Computer's at the Shop. Also, Peach Tea.

My computer's currently in the, you know, shoppy place. I'm on my Kindle right now, I've much to say, and I want an actual keyboard to say it. Once I get one of those, I will have more for you, here:

   Batman v Superman! I watched it again and... it was actually really good. Alright, it was only pretty good. I mean it was alright. Decent, I guess. Dang it, it's happening again, where my opinion grows less and less glowing the further away from the viewing I get. Guess it's one of those things that's better in the moment, like, cotton candy or something. Delicious when you eat it, but within a few hours you can't remember what the big deal was. It's like that. Fettuccine Alfredo, like, it's delicious, and you can actually recreate the taste and texture in your mouth, and remember how awesome that stuff is, dang I gotta get me to the frozens section at the nearest grocery store, because my mouth is starting to get all lubricated. Seriously.

   But analyzing the film, trying to figure out why it didn't work so well, really there aren't that many things wrong with it. Probably the biggest has nothing to do with the script or acting or, anything. The editing. Zack Snyder is kind of very guilty with the sin, occasionally, of not giving the moment proper time to play out. The most recent Every Frame a Painting talks all about when to cut. Here:

   The world is introduced to Superman (or, the Superman, as the title puts it,) and Bruce Wayne cradles the young daughter of some employee and sees Superman and Zod crashing through buildings, his face contorted in rage, and... and nothing. We don't get time to really feel the emotion of the scene.

   J J Abrams. Let's contrast Zack Snyder against J J Abrams. Remember the force torture scenes in Force Awakens? Abrams really liiingers on those shots. Perhaps for too long, but, erring on the side of caution is far far far more effective than, cutting away before the emotion of a shot sinks in. Like what with the Alka Seltzer in Taxi Driver above.

   On second viewing, also, unrelated, it's not the not!-tea jar that shatters, it's the coffee pot dropped by Martha Kent. So that's fairly excusable. Zack Snyder, ever the visual director, sure does love his excesses. But... sometimes that's a good thing?

   I think the over-the-top Citizen Kane-esque opening may in fact be deliberate: as in Kane, where Rosebud is the macguffin, the single issue unlocking the key to all psychology, Rosebud this pinnacle of lost childhood, in Dawn of Justice Martha is indeed the key. Not Lois. It's not like what Barry says; I still don't know what's up with that.* Martha is the symbol of Bruce's innocence, so when Supes pleads in the last possible moment to "save Martha," that probably, I don't know, means something. Save her memory. Don't kill in cold blood, like what Chill did (killing in hot blood remains totally fine, of course, because... Batman?)

   ...So about that.

   We can't walk in knowing nothing about the Bat Mythos, of course- like how in J J Abram's Star Trek film, "beaming up" is used at the last moment to save character's necks, and we're totally fine with it because even though there'd been no beaming up at all previously in the film, if there's one thing everyone knows about Star Trek, besides pointy ears and live long and prosper and nerve pinching and possibly redshirts, it's beaming up. Civil War introduces Spider-Man, and it is glorious, though it's a big detour from the film so far. There's a lot like that that it just, expects you to know. Bucky Barnes. Winter Soldier. Ant Man. Spider-Man was in a different chronology up till now, but Sony's made a deal with Disney yaay! Spider-Man is awesome, and nobody gives a crap that his inclusion is the tiniest bit of a shoehorn.

   We're willing to let these films get away with that, because it builds on what we already know culturally. If somebody's lost (like people were to the ending of, Lost) it's hardly the movie's fault any more than it would be if people walked into it not understanding english. Lost, you know. Just, have insanely in-depth knowledge about Gnostic philosophy from a thousand years ago, that kind of thing. It's easy. You walk in expecting this. People speak english. People sit on chairs. If you're confused by what's going on when somebody sits down, it's your fault and not the film's.

   BvS, however, disregards/ignores one of the major things that everyone thinks they know about Batman, his whole "I will not be an executioner" deal (an element not present in the earliest of the comic stories, but Doyle only had to introduce Moriarty into the Holmes canon once.) It's like they expect you not to know that Batman doesn't kill people, which is strange because they sure the heck expect you to know that Bruce Wayne=Batman.

   Maybe in the extended edition they'll have an establishing character moment near the beginning, where Batman is, I don't know, given a choice to use a gun, and blows some sex trafficker's brains out without hesitation. That'd be great. As it is, the first time we see him kill is kind of a dream sequence, so it's really ambiguous until, like, after the movie is over that, yes, Batman can kill people now. But only bad guys. Offing the Big Blue Boy Scout would still cross a moral event horizon.

   This confusion is really strange, because a lot of what fails the film elsewhere is, the producers not expecting enough of the audience- is this part and parcel, oh of course people won't know Batman doesn't usually kill, or is it contradiction, oh of course people will be smart enough to figure stuff out? There are a few things where I'd doubt that the studio really expects that much of us.

   Like Batman's opening monologue, saying how his "dream" ends. Like we really couldn't tell it to be a dream. With the bats carrying him up, without even touching him. And how the past blends into the present, and, I don't know, it's just, by this point we've figured out out.

   Or the car chase against the kryptonite. It's rendered stupid by the fact that we know that the World's Greatest Detective is already tracking the truck with his conspicuously obvious tracker, but how great would that scene be without the insert of the tracker beeping after he's fired it? It just looks like he's fired a gun, but, like, missed out whatever, so then he has to break out the Batmobile and chase after the truck. And then Superman comes down and does his thing, maybe letting the moment actually play out a bit before Batman asks Superman if he bleeds, and all, but anyway it looks like he's lost the shipment, but, twist!, he'd been tracking it all along. And you only notice how stupid it is that he's chasing the truck the second time through. Or it just comes across as being a clever plan b, which, it probably was anyway.

   What else have I got to say. Jesse Eisenberg isn't the only one playing Lex Luthor. Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL also really help us get into the dude's head; the character wouldn't be nearly the same without their involvement. Super important.

   Also a big shout-out to Heath Ledger, of course. You also played Luthor.**

   I really like this Lex Luthor, though, for real. All that, Lex Luthor stuff, is stuff I'd meant to get to in the first review, but didn't have room for.

*Though the dream logic of the Knightmare is just, rewatching it, spot-on and delicious: the meet-up spot where the truck pulls up with the fake kryptonite (I don't think the word is used once in the film) is marked with a giant omega dug into the earth, so massive as to be only recognizable from the sky. This fact is not brought up or referenced again. The soldiers have Super insignias, there are weird bat/demon/alien things, and there's the pseudosymbolism of crucifixion, like I brought up earlier.
**I wonder if Lex Luthor in the Dark Knight canon is vaguely Jared Leto-esque?