Sunday, 12 July 2015

Batman v. Superman trailer reaction: meh


Yes, the Hollywood hype machine has convinced me to pick this particular scab again. Let's just do the high points:

It seems Batman's actual plan is to straight-up murder Superman for the good of the human race; Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor looks very young but at least he gets some decently whimsical lines; the DKR-inspired Bat-suit looks even worse in motion; Ma Kent has taken on her late husband's low opinion of humanity; and, Wonder Woman gets blown up at one point but wasn't judged enough of a draw to get a line in this trailer.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised the movie franchise that had Superman snapping necks would decide to jettison the “one rule” that Batman's meant to abide by.

Also, the US government has decided that Zod wrecking Metropolis is all Clark's fault. Considering they have no means of punishing him and no means of restraining him and that this might count as the most self-defeating act of victim blaming in history.

Eisenberg gets some nice lines as Lex, even if whimsy isn't a quality typically associated with the character it is at least a moment or two of humour in a DC movie.

Everything else, though, is no more or less than you'd expect from the bastard child of Christopher Nolan and Frank Miller: dark and dreary, good looking but ultimately vacant.

I mean, I wasn't expecting much from the sequel to an origin movie that failed to explain its main character, a sequel so desperate that it gives Batman top billing so it doesn't have to admit to being a Superman movie AND THEN turns out to be a Justice League prequel.

I want the DC Cinematic Universe to work. I strongly believe in creative competition as a the only way to stave off complacency and we really need some competition here. It increasingly looks like that's not going to happen and we're heading for an invincible orthodoxy where Marvel-Disney = great, Fox = middling and DC-Warner = dire. No, I didn't mention Sony in that list because I don't really believe we'll be able to call Spider-Man films “Sony movies” with a straight face anymore.

Also, turns out the Green Lantern reboot is going to be a Green Lantern Corps movie which... sounds interesting but probably won't be. 

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