Back after a while. Life got in the way. But on to the movie.
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| True Love Is Forever. Give Us Your Money. |
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| Right below here, champ! |
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| Where do I even begin?? |
This movie is INFECTED with problems. And they aren't so much plot related as they are a succession of mechanical ones. If I were to make a hypothesis, I'd say that the film's script had an original okay shape and all was good. Happiness was had. But it was unloved. So the powers that be called the hooded men that operate the hacksaws of synergy and the duct tape of market shares to work on it. Then its loving parents had to put it back together... but then the hooded men were called again. And I believe this little episode repeated a bunch of times at different stages of its rushed development, and what they ended up with was a misshapen monstrosity bred to endure eternal pain. Said pain manifests in a bunch of individual scenes that should work fairly well on their own, without one having to resort to chemical aid for understanding, yet, they don't mesh together into a cohesive whole very well without one having to resort to chemical aid for understanding. Watching this movie feels like injecting several episodes of an expensive tv show that were edited down to just the cliff notes and then pasted in quick succession right through your eyelids.
Here are some quick examples of what happens to your eyelids:
-Batman watches the shit in Metropolis go down. This was good.
-Superman and Lois Lane have a pointed conversation about what she does, what he does, and then they kiss and make up. They do the sex after.
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| Exactly -- this is not the post to come to if you are looking for grownup commentary of adult relationships. |
-A junior senator played by Holly Hunter has issues with Lex and Supes. She's in this movie for two things: 1) make Lex's life difficult, 2) dig (her) grandma's homemade jam, which is then used to scare the shit out of her before she is blown up by a suicide bomber and then the whole incident stops mattering (kind of).
-Lex likes candy. Gets the Man to give him EVERYTHING he wants about EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Alien starship? Naturally, Lex -- there you go; Alien dead body? Of Course, Lex. Why? I don't know -- he's just not creepy at all (Jesse Eisenberg! lay off the PCP!). And plot device. Plot device. Did I mention plot device? Shut the fuck up. Stop thinking that. You don't know anything.
-The Other Martha Not Bats's Mom that Is Supes' Mom tells Supes "You don't owe this world a damn thing." Which made me want to tell her "Actually, lady, thousand of people dying horrible, ignominous deaths because he decided to have a fist fight in Metropolis would be to differ. If they could. So, you know, think 'bout that..."
-Batman going "YOUR MOM'S NAME IS MARTHA? MY MOM'S NAME IS MARTHA!! WE'RE FRIENDS NOW!!!!!" Bit just after delivering an epic beatdown for the ages on Supes. That was... odd.
For a movie that failed so hard at sticking to a linear narrative while having a linear narrative, it did manage to launch a successful campaign of TOTAL WAR against subtlety while, at the same time, becoming completely enamored by the allure (and conveniences) of EXPOSITION. What do I mean by that? This: if this movie wants you to know something, it won't simply show it to you -- because it doesn't trust you enough to know what it means you fuck. You see, they spent too many millions of orphan hearts during the making of this movie -- you will know because it will TELL you. Using different characters. And it will even reiterate the exact same point you deduced ten to twenty minutes ago, ad nauseum... and if that wasn't enough, if that notion hadn't been hammered past your skull and deep into your gray matter, THEN it will show it to you. But not before. The storytelling technique this movie employs will provide the exact same experience as this paragraph you are reading right now telling you how redundant it is.
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| This. Exactly like this. And you will know it. In 3D. Maybe. |
Eh...
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| Yep. Exactly like this. |
HERE'S THE BASIC PLOT OF THE MOVIE!!!!!
Pulitzer Prize winner and reporter extraordinaire Lois Lane gets caught up in a CIA sting operation (?!) where people get shot, that has immediate ties to Lex Luthor's evil evil super master plan at the start of the movie. It involves him supplying an African dictator with a PMC force to do shenanigans so as to endanger Lois (whom he, I assume, lured there under the guise of a legit story) and lure (huh?!) Supes into action and... frame him of some people dying/getting shot/something, while at the same time he's digging a big kryptonite motherload from the bottom of the ocean (without the movie naming it as such, or they get sued) as a front to fool the U.S. government into thinking he wants to make badass super weapon as deterrents against Supes -- which he kinda does -- when in reality he wants to fool Batman into making an elaborate super master plan to steal it from his well armed henchmen, so that he can then fashion it into his own brand of Kryptinian ass kicking tools, all so that he can then go and kill Superman for him because he's shouldering some hardcore angst that Lex has been feeding by deliberately fucking with some handicapped guy's life that used to work for him and was just in the building that collapsed at the beginning of the movie-- NO. I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. And THEN he abducts Supes' Martha (MOM!!) to blackmail him into fighting Bats or he will have a Russian guy burn her with a nasty-ass flamethrower... That is ALL in this movie. Because obvy Lex knows Supes' and Bats' secret identities, by the way (YUP). And we're haven't even touched upon Doomsday yet... because there is something much worse before he even shows up.
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| What?! This is too out of context for you? Get ready: |
There is an INFOMERCIAL in this movie.
I shit you not.
There is a legit INFOMERCIAL.
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| The answer to that last question would be the last of my remaining shreds of dignity left after watching this monstrosity. |
Somebody thought it was a great idea to have the film literally STOP so that the audience could watch not one, not two, but THREE shorts about some characters that will be starring in their own Warner Bros financed movies some time in the future.
Yes.
And it has the gall to try to to make this appear to be an organic development in the plot.
It fails. Shit -- it fails double-hard because it doesn't want you to notice, but you do. You can't not. And you simply know what that this is the work of the hooded men, and it is jarring, and weird, and you feel dirty when watching it. Your loins feel dirty when watching it. It makes even less sense than that buff squirrel above...
But back to the plot!
Lex creates Doomsday through the powers of Zod's spaceship which houses some kryptonian swimming pool, his blood (?!), and the forbidden arts of alien technology-powered plot holes.
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| No. I didn't make that up. |
BUT... at least Wonder Woman is awesome. She is the shining beacon of light in this thing. She even gets a kickass theme tune courtesy of Hans Zimmer!
That said, she's the one that gets stuck watching said infomercial and no amount of strenuous acting on Gal Gadot's part can make this shit palatable.
None.
But not everything was a trainwreck.
At least the fighting was solid?
Yes. The fighting is buckets of fun. Don't let salty reviewers sour you on this fact. And, hey, even Doomsday was solid in how he was used... yes, he was a bit of a letdown in the end in spite of them giving him some weird extra powers for no reason and the fact that he went down like a bitch... all you have to do is ignore that Lex wanted him to use him to kill Supes yet had no way of dealing with him, once he did...
But at least he was a legit, credible threat. And they made use of his original power set quite ably, imho.
On that same not-quite-as-disastrous breath, there were also a multitude of interesting moments including some interesting character beats.
In short: this movie was was a MESS. A low. Painful, hyperactive MESS. I even feel bad to bring up the old adage of "style over substance," but that is exactly the problem with this movie. Every one of its individual parts work just enough -- it is only when you try to build a coherent narrative with all of them where everything starts falling apart and that is a shame.
All THAT said, the flick wasn't without interesting themes, or even a couple of solid ideas or starting points for their characters. That is all IN there. they tried.
Examples:
Supes.- ranging from how people would deal to the introduction of an Outside Context problem in the presence of an alien demigod like Superman; the fact that even though he's perceived as this deity-like figure, the only way he knows of helping people is extremely fallible, and there's people he's hurt and he doesn't initially know how to deal with that... but what we do get is a musclebound constipated man who is a) pretty dense about all the shit going around him, and b) bad at his job. Like, at his day job. Guy is simply a bad reporter.
Bats.- here's this guy whose entire worldview (or lack thereof) was shaped by a single, tragic happenstance of the most arbitrary kind. He dedicates his entire life to fighting crime only to, twenty years later, come out of it depleted, cynical, and cruel. Then he watches the whole thing happen again but in a mass scale. And this time, he knows the man that is (in his eyes) responsible. But, yet again, the execution falters... what we do get is a musclebound, angry middle aged man that likes to burn criminals with his expensive toys... like guns.
But, still, I even thought that using the bit where Supes' and Bats' moms share the same name, as a plot device, was a solid choice. In principle.
You can see that at least some of the people that put this together, at least cared about trying to ape some of the comics' most iconic moments. Sadly, even that felt completely unearned, so, in the end, that didn't work either.
This is what happens when you take your best material and you a metric ton of extraneous bullshit collapses under it...
That said, and if it wasn't clear enough by now, it is time for an admission: I like the take on this universe.
YES. I LIKE the confused, kinda asshole Superman (YES, I do). I even like serial murderer fascist Batman (oh, yes, he "manslaughters" a bunch of people). I LIKE this world. But it doesn't work. Nothing in this movie works in this insane 2-and-a-half hour window. It just doesn't. The pieces simply don't fucking fit.
Here's a suggestion for someone with moxie and technical know-how: RECUT THIS THING and use the material herein to tell the story in a collection of SHORT FILMS. Remember Agent Carter? The original Marvel short. Like THAT. Make contained mini-episodes and have them complement each other organically to move a story along. IMO, it IS doable, and it would make more sense. And I assure you than you can't fail harder than the people that made this thing.
To close the review: the ideas here are -- I think -- GOOD. But it was either the studio, or the director (or both), that possibly are NOT... sorry.
The grade: I give this movie a dangerous, rotting zombie cow out of TEN (ten what?).
'Til next time, kiddies and may Cthulhu have mercy on us all...
--ACJ.
P.S: did I mention there is a vague-as-fuck time travel element in this movie? No? OK. Bye!
