My life has been heavy lately. And because I’ve desired to share with you what has been going on, this blog has been rather heavy too. So I thought I would switch things up a little bit and talk about a superhero film that is worthy of revisiting. A film that is often maligned.
Back in 2016, I wrote a two-part blog on, at the time, the
new film “Batman v Superman: The Dawn of
Justice”. I basically stated that
there were good elements in the movie, as well as bad elements, and then some
just flat-out bizarre stuff. However, as
time went on – 7 years already; wow, how time flies! – there was something
about it that bothered me, yet I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. One day, it finally dawned on me, and this realization
colored my view of this film negatively.
So, for today, I thought I would begin by addressing this specific
troubling aspect of the film.
First off, believe it or not, I finished viewing the “Ultimate Edition” of “Batman v Superman” for the first
time. This is, without question, the
definitive version of the film (the theatrical version cut 30 minutes out). To refresh your memory, Superman (Henry
Cavill) and Zod engaged in an epic battle in the 2013 film “Man of Steel”, which resulted in lots of
collateral damage, and even loss of life.
In one of the beginning scenes of “Batman
v Superman” (I’m going to begin abbreviating it to “BvS”) we see a flashback of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) seeing a
brief moment of their fight for himself (incidentally I submit that Affleck is
excellent in this film). Bruce sees the
death of some of his employees, a direct result of the Superman/Zod battle. While he does manage to save a little girl,
she tells him that her parents were also killed as a result of the destructive
fight.
The film jumps to 18 months later, and we see discover that
Bruce was deeply impacted by the chaos those months ago; it changed him. He is angrier, vengeful, and full of
rage. He blames Superman for the death
and destruction he had witnessed. He
begins branding the necks of criminals with a bat-shaped hot iron. This raises the eyebrows of the Gotham media,
and even Alfred himself (played quite well here by Jeremy Irons). In fact, there’s a scene where Alfred drops a
newspaper detailing Batman’s new habit of escalated violence, and calls Bruce
out on it; he rightly calls Bruce’s actions “cruel.” Bruce basically just shrugs it off, and says
something to the effect of, “People in this world don’t stay good.”
When it finally occurred to me that this is a very
different Batman – an outright murderous one – it became a negative issue I had
with this film. Of course, the Caped
Crusader is in the wrong here, but for some reason, his motivation eluded me; these murders were not something that he had done for years and years (as I previously
thought). Rather, it was all brought on
by the one he perceives as a threat to humanity – Superman. Now, a person can contend that this an
implausible plot point, and that’s their prerogative. But in this movie universe of “BvS” – often referred to as the
“Snyder-verse” after Director Zach Snyder – we are steeped in a realistic tone. And realistically, if there was an alien
invasion that resulted in loss of life, and you witnessed some of it, wouldn’t
you would fear the alien and consider him a threat to humanity?
However, contrary to popular opinion – an opinion I too had
at one point – this dire mindset of Batman’s is not the end of his story arc in
this film. To put it in a nutshell for
today, after Batman finally comes to understand that he was completely wrong
about Superman, he fights alongside him.
Ultimately, the Man of Steel’s heroic example shows Bruce the error of
his ways; we see a changed man, both through his actions (I realize this is a
debated point, I want to tackle this in more depth in the next blog), and also
his words. By the end of “BvS”, Bruce actually encourages a morose
Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot; who was so good in this, she got two
standalone movies of her own). He
resolutely declares, “Men are still good.
We fight. We kill. We betray each
other. But we can rebuild. We can do better. We will. We have to.”
To conclude, what I’ve written today doesn’t mean that I
now think this is the greatest superhero film ever made; I don’t. I think it has glaring flaws. But I don’t actually think this movie is as
bad as the general consensus seems to convey it is. I think it gets some hate that is
unjustified. Yes, it’s different and
controversial (once again, I’ll address some of the controversy next time), but
I’ve discovered you really can’t put your brain on a shelf while viewing this. I freely admit that I was guilty of not
thinking everything through that was being presented. Today I appreciate “Batman v Superman” (or “BvS”)
for what it is, glaringly obvious flaws and all. It is to this movie universe that I plan to
return to again next time.
To be continued!
God bless,
Kevin
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