![]() The film begins with a reprise of Man of Steel’s climactic showdown between Superman and General Zod, and with vistas of almighty destruction, as building after building collapses in digital rubble. The strangest thing about the film is perhaps how the action kicks off in earnest, by way of establishing how its two heroes have cause to fight in the first place. Otherwise, there are next to no images here, just an endless flurry of Picture. One is the slow-motion close-up of the breaking string of pearls worn by Bruce Wayne’s mother when she’s killed (yes, that dreary origin tale yet again) the other has young Bruce in a dream sequence falling down a hole before being born aloft by a whirlwind of winged creatures (or as my son promptly labeled it, a “batnado”). There are a couple of strong images in this film, too, although they’re a little obvious and over-familiar. On the other hand, Snyder also made one of the creepiest, most idiotic flopbusters of recent years, Sucker Punch, so he’s not entirely to be trusted. ![]() I even liked aspects of Man of Steel, which for all its bloated confusion, at least contained a number of images: notably, that strange alien visual technology, in which mineral rods formed pictures in a sort of monumental Stalinist style (I admit, I’m a sucker for any knowing instance of what you might call meta-CGI, as in: just like pixels, but on a bigger scale). I’ve liked some Snyder films- Watchmen struck me as at the very least honorable, and 300 had me roaring, “Tomorrow we breakfast in hell!” with the best of them. Superman is on one hand a follow-up to Christopher Nolan’s somber Dark Knight trilogy-he and Emma Thomas are on board as executive producers, but the tone here is much less high-minded-and a sequel to Zack Snyder’s 2013 Superman vehicle Man of Steel. ![]() I use that term advisedly, bearing in mind Matt Zoller Seitz’s formula for what superhero movies have increasingly boiled down to: “things crashing into other things.”īatman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice might have been a lot better if it had simply and honestly tried to serve this reductio ad absurdum-dum premise, but it tries to do a lot more besides, and ends up a crashing bore. It’s about the most basic hanger there is for a story-the simple question: who’s stronger and fitter? Who would win in a fight? Godzilla or Mothra? Jason or Freddy? Alien or Predator? Kramer or Kramer? Batman v. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |