading cards, you name it. But when you get right down to it, I was always more of a comedy nerd, which led to a nearly complete disinterest in reading anything that didn't make me giggle. So when it came to comic books, I eschewed the popular titles like Spider-Man or X-Men in favor of parody comics like Marvel's What The--?! and endless movie and TV tie-in comics, from Dinosaurs to Bill & multiple Roger Rabbit themed titles. I'm probably the only person I know who can say that they've read every issue of Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book, which even in this era of ironic obscurism, I'm not sure that I can count as a positive achievement. Though I will say that there is one scene from that last idiotic series that I consider to be very personally meaningful. In the opening of one Bill & Ted comic, an accountant or some such fellow is toiling away in Hell, musing on the fact that the place isn't always as bad there as people make it out to be. Every once in a great while, a cool, sunny day will break through the fire and brimstone to give you a moment of beautiful relief. Which lasts exactly long enough to remind you of how terrible everything is all the rest of time you get a perfect, cool, sunny day, which last just long enough to remind you of how terrible things are all the rest of the time. To this day, that is still the first thing that I think of any time that anything good happens to me.
Anyway, my point is that I'm not the sort of guy who can rant for hours about how Batman's belt was slightly the wrong color when compared to panel six of page twelve of so on and so forth. Really, I don't know much about any superheroes beyond the highlights that can be boiled down and fit onto an action figure package back. The practical upshot of which is that I don't usually tend to care about the creative liberties that are taken when adapting comics to film. I don't care if characters are combined, or an origin story is tweaked slightly. All I care about is that the movie is fun, entertaining, and not so overly complicated that I can't shut my higher brain off and mindlessly shovel popcorn while weaving my way through a basic understanding of what is going.
Of course, the downside to my limited education in graphic novels is that I don't usually have much background knowledge going in, which can be helpful in slogging your way through a convoluted mess like Sadbat v Supermodel. I listened to a review from my friends over at the Mass Moviecide podcast, who talked extensively about Lex Luther having orchestrated the showdown between our heroes. But after two and a half hours of movie and an hour of their in-depth discussion, I couldn't begin to tell you how he actually did that. As far as I could tell, he was just wandering around, doing his own thing before jumping in as an oddly well-informed MC for the fight of the century. Sure, he acted out every American's fantasy of blowing up their elected representatives in an effort to turn the public against Superman, and he somehow created Doomsday to beat up the good guys once they'd reunited the halves of their friendship necklaces. But what did he do to actually bring Batman and Superman together for an epic battle royale, other than introducing them to each other at a party?But hold on. They say you should always mention two positive things before delivering any criticisms, so let's not get ahead of ourselves here. First, I have to admit that Ben Affleck was a shockingly good Batman. I say "shockingly" because it's really hard to believe that the most redeeming feature of this movie was also the thing that unleashed the biggest maelstrom of internet rage that I have ever seen for a bit of movie casting. And yet, not only was Ben Affleck a good Batman, he was an even better Bruce Wayne. With the benefit of hindsight, it's perhaps not surprising that Ben Affleck excels at playing a friendless rich kid who is past his prime, but such is the nature of reactionary public outrage. He was great, the costume was great, and the warehouse fight scene is one of the best choreographed Bat-pummelings that I've ever seen.
And the second positive thing that I can say is that eventually, the movie came mercifully to an end.
Okay, back to the Luthor bashing. (The movie didn't follow any real narrative order, so why should I?) Now, as an actor, I think Jesse Eisenberg is a pretty good one, though he does have the unfornuate mark of a character actor that no matter what he says or does, he always looks and sounds like the exact same person. And while I don't object to updating fictional characters to put them in a more modern context, or filmmakers trying something new and different with their interpretation of a role, it did feel like they were pushing that idea too far by arming Mark Zuckerberg with a mediocre poet's thesaurus and casting him as a criminal mastermind. A criminal mastermind who, again, doesn't seem to actually mastermind much. Perhaps a veiled commentary on Mark Zuckerberg taking full credit for Facebook? Who's to say.
But apparently Lex Luthor is such an unrequited genius that he can just wander up to a sophisticated bit of alien technology and write the Wiki-how article on genetically modifying corpses. When he started becoming blood brothers with Zod's corpse, I had absolutely no idea what he was doing, why he thought to try doing it, or why the ship just accepted on good faith that he was its new master. Though to be fair, that's probably at least partially my own fault. I'm sure this must have been a callback to events in Man of Steel, which I haven't seen since its opening weekend. And I could bemoan the fact that they're relying too heavily on an assumption that we all have a working knowledge of a mediocre movie from three years ago, but I'll give them a pass and acknowledge that I have an exceptionally poor memory for these kinds of things.
Anyway, however he managed it, Luthor plays My Heart Will Go On with a dead alien, and thus we are given Doomsday, an andogynous space orc who has oddly well defined buttocks for someone with no genitalia. And side note, when I told my wife after the movie that this character had a name and it was in fact Doomsday, she nearly died laughing. Not sure what says about the movie, but wanted to throw it out there.
But let's back up. Wonder Woman, what? No, let's back up even further. Batman hates Superman because Superman accidentally killed some Wayne Corp employees. Which is justifiable, because we all know that even with a WTF Pod discount, Zip Recruiter ain't cheap. So Batman hates Superman because he now has no excuse not to give his friend's nephew a job, and Superman hates Batman because he takes the law into his own hands and has a way better car. It all makes perfect sense. So naturally, Batman tries to kill Superman with a stick made out of a stolen magic space-rock, not because he thinks Superman is inherently evil, but because you can never trust someone who doesn't get their power from naming everything they touch Bat-Noun. Again, this all makes perfect sense to me.
Then we meet the dramatic turning point of the movie: the big Batman v Superman showdown. And after having spent an entire movie fueled with vengeful rage, Batman steadies his hand at the last second and decides that Superman must be a good guy after all. Why? Because they both have mothers named Martha. And from cinemas across the world we hear the collective cry of, "What the holy living fuck?" Batman, The Dark Knight, The World's Greatest Detective, a man with an intellect so vast that he he can invent anything that you can attach the prefix "Bat" to, and the one thing that he hadn't considered when weighing the relative human goodness of a stranger was whether or not they are forever bonded by an arbitrary and meaningless coincidence. Batman suddenly and irrationally forgives Superman of all his imagined sins simply because their mothers were both born when Martha was considerably more popular would be akin to saying, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to..hey, cool Deep Blue Something shirt. Did you really catch the the '95 tour? Breakfast at Tiffany's is good, sure, but you really have to explore their deep album tracks to appreciate their mastery of songcraft. Sorry, what were we talking about? Couldn't have been anything important."
So the new Dynamic Duo decides to band together and defeat Doomsday, apparently unhindered by his absurd name. But those of you who are still bothered by the death toll in Man of Steel's epic final battle can relax, because before the battle really begins, a news reporter conveniently points out that the downtown area is relatively empty since it's taking place after business hours. Which is great, because instead of millions of people dying in the crossfire, the casualties will be limited to the homeless, anyone meeting for dinner on their first OK Cupid date, and all the night janitors in the city. Begging the question, who is going to clean up this mess? And by the way, while we're on the subject of lazy writing, I really hope that when the President of the United States orders a nuclear strike, his code word is, "May God have mercy on us all." But I digress.
Doomsday tries to kill Batman, but he is miraculously saved by a scantily clad woman who happens to have an atomic-fire proof shield. We of course recognize her as Wonder Woman, as this moment has been featured very prominently in all the promotional material for the film. And Batman and Superman accept her as an ally based solely on a tiny bit of flirting with Bruce Wayne and a Google image search that reveled her to be in surprisingly good shape for a grandmother, with absolutely no follow up questions beyond, "Hey, do you know this chick? No. Good enough for me!" And I know that I've been spoiled by Marvel spoonfeeding us hours of backstory in preparation for The Avengers, and that DC is trying to reverse that trend by using this film to pique our interest in the standalone films that will be coming. But even so, as an audience member, I do feel like I need a little bit of hand hold when being introduced to a new character. Because again, I'm not a comic book guy, and I know virtually nothing of Wonder Woman. I never read any of her comics, I remember so little about the Justice League cartoon from the 80s that I didn't realize until a Wikipedia search from five seconds ago that it was actually called Super Friends, and I'd never seen so much as a second of the live action Linda Hamilton TV show until I was at a Greek Pizza place in middle of nowhere Maine about two months ago, where I'm sure it was being broadcast for the first time. So you can imagine my confusion when Clark and Lois are sharing an emotional moment as the world crumbles in the background like a scene straight out of Fight Club, and we suddenly cut to an insert shot of Wonder Woman hogtying Doomsday with a glowing, golden lasso. After a few minutes of searching the deep archives of my brain, I was able to conjure some vague recollection of this being a thing. But for several minutes, I just wanted the fighting to stop long enough for Batman to ask her something like, "What the hell is that thing? Is it magic? Or is a special micro-fibre Bat-lasso that works because you're a scientist and say so? And where could you possibly have been hiding it in that non-outfit you decided to wear into the middle of a volcanic crater?" (It has since been brought to my attention that it was on her hip the whole time, and was forged by elves so that it glows when orcs are near.)
Plus, speaking of our Super Friends, I'll be honest. I was very excited when I learned that Aquaman was going to be in this movie, and even squealed a little when they released his first emo-headshot from the movie. Once again, not because I was a fan of his comics, which I wasn't. Rather, I was excited because he was my absolute favorite toy to play with in the bathtub when I was five, and I definitely feel like that merits a big-screen treatment. So you can imagine my disappointment when he pulled a Luke Skywalker and did literally nothing in the actual movie. We see him swim for two seconds in a private YouTube clip, then swim away. Which I guess does at least constitute more leg movement than we got from Mr. Skywalker, but still. I expected more.
But this is not to say that I didn't have fun. As I've said, I have a lot less emotional investment in these characters than I do in Star Wars, so despite my criticisms, I was able to enjoy the mindless idiocy of it all. And hey, despite Wonder Woman being a completely unnecessary and one-dimensional character, I did get excited to see more of her and Gone Batty Gone in the upcoming films of the franchise. Even so, I wished the movie as a whole had been good enough that I cared even a little bit when Superman died. Sure, it's not that emotionally meaningful of a loss because we all know it's only temporary, and he'll rise from the dead and ascend to the heavens again in a few Easters' time. But when you're invested in a character, you are supposed to feel sad when faced with their suffering. And with such a well-known cultural icon as Superman, it shouldn't take much to tug on the heart strings. Instead, when Martha Kent gives Lois an engagement ring and she's confronted with the life that they could have had together, all I could think was, "Hey, anything to get out of wedding planning, right?" Which is probably not the response that Zack Snyder was looking for. But as long as he continues to put spectacle above substance, and substance above basic understanding and common sense, it's the one he's going to get.
I just hope that the negative response from critics doesn't cause DC to pull the plug on the franchise before we get enough real quality time with Aquaman, as my mother always used to...
-TC
P.S., If you want to hear much more entertaining discussions of this and other films, seriously, check out the Mass Moviecide podcast.