BVS

I just got home from seeing Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice...

I didn't like it...

At all...

But I wanted to so bad.

The problem with the movie was that it wasn't a horrible movie. It was so middling that it made me so goddamn frustrated thus why I hated it so much. It had really cool and interesting parts but also really stupid and unnecessary parts. 

I'm probably going to spoil a lot of the plot but who cares.

THE GOOD

- Ben Affleck. I thought he was a great Batman. Tortured, dark and brutal. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing him in solo films. 

- Gal Gadot. She was awesome. Probably the best part of the movie. Especially when she was introduced in the final fight against Doomsday. 

- Jess Eisenberg. A lot of people gave him shit about playing Lex Luther. He's not the macho brute that Lex is usually portrayed as, but instead, he was smart, conniving and insane. I thought he was great. 

- Zack Snyder. Let's get one thing straight here. A lot of people give Zack Snyder shit about his films. But just stop. He is a great director. Everything looked great in the film. The opening scene (showing Bruce Wayne losing his parents in Crime Alley) was awesome. The fights were awesome. Special effects - awesome. He also (like in Watchmen and 300) knows how to make a movie look like you're watching a live action comic book - which I find very impressive. The problem does not lie with the direction but in the writing. The character arcs were lazy. The plot had many holes. And some of the dialogue was just stupid. Get some better writers for Snyder and he'll take the rest.

THE BAD

-  A weird scene with the Flash (maybe). There's an extremely unclear scene where a mysterious man in a red suit surrounded by lightning comes to the Batcave to tell Bruce information about Superman. But this information is never used later in the film and is completely pointless. 

- Pinning Batman and Superman against each other. Lex Luther is trying to get Batman and Superman to fight. But why? How? What? Yeah, none of those questions seem to be clear in the movie.

- Lois Lane retrieving the Kryptonite spear. Batman makes a spear of Kryptonite in order to defeat Superman. But after Batman and Superman realize that they’re not enemies, Batman throws the spear away in anger. Later, when Doomsday shows up, Batman realizes that he needs to get the spear back. But Lois is already on it. She’s already on her way to retrieve the spear. How she knows that the spear will help? I don’t know. It seemed like the writers just thought she needed more screen time.

- Superman's dumb death at the end. In the final battle, Superman must plunge the Kryptonite spear into Doomsday in order to kill him. Because Superman is weak against Kryptonite, he obviously can't carry the spear for very long periods of time. Nevertheless, instead of giving it to the super-powered Amazonian warrior woman who is clearly adept at all kinds of combat and basically invulnerable, or Batman who is also completely capable, Superman decides to charge at Doomsday to impale him with it and dies in the process. It's a completely avoidable death, and one that Superman will undoubtedly be resurrected from in the first Justice League movie.

THE UGLY

- Doomsday. He was pretty ugly.

- The future of DC movies...

A breathtaking reboot of the Superman trilogy

The original Superman film--besides "Superman and the Mole Men" (1951)--debuted in 1978. The film told the story of an alien orphan sent down from the planet Krypton who becomes the world's first superhero. As is the case with most trilogies, the first of the series was most certainly the best. After a couple failures at making a better Superman movie, the hero was dropped from theaters. That is until recently.

In June of this year, Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel" crashed into theaters. The film received very mixed reviews from viewers. For the most part, I feel that Man of Steel matched, if not slightly surpassed, the original Superman film's plot. What the reboot did that the original--or any Superman film for that part--did not do, was show viewers what exactly happened on Krypton before Clark Kent landed on Earth. Sure, we were told countless times what happened, but despite the fact that older versions of the film could not pleasingly pull off such a scene due to the lack of cinematic technology, Man of Steel was truly the only Superman movie that even tried.

Another thing the film did that others did not, was that it laced humor in with all its endless drama and action. Here's just one of many examples...

What really made this film an absolutely stunning reboot to the Superman trilogy was the film's breathtaking cinematography. Whether you liked the film or not, there's no possible way that you could say the cinematography was just so-so. Even some of the computer-generated scenes of the film--particularly the drawn-out fight scenes--are possibly some of the most extraordinary demonstrations of cinematic artwork that have ever appeared on the big screen.

While not all viewers may agree that Man of Steel was a phenomenal film, it's simply unfair to say that it was not a super reboot to the Superman trilogy.

Nolan In The Deep

As I lie in my bedroom, my eyes slowly, slowly closing, checking Facebook right before I pass out into my first full night of sleep in God knows how long... I SEE THIS:

Christopher Nolan Taking Over Justice League, Bringing Bale Back As Batman

And then I explode and die at the same time.

The idea of Christopher Nolan running the entire DC Universe is an exciting one for me, considering that Joss Whedon (another critically acclaimed writer/director) has more or less taken charge of the Marvel Universe, and these two opposing viewpoints bring a very interesting contrast in tone to the table.

The movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have very much adopted the tone of comic books, with larger-than-life characters, bright colors and snappy repartee. Conversely, Nolan's Batman universe is filled with steely grays and muted blues, telling the story of the Caped Crusader in a gritty, down-to-earth way. He has furthered this vision by producing DC's new Superman movie, Man of Steel, with one of the main questions during production being "how would the world react if Superman existed?"

Over the course of the past year, there have been abundant rumors regarding a possible DC Justice League movie to combat Marvel's immense success with the Avengers, which has scared me as a massive fan of the direction of Christopher Nolan and Zak Snyder's DC superhero movies. But more importantly, I think that DC would lose their biggest weapon: their unique voice and tone. The Dark Knight trilogy was an entirely different entity than the Marvel movies, and as Green Lantern demonstrated, DC can't beat Marvel at their own game.

If the DC universe (including the Justice League) can be united under Christopher Nolan's vision, they have a chance of continuing to combat Marvel's movie dominance. Otherwise, they will be poorly imitating, in typical Hollywood fashion, and they will lose.

Also, as a continuity junkie, the prospect of Christian Bale returning as Batman in the Justice League, alongside Henry Cavill as Superman, makes me happy all over.