My parents are easy to please people with movies, and we tend to not agree on very much. This is the first time in ages that I have gone to see a film with them and come out with the exact same consensus. The first things out of their mouth when it ended were:
Mum: "My god, I thought it was never going to end. And when did Batman become bad?"
Dad: "The first half was so boring with no action, and then the action happened and it was even more boring."
Affleck was decent, though the second best Punisher performance I saw this month.
My parents are easy to please people with movies, and we tend to not agree on very much. This is the first time in ages that I have gone to see a film with them and come out with the exact same consensus. The first things out of their mouth when it ended were:
Mum: "My god, I thought it was never going to end. And when did Batman become bad?"
Dad: "The first half was so boring with no action, and then the action happened and it was even more boring."
Affleck was decent, though the second best Punisher performance I saw this month.
A 5. I'd give Man of Steel a 7, give or take. Man of Steel's not a great film by any stretch, but I find it enjoyable enough to sit through every so often. Admittedly, mostly because I think Hans Zimmer's score for it is so wonderful and injects more heart into the movie than most of the performances.
This removed most of Man of Steel's best points and enhanced the worst aspects of it, while adding the worst elements of Amazing Spider-man 2. My favourite thing outside of the score in Man of Steel is Martha, I think that Diane Lane really did a good job in it and brought a lot of warmth to the part. She's not bad here either, buuuuut [BLACKOUT]she's absent for about fifty minutes to an hour or so, suddenly shows up for a pep talk, then gets kidnapped and rescued and that's about it.[/BLACKOUT]
The setup for Justice League is awful. Just awful. [BLACKOUT]It's building up to the big Batman v Superman fight, then moments before decides to just pause to show Wonder Woman getting an email from Batman with videos of Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman. And the Knightmare sequence comes out of nowhere and disappears back to nowhere, playing no role in the overall plot of the film and only really setting up one line Bruce says to Diana at the very end.[/BLACKOUT]
You can see the seams where things were cut, the first half especially relies on constantly cutting to black and then going into another scene. I think that's a fine technique to use to punctuate scenes and let things sink in, but it seems to happen every other scene for a while. It also jumps around constantly for the first forty five minutes or so. The pacing is horrible.
Lex is a terrible villain and his last scene, outside of [BLACKOUT]Batman's part[/BLACKOUT] was cringe-inducing.
The action is decent, but I only found the Batmobile sequence engaging and even that I don't think is particularly remarkable. The climax goes on FOREVER. Three action sequences back to back, with practically no breathing room. And then, once the fighting is over, the movie never ends. I swear, it has more endings than Return of the King.
On the positive end of things, I liked what little we got of Gadot quite a bit. It wasn't much, but I thought she did a good job with her...10 or so lines. Affleck gives a good performance, but I don't see much of Batman in this performance. He leaves a trail of death wherever he goes, from [BLACKOUT]branding people, which reportedly leads to those people being killed in prison, to unnecessarily shooting people.[/BLACKOUT] Jeremy Irons is a great Alfred with his limited time, and I look forward to seeing more of him in the inevitable Batfleck movie. Cavill's...passable. The "the bat is dead" scene is the worst he gets. He's nothing noteworthy, but I think he's alright. I like Amy Adams as Lois still, but her usage starts out good and ends horribly.
EDIT: oh, another thing that I thought was annoying. [BLACKOUT]On multiple occasions, the film flashes back to stuff earlier in the movie. Including one of the most famous scenes from comics, the death of Martha and Thomas. I don't need to see it twice in one movie, especially when it adds absolutely nothing than "hey, audience, remember how we told you at the start his mother's name was Martha? Well just in case you forgot, here's Thomas bleeding out and saying her name a second time."[/BLACKOUT]
A 5. I'd give Man of Steel a 7, give or take. Man of Steel's not a great film by any stretch, but I find it enjoyable enough to sit through every so often. Admittedly, mostly because I think Hans Zimmer's score for it is so wonderful and injects more heart into the movie than most of the performances.
This removed most of Man of Steel's best points and enhanced the worst aspects of it, while adding the worst elements of Amazing Spider-man 2. My favourite thing outside of the score in Man of Steel is Martha, I think that Diane Lane really did a good job in it and brought a lot of warmth to the part. She's not bad here either, buuuuut [BLACKOUT]she's absent for about fifty minutes to an hour or so, suddenly shows up for a pep talk, then gets kidnapped and rescued and that's about it.[/BLACKOUT]
The setup for Justice League is awful. Just awful. [BLACKOUT]It's building up to the big Batman v Superman fight, then moments before decides to just pause to show Wonder Woman getting an email from Batman with videos of Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman. And the Knightmare sequence comes out of nowhere and disappears back to nowhere, playing no role in the overall plot of the film and only really setting up one line Bruce says to Diana at the very end.[/BLACKOUT]
You can see the seams where things were cut, the first half especially relies on constantly cutting to black and then going into another scene. I think that's a fine technique to use to punctuate scenes and let things sink in, but it seems to happen every other scene for a while. It also jumps around constantly for the first forty five minutes or so. The pacing is horrible.
Lex is a terrible villain and his last scene, outside of [BLACKOUT]Batman's part[/BLACKOUT] was cringe-inducing.
The action is decent, but I only found the Batmobile sequence engaging and even that I don't think is particularly remarkable. The climax goes on FOREVER. Three action sequences back to back, with practically no breathing room. And then, once the fighting is over, the movie never ends. I swear, it has more endings than Return of the King.
On the positive end of things, I liked what little we got of Gadot quite a bit. It wasn't much, but I thought she did a good job with her...10 or so lines. Affleck gives a good performance, but I don't see much of Batman in this performance. He leaves a trail of death wherever he goes, from [BLACKOUT]branding people, which reportedly leads to those people being killed in prison, to unnecessarily shooting people.[/BLACKOUT] Jeremy Irons is a great Alfred with his limited time, and I look forward to seeing more of him in the inevitable Batfleck movie. Cavill's...passable. The "the bat is dead" scene is the worst he gets. He's nothing noteworthy, but I think he's alright. I like Amy Adams as Lois still, but her usage starts out good and ends horribly.
EDIT: oh, another thing that I thought was annoying. [BLACKOUT]On multiple occasions, the film flashes back to stuff earlier in the movie. Including one of the most famous scenes from comics, the death of Martha and Thomas. I don't need to see it twice in one movie, especially when it adds absolutely nothing than "hey, audience, remember how we told you at the start his mother's name was Martha? Well just in case you forgot, here's Thomas bleeding out and saying her name a second time."[/BLACKOUT]
sigh...yeah. I dunno....I'm kinda lost about this one(I guess I'll put it into spoiler tags, just encase some still haven't seen it). But my biggest issue with this movie, and it's a HUGE one, was...
knowing I'm gonna be having long debates with you guys, for years on end. I LOVED it. It wasn't perfect, but I loved it, though. I had so much fun watching it.
Guys....I'll be completely honest. I am struggling a bit with my opinion on this one. It would be verrrry, very easy to just call it a turkey, leave it at that and walk away. But there's a lot going on here, and it may warrant some subsequent viewings for me to really get a handle on it....trouble is, I don't have the strongest desire to watch it again.
There is a very large part of me that completely sees why this might go down historically as a trainwreck. There were many times the trainwreck-yness of it all was very palpable to me *cough Jesse Eisenberg cough*. I'd imagine it's how some of the biggest TDKR haters felt. And to be frank, I literally cannot decide whether I loved or hated Jesse as Lex. He was riding that razor's edge for me. As a performance, it's actually kind of briliiant. I don't know if I've ever seen a villain in a CBM so vile and hateable to where you literally wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the guy. But not only were there moments that were way too over the top and Jim Carrey-sih for me, I'm just not sure his motivations ended up making very much sense.
I agree with Chip, Affleck and Irons were the best parts of the movie for me. Ben is great in the role. I'll gladly eat crow on any shade I was throwing Ben's way, he is without a doubt an excellent Bruce/Batman. Heck, even the "You let your family die" face I'm pretty sure was a different take than the one in the trailer I was ripping apart (which I even mentioned could be the case), which was a relief.
However, as far as characterization goes...he's far from my favorite version of the character. He's badass to the extreme, fanboy-pants-wetting-Bat Godly awesomeness, which was nice to see for the first time, don't get me wrong, but I probably would've enjoyed that a lot more if I were like 16, 17...it's hard not to see it as kind of oppressively dark now (especially with Snyder's vision). Same probably goes for the whole movie. I missed the more heroic Bale Bruce/Batman, I just did. Tbh, I did feel a sense of relief by the end when the Trinity finally got together. The movie actually felt kind of fun for a bit there. But man...the [BLACKOUT]Martha[/BLACKOUT] thing....oof. I get what they were going for, but man that was laid on REALLY thick by Snyder. I'm glad the character has turned a corner by the end, but the culmination of the arc just felt a little too deus ex machina to me, and it was SUCH a pivotal point in the movie too.
As of now, I kind of feel similarly to how I felt about Watchmen (a movie I admire for the visuals, but don't particularly care for). I don't know...I feel like I 'get' a lot of what Snyder was going for. It's another pretty layered superhero deconstruction type of a movie that has some moments of visual beauty, but kinda like how I felt Watchmen barely works as a movie if you've never read the GN, I kinda BvS feel barely functions as a movie if you're not already pretty familiar with the DC Universe. Which is why I'm completely unsurprised it's getting savaged by critics. For some, it may just be a fanboy's wet dream...but it also might just be a general moviegoer's (k)nightmare. It will be VERY interesting to see what happens from here.
I have so much more I want to say, but I'm exhausted and I need to sleep on it a bit. I wanted to be as fair as I could and not go complete knee-jerk with my reaction here.
Also....that Sad Affleck video...my god. I feel for the guy, I do.
My parents are easy to please people with movies, and we tend to not agree on very much. This is the first time in ages that I have gone to see a film with them and come out with the exact same consensus. The first things out of their mouth when it ended were:
Mum: "My god, I thought it was never going to end. And when did Batman become bad?"
Dad: "The first half was so boring with no action, and then the action happened and it was even more boring."
Affleck was decent, though the second best Punisher performance I saw this month.
It bugged me in The Force Awakens too. In the OT, the ships had real weight about them and seemed real. In ROTJ, when the Falcon clips the comm dish on the Death Star it was almost the end of them. In TFA, it bounces off things like it was made of rubber. Bugged the hell out of me.
All of these directors and effects people need to be forced to watch Mad Max Fury Road to see how to properly do chase scenes.
Not even Snyder can be this stupid. Goyer is dumb, but he actually has some comic knowledge.
I wonder if the idiotic, wrongheaded diversions from the core of the characters had more to do with Chris Terrio. Good writer he may be. But respect for the source material is not a prerequisite for that.
If it's Terrio, removing Snyder from JLA might not be the solution.
Look, it's hard to definitively claim who the culprit is. I'm just trying to make sense of it all.
Terrio wrote a film on how a person's littlest faults in logic could lead to a bullet in their head, so I doubt it was him. That's such a Snyder thing to do, so I suspect it was Snyder. Watchmen did similar things.
I liked the deeply disturbed Batman we got here.
I liked that DC's dropping us into the middle of a universe that's already "in-motion" as opposed to being built over several movies.
Snyder needs a better editor.
I'll need to see it again before I can give it a rating/10. I'll say it was certainly a fun ride.
I liked this movie but i didn't at the same time. I give it the same "average" rating that i would give Man of Steel.
From the moment it begins, it's visually breathtaking. You know you're in for a visual treat, closer to Watchmen than Man of Steel. There's more color. Slow-motion effects are back in full force. The origin of the Waynes is done very well, to the point, only in the opening credits. My problem with the visuals, like Man of Steel, is once the final act comes in full swing. Zack goes overboard with destruction and CG until your senses are numb and you just want it to end. Yes, Doomsday is god awful and tagged on for the sake of bringing the Trinity together (as we all figured from the trailers). Wonder Woman delivers but everything with her is so convenient. Back to Doomsday for a moment...Luthor comes up with this creation as we all know, but it's a bit of a head scratcher. Everything Lex does in this movie has a generic and weak motivation behind it. He's evil and insane from the get-go for the sake of being evil and insane. Ill get back to him later..
Affleck and Irons steal the show, and Gal Gadot is right behind them, especially as Diana Prince. She's mysterious. This WORKS. But it should have been left at that until we see her in full costume in the solo Wonder Woman film. I personally thought they blew their load too soon. Justice League nuggets are corny, shoehorned in and that makes the final action scene lose a certain rhythm.
They literally cut to a Justice League reveal in the middle of the big fight. Wonder Woman injects herself into this final battle and it's soooo convenient. The fact that she's in town when she is, at the Lexcorp party when Bruce and Clark are there, ready to take off on a PLANE and decides to get off last second when she sees a fight brewing on the news. She saves everyones ass. But as convenient as it is, the party scenes with Diana are great fun and it's some of the more compelling scenes.
Superman is still a bit dull but it's nothing "bad". Well, only that bad delivery. You know the one that i hate. "The bat is dead". Ouch. Did Batman have a cue-card attached to his chest symbol? I felt for Superman in some scenes. Other scenes not so much. Perry White [BLACKOUT]makes a comment about Clark disappearing and where does HE GO!?? It's funny, but goddamn Perry must be an idiot. It would have been fantastic if that added in some humor where everyone in the office knows who Clark is and they're constantly trolling him like SO WHERE YUH GOIN EH CLARK!? lmao. But nope. Same old s**t.[/BLACKOUT]
Lois is well acted by the gorgeous Amy Adams. But she's a bit of an idiot. She's forced into the final act cuz we need her there i guess. She does questionable things and is constantly the damsel in distress. It's not a bad thing but it's something i wish they changed around a bit.
I won't complain about the bathtub scene but it's unecessary and shows how much of a teenager Snyder is. Like why does she have to be in a bathtub in that scene, almost exposing her breasts. Nevermind, i know the answer. Zack thinks she's hot, i get it
Eisenberg tries his best, and it's certainly not poor acting. But it's overly hammy. Im telling you guys, it's nothing more than a Jim Carrey impression. Whether it's a good one or bad one is up to you, but that's what it is. Edward Nygma big hair style. Sometimes it's beyond Carrey, where you're wondering what the hell he's doing with his nervous tourettes yells. Nic Cage much? Luthor is completely insane, Joker-level. It doesn't work for me.
Affleck is incredible as Bruce Wayne and solid as Batman. He's good in that suited up role but he can do better in future films as long as Snyder stays away. Irons slays as Alfred, soo good. Those scenes on the grounds of Wayne Manor were the best in the movie. The fighting is incredible (nice Rock Bottom Bats!). It's violent.
he stabs motherf***ers left and right. But he's shooting everyone down in this movie. It's Punisher in a bat suit. I don't mind it one hand because this movie ends with him feeling better about humanity, so by the time we get a solo bats film, he could be right up everyones alley. But for now he's mowing criminals down.
He has a few dream sequences. One involves a bad CG bat but it's still well done. He wakes up to that one with a lady in his bed, so it seems like there's no real separation between his public self and private self. Zero persona there. It's different but i like it. The other dream in the desert is OUT OF LEFT FIELD. It doesn't work AT ALL. Everyone seemed confused in the audience. It's laughable. Batman's look and behavior is ridiculous. In the dream he's taking their guns and shooting people left and right. Parademons are flying everywhere but why is this sequence NOT in the director's cut instead? Flash, with a terrible looking suit, starts screaming at Bruce from the batcave but apparently he's in 2 levels of dreaming like Inception. He's just as dumbfounded as we are. Then he wakes up in the cave and it inspires him to become Punisher 2.0 with that mecha-suit. It's an OK suit. Glad it's done with. The grey suit is bananas though.
Loved how they shot the first Batman scene like a horror movie. He's the boogeyman. People are sh***ing their pants, and it feels real.
Alfred pokes some fun at Bruce in his own private way and it's great. Bruce is so damn good but it has everything to do with Ben. Because he's more than cynical. He hates humanity and feels like life is pointless. That's not my Batman and that's why Bale is still my favorite. But this is good for what it is as long as he has an arc.
The bat-brand is badass but Zack only gets "badass". It's a death sentence in prison. In Begins Ras Al Ghul teaches Bruce that Thomas failed to act and that's why his family died. This inspires Bruce to stand up and protect people so the same thing doesn't happen. But in THIS version (Joker should be getting red in the face here hehehe) we see that Thomas acted like Ras would, and tries to fight this guy in the street but it backfires and it's probably why Bruce's family died. Im not against this because we all act differently in the heat of the moment. But it seems like Bruce is acting aggressive towards criminals just like Thomas, only now he's making sure that he decimates them in time so they can't cause harm. And he'll shoot them, stab them, break their necks, anyway he can to accomplish that.
Too many subplots. Zero rhythm with the editing. You jump from Gotham in the intro to Metropolis in a flashback from Bruce's POV, to the future in India to Africa to Metropolis. It's non-stop, no flow. Snyder slowly proves during the first 20 minutes that he has a good eye for visuals but he's a hack of a filmmaker/storyteller.
Some parts drag before the big Batman vs Superman showdown. But it's still an entertaining thrill ride in the cinema for the most part, at least. That showdown is solid but its conclusion is layed on thick as Batlobster said (i think?).
He's ready to slaughter Superman hardcore Punisher style and then once he knows Clark cares for his mother who has the same name as his own, he suddenly is his friend? This is something i can't judge 100 % until i see it again.
The batmobile chase scene is OK. Nothing too good or bad. Too much CG for my taste. Nolan's wipe the floor with this. Affleck or another could do sooo much better.
Dialogue can be a little too philosophical all the time especially from the mouth of Lex. It's constant with him. It's a bit unnatural. I can live with it though.
The big courtroom scene is one of the best in the entire film. I was getting a bit bored by this time and expected NOTHING from it, but it woke me up.
I liked the final 5 minutes because it was bold compared to Marvel, even though we see what's coming in the final few seconds, i still enjoyed that.
That Sadfleck video is so brutal. I really hope Affleck can endure. That he can take it.
Honestly, the feeling I keep coming back to is just feeling really embarrassed for him. He's talked up Snyder for the past couple of years, he's said how much believed in the movie and that he wouldn't have done it if he didn't think it was going to work.
What I'm wondering if he really does love the film and is just hurt by the response (which would be natural), or if he's been dreading this for a while.
I hope he does realize that everyone wants to see more of him in the role. But it'd be pretty hard to blame him from being permanently scared off from doing any more superhero films after this.
He loves the movie but he's crushed by the response. I want that to inspire him to start quickly on his solo batman movie minus Snyder, right after he wraps his current film. My friends and i were saying how INSANE a batman movie can be in his hands with Joker. It could be the best Batman movie of all-time.
He could use a bit of Ian McShane's assertiveness...Thrones fanboys got mad at McShane for something or another, to which McShane responded, "It's **** and dragons. Grow the **** up."
Some parts drag before the big Batman vs Superman showdown. But it's still an entertaining thrill ride in the cinema for the most part, at least. That showdown is solid but its conclusion is layed on thick as Batlobster said (i think?).
He's ready to slaughter Superman hardcore Punisher style and then once he knows Clark cares for his mother who has the same name as his own, he suddenly is his friend? This is something i can't judge 100 % until i see it again.
The sudden turn was WAY too much for me. I was talking to my friend after the movie, and he was basically trying to argue that Bruce was experiencing some sort of transcendental moment there, where he's been having these visions, etc. and now he's suddenly about to kill this god-like figure and he starts calling out his dead mother's name. So he argued that it's basically his "come to Jesus" moment of sorts, in addition to Bruce's typical soft spot for people losing their parents.
But for such a complex idea...it was all very, very internal and I think that could lose a lot of people. And considering it was the pivotal point in the film, it felt more than a little unearned to me, and I really wanted to be on that journey with Bruce coming to his senses after seeing him act so wrong-headedly throughout the film. I was legitimately happy to see Batman fighting alongside the good guys by the end though, and that's coming from someone who isn't a big Justice League guy.
I feel very on the same page as you so far shauner.
Yeah that was me.
The sudden turn was WAY too much for me. I was talking to my friend after the movie, and he was basically trying to argue that Bruce was experiencing some sort of transcendental moment there, where he's been having these visions, etc. and now he's suddenly about to kill this god-like figure and he starts calling out his dead mother's name. So he argued that it's basically his "come to Jesus" moment of sorts, in addition to Bruce's typical soft spot for people losing their parents.
But for such a complex idea...it was all very, very internal and I think that could lose a lot of people. And considering it was the pivotal point in the film, it felt more than a little unearned to me, and I really wanted to be on that journey with Bruce coming to his senses after seeing him act so wrong-headedly throughout the film. I was legitimately happy to see Batman fighting alongside the good guys by the end though, and that's coming from someone who isn't a big Justice League guy.
Hmm, that sounds about right, and you know what? I can get behind that. It could be quite an emotional scene for me as a Batman fan once i see this movie a couple of more times. Yes, as of now i agree that it's layed on thick. I think he [BLACKOUT]sides with him a little fast once the scene is over. Maybe the director's cut adds something (i doubt it).[/BLACKOUT] but maybe this isolated scene could work considering what happened with him before.
I liked seeing him fight alongside the good guys too. It made everything before mean something. Especially what he says at the very end. But getting there was a bit of a stretch, and now i think he NEEDS to [BLACKOUT]stop killing in future stories. It would be nice if they did a prequel Batman movie showing him as a traditional Batman until the end when Joker kills Robin, ending the film on an extremely dark note with Bruce almost having a mental breakdown. This would be a perfect way to show why he became so cruel. His arc reminds me a lot of Rust Cohle from True Detective. This intelligent/badass lost someone, he said screw humanity and God. He did what he could to rid the scum of the earth, no half measures. As he got older, he really stopped caring, until something woke him, helping him see the light.[/BLACKOUT]
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
t:
