Amph Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

It's really a nobrainer: on paper, a blockbuster movie starring Superman and Batman - the world's finest team, two of the oldest and most famous comic book superheroes, beloved by generations of casual and hardcore fans, should by itself be a recipe for staggering box office success. But when you build that movie on the grimdark and rather shaky foundation of the lukewarmly received (to be generous and not start that argument again) Man of Steel, plus immediately setting up the premise that the main draw of the film is a fight (mainly physical and ideological if only on a distant second place), then you have trouble. Yes, the late 20th century comics strained the friendship between both heroes but at the very least they respected and worked with one another and their peers. Unfortunately, the DC/Warner suits, in their rush to establish their cinematic universe, did not learn from their mistakes in MoS and committed the following missteps:

1) Kept on Snyder as director, a man that proved himself incapable of understanding the characters and their universe.

2) Again, proceeded to match both heroes from the get go, both maintaining a very antagonistic relationship to one another that wasn't resolved 'til the closing moments of the last act. All this inspired by the last few pages of a 30 year old graphic novel that saw both heroes come to blows but only in the context of the setting and plot of that particular story.

3) Not only having done the hamfisted adaptation of the closing moments of one classic story, they then proceed to adapt another gimmicky 20 year old story - the Death of Superman - and throw it into this mess. All the while perpetuating the senseless destruction porn of MoS and completely removing all stakes for one of the heroes, who's bound to inevitably come back to life for the JL movies.

4) And speaking of the JL, they're setup in scenes that range from the bad (the nonsensical Knightmare "dream sequence" that only makes sense for the hardcore geeks that could understand it), the stupid (the email attachment) to the awesome (Diana and every other moment where she is onscreen).

5) Edit the already bloated mess of a film to release a truly terrible theatrical version that was inevitably and universally panned by a large chunk of its target audience, sealing its fate.

So yes, IMO, a take of less than a billion worldwide is a failure for an already very costly film that, had it been crafted with utmost care, could've grossed possibly twice as much. Maybe even more. A World's Finest movie would've been awesome. But calling BvS a costly mistake is not an error.

 

To be fair to Warner Brothers, from a box office standpoint, on paper all the marketing pieces were in place to release this film when they did (and I don't regard the name recognition of both titular characters to be enough). They had the momentum from both the Nolan Batman films and Man of Steel, as well as the mutual momentum from the Marvel films, to make this film successful. What made the film a relative failure was the fact they released a bad film, which was compounded by the exceptionally bad press the reviews garnered. Of course one of the main reasons the film was a mess was because they didn't have the story piece in place. A story with so much exposition required, in the hands of a director like Synder, was never going to be compact and stream line. The marketing department said go and the story department should have said no.

 

I can only imagine the pressure the studio and everyone involved felt to quickly gain a piece of the superhero cinematic movie action $$$. Sadly, the WB reacted far too late and shabbily at that. The moment the world knew an Avengers film was actually going to be a thing, you would've thought that the studio heads would've scrambled to get at least a good movie starring Batman and Superman out ASAP. Hell, I would've scuttled Dark Knight Rises (no great loss there), use the extremely good will established by the previous installment and cap that trilogy with a great meeting of both heroes to actually setup that universe.

 

Without doubt the studios have been expecting since 2012 that the superhero caze would drop off rather suddenly, so they want to get as much product out before the gold field is run bare. They should have immediately linked Man of Steel with Nolan's films (even with flimsy thread, like just Bale with a completely different tone), had another Batman film released in 2014 and a Wonder Woman film in 2015. If they had fired Snyder they may have had a chance of releasing a decent and coherent and enjoyable team-up film. Oh and they should have matched Marvel's tone - I understand the need to make themselves different however it's clear that unless it's Batman, the tone the audience wants is Marvelesque. Dour and serious superhero films have too narrower demographic appeal (Batman, rather, works on many other psychological levels, which makes the darker tone necessary and natural).

 

In any case, Batman's nature makes him the straight man for any studio mandated upbeat/comedic moments. You can make humor work around him efficiently without going the dumb, awkward route (i.e. the "I thought she was with you" bit in BvS).

 

And this would not result in a fight unless you make one of them idiot. Batman could easily explain the situation.

 

TDKR was never a good choice to be the skeleton of the movie.

It's a Batman story in a "bad future" setting. Superman was turned into the government's lackey for stupid reason. Putting it into the main universe, when the top priority is to establish the Justice League, was the worst idea ever. They simply want to use this "two great heroes fight each other" as the gimmick to earn a lot of $$$.

 

I don't know. If I remember correctly, TAS did a pretty tasteful first encounter between Batman and Superman, indeed with the former investigating Lexcorp. They were at odds for much of that encounter, but I remember it being done with superior skill to this film.

With regards to humor, Jeremy Irons was the only light bit in this film. His lines were amusing, but in the context of the grimdark tone, didn't have the same affect as Michael Caine's Alfred zingers, "What's the point of all those push-ups if you can't lift a bloody log?" "You're welcome to borrow the Rolls if you like, just bring it back with a full tank." "Today I don't want to [tell you that I was right], but I did bloody tell you."

 

The problem is: WHY do you need them to fight each other? Some minor clashes? Sure. But I don't see a reason to make it the main plot, especially when all we got was MoS and they planned to make Justice League. MoS2, World's Finest or Wonder Woman would have been much better choices and much easier to handle.

 

In TAS, they didn't really have a brawl so much as an initial dislike of one another.

 

But WB wanted a big FIGHT.

Why would people want to see Batman VS Superman? Superman would win in a second without plot armor.

 

Indeed. There's no reason for "heroes" as configured in these superhero franchises to fight one another. It's an idiotic idea.

 

I would have some interest to see Captain America VS Iron Man or Spider Man. Or Batman VS Green Arrow for fun.

But Batman and Superman is simply a huge mismatch, their fight would just be utter boring, either Superman smashes him in 1 second or some stupid plot armor Batgod.

 

So can Iron-Batman beat Ironman?

 

Believe it or not, they "couldn't" -- if you recall, their goal was "move as far away from Superman Returns as possible," because for whatever reason that success (Hollywood accounting notwithstanding) was roughly the same in 2006 as Man of Steel was in 2013... but Superman Returns did link to the Nolanverse. QED... Man of Steel couldn't do it, because the story was a radically different version.

 

The point is that each hero has their own belief system for how they should operate and that often leads to conflict, because one takes the moral high ground and the other doesn't. When it was done in "The Dark Knight Returns", it was about Bruce Wayne breaking the law more overtly than he had before and a government, both local and national, that was losing patience with his criminal behavior. It finally reached a boiling point when he used criminals to enforce martial law in Gotham, after a massive fire caused by a plane crash. This, on top of being accused of killing the Joker and his assaults on the GCPD, resulted in the President sending Clark after him. And he only did so because the government was going to kill Bruce if he didn't.

Likewise, when it was done in "The Man Of Steel" mini-series, Clark went after Bruce because he was committing assault on both criminals and police officers, and so he went in to arrest him. There wasn't a fight there, but Bruce was able to stop Clark from taking him in and only after being forced to work together, did Clark realize that while he didn't approve of Bruce's methods, he understood why he used them.

So in situations like that, it becomes about different philosophies, which for Superman is about operating within the boundaries of the law and for Batman who believes that the only way to succeed is to operate outside the law. What makes for a greater contrast is that Metropolis has a low crime rate due to Superman's presence, whereas Gotham's hasn't changed much since Batman started cracking heads.

There are always a reason that conflicts occur, based in part on basic human nature and how these characters are developed.

What happened was that the Joker and Harley had gotten out of Arkham and found a chunk of Kryptonite that had been sculpted into a jade dragon. After obtaining it, they went to Metropolis with the intention of striking a deal with Lex, wherein Lex would pay the Joker to kill Superman with the Kryptonite and Lex would deal with Batman. Bruce followed them to Metropolis under the public guise of Bruce Wayne getting a status update on a joint Wayne Tech/Lexcorp project. Privately, Bruce was searching for them at night and Clark found him interrogating one of the Joker's former henchmen who didn't fall in line again after he showed up in town.

 

One might make the case that the Nolan films function less as "momentum" for a new Batman series and more as a set-up for things like "Another Batman? Already?" or "Well, these weren't as good as the Nolan movies." Christopher Nolan came into the Batman franchise with no "momentum." He came in as the guy doing a hard reset because the series had been sucking. Zack Snyder came in as the guy trying to do a hard reset from something that everyone loved. Of course, his vision of Batman failed; every person in the theater had seen the Nolan films numerous times.

 

Some comic book staples simply don't work out well when transferred to other media. Such is the case of silly hero vs. hero fights For No Good Reason We Can Think Of.

 

I thought it worked well in Captain America Civil War .

.

 

I think it can work... but probably not in the way they did it. I mean, Civil War worked in that sense, and even both of the Avengers films to varying degrees with hero-on-hero fights. But the reasons those worked is because it had the proper backstory, and therefore motivations, in place.

I mean, just at a basic level, who really thinks the whole Death of Superman storyline -- something which had, at its core, 50 years of history and everyone loving Superman so therefore the funereal procession having actual impact and gravitas -- in Snyder's vision of a world basically hating and distrusting Superman... probably not a great idea?

 

Well, I wouldn't say his vision of Batman failed. It was terribly flawed, but again, for me and many others, he got certain elements of the character just right enough to pass muster. And dude, c'mon, that warehouse fight Kicked Major Ass!

But Superman? Oh yes, his vision of the character is utter fail.

 

THIS, so much THIS.

And a lot of comic were decades old, it doesn't fit well in modern era.

 

It's not about how old something is or isn't. I mean, if you really want to get technically, all superheroes are too old to work at all. Most of them were created over sixty years ago and are outdated as a concept. A thirty year old story like TDKR isn't restrictive because of thirty years, no more than "The Death Of Superman" which was twenty four years ago, or "Civil War" which is ten years old. Regardless of what story is being told, it can work if done well. DOJ kept certain elements of TDKR as visual references and Easter Eggs, but changed the whole storyline to fit the modern day audience and storyline. Removing the government cracking down on superheroes and focusing on people's trust in Superman. "Civil War" changed the reasoning for the Registration Act from an elementary school being destroyed with kids dying, to the actions of the Avengers defending people causing discomfort and thus the Sokovia Accords are drafted.

 

They were at that time, which is why the major heroes were keep getting "upgrade" by the comic writers. But some other heroes were left there as well, a lot of the stories were too hard to get such "upgrade", too. A lot of stuff were ok in comic, but not in modern live action movies.

TDKR was a good example, it was just a "What if" kind of story and had strong political opinion at the 80s government. It was also a Batman story, Superman was just a supporting character. It might not be that outdated, but insert it into the "main movie universe" when there was little setup(and it's all Superman), it would be a failure for sure.

Death of Superman was my least favorite issue, it would have been great if Superman died forever, but no, so it only ruined the consistency even more, that's one of the major reasons I keep certain distance from superhero comics. If DCEU wants to be more "SERIOUS" than Marvel, then make sure dead characters stay dead first. Otherwise it would be a huge blow against consistency and seriousness.

 

You mean like tossing in Thor's hammer, Nick Fury, Thanos and Apocalypse, which only the hardcore fans knew about, but didn't deter from the films themselves?

"Man Of Steel" and "Secret Origin" share the basic storylines of the Pre-Crisis Superman origin stories, but overall, it is effectively the same storyline. Changing things from 1938 to 1940 to 1958 to 1986 to 2002 and 2009 is just window dressing. The overall origin is still the same even if the presentation is different.

All of those heroes and villains still exist and are still used. Name a single hero or villain who hasn't been upgraded.

Well, duh.

The only thing from TDKR that was used was cosmetic references and Easter Eggs. This Bruce Wayne did not retire after Jason Todd's death. The Joker is not catatonic. Jim Gordon is still active as commissioner. This was no different from "The Wolverine" using the 1982 mini-series by Claremont and Miller as the basis for an original story, but kept a few key sequences from the source material. Or "Spider-Man" (2002) using "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" and "The Goblin's Last Stand" as the basis for the third act. Both stories were over thirty years old when the films were made that adapted that material.

Why would it be great if Superman had stayed dead?