Subject: I am... not looking forward to seeing this.
Author:
Posted on: 2016-03-27 01:35:00 UTC
I mean, I probably should go and see it, just to see if its as much of a car crash as it's been made out to be (spoilers: the answer is almost certainly yes), but I read The Dark Knight Returns and everything about it just made me dry-heave. I despise that conceit, and I equally despise the idea of Batman as some kind of super genius planner (if he's that brilliant, why doesn't he have plans in place to keep his rogues' gallery in their various mental institutions) and the one we're supposed to root for because he's not Superman. It shows a total misunderstanding of what Superman is (IMO, YMMV) supposed to be - someone to aspire towards, someone who is great and through their greatness allows us to be more. Batman is not some kind of populist hero. Batman is the exact antithesis of a populist hero. He's an immensely wealthy private individual with a penchant for dressing in spandex and a hateboner for the poor (odd that he doesn't really go after corporate criminals but instead gangbangers who have precious little else in their lives). And that's okay. There's a lot you can do with that character. I just hate how he's been morphed into this unstoppable, overprepared mope machine purely because he's popular and hangs around with the Justice League.
The Dark Knight Returns purported to pitch human against superhuman, Earth against Krypton, mental strength against physical power. What we got was Batman dressing up as a knockoff Space Marine punching Superman in the face. It's garbage. Compare his anti-Supes suit with the Marvel version: Tony Stark's Hulkbuster armour. The key difference is that the Hulkbuster suits don't work particularly well and are largely there as a precautionary measure - the Hulk doesn't have a lot of control, and it should help lower the collateral damage until Banner comes back. Batman has his suit because he doesn't trust Superman, because he doesn't trust anyone, because he's an ungodly wealthy sociopath wallowing in the only real tragedy to ever cross his life. Plus, throw in Lex Luthor as an industrialist trying to persuade him that Superman's a menace when Superman keeps fighting him should give a supposedly sane and smart person at least a little pause. But no, we get Batman versus Superman: Dawn of The Dark Knight Returns to the Death of Superman and/or Justice. Christ.
I'll take it as read that Gal Gadot's scenes are good - Zack Snyder can do precisely one thing well, which is shoot conventionally attractive women in fetishy outfits beating nine kinds of hell out of CGI monsters, and he does it really well - but one does have to wonder what she's been given to work with by him. He, er, doesn't exactly have the strongest track record with women in his work. Just look at Sucker Punch. Or, er, don't. That is also an option. As Bob Chipman put it, his film aesthetic is "somewhere between Alex Ross and some guy who airbrushes dragons and wizards onto the sides of panel vans in southern California", and the sexual politics of his movies are skin-crawlingly bad at times.
Don't get me wrong, I want this to be good. I want more good movies in my life. I just... don't think it's going to be. The bar is low, and I fully expect Snyder and company to see it practically on the ground, share a meaningful glance, and go off to look for some shovels.