Just got back from Batman v Superman [obligatory spoiler tag] · 3:17am Mar 27th, 2016
I would like to take this time to remind people that, as I work at a movie theater, I see movies for free. This may or may not influence my opinion of movies. Usually it actually influences them towards good - since I'm not paying, I don't feel like I have much a right to complain and so just generally try to enjoy myself. For example, Gods of Egypt is a stupid, stupid movie, but it's sort-of aware that it's a stupid movie, and it was mostly just goofy adventure and fun with all the actors just having a good time pretending to be Egyptian deities and stuff. It won't be winning any Oscars, and it doesn't deserve to - but it was fine. Like eating a cake. No one needs cake. You don't get anything of nutritional value from cake. But damnit, it's tasty.
Right, that should be enough of a wall of text so as to avoid the spoilers that everyone is so afraid of.
GOOD LORD this movie was a piece of shit. Don't pay money to see it. I didn't pay money to see it and I want my money back.
For two years or so now I've been worried about this movie, but apparently I wasn't worried enough. Everything I was worried about came to pass and brought friends.
Jesus Christ. I don't even know where to begin. Um, Batman straight-up kills people. There's a start. Wonder Woman doesn't belong in this movie. Diana, one day will be yours. I want you to have a movie. I want it to be a fantastic movie. Girl power, etc. But you do not belong here. You added nothing. You are a distracting C-plot at best.
I mean, just...ugh.
Its interesting to see the nuance of different folks and perceptions on this one.
Snyder claimed to be basing his Batman on Frank Miller's, who apparently also broke the "no gun" rule... does that make a difference?
As far as I'm concerned, the tone of the movie was set when they killed off Jimmy Olsen in the first ten minutes without even naming him in the movie proper. (Snyder has confirmed that Lois Lane's photographer/CIA spook who was shot by the warlord was Olsen). That was a dumb decision, emblematic of the entire stupid movie.
3829592
Not really, no, for a few reasons - two in particular.
1) We just finished a fairly major Batman trilogy wherein the "no killing" thing was remembered. To see him casually killing people - and it is casual - in this is just absurd.
2) Batman doesn't kill. It's a fundamental part of his character. Frank Miller may have once been able to write a good Batman and be able to get away with a Batman who doesn't mind wracking up a kill count, but it's been a long time since The Dark Knight Returns, and Zack Snyder is no Frank Miller at his peak regardless.
It's not even just that, though. Batman acts like an idiot throughout this entire movie. Ugh...
...ughhhhh...
What little I had heard so far is that the movie is awful, but Batfleck was the best part of it. Not the writing for Batman, but Affleck himself did a good job with what he was given.
3829601
MOTHERFU...that was Olsen?!
Holy shit.
3829614
The acting was for the most part fine. When you have talented actors, they're gonna put own talented performances. But the best actor in the world can only do so much when you have bad directing and writing.
does this mean DCAU is doomed?
DAMN IT! Now I'm losing hope in Suicide Squad...
3829650
This movie needs to flop. It would do DC good to have an abject failure on their hands, forcing them to seriously rethink their life choices.
3829661 unfortunately...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/03/26/box-office-batman-v-superman-tops-200m-worldwide/#43329b2b3fc8
3829665
Everyone knows it'll do well opening weekend. It's the drop off next weekend that'll really be telling.
3829665
200 million doesn't even cover its production budget, which is $250 million. Generally you want to add about half again the production budget to figure out the marketing budget, though it varies from movie to movie. Let's use that half again, though. So Batman v. Superman needs to make about $325 just to break even.
Now DC is probably anticipating this to be a billion-dollar movie, like Avengers. So if it "only" makes around as much as Man of Steel did - about $668 million - then it'll be considered a "flop" by the studio even though it turned a profit.
Note that Amazing Spider-Man 2 making "only" $709 million on the same budget of BvS (well, technically $255 mil) killed the Amazing franchise (the Sinister Six moving and Amazing 3). And Amazing 2 currently holds a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. BvS is currently at 29%.
3829700 so what does it mean for DC shared movie universe?
Should I give up on it like Suicide Squad or should I give them a benefit of doubt?
3829702
Well, prior to this movie I was "hopeful" for Suicide Squad, but having seen BvS...
...I just don't know.
I think the prayer of all people who go to see a movie made about one of their favorite comic books (even atheists) is : "Oh, God. Don't let them screw this up."
Sometimes my prayers are answered, as in most of the Harry Potter movies, LOTR, The Dark Knight(plus sequels), Deadpool...
Sometimes, not, as in Green Lantern, Green Hornet...
I shall now begin praying for Suicide Squad.
3829700
Variety predicted that the movie needs to earn $800,000,000-$1,000,000,000 total to be a success.
(And yeah, that was Olsen . Snyder said that there wasn't room for Olsen in the DC Expanded Universe, which is what they're calling the movies, so he wanted to 'have some fun' with the character by killing him off unceremoniously as a shock death. Except Olsen was never named in the theatrical cut of the movie, so most people weren't shocked and the whole thing was pointless.)
3829601
3829629
The Jimmy Olsen thing struck me as so randomly cruel and the "explanation" for it equally lame. According to mister Synder, he did that with Jimmy because he felt that the movie already had so many characters in it to juggle, so why not get rid of him.
Personally, I would have just not put him in the movie and called it a day.
3829760
Or just have it be Some Guy. Random CIA Dude No. 3.
I can't not believe I actually paid to watch this which my own money! I should have listen to all the warning signs. But I wanted so badly to see batman and superman together on the big screen that I ignored all the stupidness I saw in the trailers. I guess I got what I derserve for being so blind.
3829739 Zack killed off Jimmy Olsen because the movie had too many characters? My advice, DON'T ADD SO MANY IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Thank you for the warning RDD, I'll take your word for it. By the way, do you know you can take the hat off now?
3829592
That Batman story was set in a semi-distopic future where tensions with the Soviet Union were soon going to start World War 3, the Justice League has been disbanded by the government, and Bruce is an old man. So it's very different from this movie, and a pretty grim setting. But even then, he still didn't kill anyone, as I recall.
He drove into a junkyard to rout a gang, with big machine guns on a Bat-APC, but it was with rubber bullets. Even though he brought some kryptonite to the fight, he never tried to kill Superman. The closest he got was with the Joker, and it's up for debate. He did start wringing the Joker's neck, and did lose control. But then he stopped himself. Joker finished himself off, feeling like he'd won by making Batman lose control. He then twisted his neck with mad, suicidal strength (I have no clue if that can be done in real life), making it look like Batman had finished the job to the Gotham PD. There is a body count, but those deaths weren't caused by Batman.
As soon as I saw Snyder's name attached to it, I knew it'd probably suck.
You don't?
I wish I could say I was surprised, but honestly I'd pretty much seen the writing on the wall from the start.
Man of Steel was far from a great film, but the fact that practically the first thing the studio did in response to the mixed reviews was announce they would be brining in Batman for the sequel was very telling about just how little confidence the studio had in the project. Of course they went running back to Batman to try to save face, unfortunately when Snyder couldn't even get a hero as basic as Superman right, there was probably never any chance of him understanding how to handle someone as complexly nuanced as Batman, let alone the dynamic relationship between the two heroes.
Worse still, however, was as they continued to add other heroes and it became increasingly transparent that they really had no clue what to do with any of them, but were rather just rushing to get everyone introduced for the sake of a Justice League movie. Pretty much the same mistake Amazing 2 did where it was so overly concerned with setting up a franchise that it forgot to be a good movie in its own right.
To top off the everything else the plot was obviously cribbing off both Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman, but with so little actual substance to back it up that it was probably inevitable that the result would all be an empty superficial spectacle.
But the worst thing by far is that I'll still probably end up going to see it anyway, if only out of morbid curiosity. Although I suppose I should at least wait until this Tuesday when my local theater has discounted $6 tickets, or if maybe I can hold out until for however long it takes it to reach the $2 cheep theater.
3829965
...what?
3830171
I'll actually debate that point pretty heavily - I loved Amazing 2 and, unlike with Gods, I actually find it to be a great movie. I don't understand why people don't like it, and I hate that it apparently "underperformed" (despite doing better than MoS in terms of raw numbers and still turning a huge profit - it just didn't hit the billion-dollar mark, which was an unreasonable goal) and thereby killed the Amazing franchise. I was eagerly looking forward to Sinister Six, for example, though maybe not the version they were planning - in my mind it was going to be like a supervillain version of Ocean's 11.
But, I don't feel like debating that right now.
Don't worry I'll refund you for the movie.
I did hear one thing about the movie, there was something about lex's body fluids....
3830244
Little unfair of you to bring up only to back out without giving me a chance to rebuttal, don't you think?
Fortunately I don't much feel like getting into a lengthy debate on this particular subject either. Suffice to say, I never really liked the Amazing franchise, so fairly or not, I'm glad the studio scrapped it and would just as soon forget that particular version of Spider-Man ever existed in the first place.
3830244
He’s talking about your user icon and how it’s still wearing a Santa hat.
3830537
Oh, so it is! Oops.
Well, I bit the bullet and went to the discounted $6 Tuesday morning screening. Maybe it's just because I walked in with ZERO optimism, but walking out I can't say I hated the film, but that's only because I can't say the film left any meaningful impact on me at all. There's nothing in this move to evoke any sense of passion in me, good or bad. It's all just a jumbled incoherent mess of conflicting plot points that go absolutely nowhere -- two and a half hours of set up with no pay off.
The worst part is that unlike other bad comicbook adaptations, this movie doesn't fail for a lack of effort, but rather too much effort focused in all the wrong places. I really do get the sense that everyone on the project was actually trying their best to make a good movie. There's genuine potential hiding under the surface, a dozen opportunities where this could have been a great movie, but it's consistently stymied by its own pretentious attempts to wallow in symbolic depth without doing any of the leg work to invest itself with a reason for the audience to even care. It's as if the people in charge just have so little understanding of the characters and genre that they completely miss the point at every turn. This movie disappoints me, but it doesn't offend because it's all just to empty and meaningless. It's not that these are "bad" versions of Batman, Superman, etc, because they are just so entirely devoid of any personality at all as to be nothing more than hollow facsimiles bearing familiar names.
Even at all that I could have probably forgiven the movie if only it wasn't constantly trying to take itself so overly seriously that it divests itself of any semblance of joy. At the end, however, the movie is just so dull that it can't even make me angry for failing... only bored.
That sounds like a fair review form what I've heard of the film, including a lot of spoiler, (Something about Lex Luthor's urine?)
Its kind of sad in some ways as I liked the idea of them including Wonder Woman given she's meant to be one of the 'founding three' but doing somehting poorly can at times be worse than not doing it at all.
Also am I weird or would the animated crossover have been a decent movie if translated into live action format?
Like seriously, that one has Joker, low on money, steal a Kryptonite dragon statue and half bully Lex Luthor into hiring him to kill Superman while Lex tries to get Wane in on a giant killer robot scheme.
Batman hits up Metropalis, he and Superman don't get along great and both screw over and get a bit screwed over by their respective villains (especially the Joker as he acts openly) they help each-other out and part ways as partners.
Like, that seemed like a good movie tome, I'm not even super into comics and I loved it.
3867777
It would have been great. There's also another animated movie called Justice League: War which could have been a great inspiration. But instead...ugh.
3867885
Nice to know I'm not foolish :D I got a look at that, it seemed pretty cool, I loved Wonder Woman in that, such a badass, and the team defeating Darkseid rather than it just being on one of them was fantastic, though it still seemed to fall into Batman focus a bit much for me.
Say, did you ever watch the three part, or two part not sure, start of the animated Justice League series? With a dude on Mar getting swapped out for an alien duplicate, MMH being trapped, Batman sleuthing, Superman fighting and then everyone coming together to punch giant aliens who hate the sun? I figure that could have been a pretty decent Justice League movie as well, just make a big threat and bring a bunch of colourful people together to fight it and see what happens.
3867955
Never saw much of it, sadly, though Justice League and Unlimited are both on my to-watch list.
3867967
Ah that is a shame, hopefully you get the time in the future; I'd highly recommend both, while not perfect series they do a really good job of balancing characters, hero personas, societal interactions and villains.
This is all coming form a none super hero fan as well XD
3867967 If necessary I'll buy you the boxed sets and mail them to you free of charge. The DCAU is the bedrock of my DC fandom.