as far as those creatures in Batman’s vision/dream goes:
I thought just crossed my mind. At the end of the movie how did they have 2 funerals with only 1 body?
They mentioned in the dialogue that “the circus” was burying an empty coffin.
Did anyone else think it was odd that mild mannered Clark from Kansas also got a pretty elaborate funeral with bagpipes and a horse-drawn carriage and like dozens of mourners?
It’s not like he dropped out of the sky fully grown. He grew up in Smallville. He and his family lived there for decades. Clark Kent was Local Boy Made Good. I can totally see Smallville giving him a solid funeral.
Did the funeral in Smallville have bagpipes?
I’ll not be seeing the film but I’m enjoying the thread. If Clark Kent is “killed” in this film, is the thinking that the next film will be a re-boot in which none of the stuff in this film happened or is that the end of Superman’s secret identity in the DC film universe?
I saw it three times this weekend, and I enjoyed it more each time I saw it. I recognize the flaws in it, but recognizing the ambition of the film, the flaws were going to be blatant when they missed, and a few of them missed pretty wide. I really loved all the fan-service and easter eggs to various other DC villains and characters, moments from the comics, but in talking to a lot of people that saw it, so much of that was missed on them. For instance, the obvious (to comic fans) set up for Darkseid is more of a “WTF?” moment from a lot of people. They didn’t get the omega symbol, parademons, fire pits, etc. The biggest flaw, though, was definitely the editing which, at a few times, put things in confusing order on a first view (making more sense on subsequent views why they chose that order) and in other places ruining the pacing, like having the Diana email scene between the bat signal turn on and the fight, when it could have been before it.
Personally, I hate tags and post-credit scenes, and I’m the guy that sits through the credits regardless because I enjoy listening to the music and sometimes I want to see who played certain roles or whatever. The reason being, if it’s part of the movie, make it part of the movie. We essentially got what could have been tags, with the “we need to find the others like you” being in the traditional mid-credits spot, and the floating dirt scene being the end-credits. Why make fans sit through credits if they don’t want to, especially when those scenes often aren’t worth the several minutes they waited? Sure it builds anticipation, but it can leave a sour taste in fans’ mouths. Like in Guardians of the Galaxy, a solid and well-liked film, but the Howard the Duck scene was generally not liked.
Each time I saw the film, her appearance had the strongest reaction. Even knowing it was coming, it was still bad ass. And while I understand why they put it in the promotional material, I still think it was a poor choice and it could have been even that much better of an entrance.
This scene didn’t work for a couple reasons, the worst being where it was placed in the film. We got Batman looking at it earlier where he sees her photo, and that’s it, but we get this long teasing right when the action is building up, we see the bat signal, we see Lois get kidnapped… cut to that stuff… back to Superman talking to Lex. As a whole, just put it 5-minutes earlier, and it’s less jarring. Even better, spread the teases between batman seeing some and her seeing some more through the film so it’s in smaller bites.
This was my take at first, but it’s more subtle than that. Batman has been singularly focused on killing Superman for years now. He also knows that Superman knows he’s coming after him and isn’t going to listen to anything he says. Superman is already aware from earlier in the film of Batman’s conviction and unwillingness to bend when he has something in his sites, he tries to reason with him three times, the last being with his strongest demonstration and ability to easily kill him and is willing to keep trying until he gets hit with the Kryptonite grenade and realizes that Batman has the ability to kill him. At that point, it becomes him fighting for his life and the life of his mother.
Again, my original take as well. Wow, what a coincidence. And that’s enough to stop it? But the thing is, he flashes back and remembers his father’s dying word was “Martha”. It triggers his PTSD (which, obviously, Batman has) and it’s only in realizing Superman cared about her more than his own life. Moreso, with Lois there, and his love for his mother, he comes to see that he’s not just some alien imposing his will on Earth, but he genuinely loves and is loved by other humans. It humanizes him in his eyes. And then you can see he’s piecing together how his singular focus got and he’d missed all the other things going on about why Lex was after the Kryptonite and had all that research on meta-humans he’d ignored. He realized he’d been played.
I love Clancy Brown’s version of Lex, but I’m glad they took a different spin on him. It didn’t hit home as much as I’d have liked, but it was ambitious. His eccentric nature played to the zeitgeist of modern young billionaires. He was also clearly afraid of Superman but realizing as he had the upperhand, he’d just double down.
That’s him snapping. He was so obsessed with defeating Superman, and to a lesser extent the other meta-humans, combined with his knowledge that Darkseid is coming (presumably when he was being taught by the computer in the ship), so he created Doomsday. I do hope the extended version gives us a little more insight into whether or not he had some plan to destroy it or his only thought was destroying Superman and anything else was an afterthought.
This was fan service, so I don’t blame people less familiar with the mythology not getting it. There’s a few thoughts on it, but mine is that it’s a vision of a possible future, Injustice-style, where Superman goes rogue because of Lois’s death. We also see the Omega symbol and the parademons, clear references to Darkseid. So it’s a dystopian future, mixed with Batman’s fears of what Superman is actually capable of if he wanted, but delivered by Flash going through time. We even hear him say, after the Lois bit, that he needs to find them. So Batman thinks it’s all just along the lines of the other nightmares he’s having, but it’s not, hence his “just a feeling”. Probably could have been done in better context for non-fans, but not really sure how.
Because Batman can handle thugs. Knowing that what’s going on at the ship is Kryptonian, whatever it is, Superman is going to be better able to handle whatever threat it is. Superman knows now he can trust Batman and knows he’s capable, and Batman has to make sure he takes care of the threat to humanity and he owes it to him to help save his mother.
I really liked the slow burn, although, again, I think the editting muddied some of it, which was why it needed to be in the order it was. First, though, the scene with Finch and Lex was to set up the bombing. Lex thinks he has her, like he had with the other senator, that he’s really looking out for a deterent, hence her like “take a bucket of piss and call it Granny’s Peach Tea. Take a weapon of assassination and call it a deterent.” She saw through his facade that he wasn’t trying to deter Superman, but just flat out kill him. It also made her aware just how terrifying he can be, so when she sees the glass of tea (and we have to assume it actually was his piss), she KNOWS something is about to happen.
And as for the explosion itself, it was less a set-up to frame Superman, other than in a “could he have stopped it”, they make it clear right away that Wally Keith was the one suspect of bombing, not Superman doing it. But rather to demonstrate, to him, that he’s going to fail, he was hated so much someone would kill himself and so many others to get at him, and sew the seeds of doubt in him. The anguish and disappointment on his face standing in the fire sells exactly that.
Overall, I really liked it, and I see where the flaws can hurt it for others. A tighter cut and a bit more to explain the stuff to non-fans might have helped. For instance, the references to Joker, Catwoman, Two-Face, Riddler, Jimmy Olsen, etc. and the various scenes and lines from the comics were awesome, and when missed, it didn’t hurt anything. But the more obvious references without context, especially the Darkseid stuff, probably left a lot of people confused. I’m hopeful the longer cut will do a better job explaining it, but I also imagine most of the people who aren’t serious fans probably won’t bother to see the long version. They’ll need to do a good job of providing some context to some of that in future films. Nonetheless, the flaws are outweighed by the positives, so I’m going to probably settle around an 8-8.5 for this film.
And for the future, please keep the tone, I really like it. If I want a light-hearted film, I have other options, like Marvel (and I rally enjoy most of those films too). I already loved this version of Superman from Man of Steel, and I think Batman and Wonder Woman were well realized as well. However, as great as Zack Snyder is as visuals and visual story telling, he needs help with some of the dialog scenes and particularly with editing and pacing. I was hoping that bringing in Affleck would bring some of that sensibility, and maybe it will, as Affleck said he learned a lot about directing action (PLEASE PLEASE having him direct The Batman). I think just a few minor tweaks in the editing room could have made this film truly spectacular, and maybe the longer cut will fix some of those issues. But he needs some help in some way fixing that in the future.
In the comics, “Clark” gets found after Superman returns and clears some of the rubble in Metropolis, at which point a bearded-and-bespectacled survivor who says he’d been living off supplies or something emerges from the old fallout shelter under one of those buildings that sure done got smashed up real good.
Thanks. Does this new film cover the business at the end of the previous Batman film when Batman “dies” in an explosion out at sea?
It seems to me that the Christopher Nolan Batman is not part of this film’s backstory.
That raises the question; with the studio’s plans to continue the DC super hero movies, is the next director allowed to ignore anything and everything that happened in the previous film(s)? I guess only time will tell.
Sigh. No. This is a new, connected DC movie universe that started with Man of Steel. Nothing before that is part of it but everything on the current schedule is connected.
Doesnt it have to be, with Wayne Manor in ruins from the fire?
No. Not from the same fire.
Yeah - I kinda started to realize that after I posted it - since the 2 following movies had Wayne Manor largely (if not completely) restored.
So - that was Robin’s costume with the scrawl all over it in the cave?
Apparently, which suggests that “A Death In The Family” is backstory to this version of the DC universe.
Speaking of Lex Luther and this mental issues; did anyone else wonder if Daddy Luther did more than just beat him? :eek:
And how does Martha explain the funeral (“Oh, it was just a bunch of bricks in the coffin; I was too sad to telly anyone they never found the body.”)
So that WAS the cave troll from fellowship of the ring right? tell me I’m not crazy thinking they basically reused the same monster.
Movies only, it should be pointed out. The DC TV shows (Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham) are not connected to the movies, though in some capacity are connected to each other in their own separate universe. Except for Gotham which is standalone.
Unlike Marvel’s TV shows which do directly connect to the Marvel movie timeline.