itt: consternation and wailing about Zach Snyder's upcoming SUPERMAN/BATMAN film/sequel to MAN OF STEEL -- official title: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

StillAdvance's childhood:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fcL_MS6LR_E/TlQ1i-5sChI/AAAAAAAAAJg/WS0ECsaFlQM/s1600/WareSuperman.jpg

xp

guilty lol

xpost - i must have missed the deep mine of adult maturity that was there in avengers assemble, thor, etc etc.

maybe childs sense of the world is the wrong phrasing, i suppose i just mean a child like, or simpler (?) idea of justice, good vs evil, right vs wrong, etc etc. a simpler, deeply felt idea of morality maybe is what i mean.

"xpost I kinda do expect narrative cohesion from modern blockbusters. Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore. It's nice that we're able these days to occasionally see a big, fun movie that doesn't require a complete override of one's critical faculties."

BVS isnt incoherent though. its basically earth loves superman, batman gets jealous, lex luger capitalises on this, batman and superman fight to the death.

"Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore."

erm mad max wasnt that long ago.

a child like, or simpler (?) idea of justice, good vs evil, right vs wrong, etc etc. a simpler, deeply felt idea of morality maybe is what i mean.

lol idk if you missed it but Snyder thinks this is the MATURE/GROWNUP version of morality that he's presenting

xpost Dude. a) "Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore." Indicating that, yes, orgasms of stupidity still exist. b) If you genuinely think Batman v Superman was grate and Fury Road was an orgasm of stupidity, well...

Defending this movie (or any movie, or whatever) is defensible, but when you're David fighting the Goliath of critical/public opinion, you really need to bring your A game, and this is like a C- at best.

Also ragging on Mad Max is some "point rock towards enemy"-level shit.

yeah, watching tdk in the cinema and being swept along by its sinister momentum was a really memorable experience for me - it was only once the ride was over that i started thinking 'wait, what?'

well, yeah, it worked for me the first time, too. but i later accompanied a friend to see it, and that second time, the effectiveness completely dissipated. which is why i called its approach "cheap."

what mainly still works for me is Ledger's performance. i think even if you stripped away his make up and scars, just the way he moves communicates *danger* in the sense of the kind of person you'd change subway cars to avoid.

eh, everything about that film--esp. ledger--is empty and overpraised.

as a manic, mannered performance it's not even that entertaining.

the idea of a "realistic" "serious" batman just seems to me to be such a corrupt, risible "idea" for a film and pretty much everything about the film proceeds from that.

but, you know, worse films have been made.

I'm with Ryan - the thing about the Joker is that every time he enters a room anyone in it could die, and Heath Ledger got that just right.

I enjoyed the film a lot on my second view - couldn't even countenance watching TDKR again.

i've seen TDK three times, i really enjoyed it without too many reservations up til the final stretch, which is unfortunately the stretch which is closest in tone and dullness to TDKR

the idea of a "realistic" "serious" batman just seems to me to be such a corrupt, risible "idea" for a film and pretty much everything about the film proceeds from that.

well the saving grace here is that "seriousness" isnt an aesthetic quality so much as a reader-response. i dont take TDK "seriously"--if that makes sense. anyway: wrong thread for this.

i know what you mean. but i do think a lumbering "seriousness" and "heaviness" is very much an /aesthetic/ quality of nolan's work.

https://twitter.com/nickpinkerton/status/690347619302928384

^^ok that's funny

but, you know, worse films have been made.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 11:42 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, I keep seeing/hearing this argument as a defense of BvS. I overheard my coworker give a half-hearted "eh, it could've been worse". Yeah, Jonestown could've been worse, too.

to defer to nick pinkerton again:

The overarching theme of the Batman films is the moral problem of vigilantism, as played out by name-tagged figures of virtue and vice. "The idea was to be a symbol," Wayne says of his anonymous alter ego in The Dark Knight Rises—and so this most solemn of superhero franchises duly marches ahead with the process of ominous signification, having established itself among those who accept its self-regard at face value as not just another blockbuster but the multiplex State of the Nation for the 21st century. If The Dark Knight openly invited interpretation as the War on Terror Batman, then The Dark Knight Rises, whose creators obviously scented the class discontent in the air, is the Occupy Wall Street installment. "You think all this can last?" down-and-out survivor Selina says upon meeting Wayne at a fancy-dress masquerade ball. "There's a storm coming."

so many of the more fine-grained aesthetic choices in those films seems to proceed from this basic, self-important conception.

(sorry for all the grammatical infelicities in that sentence)

the solemnity of the series is overstated (though TDKR tips over into that a bit too much), what i remember about the first pair is that they're pretty fun rides and the seriousness (while a big element of the proceedings) isn't particularly overwhelming.

so many of the more fine-grained aesthetic choices in those films seems to proceed from this basic, self-important conception.

self-regard or self-importance is not necessarily (imo) a negative quality. it doesn't have an aesthetic value either way for me. to stop there as if a critical point was made is .... bad criticism.

but it's quite possible that when we are talking about self-regard in a commercial entertainment we're dancing around something harder to describe.

nolan's operatic ambition is one of his better qualities! like if he wants to make a space-time-travel movie about the infinity of love or a super hero movie about the paradox of justice i say go for it, whether it succeeds or not is a different conversation.

'Seriuousness' is in the eye of the beholder, no? I enjoy Inception as a deeply cynical/ironic work about the emptiness of marketing.

well sure i'm making this "argument" in little spurts in between meetings so i'm not putting forward the most sophisticated observations. just a kind of thumbnail soundbite version. sorry!

hey it's cool we're all just talking here.

I think 'ambition' is more apt than 'seriousness'. There's always thrice as many twists as needed, two times as many references to the real world, and 50% more plot. Unfortunately that doesn't leave much place for personality, perhaps, even though his films are 150 min long. I do really like him, though.

1) The Prestige
2) Interstellar
3) Inception
4) The Dark Knight
5) The Following

ambition and self-seriousness are two different things! i mean, they can go together, but they aren't necessarily conjoined.

all these talk about snyder and nolan just makes me want to cleanse my palate and watch Fury Road again tbqh

*this

wonder what Miller's Justice League would have been like

Or Millar's, for that matter

i still dont quite get what was so incomprehensible about this film. its not like the basic plot was that complicated

then please explain what the senator's plot was. what did she want, what was the point of the hearings, and why did she back out of her deal w Luthor after giving him total access to highly classified materials.

if it isn't complicated then this should be easy for you.

i just have a hard time with a world that is SUPER CONCERNED about Superman as a homeland security concern and yet is fine with allowing a single senator to just hand over the UFO and dead alien body to whoever they want.

it's like they came up with every part of this plot separately and just edited them together with no thought about internal consistency. it's just sloppy writing.

Or Millar's, for that matter

badly drawn, full of references to government work and beer
oh wait n/m

this was fun! stupid, stupid, stupid fun.
blatantly fascist, kinda over-the-hill Affleck Batman was pretty entertaining.
a lotta effective stealing from Frank Miller and the recent videogames (Arkham series, Injustice)
favorite part for me was that wacky future dream sequence with Red Son Batman followed by crazy future Flash w/a Crisis-style warning.

not gonna defend the immense stupidity. but i will say during the super serious angry titular fight scene, Batman takes the time to rip a bathroom sink off of a wall and smack Superman in the back of the head with it. this is played completely seriously.

think people here may take Zach Snyder waaaaaaaay more seriously that he is actually taking these films. ya'll gotta chill

i'd be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he'd previously shown any grasp of nuance or irony either onscreen or in interviews

"i'd be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he'd previously shown any grasp of nuance or irony either onscreen or in interviews"

this is like wishing woody allen was better at shooting action sequences and using CGI. its just not what he does. but he does other things very well (if flawed).

xpost, i didnt actually care about the senator or what she was doing or why lol. maybe ive watched too many arthouse movies, but i didnt really care about the plot of this all that much, i just liked the mood/tone/feel etc etc of their scenes. i didnt go into the film expecting cohesion and properly explored/resolved plotlines. i just wanted to see a slightly diff kind of superhero movie. which is what i got.

i think my expectations were diff as i saw sucker punch fairly recently, and so knew what i was letting myself in for (ie incoherent plot, themes touched on then forgotten, confused messages, orgiastic visuals, seemingly incompatible parallel worlds smashed together, etc), and this didnt disappoint. i honestly feel like snyder is trying to do something new. hes a really skilled visual storyteller, just not that great at any other kind. i think he should maybe be working at rockstar games, as his films resemble not really trailers, but video game sequences, but i really like what he brings to big hollywood movies. it feels new. so what if certain characters come in and out and you dont know what or why theyre there.

ive a feeling the extended cut thats coming out on dvd later in the year could make it better, and maybe explain a few things (then again, maybe not lol).

"not gonna defend the immense stupidity. but i will say during the super serious angry titular fight scene, Batman takes the time to rip a bathroom sink off of a wall and smack Superman in the back of the head with it. this is played completely seriously."

this was an awesome scene lol.

this is like wishing woody allen was better at shooting action sequences and using CGI

i also wish this btw, hoping woody takes the director's chair for guardians of the galaxy 3

so what if certain characters come in and out and you don't know what or why they're there.

Right, but this isn't a documentary, they don't have to be there at all (but if you make everything have a purpose and streamline it, you get Mad Max, which you apparently don't rate?).

I admit this is not really a criticism of Snyder, who didn't write any of this.

im not sure if snyder has a grasp of irony or nuance. i dont care actually. as if every filmmaker has to pass some sort of humour exam. nolan didnt have much of a sense of humour either, but snyder at least directs with elan and energy, rather than nolan's leaden, po-faced trudge, which seemed doggedly intent on denying the audience any of those things.

i would say you actually need a *certain* level of stupidity (which i would say compensates for humour or irony) for a good superhero film, and synder at least provides that, with *sincerity*, whereas nolan seemed out to cleanse his batman films of anything resembling silliness.

"Right, but this isn't a documentary, they don't have to be there at all (but if you make everything have a purpose and streamline it, you get Mad Max, which you apparently don't rate?)."

what does it matter whether they *have* to be there or not? she IS there. and hunter's senator character provides a purpose, which is more or less to show you who eisenberg's lex luther is, and what give you a sense of what kind of villain he is. their exchange is also one of the film's most entertaining. and obv sets up the courtroom scene later on. so i would say she DOES have to be there.

i would say you actually need a *certain* level of stupidity (which i would say compensates for humour or irony) for a good superhero film, and synder at least provides that, with *sincerity*, whereas nolan seemed out to cleanse his batman films of anything resembling silliness

i think we're pretty much diametrically opposed on snyder and i don't think either of us are going to change our minds but i'd like to point out that snyder is also opposed to silliness to the extent that he mandated that superman's costume be modified to remove the iconic red trunks, which he thought looked stupid

also, having sincere intentions does not preclude at all the possibility that the work you're producing will be stupid, silly, or both

Luthor was pre-Riddler Jim Carey E. Nigma as a Redditor. what did the senator bring to his character?

i mean i didn't care about the senator either but unfortunately it was like 1/3 of the movie

maybe ive watched too many arthouse movies, but i didnt really care about the plot of this all that much

lol no you haven't watched too many arthouse movies.