I went to see BvS yesterday and I loved it. I freely admit to having a love/hate relationship with MoS. Most of the things I hate can be attributed to the director, though, and I can get past that and ratify/understand everything I hate. With it being the same director I knew there was a chance I could feel the same about this movie too, but I don't. I love it. As with every film it could be picked apart if you chose to. For example, certain plot points don't make sense, but there could be off-screen moments that explain them and they are not literally conflicting points. I hate it when people slate a film for things like that. I wish I could shout at them - "fill in the missing scenes with your imagination - the director doesn't have to tell us EVERYTHING."
Non-spoiler points:
I found the main plot-line and the gradual build up to the fight as believable. In my mind there were no sudden ‘out of character’ decisions by the main characters, although I have heard others say that the reason the ‘fight’ came to an end was sudden and not powerful enough to cause the reaction it did. I don’t agree.
The Clark/Lois relationship doesn’t get as much screen time as I would like, but I am a complete addict for Clark/Lois scenes. Still, the ones we get are fantastic. Their relationship has never been depicted in this way on the big screen before and I love it.
Teasing the future films. This was done seamlessly. For comic fans it was clear that they were teases for the coming films, but they were not ‘shoe-horned in’ to a plot that they didn’t fit into. It all made sense to me. It was great to see these other Justice League members, even if it was only for the few seconds screen time they got. The other big tease was not about other Superheroes, but about the big baddie that might be coming (for the Justice League movie I presume). But, this definitely falls into the spoiler category, so I will mention it below.
Casting:
Henry Cavill – well, they couldn’t exactly cast anyone else!! He is great. I love his deep sexy voice. His smile, whenever he looks at Lois, or his mother, is beautiful. He is a confident but quiet Clark Kent – just like our favourite Dean Cain, and there is no sign of a bumbling dork. His Superman is caring and strong, but also full of self-doubt (that I just want to wash away with a very long and intimate hug).
Amy Adams – She continues to play Lois as both gentle and yet driven. Her soft voice conceals a brave and determined heart for her career, and also for her man.
Ben Affleck – I was appalled at the thought of Ben Affleck as Batman when I heard – even though I actually love him as Daredevil – another film that everyone slates, but I love. But he is fantastic. My husband has even stated that Ben is now the best portrayal of Bruce he has ever seen and he is a Batman fan 1st and Superman fan 2nd. (I’m slowly working on that though, and have made GREAT progress).
Jeremy Irons – Great. He played Alfred as a loyal butler and friend, not afraid to share his opinion, or his sarcastic wit. I loved some of his droll one-liners.
Jesse Eisenberg – Lex is clearly mad and a genius, but there was no 'power' presence, or 'fear' presence that I felt coming from Jesse. I know that 'height' has nothing to do with how well a person can act (and he can clearly act extremely well), but in this case, he looked way too small - especially against Superman, and so I didn't feel that anyone would ever be intimidated by him. He was also missing the 'suave' feel that Lex is supposed to have been since the 80s and John Shea, followed by Michael Rosenbaum, played excellently. I guess I shouldn’t hang on to that, as actors, writers and directors are at liberty to change the portrayal of a character, but in this particular case I didn’t feel that it worked.
Gal Gadot – She is beautiful, and I love the slightly exotic accent. I believe this is the first time that Diana/Wonder Woman has been portrayed with a foreign accent, but I don’t understand why. Cleary she SHOULD have an exotic accent. Her role was small, but just big enough to have significance. She teased with Bruce especially well and her involvement in the climax was well played.
Scenes/scenery and directing:
I’m still not convinced of Zack Snyder as director. As I said before most of my problems with MoS I put down to the director’s choices to do things in a certain way, or not show certain things. There are not as many instances of this in BvS but I still find some of his directing choices, and the way he patches certain things together, to be jarring. His extreme close ups in MoS, which were meant to give the viewer the feeling of being right in the middle of the action – but just meant that the viewer missed seeing the whole scope of the scene/action, was still used but to a much lesser degree. The fight scenes were mostly viewed from an external perspective, so that the viewer could actually get an idea of the full scope of the action and the few close ups were just enough to bring me in to the scene emotionally rather than keep me as a passive outside viewer.
Conclusion:
I loved the film. Got to see it again the following day with my daughter and she loved it too. We have finally got to see a confrontation between the two major DC players. DC has given us this confrontation in many forms in the comics and the translation to big screen was not going to be easy. The general public (non-comic reading/non-superhero loving public) would never accept that these two men would fight under normal circumstances. They also tend to find superhero movies too unrealistic, especially if they skirt too close to ‘comic book’ story lines and ‘comic book’ suspension of disbelief. I believe that this film actually manages to tell a true ‘comic book’ story-line, on the big screen and does it believably.
In the end I only have two things I really don't like. One falls into the "off-screen things we don't see"/director choice category and cannot be covered in non-spoiler mode, and the other is the casting choice for Lex Luthor.
I am looking forward to the DVD, where I understand there is to be an extra 30 minutes, too. The future of this series, with all the other Justice League members and movies, is also looking very promising and I can see my DVD shelf being full of all these movies in the years to come. I’m only disappointed that it will take a decade to get there!
Spoiler points: I’m going to explain the two things I mentioned above, and also reply to some other spoilery comments by others.
Of the two things I didn’t like about the film, the one I couldn’t mention above is to with Lois and her emotions/feeling towards Clark. I have no problem believing that she loved him just as much as he loved her, but it never got shown. I take this as a directing mistake - off-screen action. It was most clear to me in the death scene, closely followed by the bedroom scene with the ring and the graveside scene. While she cried and shed some tears, she never 'broke down' as I would have expected - especially having seen the iconic comic picture and having read Death and Life of Superman many, many times.
The tease of the future villain I mentioned above was seen in the dream/vision of the future that Bruce had while decrypting Lex’s drive. There was an Omega symbol carved into the desert floor. There were also odd flying creatures in the dream. This, combined with the angels/demons painting on Lex’s wall, Lex’s ramblings about Gods, and of demons coming from above, lead me to believe that the baddie we will be seeing in the Justice League movie is Darkseid and Apokolips. Once I came to this conclusion I then also realised that the ‘fake wake-up’ in Bruce’s dream was another hint – with the man screaming his warning to Bruce clearly being in a boom-tube. This, and Lex’s mention of ‘them already hearing and coming’ at the end, led me to believe that Darkseid was the one doing ALL the manipulation from the start – including scaring/manipulation of/or using Lex to do the earthly manipulation of the two heroes.
the blood ritual Luthor performs to transform Zod into Doomsday. It just seemed out of place amongst all that high-tech stuff.
I disagree, personally. It wasn’t a ‘ritual’ in my mind – although it would give a counterpoint between spiritual and technological. Lex didn’t say any ritualistic words, he was just gloating at winning, and then he introduced foreign DNA into the chamber – a chemical/biological reaction – definitely a scientific process.
Are they finally going to have Superman defeat him without dying? Sadly, not. I do wish Lois didn't know and tell us that Superman was about to sacrifice himself.
I was pretty sure I knew how the film would end once I knew that Doomsday was in it. Especially as the major part of the film was to be the conflict between Batman and Superman, so there was no way that he could be introduced early enough to mean that Clark could die then come back to life in the same movie. There was a small part of me that wondered whether it would be a live victory for Superman, but if they had done that then the fans would have seen the film as a cop-out/being too scared to do what the comics dared to do two decades ago. I thought it was a lovely nod to the comics to have Clark tell Lois that he loved her before going off to face Doomsday with the spear, but I would have loved it even more if they had used the famous EXACT line. It wouldn’t have taken much of a dialogue change. “Remember, Lois ... no matter what happens ... I will always love you.”
Was a bit surprised by Batman's use of lethal weapons, though, as I thought that went against his code. They also made Batman my age (which was surprising), and he'd been the Batman for at least 20 years.
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I'm not sure that I liked the aspect where Batman brands the people he captures. That was a bit on the creepy side.
My hubby pointed out that the message sprayed on the robin outfit is the exact message that Joker sprayed in a particular version of Batman, after he had killed EVERYONE Bruce knew, and then Bruce had actually killed the Joker. It’s possible that Bruce is dealing with a lot of darkness and hurt that we don’t know about as we haven’t seen his full story. The mansion is also burned out and he lives in a lakeside apartment on the grounds. I would love to know the whole story of how Bruce got to this place. It’s almost Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, but not!!
I did like how Clark figured out how Bruce was Batman, by hearing Alfred talking to him through the earpiece at Luthor's party.
That was original and unexpected while at the same time making me say, "Duh!"
Clark calls Batman ’Bruce’ in their fight but it is not made clear when Clark realised or worked it out. It could have been at the party when he hears Alfred’s instructions to Bruce, my husband thinks this. But I think that – at the time – Clark would have no reason to connect him to Batman, but rather to industrial espionage. Possibly Bruce is trying to steal some secrets from a rival company. Looking retrospectively at the incident it may have then helped him to figure it out. OR maybe he just x-rayed Batman’s helmet. It’s not made clear. It’s also not made clear how Lex figured out that Superman was Clark. We can make a reasonable guess that he is intelligent enough to figure it out like Lois did, or there could be plenty of other explanations, we are just not given them. I also suspect that Lex knew Bruce was Batman. Watching the scene with all three of them, at the Library do – when Lex says “Clark Kent meets Bruce Wayne”, had a whole different significance the second time around, and adds even more to the ‘Lex is manipulating them both’ plotline.
Keep your eyes out: the credits show a "Jimmy Olsen" (Jenny's back as well), a "Lana", and a "Pete Ross", but I missed all three.
Didn’t see that!!! I wondered if the cameraman at the beginning was Jimmy, but then he was revealed as too old and too accomplished and clearly a government operative – plus he gets shot in the head. I then took my eldest daughter to see it and I became convinced that it was the guy stood with Clark on the red carpet when Bruce gets out of his car to go to Lex Luthor’s Library thing. Nope, turns out it WAS the guy at the beginning.
Would the show lose a lot in the transition from the big screen to a television set? It is very difficult for me to get to the movie theatre (the next free time I'm likely to have will be mid-April, when my son is at an Easter Seals camp). I have pre-ordered the movie on Amazon so I can see it at home; would those of you who have seen it consider it worth using my extremely rare free time to see the movie in the cinema? The main reason I would see it in the theatre rather than wait would be if the visuals were absolutely phenomenal. (The only movies I have ever seen which I consider that much better on the big screen were the Hobbit and LoTR movies.)
There are some spectacular scenes and effects shots, but nothing like the vistas and epic scenes of LoTR. If your time really is so very precious then you do have to choose carefully. In my opinion it is a fantastic movie but you would have to check on the movie listings to come over the next few months to see if you considered anything else more likely to have that ‘wow’ factor.
But I really liked the scene with the ring at the end.
I loved this. It’s also great that the ring actually looks exactly like the engagement ring from the comics. I love that Lois chose to put the ring on, accepting the proposal that Clark never got to give. I hope that when Clark returns (which I’m sure he will) that he will get the chance to propose properly, though.
Gosh, that was long. Probably the first time I have fully tried to review a movie, too, rather than just give general comments and thoughts.
