Monday, April 11, 2016

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Okay this review will look very depressing, because the movie is kind of disappointing. From the trailer, you can already see the whole picture – literary the whole picture; it didn’t give us a proper cliffhanger; there were things that the trailer said too much. I was already seeing another blockbuster downer – this happened with Terminator: Genesys (2015).

To the picture.

The movie is aggressive in many ways. The story, the characters, the tempo, the look, etc. It was dark and depressing. DC really likes the dark-themed of their products. Contrary to their adversary, Marvel. It was really their style of story. But, the most aggressive part of their franchise was their pride; they didn’t want to follow Marvel’s strategy of story and character building; instead they did it too fast.

The theme of the movie was really interesting. I really like the missconception of Batman and Superman. But, it wasn’t really engaging the whole thing, because of the weak character build-up and the slow-build story. Oh yeah, for the story, it was both too slow and too fast. Let me get this straight. Batman started this movie too old (that’s why it was too fast) and we didn’t see the whole picture of Snyder’s Batman. We need the standalone Batman movie first, then after that, we would really enjoy Batman v. Superman. More about Batman later. The slow part about the movie was the story build-up. They use some plot points for preparing Justice League, but they didn’t support the whole movie into something useful. I think they only tried to tease us. But, I’m not sure that I’m that excited of it. There should be more character build-up for Batman and Superman from this movie. Because both of their names appeared on the title.

The mise en scene were pretty amazing – the dark yet comical look. It was the main key selling point of the film. Snyder also used some symbolism in the movie and interestingly wasn’t hard to be found. But, what iritated me was the fact that they also destroyed a whole city for their fight. It was like Dragonball in the real world.

Ben Affleck’s Batman was the hype we were all waiting for. We would like to see how it compared with Christian Bale’s Batman. And I think, Ben Affleck’s Batman nailed it in his own way. But not in a very “Batman” way. Alright, I mentioned about “aggressive” earlier, right? Well Batman was very very aggressive. Oh man, seeing Batman killing guys was really a bummer. Batman, as I knew it, NEVER kills his enemies. Just look at The Dark Knight (2008), Christian Bale’s Batman didn’t kill Joker, even though he had killed his love intesrest; nor in the animated series. I was really shocked and not really thrilled. I thought, “Ohhhh.. so that’s why Superman wanted to kill Batman” – I wasn’t surprised. Batman’s character in this movie looks comical instead of realistic. Even his costume, gadgets, and WEAPONS looked comical.

As for Superman, well, as usual had to face an identity crisis – the theme which Man of Steel (2013) tried to explore. Superman was aggressive when he tried to levitate, REALLY, I hate it when he was going to fly. The sonic boom really hurt my ears and, literary, my heart. Why can’t he just levitated slowly in normal situations? I understand if he was fighting in a battlefield, but not EVERYtime. There’s also an awkward-fuuny-peevish moment near the end of the final battle scene; I’ll give you a hint, it had something to do with Lois Lane. I, Thaliya, Ricky, and Timo were laughing hard at this scene. You’ll notice it, if you watch the movie.

Jesse Einsberg was the BEST Lex Luthor I’ve ever seen. He played it as a fragile-but-full-of-evil-ideas Lex Luthor. Einsberg showed us the phsycology of sociopath people. Even his little actions were amazing. In this movie, they explored a glimes of his back story.
The most fun part of the movie was the scoring. Seeing Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL teaming up to create them was a dream come true for filmmakers. There was a chemistry going on between them. They both create entertaining scoring for great movies. Ricky even set their scoring for his phone’s ringtone.

Snyder’s visualisation of Batman and Superman wasn’t good. There were a lot of things which he tried to do in HIS own way. But, one thing I learned recently is that sometimes one’s ego had to be fought down so the people’s voices can be heard. Some of the people’s voices weren’t heard. Snyder’s ambition to always compare his works with Nolan’s had become his greatest weakness. He shouldn’t do things like this, WE SHOULDN’T DO THINGS LIKE THIS.

The verdict:


Batman v. Superman lacks the fun part of movie-watching; it builds too slow and too fast at the same time.

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