Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

it was a little bit elaborate to the point it feel luthor is making trailer rather than looking natural and it said it drag a little bit to long, other than that is pretty much okay.

About the script...is a problem with the flow more than anything else, the movie start FAST with metropolis scene AND dugegon moment with Batman(which in my opinion are two of the best moment) but after that it drag alone as it try to set thing up for the final act, so while im a fan, I can understand

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

It's a shame Chris Terrio had to be involved with being part of the Worst Screenplay "win". After winning best adapted screenplay for Argo, you'd think he'd be devoid of being group into this type of accolade.

I wouldn't call the script disjointed. It had a number of divergences, sure, the Knightmare, Man-Bat dream and Justice League cameos were rather superfluous, but superfluous stuff is part and parcel of world building, especially big epics like the film was trying to be. When I think of disjointed I think of Amazing Spider-Man 2, where the multiple subplots barely connect together and the entire movie feels piecemeal, written and directed by three different people at once. BVS is convoluted, certainly, but there is a sense that it is being lead and directed by one person trying to keep it all together.

Suicide Squad also doesn't have that bad of a script. Many of the complaints were answered and even fixed in the novelization (assuming it to be an extension of the original script), as one troper had made a list of all the things it clarifies. The problem seemed to be that the shooting script was a rough idea that they tried expanding upon in the filming, that's why we have some really good performances all around but a lot of the details of the narrative are missing because the filmmakers were just guessing how it was going to come together.

That's...exactly what Batman v Superman feels like to me. When Doomsday appears at the end, I just sighed and went, "Okay, now we have Doomsday. Is there a point to him?"

edited 26th Feb '17 10:23:31 AM by alliterator

But you can't say he just shows up at the end with no building to his reveal. All of Lex's experiments on Zod's body and accessing the scout ship is leading to Doomsday. The subplot itself was maybe more than what the movie needed to do, but you're not confused over where he came from, what he was created to do or even why he shows up WHEN he does. His existence also becomes the most important thing in the story for the entire climax, and has its own logical conclusion with Superman's death. The subplot is complete and not half baked.

Compare that to ASM 2 where Harry's mutation, acquisition of the goblin tech and battle with Spider-Man is rushed in the climax, and Rhino forgotten for the entire movie and even left to be defeated off screen between that film and the hypothetical 3rd film.

There's a scene or two that builds up to his reveal, but there's no point to it. I mean, for all that people complain about Marvel's villains, they are at least characters. They don't introduce a brand new villain at the very end of the film for the heroes to fight because, somehow, there hasn't been enough fighting.

The original point of Doomsday was that he was completely and utterly unstoppable. Once he appeared, nobody in the JLA could prevent him from stomping his way to Metropolis and trying to kill Superman — hell, that's where he got his name, from Booster Gold yelling how this was "doomsday." Sure, he had no personality and he was pretty clearly designed only to kill Superman, but we saw enough of him so that when they both died in that battle, we weren't disappointed. The battle had gone on long enough and Doomsday was a worthy enough opponent so that Superman's death didn't feel cheap or tacked on. Hell, Superman's death was what the entire storyline was leading up to.

Batman v Superman felt like it was leading up the big "Martha" reveal (which still doesn't work due to Narm) and then after that, they felt like they needed some big fight scene with Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman. And since Lex Luthor isn't strong enough to fight all three, they needed someone who was, hence Doomsday. He's not a character or a villain — he's a plot device. He's there so that there will be a big fight scene and then Superman will die. No build up to his death, either, just bam. Dead.

It would have been better had they just given Lex Luthor a Kryptonite-powered battle armor.

Again: his existence is only there to facilitate a fight scene and Superman's death. He's not a character. He's a plot device.

Just one thing here, you are blaming doomsday for being a plot device when that is exactly what it was in the comic, is the same thing here, you can talk about the weight and their use(if I know well, Doomsay just sort apear at first in the comic while here show more to the very end):

Also is not just one scene or two, is from luthor demanding the access to the ship, we dont know until the very end but the plot line goes into that, now the build up to the death of superman have to do more with him dying to allow Bruce and Diana to create the League.

Also, Kurse from Thor 2 is not a chararter, no in a really damn way, he is just Marvel doomsday to justify Loki "Death"

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

actually i would call him even less than a plot device. He's a scene device.

The plot, as far as the movie was concerned, was resolved. Batman vs Superman. They fought. They reconciled. They discovered who was setting them against each other. The plot is over.

BUT WAIT! We want a scene where they fight together! but there's nothing left to fight, the whole point was that they were fighting each other.

So, throw in doomsday, at the very end.

In the comics and cartoons, Doomsday himself WAS the entire plot. It may have been a simple one, but all efforts and story revolved around him. This one was more like, "how can we have another action scene?"

the very creation of Doomsday himself doesn't even make sense in the movie anyway. Lex doesn't want this invincible dude "ruling" over Earth? Build a mega-invincible dude that's also an uncontrollable berserker! Problem solving, Lex Luthor style.

edited 26th Feb '17 10:06:09 PM by willyolio

The fight with Kurse is not the final battle, that's still Malekith, the big villain we've been following all film. And still, with Kurse, we can even see his personality in the short scene we have with him, especially his loyalty. As for Loki's "death" — nobody really thought he was dead. And he wasn't.

I think Civil War had the right idea — the fight between Captain America and Iron Man was the final battle. That is the movie. That was the climax and then they had a short epilogue, but that was it.

Batman v Superman seemed like it went on for another hour after the actual Batman v Superman fight. The epilogue should have been rescuing Martha and arresting Luthor. Not fighting an entirely new villain that then kills Superman just to set up the Justice League movie.

edited 26th Feb '17 10:54:36 PM by alliterator

Is kinda semi correct on that one, the last part have to be more with justice league that everything: Luthor made contact with something and Clark die so the situation is bad, again is all join by luthor.

And because Luthor thought Super will kill Batman...them what? you sill have a over angry kryptonian, the weird part is that Luthor really seen to think he can control Doomsday, but by that point he is going mad.

Granted this all blurry so it end being confusing, I get that but I disagree with doomsday, even if a plotline is made on that, it still start with "a wild doomsday apear!" he is just something to "Kill superman"

And neither superman is death or will be death, also the point is Kurse is just there so Loki can disapear from the plot until the very end, is loyalty dosent make him more a chararter and Doomsday angryness make one of him.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Superman is dead at the end of the film and will stay dead until Justice League comes out. That is vastly different from Loki faking his own death and being shown to be alive at the end of the film.

His Undying Loyalty absolutely makes him more of a character than Doomsday, who doesn't even have "anger" as a quality — he's simply a monster to fight. He's the troll from Harry Potter except if Harry fought him in the final battle instead of Voldemort.

Kurse sucks (so did Destroyer), but he sucks in such a way that his appearing onscreen feels like a natural (albeit boring) development, as opposed to being disruptively shoehorned in the way Doomsday is. Thor fights Kurse because of course he does. The Trinity fight Doomsday because even though the main conflict of the movie has been resolved, there's still a half-hour of movie left to fill somehow.

Most villains are plot devices, someone to cause trouble for the hero. Having a little bit of characterization doesn't change that. Doomsday has always been a plot device, he exists for one purpose and rarely has any characterization beyond berserker. Lex is a plot device, Zod is a plot device, Zemo is a plot device, Killian is a plot device, Kaecillius is a plot device and so on. The only way villains don't become plot devices is if they are given their own character arc within the story, especially if it has an impact on the character arc of the hero. Wilson Fisk in the Netflix Daredevil is a great example of that. Doomsday will never not be a plot device, although in the movie he did have a few touches that made you realize It Can Think (the long stare at Superman's statue being the main one).

It's also not good enough to have just a couple of scenes of foreshadowing. Most scripts try to include at least one bit of foreshadowing so that it doesn't come across as too jarring. But good writing does more than that. It's about weaving these elements into the narrative via direct hints, running themes, dual purpose plot points and so on. When a script is written that way it becomes more difficult to just remove parts of it because it contains either a set-up or a payoff to existing plot points. Supposedly Arrival originally had a much different ending relating to FTL travel, while the official ending relates to the overall theme of the film, being about language. BVS doesn't just indicate that Doomsday will be at the end but it builds the entire story around the theme of the movie and the actions of the characters.

Here's a listing of all the things the movie does to introduce Doomsday and Superman's death (which is the reason for Doomsday being in the movie at all):

• Prior established elements such as the scout ship, Zod's command key (which is shown to also has an extensive database of everything Krypton knew) and specifically the Genesis Chamber. This right off explains where the technology came from to do all this.
• Zod's body in custody and being experimented on, serves a dual purpose in indicating Kryptonite's effect on Superman.
• Lex's line about the metahuman thesis and not relying on the grace of monsters. It serves many purposes including Lex's talk of a silver bullet, hinting towards the Justice League videos AND serve as an ironic turn of events.
• Lex acquiring full access to the scout ship and use of Zod's body. He is also shown getting Zod's fingerprints, setting up a mystery as to what he is trying to do.
• Lex talks a lot of god, man and devils throughout the story. This makes his creation of Doomsday continue the thematic rhetoric he uses.
• Bruce and Alfred have some similar dialogue, Batman even tells Superman in their fight that he isn't a god or a man, saying that men are brave. At Superman's funeral he says men are still good, indicating he has come to see Superman as a man because he performed a brave act.
• Lex entering the Genesis Chamber, gaining access to the database and setting the stage for Doomsday's creation. Notably this happens after his Kryptonite cache was stolen, suggesting he is looking for other ways to kill Superman.
• Batman creates Kryptonite weaponry to kill Superman, which serves a dual purpose as a logical weapon to kill Doomsday too.
• Wonder Woman has her own action role in the story by joining the fight with Doomsday.

Removing Doomsday and Superman's death from the narrative means you have a lot of lost themes and plot points that have no resolution. That's why I say he isn't really just tacked on, as though he was added in reshoots or something. Doomsday or something very similar is needed for the story as a whole to come together, it actually makes Lex look even more of an idiot without it, he loses the Kryptonite to Batman and didn't develop any backup plan despite knowing he has pissed off Superman. I guess you could replace Doomsday with Lex in his purple powered armor with the explanation of where he got it more or less the same (scout ship technology), but Lex is never as interesting as a combatant and I don't think Eisenberg cackling in a suit of armor would be somehow better.

Snyder said part of the reason they decided to depict Superman's death is that they wanted a very humbling experience for the characters, and death is one of the most human things you can encounter. He also said that when developing the script for Justice League they found the idea of Batman recruiting the League members more interesting, which has its own problems because you shouldn't let future installments influence your current story that much. But I have to agree with the basic assertion, with Superman around anyone they talk to would likely question the need for the League. The fact that Superman is dead and the power vacuum that results is an interesting story to follow, something I liked from Suicide Squad is how they draw subtle parallels to Task Force X and the League.

edited 27th Feb '17 12:46:32 AM by KJMackley

Doomsday wasn't tacked on, just poorly integrated and underdeveloped. In a movie that aims to be about resonance with its universal themes, at the end of the day he's still just a big dumb crashing monster whose origin doesn't make much sense and whose actual introduction comes right around the time the movie should be ending. Good intentions aside, and I believe the movie and Snyder's vision of it did have potential, Doomsday just doesn't work. Biggest sin of all in this particular movie, he's not fun to watch. He's kind of generic and the fight with him didn't seem to register the same weight and gravitas as the other fight scenes in Snyder's movies, to the point where I wonder if the notoriously strict editing process at WB didn't also put a hand between Snyder and the CG studio for that fight. That your final fight scene in Batman V Superman is less memorable that that first(?) fight scene in Sucker Punch (the one with the stone/robot samurai) seems like a problem, possibly a shameful misuse of a talented director.

I actually agree with part of that, the problem is less how Doomsday is developed and introduced and more that he is integrated into a story that is also trying to establish Batman and Superman meeting for the first time and having a big fight. Both BVS and MOS has had problems where the action in the movie is mostly back-loaded, not giving you much of a break between sequences and making other parts of the movie feel longer than they need to be.

As for the other part, I disagree on the overall Doomsday fight. It's some of the most spectacular action and imagery ever put on film. Yeah, it's a lot of CG but it's not like Henry Cavill can actually fly for real. The real accomplishment of MOS and BVS is that Superman always feels like Superman, he doesn't go from flying at supersonic speeds to having a ballet fight. Moments like when Superman regains his strength and Batman's punch bounces off his face is brilliant. Superman rushing Doomsday into orbit is the coolest way to make "taking a fight away from the city" interesting. The fast way Superman and Wonder Woman move makes them feel powerful. And the way Batman does his grapple escape from Doomsday was a much more interesting way to depict a Badass Normal than having him judo throw a 12 foot monster.

The review quote from They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot sums up my problem with Doomsday.

I very much disagree with this — every character is a plot device, sure, meant to perform a specific action, until you add even the smallest bit of characterization, in which they become at least two dimensional. Then their actions become informed by their characterization — which is how we can say characters act OOC — and villains themselves act according to their personality and characterization.

Doomsday has no personality or characterization. He isn't even two dimensional — he is entirely one dimensional. This is why the last fight has no weight for me — the only reason they are fighting is because Doomsday is "CRUSH! KILL! DESTROY!" which might work for an opening fight, but doesn't work for a big climactic fight. You need an actual villain for that. And Doomsday isn't a villain, he's a D&D monster. In a badly written D&D campaign.

There are clever ideas in the Doomsday fight, as there were in the final Zod fight in MOS, but the way they're filmed is garbled and drags on for way too long without stopping to take a breath. If I didn't enjoy watching your final fight scene in a superhero movie directed by the same guy as 300, something's gone wrong.

edited 27th Feb '17 9:00:43 AM by Unsung

"There are clever ideas, but..." is a pretty apt description of the entire movie.

I enjoyed the Zod fight way more, but Zod at that point was established and served as a driving antagonist, so when he did decide to go full Vegeta the audience was invested. Granted it has flaws but it was nowhere near as detached.

Amen to that.

Christ, didn't we go over all this last year ?

Anyway here's something new http://heroichollywood.com/james-cameron-zack-snyder-inspiration/

"That is vastly different from Loki faking his own death and being shown to be alive at the end of the film."

it dosent it because it acomplish the same in writen term: to get rid of the chararter until you need again, that it, Kurse is the way Loki dosent show up anymore.

"Kurse sucks (so did Destroyer)," Actually I like the destroyer, is not a villian but a force and it show well, it also leave the spot to the confrontation between Loki and Thor which is the best part of the movie.

"There are plenty of great movies out there that don't take sides on deep issues like how we must handle the consolidation of power given its corrosive nature. One such movie is Rocky. Another is The Little Mermaid. While those movies have some differences, they do have one big thing in common"

yeah...neither of those have this set up, that....that dosent really make sense, hell Rocky balboa bring a good point if he should fight or not and that is better that their boxing scene.

"Doomsday is "CRUSH! KILL! DESTROY!" which might work for an opening fight, but doesn't work for a big climactic fight. You need an actual villain for that"

No really, just to set him up as something bigger, you have good fight with lame villian as marvel does kinda a lot, Doomsday is overly strong minion which is funtion as the villian is luthor.

"so when he did decide to go full Vegeta the audience was invested"

I did not care about that both how Zod establish the rules of the fight "ether you die or I do" and ACTUALLY follow it without those annoying half ass third way so a super dosent have issues

It is what it is, what else we can see about that?

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Well... This has been a good year for DC, it seems.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV

That's pretty much always been Doomsday, a rage monster. That, in and of itself, is characterization. As I already said, there are several moments when it is clear that Doomsday has mild intelligence and semi-aware. There was that long pause staring at the Superman statue, even before then it seemed to be contemplating Lex's statement before trying to splatter him. Even the way it fought Superman and Wonder Woman indicated more of a tactical mind and trained skills, multiple times it caught Superman out of the air with his mach 3 tackle, growing savvy to his one good move.

There are also times when trying to give someone more characterization backfires and is actually detrimental to the story. In that instance being a plot device with one well defined purpose is preferable to being a three dimensional character that does nothing for the story. It reminds me of Not Another Teen Movie where Malik is revealed to be intelligent and well read but nobody cares because he's just there to be the Token Minority. Kaecilius in Doctor Strange was pretty bad on that account, his only notable speech has him crying about the futility of life and Strange's response is "Well.. okay. Good luck with that." I really feel that if he said nothing and just glared at Strange the character might have worked a little better. The Borg from Star Trek worked primarily as an intensely scary, unstoppable force with no sense of diplomacy. The more nuance and "three dimensions" they acquired the less scary they were.

^ You have to hand it to him, Snyder's directoral style is distinctive and unique. Think of how many modern directors (last 15 years or so) you could reference as a Person as Verb. Someone says a sequence is Snyder-esque and I think people would have a small clue what they are talking about. Same with Spielberg-esque, Burton-esque or Nolan-esque. In contrast Joss Whedon's direction is rather indistinct, but you say a script is Whedon-esque and people know what you're talking about.

I liked this movie. Perhaps there was too much going on but I appreciate the ambition of it.

So i came in here pretty aggressively but I'm trying to rein myself in. I'm gonna ask this as politely as I can.

Why do people resent the DC movies for having some soul? For trying to say something? The response to Man of Steel was "SUPERMAN IS A MURDERER!!! HE KILLED TONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE!!!!" No, goddammit. That's not what happened. This is not the MCU where the only casualties are empty cars. The movie was trying to drive home the implications of a superman ,of a proper throwdown between beings who make us look like ants. Yes, there will be some casualties, there will be some ugly things to contemplate because of this. That's the point.

I just really don't get the absolutely massive hate for these movies when they are trying to really discuss the nature of supers.

edited 25th Apr '17 11:36:27 PM by Nikkolas