A Batman v Superman Rant

Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers

Zack Snyder, I am an educator, which means I believe in Positive Affirmation when I'm trying to manipulate someone to behave the way I want them to.  So, let me just say, thanks for Wonder Woman! Her armor, her candor, her fight scenes, was everything I wanted in that character. Her lasso was a straight up weapon. She looked and acted like the warrior and goddess she is. Amazing. A+.

Ok, now let's talk about the parts of the movie that were "satisfactory"....

Ok, now let's talk about the parts of the movie that need some improvement....

Ok, my teacher voice is officially done. Get your act together Snyder!

After two hours of torture, I was actually a little excited for Doomsday. One of the biggest issues I face as a Superman fan is having so few bad guys that Superman can just fight. He's normally up against magic or a natural disaster. But you brought out the big bad who is infamous for being someone who Superman could go into combat with, and to the death.

But the problem is he has fought him to the death. And come back. So I'm sitting through two separate funerals just kind of bored and annoyed at the lazy way you chose to take this movie, until finally some dirt levitates off of Clark's coffin, but I'm sorry what exactly is levitating dirt supposed to show? Because I already know Superman is alive. Or if he isn't he just needs a little yellow sun to get better. But when did someone secretly still being alive, meta-human or not, make dirt levitate? That's a pretty poor way to close this story arc. Although it does remind me of how this movie started, with the bats making Bruce levitate, which turned out to be a dream sequence, which of course was the moment the audience needed to steel itself for how this was going to go down.

Any scene where anything remotely cool happened turned out to be a dream, prophecy, vision, or something so confusing viewers couldn't tell which one it was. Which made it hard to get excited for any scene, because in the back of my mind was the constant thread of "does Wonder Woman even exist??? Is she just a figment of Bruce's imagination???" And until the next installment how can I really be sure??? Again, this is just so freaking lazy.

But let's go back to Doomsday. Again, I was excited at the creation of Doomsday. But the way it played out was frustrating. Listening to Talks from Superheroes (McCallum and Ivimey) helped me put my finger on it. Talks from Superheroes points out that it was a waste of Zod's body, who could have been revitalized with intelligent motives and intentional operations. That's an excellent point and made me realize that it was also a waste of Doomsday. You took a big bad with an intriguing backstory who was logistically unstoppable, and you brought him to life and destroyed him within a half hour while erasing anything interesting about the character himself. You wasted two villians' storylines in one fell swoop.

And why did we spend so little time on Doomsday, when that fight scene was the best part of the movie? (Which is arguably because it was the only fight scene we got to see Wonder Woman in...) Because you spent two hours giving us backstory for characters we know everything about! The only interesting nuances about these characters were hinted at and never explored. Was there a Robin killed in your universe? Were they killed by the Joker? I can kind of gleam as much, but mostly your hints at story arcs you don't actually explore make me feel frustrated and comic book universe inferior. That is so frustrating and turns more people off of the overall canon, making fans feel like if they haven't made keeping up with the Infinite Crises within the D.C. Universe their full time job, they shouldn't bother with your movies.

I want to change this diatribe a bit here to let you know that Lois was my favorite part of Man of Steel. I don't think any director, or possibly comic book writer, had written Lois in a way that captured her essence as much as you did. She is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and she ran the story she came across to the ground immediately. No three years of falling in love with two people who turn out to be the same man behind a pair of glasses. Just an intelligent, career driven reporter who does her job well. So why is it that in this movie she only does weird things like ask her boss for a helicopter but "it's not for a story" and throw a kryptonite spear into water, as if that does anything. What happened between Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice to make you hate women so much you would try to use Lois to back pedal us three or four decades?

Now I'm starting to wrap up the many angers and confusions and overall bafflement I felt while sitting through the experience you called a "superhero movie." And I have to talk about Lex. Lex Luthor has been interpreted in many different ways. Sometimes he is viciously evil and cruel. Sometimes he is sweet and charismatic on the surface, and only once you get to know him do you see his manipulative and controlling side. Sometimes he starts out as a nice guy and the viewer/reader sees him go through a devastating experience that pushes him to the dark side. New interpretations can be interesting. They can keep overdone villains interesting.

But what did Lex do in this movie besides attack Superman and be a millenial? I know he blew up a Congressional hearing and cut off a disabled victim of Zod's from his income, pushing him to an unstable position and taking advantage of him. But these acts were to get at Superman. Did Lex do anything evil besides challenge Superman? Because if his evilness was centered around Superman, couldn't Superman have solved whatever beef Lex had with him? Lex needs a evil path that runs deeper. A crime ring, a capitalist 1% agenda, bribing and blackmailing his way to power, etc. That's what should catch Superman's attention and pit him against Lex. Otherwise Lex is just a scared human fearing for his species when a more powerful being comes into play, acting on self-preservation instincts. And if Superman is one ounce of the charming, empathetic character we know from the canon, he would at least see and acknowledge this in Lex and have some sympathy for him.

Well, I'm running out of rant for now, so I'll close this shit sandwich with a positive affirmation reminder. I'm hoping that out of the 2.5 hour misery I lived through will come a CinemaSins shout out to Wonder Woman. Here's how it could easily go down:

Batman: "Alfred, I need to lead the abomination back to the city."

Wonder Woman begins fighting Doomsday.
Wonder Woman to Batman: "Why did you bring it back to the city?"
CinemaSins: "Wonder Woman would be great at Cinema Sins."

(1) McCallum, Diana, and Andrew Ivimey. "Talks from Superheroes: Batman v. Superman." Audio blog post. http://fromsuperheroes.com/post/141838670228/talk-from-superheroes-batman-v-superman-this. From Superheroes, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

(2) "CinemaSins - No Movie Is without Sins." CinemaSins. Sins Media, 2016. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.