It’s been some time since I have written anything here on the trusty old website and that is totally my fault of course. There has been plenty to write about but many other responsibilities get in the way. My hope is that I can make it up to you for the rest of the year (let’s keep our fingers crossed).
For those three people who actually come to my website, you know that the material that I enjoy to write and read is in the superheroic vein. If I were to describe my writing from a movie, it would be a cross between Jason Bourne, Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Dr. Strange. If you can find a happy medium in there somewhere then that would be the place.
Though it is now a new year, I will be taking a step back and looking at some of the past movies that came out in 2016 that I viewed that fall into my illustrious genre. Though it was not the first that I saw, it was the first in the order of its release. That is Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Before this movie came out, I made the prediction on seeing the trailers alone that this was NOT going to be a good movie. It simply didn’t seem to be compelling enough, even in the trailer. When the reviews hit, I was surprised because they were even worse than what I predicted. Could the movie be that bad? It wasn’t until August 26th in the comfort of my home that I found the answer to that question.
Understand that when I do a review of these movies, I’m always doing it from the perspective of a writer. I’m not just looking at the acting or all the other things but primarily I’m looking at the writing. The script. The story. This movie gets it so wrong on so many different levels, it’s hard to know where to begin.
First, there are just some cheesy elements to it. The scene where Bruce was a young boy and the bats fly all around him and lift him up into the air. That was weak, banal writing. I was hoping that the script wasn’t going to go there when I saw it but I had a feeling it would…and it did. Lame.
As we move on through the show, it appears that the writers were trying their best to simply dismantle any and everything from the source material. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a million times: if a universe has been established, you have to stay within the confines of it. To deviate too far means you are not taking your audience seriously and basically are running roughshod over their intelligence. They are expecting what they have gotten before to a large extent and to completely ignore that expectation with no set up or explanation for the change is just simply rude and arrogant. The audience will pick up on that as well. With this movie they did and the reviews from both critics and movie goers says it all (peep the Rotten Tomatoes score on both counts).
Another thing that totally ruined the movie was Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Lex Luthor which really wasn’t a portrayal of Lex Luthor but Jesse Eisenberg playing himself which no one was interested in seeing. Even my wife, who is by no means a geek in any sense of the word, blurted out, “That’s not Lex Luthor.” That’s pretty bad when someone who is casually involved with the lore says that.
The writing in this movie is too rushed. Too much trying to happen. This is Spider-Man 3 all over again. Trying to pull off so much that the writing doesn’t say anything meaningful at all. It’s not actually caring about the writing but just trying to do a take on the movie cinematically without any real character or plot development. Marvel Studios is taking YEARS to get to the Infinity Gauntlet and Thanos, a major villain. DC got to Doomsday in a couple hours and he’s just this rumbling ball of stupidity? Come on.
The only thing that was remotely good was the Batman scene in the warehouse when he takes on all those guys. Funny how the best part of the movie has no dialogue. *sigh*
This is not how you write a movie but more importantly, it’s not how you write a story. If I read this in the comics I’d want to return the comic. Since that is not the case, I can only give it a mediocre score here. IMDB gave this a 6.7. Rotten Tomatoes fans gave it a 64% (when translated in IMDB standards it equals a 6.4). Moi? This is coming in at a 4.0 and I think I’m being generous. Bad writing, bad plot, bad acting, equals a bad movie. It’s in the history books now.
