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However since the film's
release it seems that another rivalry has also emerged and that's
between the critics and the fans. After the film's embargo was over, a
slurry of average-to-shite reviews began to emerge with the online
fans responses being that of pure denial. It was like watching a
bitchy Mum get called into school to be told that her child had been
a scummy little twat, resulting in her flicking a cigarette into the
teachers eye and accusing them of lying about her 'precious little
prince'. As an independent observer it was difficult to know who was
right during these initial clashes of opinions... the highly
respected journalists who were paid actual money for their cinematic
expertise.. or the nerdy little fanboys who hadn't even seen the film
at this fucking point. The general consensus seems to be that the
reviews have been written by a hive-mind-like Borg of critics who
have simply used their powers to sully the reputation of director
Zack Snyder. This is despite his remake of Dawn Of The Dead
actually being
quite highly regarded and Sucker Punch, his
only completely original movie, being less enjoyable than picturing
Donald Trumps undersized, witchetty grub of a penis.
Batman V Superman:
Dawn Of Justice actually begins
with a Rashomon-style
retelling of Man Of Steel's Metropolis-shitting conclusion. Do you remember that episode of The
Simpsons in which Mr Burns tells
the story of his life in a slightly more flattering way than it may
have happened? Well speaking of Donald Trump, the opening to this
movie is like a promotional video for his presidential campaign as
directed by the scatty-haired, knob-toad himself. Affleck's Bruce
Wayne, the respected and influential billionaire, runs towards his
tower as it's smashed into living fuck due to the pettiness of a
couple of super-immigrants. As a result, Batman decides that instead
of investigating the indestructible flying man who has since
co-operated with the grateful humanity, the only thing to do is kill
him. By contrast however, Superman doesn't seem to be doing that much
beyond being a shite reporter and dwelling over how much a minority
of people might one day hate him. Balls to bright green
kryptonite, it seems that the Man Of Steel's real weakness is anxiety.
Every time there's a disaster on the news he looks at it as though
debating whether to get involved and help or to simply run to the
bathroom for a nice long stress-dump.
As
a fan of Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead and
a defender of his Watchmen, I
went into this film with a completely open mind, and I have to say
that I thought the first half-hour was brilliant. I loved its
operatic scale and the fact that he seemed to think he was making a
horror movie. One of the biggest criticisms of Batman And
Robin was in how it pandered to
a younger audience in order to sell merchandise. Well, unless your
child is after an officially licensed, red-hot piece of metal to melt
their friend's flesh by branding them with the shape of a bat, then I
don't think that's something that we have to worry about here.
Buzzing off this opening, it was a shame to realise that the second
full hour had actually been pretty fucking boring by comparison. A
bunch of shit had happened and none of it really made any sense. Do
people actually think Superman shot a bunch of people? I mean I know
he's American, but he's also got laser fucking vision! And why did
that bomb go off at the inquest again? Because as far as I could tell
it achieved pretty much piss-all in the grand scheme of things. Not
to worry though, I thought- still got the big fight to go. That should
liven things up and maybe the third act will explain what the fuck is
going on?!
Do
you remember how everybody slagged off Man Of Steel for
its final fight being over-loaded with CG, the destruction of
Metropolis, and Superman's out of character killing? Well.. same
thing happens again here. Despite this being billed as Batman versus
Superman, that actual fight only lasts a couple of minutes and ends
when one of the characters 'operation grand slam's his way out of
trouble. As anti-climaxes go, it was the cinematic equivalent of
actually getting to sleep with Jennifer Lawrence but the moment
you're about to get down to it you find a big old pair of hairy
bollocks between her legs. The real fight however is with a cave
troll that's completely fake and unbelievable, with the one exception
of it's obvious and winking anus. Despite this film trying to cram
too much in to the point of incoherence as it is, they then decided to
fuck off the whole Batman versus Superman thing and conclude with an
adaptation of The Death Of Superman's third
act. During which
Batman for some reason lures the beast to a small weapon near the
city rather than just going to get the weapon to take back to the
monster. But don't worry because he assures us that it's night and so
despite the insane levels of devastation, nobody will get hurt because
at this time they'll all be tucked up in bed. Oh and then Wonder
Woman drops into battle from literally out of nowhere as though
Player fucking Three has entered the game.
In
fact, the film's treatment of its females is one of the worst
depictions of the alternate gender since Michael Bay introduced a
character via her arse and then had her described as though she was a
fucking car in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. Lois
Lane might be one of the most iconic characters of all time but here
she's reduced to 'damsel in distress' and 'constant fuck up'. I mean, the
daft bitch gets herself into so much trouble, all without adding a
single thing to the plot, and Superman is practically her fucking
carer. At one point too the villain uses her to get Superman's
attention as though her screaming is the Kryptonian's fucking ring
tone. Oh and then there's his Mum who only gets about two minutes of
screen time in which she dispenses some obvious and bullshit advice
before she too.. yep you've guessed it.. becomes a damsel in fucking
distress. With the amount of trouble that the women in Superman's
life cause him, it's a wonder that he's not gone full Nil By
Mouth, turned to drink, and
started smacking them about. Holly Hunter also pops up, and despite
being a brilliant actress, adds literally nothing to the plot here. Oh,
and as for Wonder Woman, she really is nothing more than a giant
advert for the next Justice League film.
You know how Marvel spent years building up their cinematic universe?
Well, the DC equivalent seems to be to have her walk about the film
like an extra taking the piss before going onto Lex Luthor's computer
and watching a couple of trailers for the next few fucking films.
Oh-
and speaking of Lex Luthor, fuck me was he at knob-rash levels of
irritation in this movie. Usually I'm a huge fan of Jessie Eisenberg
with there being no doubt of his brilliance in films like The
Social Network, The Double, and
even Zombieland. However
his performance here has got to be up there with Chris Tucker in The
Fifth Element on a list of
people I instantly want to punch in the fucking face. It's like
somebody had asked him to do that slightly crazy, neurotic thing that
he often does and then right before calling action, they darted him
in the eye with some speed and stopped giving him direction. Imagine
Jim Carrey's portrayal of The Riddler in Batman Forever but
crossed with the moment in Austin Powers in
which he can't control the volume of his voice and it's a bit like
that... as played by a knob with a bag full of nervous ticks. I heard
in an interview that he finds it hard to watch himself back on
screen, in which case -and as a fan of his work- I hope to shit that he
doesn't catch a showing of this movie. Beyond his performance, the
characters motivations and plan also make literally no sense
whatsoever. Why does he go to Holly Hunter to request permission for
the creation of a weapon when he's already planning to build it
anyway? And because Batman isn't capable of typing the name of a boat
into fucking Google, he's quite clearly going to get away with it
too.
Although
if his plan to destroy Superman is slightly muddled then I wouldn't
worry because the film seems to hate the man of steel too. Despite
being indestructible, he literally kicks the buckets twice within the
space of about half an hour; he fails to notice a bomb that's in the
same room as him; and it turns out that he's about as good at
fighting as Stevie Wonder is at 'I Spy'. Batman is a little more
interesting as a character although you never really get chance to
learn much about either of them because it's essentially two separate
films that have been donkey punched into one. It's like channel
flicking between Batman Begins and
The Man Of Steel for
two hours in that you might see some cool moments but the story now
makes no sense and you've learnt nothing about anyone involved. It
doesn't help when the whole thing is muddled with hallucinations,
flashbacks, and dream sequences, which all also add fuck all to the
story. At one point the un-introduced Flash travels back in time into
a dream-within-a-dream to deliver Batman a message that makes no sense,
and that he then rightfully ignores. It's honestly like this script
was not only written by somebody with no basic understanding of
structure, but by somebody who also only knows what a film is from a
brief explanation from an autistic child.
So
why do the 'fans' seem to think this film is so brilliant when it is
quite obviously a little bit shite? Well I do think that the
previously mentioned denial is a factor. Also Snyder made his name
initially from directing adverts and music videos which would
probably explain why the opening Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, musical
titles for Dawn Of The Dead and
Watchmen are their
highlights. The man is good at putting together cool little sequences
which I honestly think has here shown the fans clips of what they
want to see and prevented them from taking the movie as a whole.
There's a short sequence in which we see Superman save a bunch of
people which is genuinely cool... but that's all it is. A cool little
sequence in a movie that's more muddled than an old man with
alzheimer's on a pub crawl. I mean, in one scene in this movie we see
Superman dragging a boat as though it's a log through the snow and in
another we see Bruce Wayne's training montage in which he hits some
big rubber tires with a sledge hammer. If you look at The
Dark Knight Trilogy then you can
see outside of the source material that Nolan's biggest influences
were the genre re-defining Blade Runner, the
seminal Heat, and
Dickens's A Tale Of Two Cities. However
Snyder's seems to have taken his main influence from Rocky
fucking 4... the
worst of the Rocky movies.
His religious subtext here is also so unsubtle that it if you were to
take a drink every time somebody says the word “God”, then when
you get to about twenty minutes in you'd be fucking dead.
There's
this bizarre idea too that there's a distinction between fans and
critics. The fans sit at home and bitch about shit on the internet
whereas the critics are so in love with the medium that they've found
the drive and dedication to somehow make film an all consuming part
of their life. Could it not just be a tiny bit possible that critics
are fans too? They're not just trying to fuck over Snyder because, as
mentioned, Dawn Of The Dead did
really well with them. They're not trying to fuck over Batman or
Superman because Nolan's trilogy and Christopher Reeves first two
movies were also critically adored. The reality is that
Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is
an overly-long, narratively incoherent, plot-hole filled, CG
over-loaded borefest that puts too much time into setting up sequels
before concluding with two anti-climactic battles. Ben Affleck was
alright though. There's an interview going around right now in which
he's asked about the bad reviews and it looks as though he's about to
burst into tears. However he's a brilliant filmmaker in his own right,
having won an Oscar for directing Argo before
then giving a phenomenal performance in Fincher's Gone
Girl. He doesn't look like he's
about to cry because the film got bad reviews but because he knows
they're fucking right. The tagline for the ultra-shit Alien
Vs Predator was “whoever wins,
we lose”. As Ben Affleck and the critics know.. that could probably
be the tagline for this film too. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers,
and see you next time.
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