What's on your mind?

[DerVVulfman]

I went to see "Batman V Superman" today and enjoyed it. However, let me stress that this is a DC comics movie and has used material ground in the history of the DC Universe. So for those who are not familiar with material from the past twenty years, there may be a level of confusion. And for those would-be critics who wish to dismiss the movie or lay hate upon it, I would ask them how much they know about the actual title character 'Batman' other than from the movies. Yes, I say that the lead is Batman rather than being an ensemble piece. It could be prejudice on my part, but I think that Mister Cowl and Cape had more screen time than any of the others.

SuperSpoiler Be Very afraid....

Be warned... this gives many reveals, not just assumptions.

When one sees the trailers, they may see a Bat-Suit that has a yellow spray-painted message on it from what many believe to be the Joker. The suit does not belong to Bruce/Batman, but one of his sidekicks. Many believe it to be Robin's, and they are both correct and not. In the 1980's, there was a famous 4-part story arc called "A Death in the Family" where the Joker killed Jason Todd, the second Robin. The first Robin, being Dick Grayson, had taken on the new alias of Nightwing. Not many may even know who Jason Todd is, unless they picked up the fairly recent DVD feature "Under the Red Hood" from DC Comics. So while many may believe the suit in "Batman V Superman" may be that of the late Jason Todd, I would remind them that Jason's suit was that of the Red, Green and Yellow Robin suit and that the suit on display belonged to Dick Grayson himself. This is a departure from the comics line in the DC Universe in an attempt to keep some level of surprise while still holding true to the core characters.

Now for Bruce/Batman himself. The character is not being re-vamped again in the classic sense. We just had the "Dark Knight Trilogy" with Christian Bale as the title character. And with that, no true need for the origin story other than approximately ten minutes interspersed. However, this is not the Christian Bale Batman, but more akin to Frank Miller’s rendition from "The Dark Knight Returns". After the story of "A Death in the Family", Frank Miller’s tale created a dark world where the Batman had retired and had no other Robin. A bleak world where attempted to detatch himself from the world, but couldn’t. Miller does seem to have a thing for grimy and dark worlds if one recalls Sin City.

But this Batman did not retire after the Joker killed his friend, nor become that dark. That is, he did not become that dark or unsettled until his whole world crashed down around him. And it was a relief and surprise that Ben Affleck actually played it right. Totally unlike his performance in "DareDevil", he delivered a grittier performance as one would have seen in "The Town." And after everything Bruce/Batman has gone through, how else could he feel after losing friends and coworkers when the Metropolis WayneTech building was toppled in the Zod vs Superman fight? And who else would he blame other than the one left standing who remained as much a mystery since that fateful day? Unfortunately, that anger was unchecked and Bruce/Batman became more dangerous to the criminal world. Unlike the Batman from the traditional comics, this one was more violent and did not shy away from using firepower. But make no mistake, this is not unique and was even apparent in Frank Miller’s work. In fact, the last couple panels of a hostage scene in the first issue of "The Dark Knight Returns" was clearly reused in a later climactic rescue in "Batman V Superman."

From the Dark Knight Returns

However, the Batman is also a detective and will follow leads and finds evidence of wrongdoing whenever possible. So while some may have expected nothing more than a Gladiator fight, they found themselves something more. Granted, his information extraction techniques are not exactly politically correct. And I must say this, and this may be a surprise to some who may even have seen the movie and not caught this.

Batman was setup.

Enter our current movie’s main protagonist, Lex Luthor. I say current movie, because there are, as Frank Herbert wrote in the 1967 novel Dune, ‘plans within plans’.

Alexander (Lex) Luthor is a genius, but with genius of this level comes madness... or at least that is what is said. The more contemporary Lex Luthor always felt that the coming of Superman was a crushing blow to his ego and feeling of superiority. Luthor could never cope with that and the only way he could reconcile this was to bring down this monster which removed Earth and Humanity from the center of his universe. This loathing that Luthor had for Superman has been seen in the comics from the 1980s when they changed the Luthor persona from SuperVillain into an evil Multimillionaire Tycoon. It was very much visible in the stories after the "Death of Superman", or the DVD of the same name, and in the DC Comics story "Batman/Superman: Public Enemies" where Luthor glared at Superman and said "Because I know evil!"

But Luthor isn’t only a genius with science. He can deduce other things, such as Lois Lane gets rescued a few times by Superman, but shacks up with Clark Kent. Can anyone say ‘Duh’? When is confronted, Luthor even calls him out as Clark Joseph Kent! Wow... middle name. That’s never good. So is it any wonder he would be able to find ways to make Superman look bad?

But wait, I said that Batman was setup, didn’t I? Yes, I did.

Breadcrumbs were set up so Bruce Wayne would eventually find kryptonite since there is no way that Luthor could physically take on the Man of Steel. Why fight someone when you can get a big, hulking expert to do it for you? And what better way than even invite Bruce Wayne to your shindig that had Clark Kent there too? "You should NOT pick a fight with this person." Did he just say that knowing who he was talking to?

Yes, yes yes. Luthor not only knows that Clark is Superman, he invited Bruce Wayne to tap into his computer to steal the information he needed! It's not being broadcast out there, but all the while he was setting up his so-called Gladiator Match from the very beginning. And of the man in the wheelchair, a wheelchair so generously provided by Luthor (to go boom), who do you think really intercepted and returned the former Waynetech employee’s paychecks? It may only be a speculation on my part, but I would just guess that Luthor intercepted the checks to make the former Waynetech employee, and victim of the Man of Steel Zod fight, to become destitute so he could become a carefully planted pawn when needed.

The Man of Steel himself, again played by Henry Cavill, was on the money. Still playing a child of both worlds but raised in Kansas, he still has the moral fiber everyone is used to seeing. But as events unfold, he is finding the world is becoming a dark place. Because of events set in motion by Luthor, he is finding himself at odds with the press questioning his actions and accusing him of mass murder. Even as Lois attempts to uncover who is setting him up, Clark/Superman wonders if they can even remain together as his world unravels around him.

To my surprise, there is not really that much more I can say about Cavill’s character as he played it just as one should expect our Man of Steel to be. All-in-all, human in nature and feelings, even as though isn’t human at all. And while he is powerful and able to perform incredible (or Super) feats, he isn’t omniscient. Only a barest moment of foreshadowing appeared when something dire was about to happen, and Clark/Superman wasn’t the first to realize it.

Now for the fight that everyone was expecting given the title of the film. Hey, it was at least a good ten minutes and it did show that mere humans can find ways to take down a Kryptonian. But the techniques and trappings were also a given for those who read Frank Miller’s story. Yes, I am talking about the "Dark Knight Returns" again. Be it the use of sonics to disrupt Clark’s equilibrium, aerosol kryptonite gas grenades, or just using enhanced armor to totally surprise a weakened Superman in hand-to-hand combat, the red-caped flyboy had a hard time with Bats. It was only the last moments of the fight that made Bruce unsettled and unsure for the first time about the fight. To be honest, for all these years (cough..decades), I never noticed their mothers shared the same first name.

From the Dark Knight Returns

Now, there are some that say "Why is Doomsday here?" in the movie, or even that Doomsday is showing up too soon. As the title of the movie has a subtitle of ‘Dawn of Justice", and also shows some material regarding The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, it is a jumping board for a Justice League movie. And with that, there had to be some dire threat big enough to make at least one hero think that things are about to be too big for just one person to handle. If it was someone like the Joker, Superman could flatten him in 0.032 seconds. If it were Metallo, Batman would just throw some C4 plastique and electrified batarangs. Cheetah? Nah... But I’m wondering if she’d look anything like kyonides’s little pic from two weeks ago.

Have I been writing for two hours? Yup.

So we needed something of non-terran origin, but still be based on an apparent Earh-origin story. So that would immediately eliminate most heavy hitters from the Superman world like Darkseid or Mongul of WarWorld. So we find ourselves heralding back to the "Death of Superman" story once again. It was surmised slightly in the comics, but way more blatant in the DVD feature, that Luthor did have a hand in the monster’s release. So it made perfect sense that Luthor would have a hand in this one’s origin. And as the story went, Doomsday was of Kryptonian origin, but not entirely Kryptonian. And good luck using anything radioactive against him. Superman gets his powers nourished from solar radiation, so how do you think this behemoth will react?

And yes, there is a scene in ‘The Dark Knight Returns" that shows Clark recovering thanks to sunlight just like in the movie. Hardly a spoiler there for anyone with passing knowledge of the character.

Now there has been some passing talk as to why Wonder Woman, or that Gal Gadot was too skinny to play her. Guys? Linda Carter in the 70s was way skinnier. And as to why even have Wonder Woman? Why not? The boys can’t have all the fun. I mean, we’ve already had Xena, Sarah Conner from Terminator 2, Lt. Ellen Ripley in Aliens, so let her have some fun. Hell, Diana was even smiling with her sword ready as she was planning to strike! And if they needed a meta-human in the world to fight with them, it had to be someone a bit more human-eque or *cough* relatively normal in action and appearance *cough* than The Flash or Cyborg.

Way too early to get Hal Jordan, and .... they severely need to reboot and erase the Ryan Reynolds version.

As to the ending, I already had a guess that things were being put forth that would need an actual Justice League. If not, then why have a subtitle of "Dawn of Justice"? And I will say that I already knew (or think I knew) who was really pulling the strings. This, being garnered from the final shots of Luthor as he confronts our title character one last time. Again, I quote from Frank Herbert, "plans within plans". I already had a feeling someone bigger was influencing affairs, even though I was told that something I saw in one of the trailers was part of a dream sequence. But it was from the same sequence that the Flash appeared and gave Bruce Wayne a warning. So it gave me a moment of pause if the winged things that were in Batman’s nightmare (and in same said trailer) were just in his imagination or a foretelling of things to come. And from what I read, I am not the only person on the internet with this guess.

There are some qualms that I have.

The first and foremost was "Why Jessi Eisenberg?" is the top of the list of course. Technically (and historically) it should be someone physically the same age as Clark. In the earliest lore, they knew each other and Lex lost his hair due to a Superboy incident. Yes, I said Superboy. But even later material, the two were the same age. So why Eisenberg? I haven’t a clue. Madness? Well, madness would explain him being cast (by that I mean the casting director going insane). Many feel that Bryan Cranston could have filled the bill perfectly, though that may be thanks to his bald-look in Breaking Bad. It could be that they chose Eisenberg for his role in ‘The Social Network", but that is only a passing guess. As to a better choice, who knows?

Now, Jeremy Irons as Alfred. It’s better than his role in "Dungeons and Dragons", but I have never seen the Wayne Butler as unkempt and unshaven as I have in this version. And even more, he had a sour attitude without the same wit as the Michael Caine version ("I’ll even let you borrow the Rolls. Just bring it back with a full tank of gas."). Perhaps it is because this appears to Alfred as a doomed quest after all these years and Bruce will die alone. But I have hope that this will change in later movies as the League is formed. There have been times when Alfred has sewn up Clark’s cape afterall.

And Wayne Manor is a mausoleum! Oh, my gawd. Well, I guess if there’s only one person on staff, keeping a mansion 1/4th the size of Buckingham Palace would be impossible. But letting it go like that? It’s a disaster. No wonder they’re probably living in the cave.

In my opinion, the story was a B-(minus), detailed in criminal cunning that did require a detective to determine what was happening until the reveal However, some may not accept this Batman if they are unfamiliar with the character's history of the past 25 years. Action was also a B-(minus), executed well but it some facets were derived from other sources. Granted, it was the action's source of power, but also its slight failing. Mind you, action alone is not what drives the film. Music was A-(minus) (do I ever give anything a plus?), afterall... it is a Hans Zimmer score. And the players/cast was a C+ (finally, a plus). Good acting overall, but I cannot get over Eisenberg. But I have hopes for Irons.

And I want that batmobile.