Yesterday I reviewed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvS from here on out) and (SPOILERS) I liked the film.
There are many out there, including a majority of professional reviewers as per rottentomatoes.com, who did not. I’ve read samplings from those who did not like the film because, frankly, I’m curious why it worked for some -including, obviously, me- but for others it was such a bust.
Understand, I’m not trying to pick a fight and/or defend my views. Opinions regarding works of art, be they paintings or music or books or, yes, movies are a subjective thing and while I may love, say, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (I consider it along with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis among my two all time favorite films). I can certainly understand if someone feels the film doesn’t work for them.
What is a fascinating added element to the BvS mix of opinions is the fact, I believe, that people coming into it have a built in emotional investment. There are those who love Marvel films/works and couldn’t be happier if anything with the “taint” of DC on it fails. Let’s face it, there has always been a competition between the heroes of DC comics and those of Marvel and, likely, always will be.
There are others who sampled director Zach Snyder’s previous works -including Man of Steel, the film BvS is a direct sequel to- and based on that they have no faith in his works and therefore just knew he was going to screw this film up. There are still others, not unlike me, who love the characters of Superman and/or Batman -and Wonder Woman!- and went to see the film hoping it would succeed even as the early word was so negative. And then there are those who went to see the film with no real “skin in the game”. They went in with some, perhaps a very small knowledge of Superman and Batman and hoped for a good time.
These, of course, aren’t all the possibilities and there are likely those who had several factors apply to their view of the film.
In my review, I noted BvS was not a perfect film. To me there probably isn’t and never will be a “perfect” film. Things could always be better but as a viewer one should try to see a film in a neutral state and then judge what you’ve seen with as few prejudices and/or expectations as you can.
Which in the case of BvS may well be impossible.
As I said, these characters mean something to people, and for some the idea of a Zach Snyder getting his hands on them is reason enough to automatically suspect the end the result will be godawful.
Curiously, this film revealed a big disconnect, at least so far, between “fans” and “critics”. While not all critics condemned the film, a vast majority did. Yet the film proved a box-office juggernaut upon its release last week. According to boxofficemojo.com, the film earned a record for March 170.1 million dollars in the U.S. and an incredibly impressive $424.1 million in foreign markets.
Though the movie is clearly a box office success, those who most seem invested in booting director Zach Snyder from the DC movie business -or movie business in general- were forced to change their tune. While at first they engaged in a “told you so” type statement by pointing out the very poor critical reaction, the box office success has them making comments along the lines of:
Let’s see what happens with the movie’s boxoffice next week.
Their original negative view of the film hasn’t been rejected. The film remains the turd they expected it to be, even if they didn’t bother going to see it, and the box office success only points out that people were fooled by that first week of release and now that everyone knows just how terrible this film is, they fully expect a heavy box-office drop.
To which I, someone who liked the film, would say: I expect a heavy box office drop next week. You can’t have two weeks where in the first a film breaks box office records and in the second week it stays very close to that box office record (almost all films drop sales from week one to two). Will the drop be precipitous, ie in the 60% range? Who knows.
Even so, I suspect Warner Brothers will still be happy with the end result.
Now, shifting focus just a little bit, I think there’s another reason someone like me might find himself liking this film more than some others.
BvS, for better or worse, has a great many DC comics “easter eggs” within it. The more you know about DC comics and their characters/storylines, the more you may get out of the film.
For example, Bruce Wayne/Batman’s weird post-apocalyptic dream.
The dream appears to point to future DC movie storylines but, IMHO, BvS could have worked perfectly fine without it. Nonetheless, it is in the theatrical cut and I suspect people who are not as familiar with DC comic stories may find the whole thing confusing.
Why, they may ask, are we seeing this weird dream? What possible reason is it in this movie (again, I feel it could have been cut from the theatrical version and included in the extended cut)? What in the world does it mean?
To the DC comic fan, that later question touches upon several DC comics storylines and, in particular, the villainous Darkseid and the New Gods (there are other more subtle references to this in the movie as well)…
…as well as the multiverse. Was Bruce Wayne/Batman having a vision of another, parallel Earth where Superman is recruited by Darkseid? Further, the dream/vision ends with the Flash appearing and warning Bruce Wayne of the future, not unlike this scene, found in Crisis on Infinite Worlds…
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a 12 part story written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez and a number of inkers. That above panel has Batman seeing a vision of a dying Flash who has come from the future and warns him of the destruction that lies ahead. The vision Bruce Wayne/Batman has in BvS ends with Flash warning him of the future not unlike the Flash did in Crisis.
Based on this I can’t help but feel the Justice League film might be using the Crisis storyline while marrying it with the New Gods/Darkseid.
Could be, anyway.
Regardless, it would appear the summer movie season has officially begun.