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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
160 Plays4 years ago
With the Snyder Cut release upon us, we look back at the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman and find it's still pretty much as terrible as the theatrical cut. From everyone in this movie being a total asshole to the plot holes and the head-scratchingly bizarre portrayal of Lex Luthor, the only real bright spots are Ben Affleck, Jeremy Irons, and Gal Gadot.
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Transcript
Introduction and Audible Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey Derek, guess what? Hit me with it. We just got a promotion with Audible. Audible, fantastic. I love Audible. Do you know what the cool thing about this deal is? What's that? If our listeners go to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod, they get a free trial with Audible. And do you know what they get with that?
00:00:22
Speaker
What do they get with that? Tell me. They get one free audiobook of their choice and they get two free Audible Originals, which is special content that Audible makes available free for all its subscribers. Are you kidding me? That deal is so good I may go myself and sign them. Do you think they let you keep the books after you're done?
00:00:43
Speaker
No, you're not going to tell me they let you keep the books after you're done. Yes. In fact, you can go sign up for a trial and you can cancel before the trial ends and you get to keep the books you've already downloaded.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I don't see how you can beat that with a stick. Exactly, yeah. And you get lots of great books, especially for fans of the show. You can listen to Super Gods by Grant Morrison, which is all about how the superhero comics have changed and evolved over time. Or you can check out Marvel Comics, The Untold Story. Which is a terrific book. I have that both in hardcover and I listened to that on Audible myself in my car while traveling back and forth.
00:01:21
Speaker
And there's also another similar book that's called Slugfest, which is about like the wars between Marvel and DC Comics. Oh, okay. So that's another one you got to check out too. So yeah, head on over to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod and start your free trial right now. You got one free audio book and two free audible originals, and you can keep them even if you cancel before it's over.
Discussion on Bat Vigilante in Gotham
00:01:57
Speaker
What's your position in the Bat Vigilante in Gotham? The Daily Planet. Wait, do I own this one? Or is that the other guy? Civil liberties are being trampled on in your city. Good people living in fear. Don't believe everything you hear, son. I've seen it, Mr. Wayne. He thinks he's above the law. The Daily Planet, criticizing those who think they're above the laws,
00:02:24
Speaker
A little hypocritical, wouldn't you say? Considering every time your hero saves a cat out of a tree, you're at a puff-piece editorial about an alien who, if he wanted to, could burn the whole place down. It wouldn't be a damn thing we could do stuff. Most of the world doesn't share your opinion, Mr. Wayne. Maybe it's the Gotham City in me. We just have a bad history with freaks dressed like clowns.
00:02:55
Speaker
Boys, Bruce Wayne meets Clark Kent. I love it. I love bringing people together. How are we? Lex. Hello. Good. Hi. Hello. Lex, it is a pleasure. Ow. Wow. That is a good grip. You should not pick a fight with this person. So after all these years, we finally got you over to Metropolis. I thought I'd come drink and dry. Well, you're welcome. You should out the harbor more often, though. I'd love to show you my labs. Maybe we could partner on something. My R&D is up to all sorts of no good.
00:03:25
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm half of your host, Perry Constantine. And as always, I'm the other half, Derek Ferguson. Good evening, folks. How are you Perry? Good morning. I'm doing pretty good over here. How are you doing? Yeah. Okay. A little bit of the allergies messing with me. So folks, if you hear me coughing and doing all that other stuff, don't worry. That's just my allergies playing hard with me as they always do. All day long, nothing. Then of course, as soon as I get ready to do this with you,
00:03:55
Speaker
then they start, you know, but. Well, it's the same thing. Usually when I've got my daughter next to me, she's fine until I start recording and then she wants attention. Well, of course. Yeah.
00:04:06
Speaker
Of course, it wouldn't be fun otherwise. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we got a little bit of news today, not a whole lot because we recorded just a few days ago, but a few things did pop up in the past few days. One of them is there's apparently a Blade casting rumor for the Mahershala Ali movie. And we talked before about the whole rumor that was going around that if Wesley Snipes came back, they would be introducing the Fallon Grey character, playing his daughter.
00:04:36
Speaker
who would it be his daughter in like a blade continuation slash reboot and how the comics almost had something similar. So it looks like this new casting room, and again, this is all a rumor, but the production is actively casting a character named Ruby, a teen that's said to be thoughtful, serious, and burdened by growing up in a complex world.
00:05:00
Speaker
It's expected that she's gonna be playing a strong supporting role in the film. But one of the things about the Marvel's casting calls is the names that they put on these casting sheets are often inaccurate because Marvel tries to hide stuff. So a lot of people are theorizing this could actually be a casting for Fallon Gray, Blade's daughter. Oh, okay. So it looks like we might actually get that.
00:05:29
Speaker
Well, we look forward to seeing any, even though I'm not exactly jumping over, like I said, I got met against Marsha Ali, but for some reason I look at him and I don't see Blade.
00:05:44
Speaker
I don't know. And maybe it's because we just recently watched Blade 2 and I'm saying, well damn, where's these snakes? Cause they'll kick ass. Why not just get here? But you know, I understand it's that whole thing that they trying to divorce themselves from, you know, all the previous itinerations of Marvel. So. And now that they've got the, they're introducing the multiverse with WandaVision and
Fan Expectations vs. Reality in WandaVision
00:06:10
Speaker
Dr. Strange and possibly Spider-Man, then,
00:06:13
Speaker
Maybe we could see Wesley Snipes reprise the role at some point. I would buy, you know, like I said, if I had my way, yeah, they would do the thing with his daughter taking over being Blade and he would, you know, take over being Whistler essentially. And that's something I would like to see myself, but hey, I don't learn Marvel. They don't ask my opinion. So, hey.
00:06:39
Speaker
Something else new is because of WandaVision, a lot of people are developing a newfound affection for Age of Ultron. Because you remember when it came out, a lot of mixed reaction to it. And a lot of people were kind of cold on it. And a lot of people still were kind of down on the movie as being one of the worst of the MCU outings, just like the same reception that the Dark World got.
00:07:05
Speaker
And I really never understood that because actually, you know, well, I don't know, it's just me. To me, Age of Ultron feels the most like an Avengers comic book. I loved Age of Ultron, yes. You know, I watch it and it's like the same feeling I have like when I used to go and get one of those 64 page Avengers specials. Yeah, that's what, yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, I totally dug Age of Ultron, so I'm glad that it's getting kind of this renewed affection. And the same thing happened with the Dark World after Endgame came out, because they had that whole sequence set on Asgard during Endgame. And after that movie came out, a lot of people were like, hey, you know, Dark World's actually not so bad.
00:07:44
Speaker
It's not. I don't understand what people don't like about the dark world. And also, I was going to suggest because we got another week until we get, of course, the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Another few weeks, actually. Yeah, another few weeks. So I was going to suggest for next week, since WandaVision is ending this week, we do Age of Ultron next week.
00:08:09
Speaker
Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That'll work out. This week is the last episode, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Ray Fisher's Accusations Against Warner Brothers
00:08:16
Speaker
So that's a pretty good idea. Yeah. I thought it'd be a good time for us to revisit, you know, age of Ultron. Yeah. I love that idea. I love age of Ultron. So I'm talking about that. I love the hell out of age. I really didn't understand the backlash that people
00:08:31
Speaker
had for it, a lot of people didn't like it, and I really didn't understand why. Yeah, I mean, I know, and we'll talk about this more when we talk about Age of Ultron next week, but I know there was the whole thing about the Black Widow stuff in there, and which I feel was more misinterpreted and just kind of sloppily constructed as opposed to like, as bad as everybody says it was. Yeah, yeah, I, like I said, I couldn't see it myself, but
00:09:00
Speaker
You know what, long ago I made up my mind that I think what a lot of people happens is that, and I see it happen with WandaVision. People are more pissed off about WandaVision because they come up with these theories and then they watch the episode and the theory's all wrong.
00:09:21
Speaker
It's exactly what I was about to say. Exactly what I was about to say. Well, go ahead and say it then, bro. Go ahead and say it. Well, I remember seeing all this stuff about the aerospace engineer, right? In what division? Monica's friend who's going to make her this. Everyone's like, oh, it's Rhodey. Or, oh, it's Reed Richards. Or, oh, it's whoever, whoever, whoever. And it comes in and it's just like nobody. Yeah. And everybody's like, oh, well, the real aerospace engineer is going to be coming in later, right?
00:09:49
Speaker
People are more pissed because it's not what they expected as opposed to just enjoying what it is. I don't understand why people just can't sit back and watch.
00:10:00
Speaker
You know, it's like watching movies with my wife. I'm watching movies with my wife, for instance. And she'll be asking me questions. Well, why is he doing that? And why is he doing that? And do you think he's going to do this? And I said, see, my wife is just like a MCU fan. You know, she's trying to get ahead of the plot and figure it out instead of just sitting back and watching it.
00:10:20
Speaker
I mean, these people are doing the work for you, you don't have to sit there and try to figure but you know yeah and and I really think that that's the problem with a lot of people is that they come up with these theories. And that's what they're more interested in seeing their theories prove right, then, and then of course when their theories.
00:10:38
Speaker
dope pan out. Oh, well, that was a shit episode. Oh, this is a horrible show. This is a terrible. Right, right. Like I remember there were there were theories when we saw the Age of Ultron trailers that like maybe time travel was going to be involved and Steve Rogers was going to be going because there's the scene when he's in the castle. Everyone's like, oh, maybe that's him going back to World War Two or or something like that. And when it didn't happen, everyone's getting pissed off. It just just because it didn't happen the way you expected it to be doesn't make it bad.
00:11:06
Speaker
You and I are a real breed, my friend, and we are just content to just sit and watch the story. We know something else I've noticed, too, is a lot of this, the fan theory stuff that I've read online, it really shows you that a lot of fans aren't writers and shouldn't be writers. No, no, they're not. No, they're not. They really are.
00:11:27
Speaker
Two other pieces of things to talk about. So there was a response
Reaction to 'Thunder Force' Trailer
00:11:32
Speaker
to Ray Fisher continuing the ongoing saga of Ray Fisher.
00:11:41
Speaker
So there was Catherine B. Forrest. So she was a former federal judge who was a third party hired by Warner Brothers to investigate Fisher's accusations. So she investigated and she looked into alleged misconduct. And one of the things that Fisher has said is that Walter Hamada kept trying to interfere with the investigation. And she came out and she says, no, Hamada did not interfere with the investigation.
00:12:09
Speaker
You know, her exact words, I am disappointed by continued public statements made suggesting that Walter Hamada in any way interfered with the Justice League investigation. He did not. I interviewed him extensively on more than one occasion and specifically interviewed him concerning his very limited interaction with Mr. Fisher. I found Mr. Hamada credible and forthcoming. I concluded that he did nothing that impeded or interfered with the investigation. To the contrary, the information he provided was useful and advanced the investigation.
00:12:38
Speaker
So that was her. And then Ray Fisher came out with another statement in response. And this is the first time he's been a little bit more specific about some of the accusations, specifically Toby Emmerich, Jeff Johns, and John Berg. And so he was told about, these were apparently conversations that they had. So,
00:13:05
Speaker
prior to the Justice League reshoots, racially discriminatory conversations were had and entertained on multiple occasions by Warner Brothers Pictures executives. Had I been aware of those conversations in real time, I would have addressed them in real time. However, it wasn't until the summer of 2020 that individuals who were in those meetings felt comfortable sharing with me what they had witnessed firsthand.
00:13:28
Speaker
Um, so here's, when it comes to matters involving race, I always try to give the benefit of the doubt to those who may be ignorant of their own biases. But when you have studio executives, particularly Jeff John saying we can't have an angry black man at the center of the movie. And then those executives use their power to reduce and remove all black people from the movie. They are no longer entitled to any benefit associated with doubt.
00:13:52
Speaker
Toby, Jeff, and John were not ignorant of their biases. They understood full well the racist rhetoric they chose to entertain in those meetings was offensive, discriminatory, and unacceptable. Furthermore, they dared not speak those things to me nor any other black person associated with the film. Instead, they chose the cowardly route of gaslighting, complete with extremely problematic requests such as asking me to play cyborg like Quasimodo and forcing a scene to be re-shot so they could highlight the existence of cyborg's penis. Unfortunately, those were just some of the issues.
00:14:21
Speaker
continues going on and says the truth will continue to reveal itself. But he doesn't go any further. He doesn't really mention anything about Josh Whedon here. And so that's what we've gotten so far. So what do you think?
00:14:41
Speaker
Like anything, I am no longer concerned with Ray Fisher or whatever. Seriously, I'm no longer concerned with him, but whatever it is that he's trying to prove, well, you know what, if you got legitimate charges of complaints or whatever to make, go ahead and make them. Don't be driven and drab it every couple of days and you got to, you know, I mean, if there's,
00:15:01
Speaker
If you have something legitimate that you have to say, call press conference and go ahead and state it and lay it out there for everybody to see so it can be investigated properly instead of just dragging this thing on. Because he's already burned his bridges, right? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, he's burned his bridges so I don't understand why he keeps dragging this out.
00:15:24
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe he's hoping for some sort of documentary series deal or some other studio to come in and be like, we're gonna put him under contract or something. I don't know. Maybe it's something like that. Or maybe he thinks that they're gonna pay him off.
00:15:42
Speaker
you know to go away because see now my thinking is that with all of the press about uh you know Justice League now he figured they wouldn't want any negative you know press associated yeah with the movie but let's but let's face it unless
00:16:04
Speaker
The only thing that could derail the popularity of this movie is this Zack Snyder showed up butt naked in Times Square. Screwing the goat.
00:16:18
Speaker
And even then, I don't think that that would have any. Yeah, I'm not so sure either. It would take something on the level of that. You know, we'd have to be like, you know, like all of the money that, okay, like all the money that Justice League made was funneled into a child pornography ring. You know, it would take something on that level. Yeah, yeah. To derail the popularity and anticipation for this movie.
00:16:42
Speaker
And also, well, also the two things I notice here, first off, these are secondhand accusations, right? He wasn't even in those meetings, right? This is stuff he heard from some other people. Right. That he's then relaying. So my question is, why aren't those people coming forward about it if it was so, so god awful. But, but second thing too is,
00:17:05
Speaker
Like it's not like, it's not like, you know, Jeff Johns is going around saying N word this, N word that, right? I mean, he made some statements that were, you know, probably insensitive and, but were probably rooted in actual studio concerns, like, you know, having the angry black men stereotype in the movie. And I do remember there was a whole kerfuffle a few years ago about,
00:17:34
Speaker
about the cyborg character in general in the comic books and how when they had done an ongoing series, I think they had made a point specifically to restore some of his biology because it was this whole idea of like him losing parts of his body like his penis and all that was a type was a kind of demasculining of black men is kind of like the charge I heard in some
00:17:57
Speaker
paper or article I'd read at the time. So it seemed like that seemed like a specific concern that Johns was concerned about addressing, which while ham-fisted doesn't seem as maliciously racist as Ray Fisher was trying to paint all this. First of all, I've never been able to understand why they are so helping or shoehorning
00:18:19
Speaker
Cyborg into the Justice League anyway, because to me, anytime I think of Cyborg, it's, you know, the Titans. Yes. You know, and, and, and now that I've seen him in Doom Patrol, I can say, okay. Yeah. But you know what? Cyborg to me seems more of a fit for Doom Patrol anyway, after the Justice League.
00:18:37
Speaker
You know, and the guy who was playing Cyborg isn't doing patrol. He's terrific. Oh, he's amazing. Yeah. He's fantastic. Now, if you got him and put him in the Justice League movie, yeah, okay. But I've never, because, yeah, even right from the start when they said Cyborg, I said, well, that's a weird, you know, if instead of Cyborg get a bit black lightning, okay, I could have understood that, you know.
00:19:03
Speaker
Because Black Lightning's been around longer. And just to mention the actor's name on Doom Patrol, it's Jovian Wade. Yeah. And he's great aside. I love him in Doom Patrol. Yeah, you know, there are other
00:19:17
Speaker
Black characters that they could have put into Justice League except for Cyborg. The only reason why I figured that they put him in there was, of course, you got the mother box connection to Apocalypse. So I said, OK, well, I'm willing to go with that. But to me, he always was our choice. Yeah, yeah. And that that's something that comes out of the new 52 because Jeff Johns brought him into the new 52 and had him replace
00:19:39
Speaker
Martian Manhunter when they tried to reboot the DC Universe. And yeah, I've never been, when they announced that I was always kind of surprised. I'm like, why is Cyborg in the Justice League? And also I was kind of annoyed because Martian Manhunter is probably my favorite Justice League character.
00:20:00
Speaker
Martian Manhunter has been in just about every incarnation of the Justice League. So I mean, he's like the guy. He's like Mr. Justice League. Exactly, yeah. More than any other character, it's the Martian Manhunter. So yeah, I would have much preferred to see him in the movie. But I can understand why they probably wouldn't want to hit him in there because they say, well,
00:20:26
Speaker
Basically, he's got the same powers as Superman. Yeah, yeah. So I could see why they would want a character that has different powers visually. Yeah, yeah. It's a different visual thing. A character that looks like you. But hey, like I keep saying, we don't make these movies. They don't ask us our opinion.
00:20:47
Speaker
And one more piece of news that came out is just before we started recording, I saw there's a trailer for a new superhero movie called Thunder Force with Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer. Yeah, I haven't watched the trailer yet, but I know what you're talking about. I just watched the trailer before we started and I posted in our Superhero Cinephiles group. It looks a lot of fun. It looks like Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Butler are really having a good time.
00:21:12
Speaker
I'm sure it is. I mean, a lot of people, for whatever reason, don't like Melissa McCarthy. Yeah. I think she's, I think she's, and know what? My wife didn't like her. And I said, okay, well, you know what you do? And I pulled up spy. I said, sit down and watch spy. She watched spy. She said, yeah, you know what? I got to admit that was good. She was good. Yeah. I always, you know, is, I don't know. There are just certain
00:21:37
Speaker
people that everybody seems to dislike. And then when I asked them, well, why don't you like, they can't tell me, well, I just don't like her. Yeah. Listen McCarthy, she's one of those. Yeah. And so it looks a lot of fun. And also Jason Bateman looks like he's got a cameo in it as well. And Bobby Cannavale plays the villain in it. So it looks like it'll be fun. It's coming out on Netflix, April 9th.
00:22:05
Speaker
Now this last movie that she was in, that was a terrible movie. The one with the guy, what's his name? The one who swears that he's so talented. James Corden. Oh, okay. I didn't see that one. Don't watch it. It's a movie where James Corden is the artificial intelligence that wants to take over the world. Oh, super intelligence?
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Terrible move. Yeah. I didn't even, I never even heard that. Don't waste your time. Okay. Yeah. James Corden. I never really got the kind of, you know, popularity that he has. I, yeah. James Corden, mind you, I don't dislike the guy, but I just don't get why he's so popular. Yeah. Yeah. Same here.
00:22:49
Speaker
You know, it seems to me that he's one of these people that thinks he's more talented than he actually is. And I think what it is is that it's just that enthusiasm and willingness to please the audience. I think that that's what, you know, comes across. Right. Right. You know, more than anything else. See me.
00:23:08
Speaker
because he took over the show when uh wasn't named left Craig Ferguson and once Craig Ferguson left I that was it yeah I remember like I'd always seen a few episodes but I'd seen some of Craig Ferguson's stand up and I always thought he was pretty funny.
00:23:21
Speaker
That was my guy. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he, cause he had that snarky, I don't give a shit. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas that eagerness to please thing that I don't respond to that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not that I wish, like I said, not that I wish him ill. I don't have nothing against him. I saw him in cats and he was terrible at that one too. But then that movie was terrible. I was going to say, yeah. Oh my God. That was the one move.
00:23:49
Speaker
I was watching Cats here and I watched it like two o'clock in the morning. I couldn't sleep. And I said, well, let me watch this shit. So help me. I felt like I was on a low level acid trick watching that movie. That's how surreal it was. There was an article that someone had wrote, Ed, it was just about the experience of watching Cats. I'll try to find it and I'll try to send it to you. But it had me in stitches.
00:24:16
Speaker
Oh my God. That's it. And just seeing Rebel Wilson of all people prancing around in cat. I can't describe, I really, I can't describe Judy Dench. I mean, there are sites in this movie that should never be seen. Oh my God. It gets worse. There was a, you know, there was a butthole cut of cats.
00:24:42
Speaker
What's a bubble cut? Butthole cut. Oh, butthole, ooh. Do I really wanna know? No, you don't, but you could just Google catch butthole cut and you'll- No, that's all right. There's behind it. That is cool. You know what? It's one of those movies that you watch it. And when you get to the end of it, you say to yourself, who did they make this movie for?
00:25:12
Speaker
Who did they think this movie was going to appeal to? It's a bizarre movie. It's one of those movies, let me say this real quick. If they had made it back in the 1970s, it would have been like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It would have ran for years as a midnight movie. Or like the room. Right, yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah. It's exactly that type of move. Okay. I also saw the, I'm not sure if you're up on TV watching, but they had the second episode of Superman and Lois came out and also the premiere of the seventh season of The Flash.
Superman & Lois and The Flash Updates
00:25:57
Speaker
I haven't watched it yet. I will most likely watch it after we're done. It's good. I really, and you know, I saw people complaining that there wasn't enough action in the first episode. And I think we kind of talked about that really briefly, but we get some more action in this episode.
00:26:11
Speaker
And we get some more hints into who Captain Luther is and what his whole deal is. We see Morgan Edge finally makes an appearance. And yeah, I'm enjoying it. I still think the guy who's playing Lana's husband, I still think Lana's husband's a dick. They still aren't doing anything to really improve my opinion of that guy. But it's good. It's nice to see the characters interacting more and just seeing the series progress.
00:26:41
Speaker
just seeing like the different conflicts that develop. Like, you know, the inter-family conflicts and also with the pressures of being Superman and all that on his relationship with Lois's dad and all that kind of stuff. So all of this is playing through. It's really enjoyable. I'm really excited to see more of it. Like most of the CW shows, I've just kind of gotten the habit of waiting until it comes to streaming. But this is one that I'm probably gonna fire up the CW app for every week.
00:27:10
Speaker
Yeah, that, matter of fact, that's what I used to do. I used to wait until like the season of Flash was over, the season of Supergirl was over, and then we'd go to Netflix, and then I would like just binge the whole season. Yeah. You know, like in two or three days. But yeah, but Superman, I'm, yeah, that's the one, like the next day I go right to the CW app and I watch it, you know.
00:27:33
Speaker
And it comes at the perfect time for me because I finished, because it comes out for me like on Wednesday here. So Wednesday night I get home from work and I'm just, you know, just pour myself a drink and just fire up the CW app and just watch Superman and Lois. That's my Wednesday night routine now. Cool. Cool. Good one.
00:27:50
Speaker
Okay, now speaking of Superman, that's as good of a transition as we're going to get into today's movie. So we go from talking about a good Superman to talking about a not so good one. And that's when we're talking about Batman v Superman, the ultimate cut. The ultimate edition, which if you don't have it, it's on HBO Max. And as always,
00:28:13
Speaker
We hardly endorsed that if you have not get it and if you can afford it, of course, I'm not asking anybody to go broke, but if you can, it's well worth the money. Yeah.
Critique of Batman V Superman's Plot
00:28:23
Speaker
Now you hadn't seen the ultimate cut before, the ultimate edition before. No, I had. I had seen the regular plain old version.
00:28:32
Speaker
I watched it, I watched it this morning. Matter of fact, I watched it like, cause the damn thing is like three and a half hours long. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my understanding is this is like 30 minutes is added to the original movie. So I watched it like nine, 10 o'clock this morning. And
00:28:52
Speaker
Well, you tell me what you think first and then I'll go. So everyone talked about how the Ultimate Edition, the whole reason I even bothered with the Ultimate, because someone asked me, Adam Garcia asked me online, he's like, why have you watched this movie more than once? I saw that. He said, why are you watching this again? Because I did see it in the theaters when it came out. And me too. Yeah, I saw the theaters when, yeah. And I immediately regretted it after once the credits rolled. And then,
00:29:19
Speaker
When it came out on video, you know, my then wife at the time, my first wife, she was curious to watch it. So we had watched, we had gone through a kind of like a binge. We'd watched like all the Batman movies. We'd watched all the Superman movies. And then we got to Batman V Superman. After it was over, I asked her like, what'd you think? And she's like, I don't understand why they're fighting. And I'm like, nobody does. It doesn't make any sense. Nobody, yeah. Yeah, that's done. Yeah, nobody. You know what? Patricia asked me the same thing.
00:29:46
Speaker
See it in the theater. She said, I still don't get why they were fighting. And then, yeah, well, neither did I. Yeah, yeah. But I'd seen it. I saw it in theater. And then I think I saw it like on HBO or something like that, a couple of months. I watched it again. And I watched it. Okay, here's the thing. Watching it today,
00:30:12
Speaker
I could watch it with a completely different mindset because unlike when I saw it the first time in the theater, I didn't know what to expect. But now this time I knew what I was getting. So I was able to look at it, I think with a little bit more objectivity than I did. Because the first time I saw it, I came out of the theater. I said, well, that was a piece of shit.
00:30:35
Speaker
But that was more for disappointment than anything because I'm watching it and I saw what I perceived to be a lot of missed opportunities. It seems like this was a movie that for everything it got right, it immediately turned around and said, okay, well, let's screw this up.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah, I had a low opinion. I had low expectations for this movie before I saw it in the theater just because of how terrible Man of Steel was. And so going into it, my expectations were already pretty low and somehow the movie couldn't even meet that very low bar. And it was even worse than I expected. I mean, I even defended, I remember the Ben Affleck was a casting choice that was cursed.
00:31:22
Speaker
cursed as often as the day is long, right? Everybody was so up in arms about Ben Affleck playing Batman. At the time I'm like, you know what? I've seen Ben Affleck in some good stuff. I think we, I want to, I want to see what he does with Batman. I mean, I'm not completely sold on the idea, but I'm not against it. And it was Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. I defended that one because I had seen him in social network. I know he's a good actor. I'm like, you know, if he plays the character,
00:31:46
Speaker
you know, similar to how he played Mark Zuckerberg in social network, it might be an interesting take on on Lex Luthor, and especially because they released photos of him with the shaved head. And I'm like, well, actually, he looks pretty menacing like that. But okay.
00:32:01
Speaker
So I was half right. Ben Affleck was really good and I was right to defend him. I was not right to defend Jesse Eisenberg. Matter of fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that Ben Affleck is the best thing, and Ben Affleck is the best thing in the movie. Him, Jeremy Irons, Gal Gadot.
00:32:17
Speaker
They're the best things in the movie, really. Because you know what? Because this actually is a Batman movie. Yeah, yeah. Superman is a supporting character in the movie, actually. The movie is about Bruce Wayne dealing with
00:32:33
Speaker
being re-traumatized all over again. In the beginning, when he goes to Metropolis, and Superman's fighting with General Zod, and they're tearing up the city, and there's shit falling all over the place, and things are exploding, and he's watching people being crushed. And I get what Zack Snyder was trying to do with the 9-11 imagery, but I think he pushed it a little bit too far. Oh, yeah, yeah. He did. I think he went too far with that, because it was too real.
00:33:01
Speaker
It was there, and for those of you who don't know, I live in New York, I live in Brooklyn, so I would, yeah, I vividly remember 9-11. I remember walking about five o'clock that same day, walking out and seeing tanks. Well, not tanks, but like half tracks, military vehicles, going to Flatbush Avenue, and they had,
00:33:25
Speaker
on Atlantic Avenue, there's like a street with all kinds of Arab shops and stores and stuff like that. There was military all over there. Jesus. Had a corridor, yeah. So the 9-11 imagery, I think he pushed that a little bit too far. I could have done with a little, I didn't need for it to be that real.
00:33:45
Speaker
And also what I expected is that the whole idea behind Batman being against Superman is what I thought it would be the fact that Superman's actions had resulted in Metropolis being destroyed. And Batman would have been more like, look, you can't do it this way. You have to be a better... But then you watch this movie and you're like, Batman's just as much of a bastard as Superman is. His little concern for collateral damage as Superman does. Yeah. I mean, like I said,
00:34:15
Speaker
This whole movie is about him, because when he comes to Metropolis and sees all that, Bruce Wayne is re-traumatized all over again. And that's what the movie he's dealing with. Well, like you said, you made a statement sometime, and I've attributed it to you, because I'm pretty sure you said this, because you're a pretty perceptive guy, that this is a movie that would have been over with in 30 minutes if people just talk to each other. Yeah, I don't think I said that, but I definitely agree with that. Yeah. Like you said, you know,
00:34:45
Speaker
Bruce Wayne, you know, he goes to him and talks to him and say, listen, you can't go around doing that shit like this. He'd tear up the city and stuff like that. There's like, I would say a good six, six distinctive parts in this movie where the people would just talk to each other. The movie would be over. Yeah. Yeah. And we pretty much have Alfred making that argument throughout the whole movie, right?
00:35:09
Speaker
I mean, for all the talking that goes on in this movie, nobody actually says a damn thing to each other. No, no. That's what I'm saying. They're all talking at each other and past each other. Except for Alfred and Bruce. Well, even so, I think Bruce isn't really having any of it. So Alfred's still just kind of like talking past Bruce because Bruce ain't listening. Well, Alfred is talking Bruce ain't listening. Yeah, yeah. You know, his whole thing is, well, kill Superman. Wait, what?
00:35:40
Speaker
How do we jump to kill Superman so quickly? Shouldn't we try, you know, inviting him for lunch? So I saw all the, when the ultimate edition came out, everyone's like, oh, it's so much better, right? It makes the story, it makes for such a better movie. And I watched it hoping, you know, some vague hope that maybe it would make the movie a little bit better. It makes the movie more complete, but it doesn't make the movie better is what I felt.
00:36:08
Speaker
Like this is a movie that starts off with about 20 people in the desert. We got about like 20 people get slaughtered, bodies get incinerated. And that pretty much sets the tone for the whole movie because this movie is about darkness, depression and death. Well, I mean so much so that they killed Jimmy Olsen, right? First they make Jimmy Olsen the CIA assassin posing as a photographer.
00:36:36
Speaker
And then they have KGBs, you know, shoot them in the fucking head.
00:36:41
Speaker
Well, you know, the theory that I've heard is that that wasn't the real Jimmy Olsen. It was a CIA agent just using his identity to you because Jimmy Olsen is a well-known, you know, photographer. So they, so this was a CIA agent that appropriated his identity to, you know, get closer, which is a theory I'm going with because I would really just hate to think that Zach's not adjusted off Jimmy Olsen like that different, no good goddamn reason.
00:37:10
Speaker
No, that is actually what he did like I that would be an interesting theory but Zack Snyder is pretty much, you know, dismiss that theory himself. Oh really. Okay, so that's, so that's supposed to be real. Oh man, that sucks. So I'm bringing up the, the articles. This was from an article back in.
00:37:38
Speaker
Cause that was a theory I had always heard. And it would explain why he has introduced himself to Lois Lane. Yeah. He just said like, he just, you know, their role, his Jimmy's purpose in Batman V suit was just to die. Well, see, that's no, well, see, that's not a good reason because then it could have been, cause see now you just, okay. So now you're just telling me you did it for the shock value. Yeah, basically.
00:38:05
Speaker
You know, which, you know, you don't do that to Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy Olsen is just as much a part of the Superman mythos as Superman himself, his parents, Lois Lane, crypto, you know, Jimmy Olsen. Here's what he said back in. So here's what he said. He said, I thought if it were Jesse, he goes out and he goes, I'm Jimmy Olsen. You'd be like, oh my God, we're going to have Jimmy Olsen in the whole movie, right? And then if he got shot, you'd just be like, what? You can't do that.
00:38:33
Speaker
And the bigger, and the article asks, you know, well, if you're just gonna, why bring in Jimmy Olsen if you're just going to kill him off? And here's what Snyder said. Exactly, yeah. We just did it as this little aside because we had been tracking where we thought the movies were gonna go and we don't have room for Jimmy Olsen, our big pantheon of characters, but we can have fun with him, right? So Zack Snyder's idea of having fun with Jimmy Olsen is, you know, putting a bullet in his head. Putting a bullet in his head, yeah. Okay, well.
00:39:00
Speaker
You know what, I'm still gonna believe that that wasn't the real Jimmy Olsen. I don't care what he said. It makes it easier for me to swallow if I can believe that that wasn't the real Jimmy Olsen.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, that, you know, so that whole opening scene in the desert kind of sets the tone for, and of course, the destruction of metropolis, which we got to see again, you know, and the 9-11 image, that pretty much to me sets the tone for the whole movie, which as I said, now that I've seen already, I can watch it, because this is not a fun movie. No. Well, we also get the, it's also letting us know right from the jump that it's going to be Frank Miller pornography.
00:39:39
Speaker
Right, because we get we get the the scene at the beginning with the parents dying and the the pearls falling in slow motion and all that. Yeah, it's just like the just like the total.
00:39:51
Speaker
you know, waking all over Frank Miller's comics. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I mean, Ben Affleck himself, he's in the Frank Miller Batsuit. Yeah, yeah. It's in the dark that returned to Batsuit. Pretty much, you know, which I have to say, he looks damn good in him. Well, that's one thing that I can never fault Snyder for is the costumes in these movies, in Man of Steel and in Batman V Superman, they look amazing. Maybe a little bit too darkly lit, but the designs are really good.
00:40:20
Speaker
And we got to give Zach some out of credit that he actually, instead of having Batman in this armored suit all the time, it's a cloth costume.
Action Sequences in Batman V Superman
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, it's a kind of armor, but it's a much more flexible type of armor. So we can actually see a move around. Right. We actually see a move like what you and I had a bunch of voted. The best live action Batman fight sequence in film history in the warehouse. Yes, yeah.
00:40:49
Speaker
Now, I mean, you look at that and you say, holy shit, why can't they do that at every Batman movie? Yeah, yeah. It plays out like one of the fight scenes in the Arkham games. Yeah. I mean, I remind that thing twice a watch. Yeah, that was a really, and that's one of the things that Snyder is really good at directing action. He knows how to direct an action scene. He knows how to frame it well. He knows how to choreograph it well. All of that, no complaints from me at all. But it's when we get to the other stuff, that's when we have issues.
00:41:18
Speaker
No, and so going back to that first thing also.
00:41:22
Speaker
Is it just me or is Lois kind of needlessly a bitch in this scene when she meets fake Jimmy Olsen? Everybody's needlessly. Everybody's needlessly. Because she's like... Look at Perry White. I said damn, what is your problem, dude? I'll get to Perry White in a minute because it's another one I got phones to pick with. But she comes in and she's talking about this other photographer. She's like, you know what I liked about him? And he's like, what's that? She's like, he was quiet.
00:41:49
Speaker
And I'm like, what the fuck? Jesus, lady. I mean, you don't introduce, hey, how you doing? Nice working with you and everything like that. She said, yeah, you know, oh, you know what I liked about him? Oh, he was quiet. I said, wow. But you know what? Amy Adams, as good an actress as she is, her lowest lane is entirely unmemorable. She's not as bad as Kate Bosworth, which to me is the worst lowest lane.
00:42:19
Speaker
It's like she, there's nothing that stands out about her Lois Lane. Yeah. And I really don't feel that she and Henry Cavill have much chemistry. I really don't. I had a hard time that stupid scene in the bathtub. Oh God. Yeah, that was ridiculous. You know, folks, let me tell you two things that you will see in movies that actually in real life is impossible to do.
00:42:48
Speaker
I will be a little personally, yeah, I did myself. You cannot make love in a bathtub and you cannot make love on a staircase. Not a bathtub that size at least. Yeah. Not really in any bath. You need like a hot tub really, you know, but the bathtub that, no, I mean, you know, that was,
00:43:06
Speaker
That was a silly scene that was trying to, I don't know, trying to break the mood, trying to break the tension, but it just comes up as being something from a sitcom. Yeah, yeah. Especially because they're in the midst of this serious conversation about, look, everybody thinks you've killed a whole bunch of people. And now you're just going to say, oh, forget it. Let's have bathtub sex.
00:43:28
Speaker
Well, every single conversation everybody has in this movie is serious. Nobody takes a minute, except for Perry White, the one scene where he's having a staff meeting and Clark is trying to sell him on the idea of doing a series of stories about Batman.
00:43:47
Speaker
And Perry says, oh, crime waiving Gotham. In other news, water is wet, you know, that's about the closest we come to humor. Yeah, in this movie, really. Yeah. And so yeah, that's a good transition to talking about Perry White because
00:44:03
Speaker
My God, he's a fucking dick in this movie. Oh my God. He's just like, you know, I mean, Perry White is supposed to be gruff. Yeah. And I think that what it is is that they would, because he has a conversation with Clark and I think that what they were trying to get across that Perry feels a lot of frustration because print media or print journalism is dying and he's had to
00:44:29
Speaker
you know, make compromises. I think that's what they were trying to go for, but it didn't come across very well. Like you said, it just comes across as making Perry White like an unlikable dick. Well, yeah, and also like, I don't think Zack Snyder understands how newspapers work because you don't just take a reporter from One Beat and just suddenly say like, oh, you're gonna go cover sports now.
00:44:57
Speaker
Yeah, Clark has a crime report. What's he doing? What's he telling all you? You have sports reporters for them to cover sports. You just don't tell Clark Kent, you know, well, you're going to go cover the sport. Yeah. And it's not it's.
00:45:11
Speaker
And Clark quite rightly says, well, screw you. No, I want to go investigate the bat in hand. He also sends him on the, like in that case, he got the invitations for Clark Kent, so I understood that. But there is no story reason whatsoever for Perry White to keep hammering Clark about how come you haven't wrote about the football game yet.
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's like the only thing he's worried about through the whole movie. That clock won't write this story about this goddamn football game. And quite frankly, he got on her nerve after a while. Why don't you go cover the football game then? And just like the whole thing where the end too, when she goes up to, she needs to get to Gotham and she's like, I need the chopper. He's like, I'm not giving you the chopper for a story. And she's like, Perry, it's not for a story. He's like, oh, well, okay then go.
00:46:00
Speaker
So let me get this straight. The helicopter that the Daily Planet has is not to be used for going on stories. But if you've got some personal business that you can't give any reason for why you need this helicopter for. Go ahead. Yeah, it's fine. Go ahead and take it. You're hearing the keys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hear the keys. Fine. Yeah. It makes no sense at all.
00:46:22
Speaker
No sense at all. Yeah. And just like his whole, you know, like the whole thing where he's like the American consciousness died with Bobby Martin and John. It's like, yeah, I get what you're trying to say there, but the whole purpose of Perry White is that he's gruff, but he wants to make the world a better place. He wants to use the news to do that. And Clark is doing that and Perry White is saying, no, fuck you. Basically, yeah, pretty much.
00:46:47
Speaker
Pretty much it's, and Lars Fishburne does the best he can. And I understand that he's got to work with what he's given with, but just because he's the one with Fishburne, he deserves better. And the Perry White, I know. Everyone in this movie deserves better than what they're giving, right? Like this is a movie that is so filled with good actors being forced to read a terrible script. Yeah, yeah.
00:47:17
Speaker
because the script is not about anything. Once you really get down to it, it really isn't about anything. It's a mishmash of half a dozen different plots. You know, we've got the death of Superman, we've got doomsday. We've got- Dark Knight Returns. Dark Knight Returns, we've got to introduce Wonder Woman. We've got, you know, there's half a dozen different
00:47:46
Speaker
different storylines and plots taken from different DC Comics and turned into this Frankensteinian. There's some injustice stuff thrown in there as well. There's some injustice stuff, you know, from the video game series. Yeah, yeah.
00:48:01
Speaker
So, like I said, it's all these different stories that are totally unrelated mine. And just like Dr. Frankenstein stitched together a monster out of it, that's what Zack Snyder did. He took half a dozen different plots and stitched them together into this unholy creation. Well, and the other thing is one of the big complaints, one of the big rebuttals everybody had when, because one of my biggest issues with Man of Steel was the fact that he kills Zod at the end.
00:48:30
Speaker
And you always have the defenders coming out and saying, well, he killed Zod in the comic books. He killed Zod in Superman II. And well, there was nothing else he could do. And so let me just get this out of the way first off. So first off,
00:48:45
Speaker
comic books, right? John Byrne did this story in the 80s where he had General Zod and the other Krypton supervillains come in. It was like not from the real Krypton, they were from a pocket universe or something because John Burton was obsessed with the idea that Superman can be the only Kryptonian
00:49:04
Speaker
Right. So he brought them in. He had to work through this really bizarre kind of explanation for how they exist in the first place. And they end up getting rendered powerless. And Superman is worried that they pose a threat that he comes and he exposes them to a lethal amount of kryptonite and kills them.
00:49:22
Speaker
Now, when people cite that story, I think they're forgetting the point that a lot of Superman fans fucking hate that story because of what he does in that. And Superman writer, and I think that was John Byrne's last story on the book.
00:49:37
Speaker
And after that story, like Superman writers spent like the next 20 years twisting themselves in knots to try and justify and explain that story. Like there was a time when he went off into exile in space and all this kind of stuff. Another issue where, in Justice Morrison's JLA,
00:49:58
Speaker
Morpheus, the Sandman comes in. He could, or I think, no, not Morpheus. I think it was Hal Jordan confronts Superman about it. And Superman says, look, that is something that I was wrong. I should never have done that. And it's something that haunts me every single day of my life. Like they made a good effort to say like, this is not who Superman is. This was a mistake. This was a bad storytelling choice. Right. And
00:50:21
Speaker
So when people say, well, he did that in the comics, it's like also saying, well, yeah, Tony Stark in the comics went crazy and was working for Kang and tried to kill the Avengers. Doesn't mean we want to see Robert Downey Jr. do that. And Marvel spent a whole lot of time retconning that away, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just because something happened in the comics doesn't mean it was a good thing.
00:50:42
Speaker
No, I'm not. As a matter of fact, if they never make mention of it again, there's reason why they never make mention of it. Yeah, yeah. And so the other one is Superman II, right? They say, oh, well, he kills Zod in Superman II. Well, no, he doesn't. And this has to do with the Salkins and Richard Lester coming in and butchering everything. But in Superman II, Dada originally had a scene filmed where you have the depowered Kryptonian villains being taken away by the cops.
00:51:11
Speaker
Right. So they did survive the intent. So people say, well, that wasn't Donner's choice, right? So to blame Donner for the fact that someone else fucked with his movie isn't fair. It's like blaming Zack Snyder for the problems with the research Josh Whedon did on Justice League.
00:51:30
Speaker
And I never had a problem with that. Like I said, you know, I always just so be sending back to the Phantom Zone when they fell down into the pit and everything like that. I figured he just sent it back to the Phantom Zone. Well, like we said, like in comic books, first rule comics is if you don't see a body, they're not dead. If you don't see a body, they're not dead. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that addressed those. And now the other one, he had no choice. I could possibly buy that. And Mark Wade did a really good job of
00:51:58
Speaker
of saying this when he reviewed this movie. And he said, look, if you're gonna have Superman kills Zod, if you feel that's the only way you have to go, I don't like it, but there's a better way to do it.
00:52:09
Speaker
And you should have him, you need to show him like Zod threatening humanity and like throwing, and like you have to push Superman to his limit trying to stop Zod from, you know, killing all these people. But instead Superman's causing just as much damage to everyone else. So it just, it doesn't have that same weight. You have to have Zod in, you have to have Zod with his hands around a child's neck. Yeah. Saying I'm going to kill this child.
00:52:39
Speaker
to push Superman to make that decision. You gotta do something like that. You can't just say, well, he didn't have any other choice. Well, he's Superman. He'll find another way. He'll always find another way. That's why he's Superman. It's just like we always say that Batman is always prepared. Superman will always find another way. Right, exactly. So there's a way to do it. And now even so, if you're gonna make that argument, okay, he killed Zod, he had no choice. I don't like it. I can live with it.
00:53:09
Speaker
But then you have this movie and the first time we see Superman in this movie, right? He breaks into this compound and he sees this warlord. He's got his gun on Lois's head.
00:53:21
Speaker
And what does he do? Superman slams him, a human guy, by the way, through two or three different- He straight up murders that cat. He straight up murders that cat. That guy is gonna be liquid by the end. Wait a minute. And here's the thing. Here's the thing about that scene, Perry. We're supposed to buy it because Lois Lane's life was in danger. Yeah. So we're supposed to, well, that's the woman he loved.
00:53:46
Speaker
What happened to Heat Vision? I know. Well, I mean, he's fast enough to slam the guy through two walls without any harm coming to Lois. Obviously, he's fast enough to disarm him. He could have been across the head, and that would have been a better scene, that he's just standing there, and then all of a sudden, he's standing there, and the guy's got his finger pointing to Lois' head, and Superman's back where he had spinning the gun around his finger.
00:54:09
Speaker
Or he just kind of looks at the gun, his eyes glow red, and then the gun becomes so hot, the guy drops it, right? That stuff happens all the time in the Superman stories. You and I have seen Superman do that a thousand times, where he makes the gun too hot. Yeah. Now, I can understand, maybe he didn't want to take a chance when the bullets exploding.
00:54:31
Speaker
I can see that, but still, he's fast enough to go across there and take the gun away from the guy. Yeah. And you know, he didn't have to go ahead. Because the first time I saw it in the theater, I said, well, damn, talk about overkill. Yeah. Yeah. I said, he just killed that. I said, Superman, just straight up killed this guy. He just, he fucking liquefied him. Like that guy, there's not going to be anything left of that guy by the time he's done. There's nothing left of him. Yeah.
00:54:56
Speaker
But like I said, the thing that's insulting to me is that I'm supposed to excuse it, because he did it because he was afraid for Lois is like, now bullshit get out. Yeah, yeah, miss me with that. Well, I mean that whole plot to is just so stupid that because Lex Luthor sends kg beast and his men out to this village to frame Superman.
00:55:20
Speaker
This move- First off, like, apparently Superman has nothing better to do with his time than just fly around and listen for when Lois Lane is in trouble. Apparently so, because there's like three times in this movie where Lois is in peril, and he just shows up. So he's like constantly got an ear cocked out for her, apparently. But yeah, going back to what you said about the plot, this movie has got enough plot for three movies. You know, there's way too much.
00:55:50
Speaker
And it's convoluted. Especially when it comes to Lex Luthor, we find out that he's been manipulating all of this kind of stuff. But in such a stupid way, I don't understand how nobody figures out what Luthor's doing because he fucking signs the murder. There's no reason. If you want to frame Superman, you don't do it with a gun.
00:56:14
Speaker
first off. And you know, I know we see the scene when they torch all the bodies, but still, I mean, does anyone going to, you know, do an autopsy on any of these bodies to see like what they really died of? Because it's very easy to torch bodies after they've already been shot. Especially when you're using a flamethrower because the chemical residue
00:56:37
Speaker
would still be on the body. Yeah, exactly. Whereas if Superman had used his heat vision, you would not have any chemical residue. You see what I mean when I say, if you just take five minutes to stop and apply common sense and logic to this plot, it falls apart. I mean, if you want to frame someone, right, why would you use the experimental
00:56:59
Speaker
ammo, ammunition, your company is the only one on earth that makes, and this ammo is not available, it's not on the market anywhere in the world. Why would you have your men use that weaponry? Like, why not just use regular bullets? Why don't you just put a sign on lexical? But okay, first of all, oh man. You remember when the Shining came out?
00:57:29
Speaker
No. Maybe you might not. You're younger. OK. When The Shining came out, Stephen King said that he didn't care for it too much. He said one of the reasons why he didn't care for it was Jack Nicholson's performance. Yeah. He said because the movie is about one man's slow descent into madness. He said Jack Nicholson, right from the first scene, looks like he can't wait to get his wife and child up to this hotel and extroverted his share. He said that throws the whole movie off. OK.
00:57:58
Speaker
Jesse Eisenberg has the same problem here because he's obviously batshit crazy right from the start. So it's like there's no suspense, you know. So me, I'm looking at these people doing business with him and I'm saying, can't these people see how nuts he is? Why are they doing business with him? Why is it so hard to connect the dots and say, well, yeah, Lex Luthor is behind it. Well, how do you figure? Well, he's crazy. Look at him.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a good transition talking about Eisenberg's Lex Luthor because I don't know anyone who would watch Jim Carrey in Batman Forever and think that's a good way to play Lex Luthor. Ooh, good observation. Yeah, you hit it right on the head, yeah. Yeah, because that's what he's doing. He's doing Jim Carrey. He is. And it's just, first off, it doesn't fit his style of acting at all.
00:58:51
Speaker
Right. Second, it doesn't fit the character of Lex Luthor at all. So I have no idea why they're doing it this way. And you know what? OK. And here's the problem with it. Because everybody else in the movie is so serious and stoic and dense and ponderous, his performance looks even more wacky. Yeah. Because he's doing all of this. And he's doing all of these ticks and twicks and everything.
00:59:21
Speaker
so that you get to the point where you said, well, shouldn't this guy be on mint? You know? Yeah. I mean, if you're going to be doing a Batman Superman movie and you're going to have Lex Luthor as the villain, and if you can only have one character in that movie be like the comic relief, zany character, it should not be fucking Lex Luthor. And don't get me wrong, folks. I love Jesse Eisenberg. He's a terrific actor. He is, yeah. I love everything he did.
00:59:51
Speaker
I don't blame him for, because, okay, I get what he's trying to do because he's trying to do something different from Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey. You know, he's trying to do his own Lex Luthor and you know, yeah, he's basing it or, you know, like you said, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and all of these other, you know, kind of tech guys that, you know, make a billion dollars when they're 19 years old and stuff like that.
01:00:19
Speaker
It's not a characterization I buy for Lex Luthor. And also he's too young. I think in 20 years, bring him back and let him play Lex Luthor. But right now for this movie, yeah, you know what? I'm watching him and all I can keep thinking is, damn, I wish this was Brian Cranston. Yeah, same here. Or you know, Michael Rosenbaum, because he's a young, he played a young Lex Luthor.
01:00:49
Speaker
but he was still felt like Lex Luthor. Yeah, and also he was working with other actors in his own age, you know, because they're all young. So you're kind of young Lex Luthor. He looks like a little kid, you know, playing with the grownups. Yeah, yeah. And there's that weird scene too when he's
01:01:11
Speaker
with that senator and he's like putting the Jolly Rancher in his mouth. I'm just like, what the hell are you doing? You see what I mean? Yeah. And the senator just standing there taking it instead of just smacking the shit out of him and say, you know something, the deal's off. Goodbye. I mean, even that actor, I think he was, I don't think that was in the script because that actor was like, I don't know what the hell's happening right now. Yeah, exactly. Either he's a very good actor or that was like,
01:01:41
Speaker
a total improvisation. Because he looks as a surprise is like, you know, but he goes along with it. He stays in character. I'll give him. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, all right. And then we also have Tal Okamoto is another, one of those actresses, actors in this movie who's just completely wasted. Right. I mean, she was great as Monaco in the Wolverine.
01:02:04
Speaker
And then you bring her in this movie and you have her play Mercy who's like a very memorable character from the animated series and she does nothing. She gets like one line. Well, let's close her up. Yeah. Let's get blown up. Yeah. And there's also this whole thing about, I don't know, Zack Snyder is so obsessed with this idea of Superman being an alien.
01:02:33
Speaker
Right. But the whole thing that he keeps forgetting is that Superman was raised on Earth. Yeah. But he's always acting like I don't understand humanity. What is human? Right. Yeah. Yeah. See.
01:02:52
Speaker
Okay, Superman doesn't feel like he's an alien. He doesn't feel like he's an alien because he knows nothing of Krypton. He only knows a Krypton of what he knows when he went to the fortress of solitude. And, you know, and the hologram of Jor-El said, okay, well, you're Kal-El, you come from plant Krypton, blah, blah, blah, blah, yeah.
01:03:17
Speaker
He accepts his heritage, but that's not who he is. He's Clark Kent from Smallville. And I will say one of the best lines in Man of Steel was when he tells the general at the end, he's like, I'm from Kansas General, I'm as American as they come. Yeah, yeah. So all of those issues about him being an alien, he never had those. He never had those because he was raised as a human being.
01:03:46
Speaker
You know, it's like if you take a child from one culture and raise them up in another culture, pretty much. He identifies with that culture. He doesn't identify with the one that is his native heritage. So to me, it's a very weird thing to have this
01:04:13
Speaker
Moreau's sad Superman going around moping, talking about how he feels isolated. He can't connect with humanity either. What, really? Yeah.
01:04:24
Speaker
And you do you raise on a farm. It don't get more human than that. Yeah, there's also that one thing I think when when Lois is telling him about the shields and she's like, this means something. And he says on my world, it did. Right. But Superman doesn't think of Krypton as his world. He's on his earth.
01:04:45
Speaker
He thinks of Krypton as the place he came from. He tells me, oh, well, I came from Krypton, but I was born on earth. He's used that line. He said that in comic books and probably in movies too. But he said that, yeah, he said, I came from Krypton. And just the fundamental misunderstanding. And also there's that other scene when Martha is telling him,
01:05:11
Speaker
you don't know this world, the damn thing, right? You can be their savior or be none of it. Like that's just, again, there's just, it's just such a corruption of the values that the Ken's actually taught him. I've always maintained that.
01:05:28
Speaker
Uh, the real heroes of the DC universe is Jonathan and Martha Kent. Yeah. Because of the way they raised up Superman. Yes. And in turn, he inspired so many other superheroes and, you know, he was like the template for what they should follow, you know, as far as the responsibilities that you have of putting these vast powers at the service of humanity. So my hats is always off to Jonathan and Martha Kent, because if they hadn't raised up Superman right,
01:05:58
Speaker
who knows where we were. However, I do not feel about that way about the Jonathan and Martha Kidd that we get in Man of Steel. And in this movie, cause there's one part in the movie where he like talks to the ghost of his father. That is such a bizarre scene. Like I have no idea what the hell is going on there. Where did that come from? That just like came out of nowhere. And like, I'm not sure is, is Clark hallucinating? Is he actually somehow encountered the ghost of his dad up in the Arctic somewhere?
01:06:29
Speaker
It's just so weird. And it's just like the story he tells is just like the most cynical fucking story ever, right? Cause he's like, Oh, well, yeah. You know, we had tried to save the cows and you know, my mother baked me a cake, called me a hero. And then we found out the water got backed up and their whole farm was drowned. It's like, so what you're saying that you shouldn't do anything. I mean, it's just like, I don't get the message here. Yeah. Well, yeah. No, you got the message. That was it. The message is do nothing.
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah. And, um, like I said, it's, I don't know. I just can't get with a sad morose Superman who feels he cannot connect with humanity. That's the whole thing. He does feel, he does connect with the whole of humanity. He feels like he's a citizen of the world. And I think that, and
01:07:22
Speaker
It's so weird watching this movie after seeing the premiere of Superman and Lois, because we get the way Superman is supposed to be. We get a Superman who is in touch with humanity, who understands that he is a human first and Kryptonian second. Right, yeah, exactly. And I'm glad you mentioned that, because yeah, I did have a weird feeling watching this.
01:07:45
Speaker
after seeing Superman and Lois. I did that really, because I say, you know something, this might as well be Earth One and Earth Two. You know, really, you know, as far as Superman goes. Batman, yeah, well Batman is the same dick he always is. And thank God for that, because I mean, some of, matter of fact, most of my favorite scenes in this movie involve Ben Affleck.
01:08:15
Speaker
There are some things I wish they went into a little bit more because apparently he'd let Wayne Manor go to rack and ruin. And he built this whole new complex on the other side of the lake. Yeah. That's cool as hell. I said, damn, that's a fresh hideout to be hanging out at. But I wanted to know why he just let Wayne Manor apparently go to rack and ruin. Yeah, yeah. Keep it up.
01:08:44
Speaker
I want to say one more thing about Jesse Eisenberg before we get into, cause I do want to talk about Bruce Wayne and Alfred and all that, but so one of the things, another thing is Jesse Eisenberg, Lex Luthor's whole motivation, right? His whole reason for going after Superman. That's another thing that just doesn't make any sense, right? He hates Superman because his father beat him and Superman wasn't around to say, I mean, there is absolutely no reason
01:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, really, there is no motivation. Holly Hunter, who plays the senator, even if she comes to him and he's got this cock-eyed ID, he says, okay, well, if I have enough kryptonite, I can make a weapon to kill Superman. And even she looks up, she says, well, why? Yeah, yeah. Why do you want it? Yeah, she says, well, why do you want to kill Superman? What's the big deal?
01:09:40
Speaker
He's not hurting anybody. Oh, well, no, he, you know, he's a God, he flies above us and we're supposed to resent him for that. And he says a whole lot of stuff, but really the bottom line is he hates Superman because he's Lex Luthor and we've been indoctrinated through the comic books and movies and cartoons and everything. Then Lex Luthor hates Superman, so. But really, I mean, Man of Steel gives you the perfect setup for why Lex Luthor should hate Superman.
01:10:09
Speaker
Because my whole conception of Lex Luthor is that he thinks that anyone who has that much power is eventually gonna use that power for his own selfish interests. Because that's how Lex Luthor thinks. He thinks, well, if I had that power, of course I would use it for my own interests. So he thinks that Superman is one day gonna turn on humanity. And Man of Steel gives you that perfect template there. You just saw what happens when you see Superman unleashed.
01:10:36
Speaker
Right. Right. And not only that, but one of the things about Lex, this is why you would need like Brian Cranston because you need an older Lex Luthor, someone who helped build up Metropolis. Exactly. Exactly. Because that was a large part of
01:10:52
Speaker
you know, the John Byrne, when he did it, that Lex resented Superman for stealing a lot of his thunder and his attention. Yeah, yeah. Cause he was the number one man in Metropolis until Superman showed up. Right. And then he took a lot of that away from him, you know? So, okay, give me that as a motivation. But again, you made an excellent point just a minute ago. That's why you need, yeah, that's why you needed an older Lex Luthor. Yeah. For this.
01:11:19
Speaker
What possible reason could this kid have for like, he doesn't like Superman? Yeah, it's just so weird. I mean, Superman wasn't even Superman when you were a kid and your father was beating you. Seriously. But he has this whole thing. He's like, if God exists, he's not all powerful. If he's all powerful, then he can't be all good. It's like, so that means that you're all powerful. That means you're not good. Or you're not all powerful and you are. Yeah, yeah. Like I said,
01:11:47
Speaker
He hates Superman because if you have Lex Luthor in your Superman movie, well, him and Superman are supposed to fight because they've been fighting at him for 90, for 80 years. And he also has, he also somehow, like I can kind of guess how he discovers Superman's identity because there is the whole thing. This is why I'm kind of surprised that Lois is surprised that people know Superman cares about her, right? When she's talking to the,
01:12:16
Speaker
former general who's now obviously the, who's actually the Martian man hunter in disguise. Yeah, Harry Lennox. Harry Lennox, yeah, yeah. And she talks to him and she's like, well, how would they even know Superman was going to be there? It's like, oh, they knew because of me. It's like, well,
01:12:30
Speaker
Bitch, you were making out with a guy in the desk after the stop of the Ashes of Metropolis. I mean, it's not that hard to figure out. All people got to do is just replay the tape. Yeah, yeah. And they say, oh, OK, well. And then here comes this. OK, we got that. And here comes this, you know, this tall, dark haired guy with blue eyes who just started working at Metropolis and automatically him and Lois are living together. And it's like,
01:12:58
Speaker
See, I can understand how Lex figures out that that guy is Superman. Yeah, yeah, it's not that hard. Now I have no freaking clue how a guy as clearly stupid and insane as Lex Luthor is in this movie can figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. I know how. Okay. He found the contractor who built the ramp in the middle of the lake.
01:13:28
Speaker
He just went around to different contractors and said, listen, let me ask you a question. This is going to sound kind of weird. Say about 10, 15 years ago for Bruce Wayne, did you build a ramp in the middle of a lake that opens up a, oh shit, you know something, Mr. Luto? Actually, I asked him, why did he need it? That's OK. That's all I need to know. Thank you. Bye. Click.
01:13:54
Speaker
Seriously, that's all he had to do. When I watched that scene, I said, wait a minute. Where does he find his contractors to build it for him? Well, see now, it actually makes more sense with the Snyder Batman because I totally believe that Snyder's version of Bruce Wayne just straight up fucking murdered those people. I have heard a fan theory, and this is the only one that I can go with, is that Bruce Wayne like,
01:14:23
Speaker
went to China and he flew a bunch of Chinese over and put them in a plane and didn't let them see where they were going. And he made them live, you know, on his property while they built that. And then he flew them back and they didn't, that's the only way I could, I'm sorry, because then you get stuff like in the dark night rises where I'm trying to figure out
01:14:49
Speaker
the conversation between Bruce Wayne and the contractor who says, okay, Mr. Wayne, explain to me again why you need these giant plexiglass cubes to be hydraulically lifted out of this underground lake. You know, is this some kind of sex thing? Is this a sex cult thing, Mr. Wayne? I'm sorry, I'm trying to...
01:15:10
Speaker
You know, it's just me, you know, it's just me folks, you know. I mean, I know you have to suspect your disbelief, but I figured that's how Lex Luthor in this movie found out he was Bruce. He just called up a bunch of contractors.
01:15:25
Speaker
All right, so now let's talk about Batman. So like we said, Ben Affleck does a really good job, but I think the material does work against him in a lot of ways. And it is kind of a miracle that Affleck is able to give as convincing a performance as he does when the material is still working against him in a lot of ways. Because this Batman is, you know, basically a xenophobe, right? Like he's like,
01:15:53
Speaker
It's like the classic, you know, scary immigrant fear that he's obsessed with. The scary immigrant? Well, yeah, because he's like, oh, well, he's the alien. We have to kill the alien. We have to kill the alien, right? It's just like, okay. And it's like they turn him into, you know, and he's
01:16:13
Speaker
Plus the whole thing about him branding people? Yeah, that was weird. I can't go with that. But to give the movie his credit, even Alfred addresses that. He says, well, is this what we do now? Yeah. And Bruce says something like, well, we've always been criminals. And Alfred said, what are you talking about? What's that got to do with it? Yeah, yeah. You're branding people.
01:16:43
Speaker
That's another thing that Alfred putting up with that shit too is something else I didn't buy. Like as good as Jeremy Irons is, Alfred I know would never put up with that shit. He would have been like, look, if you're gonna do this, then I'm outta here. Yeah, yeah. He would, yeah, but Alfred. Excuse me. Because Alfred in so many ways is Bruce's conscience. Yes, yeah. And he's reigns him in.
01:17:11
Speaker
when he goes too far. And yeah, Alfred would have never put up with that. And when he has gone too far, Alfred has made good on those threats. He has left several times. Yeah, he's walked. Yeah, he's walked. He said, you know what? Call me when you come back to your senses. And Michael Caine did that too in Dark Knight Rises, right? He's like, you know what? You're going to do that. I'm not going to be part of this anymore. And he just got up and he walked. But as I've said before, the best thing I like about Ben Affleck and Jeremy Irons is that
01:17:40
Speaker
I can see them as being the Michael Keaton, Michael Galg, Batman and Alfred, 20 years down the road. There's just something in their performance that has echoes when I go back and I watch the older Batman movies, the Tim Burton. I see flashes of that in there.
01:18:06
Speaker
And like I said before, they got that great line in Justice League, where they actually referenced the robot penguins from Batman Returns, where they said, oh, don't you miss the good old days where all we had to worry about was rocket fire and robot? I said, oh, wow. So that's the one thing I love about their performance. Out of all the actors in this movie, they've got the best rapport. Yeah, you believe that they've got a history. They have a really good job making you believe that. Yeah.
01:18:35
Speaker
But also with the branding thing, too, is there's this whole thing in the story that the criminals who are branded, they get attacked, they get killed by the other criminals in prison. Right. Let me ask you something. Did you ever think you'd see a Superman Batman movie where a guy gets shanked in a prison yard? Well, we did see a shanking and Superman returns. Let's leave the script tonight.
01:19:03
Speaker
But no, you're right. But I don't understand the logic behind that. It's known that Batman is inflicting this brand on people, but the criminals in prison, they think, oh, you're working with Batman. So we're gonna, I don't understand the logic behind that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't...
01:19:24
Speaker
I don't understand the logic of Batman branding people in the first place. Yeah, it's needlessly cruel. It makes no sense at all. The only reason for it is just to be a torturous son of a bitch. Yeah, it is. And that ties into later one where we see when they get down to their big fight and Batman has the kryptonite spear. He actually indulges
01:19:55
Speaker
and a little bit of sadism where he draws it across Superman's face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he puts a scar on his face. And I said, damn. And that gave me like an icky feeling. I said, you know what? Batman wouldn't do it. If he was going to do it, he'd just do it. Just do it, friend, and get it over with. He wouldn't indulge in that little bit of sadism. Yeah. And also, I hate the idea of the warehouse scene is as good as it is. There is that scene at the end where it's lifted from the dark night where
01:20:25
Speaker
Dark Knight Returns where he's got the hostage and he says, if you don't drop it, I'll kill her. And Batman says, I believe you. And then he shoots the guy and blows him up, right? Yeah. Zack Snyder says, oh, I got that from Dark Knight Returns. Well, no, we didn't.
01:20:40
Speaker
Because that is one scene that everybody misreads in The Dark Knight Returns. And part of the problem is the artwork isn't that clear in it. But you can tell from the story that, because one of the whole points in this whole book, in the whole story is that Batman still does not cross that line. Even in The Dark Knight Returns, he still refuses to kill, right? The Joker frames him for his murder by breaking his own neck.
01:21:07
Speaker
but he never kills, but he never kills anyone. So, and even when, you know, the new commissioner, Yandel, she comes in, she's, and she's leading off, reading off this laundry list of charges. She never once mentions murder as one of the charges. Exactly. So this is the one scene that's always misread and people, and I'm always like, well, think about it logically. If Batman wouldn't kill the Joker, if he wouldn't go that far, what makes you think he's going to kill some punk? Yeah, some low level. Yeah.
01:21:37
Speaker
some low level pumps that you can take. They have a scene that's in there where, you know,
01:21:44
Speaker
he goes over all the different ways that he can take out, you know, like this punk that he's fighting, he says, well, you know, okay, from this position, I've got eight ways I could disable him, you know, and two to kill him. So, you know, Batman has got multiple ways of taking out people. Yeah, he doesn't have to kill. Matter of fact, that's why he works so hard at making himself the best martial artist he can, so he doesn't have to kill. And he got that great, you know,
01:22:13
Speaker
the same book that you mentioned, where he actually breaks a gun and he tells the street gang that he's taken over. He said, this is the weapon of the enemy. We don't use this shit. You know, this isn't us. We don't do this. We don't use this. Yeah. That's not Batman. Right. The whole thing about Batman is Batman is very, like Batman is the most anti-gun guy you'll ever get. Oh yeah. Because a gun killed his parents. So he's
01:22:39
Speaker
And I know in some comic book, he was different, but like, so that's what, that's the version of Batman I prefer to stick with is the one who was like, we don't use guns, right? Guns are not the, guns are the weapon. Now that doesn't mean he doesn't know how to use one because they haven't seen in this movie where he puts a tracker on the truck that's holding the kryptonite. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's like a half a mile away up in the air and he accurately puts it there. He knows how to use a gun. Yes, yeah. He just, he's like,
01:23:08
Speaker
what you call Tom Selleck in Quickly Down Under, where he doesn't use Revolver until the end of the movie. And then when he kills him, Alan Rickman looked at that and said, but you said that he said, listen, I never said I didn't know how to use what he's saying. I just don't like using them. There's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one of the things I've, and that's, I've always, that's why I've always hated whenever they have, they show back the Batmobile and it's got like gun turrets on and everything. Cause to me, that's just not Batman.
01:23:38
Speaker
No, no. And yeah, Batman's got like machine guns and stuff like that on this iteration of the Batmobile. But I like it because it's not an armored tank. It's more like a roadster. You know, it's more like an armored roadster. Yeah, it is a much better. I do like this Batmobile better. I mean, still like the, but still like my favorite take on the Batmobile in live action is the Burton one.
01:24:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's, that's, that's like my favorite Batmobile too, because you know what? Okay. I can see Batman like in, uh, what was that? The dark night where he drive around in that tank that apparently could jump over rooftops. Yeah. The tumbler. Batman pulls out once in a while for special occasions. He doesn't go drive around in that thing.
01:24:29
Speaker
You know, he needs something that's quick, fast, and maneuverable and can smash the walls and stuff like that, like what he drives in this movie. Yeah, yeah. And it's got like one machine gun turret on it. It doesn't have like eight or nine different, you know, rockets and all that kind, you know. It doesn't have all that kind of thing. It's more important for him to get away fast. Yeah, yeah. Although my favorite Batmobile is still the one from the animated series. That one I think was like the perfect design. They're all pretty good. They're all pretty good, but that one's my favorite.
01:24:58
Speaker
The one from, you know, the Adam West. I love that one, of course. But yeah, like, I mean, like the Tim Burton one. Yeah, that's a fantastic design. Yeah. You know, but yeah, I liked the one in this one.
Batman vs. Superman Plot Critique
01:25:14
Speaker
A whole lot. There was something else I wanted to say about the Batmobile. Oh, not the Batmobile, but the fact that too often we get a Batman that just like,
01:25:29
Speaker
beats the piss, he just overcomes his enemies through superior firepower and technology. But we actually see a Batman here that actually does detective work as Bruce Wayne. Kind of, but he's a really bad detective as well. Because you got this thing where Lex Luthor is sending him all these newspaper clippings, like you let your family die written on it. And I don't...
01:25:58
Speaker
Bruce Wayne never thinks to figure out where these things are coming from. Well, he's too busy trying to figure out how to kill Superman. Well, I mean, that's the thing. The real Bruce Wayne, he would be approaching this more methodically and be like, what's going on? The real Bruce Wayne would have figured out what Lex Luthor is doing in 10 minutes flat. Oh, absolutely. Because as we said, this is the dumbest plot known to man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because first of all, Bruce Wayne slash Batman doesn't trust anybody. Yeah.
01:26:28
Speaker
So yeah, he would have figured it out. And of course, Lex Luthor, he would have figured it out. He'd say, OK, well, because as far as Batman is concerned, everybody's got something to hide. Everybody's got an ulterior motive. I mean, Lois Lane is a better detective in this movie than Batman because she figures out that Luthor's behind it. Yeah, check that out. But Luthor signed his work to begin with, so she's not even that good of a detective. He's not even that good either, yeah. She just asked the one question nobody else would. Yeah.
01:26:58
Speaker
I mean, so, so yeah, like really, he's, they do show him doing some detective work, but he's still not a very good detective. He's still not a very, that's, that is one thing that Batman has never been served well in the movie, except for the Tim Burton, the first Tim Burton movie, where we actually see Michael Heaton,
01:27:22
Speaker
in the back cave working, putting together clues and stuff like that. We get hints of it, but again, it all happens between the scenes. It all happens off camera. Yeah. So we get hints of it, but we don't really see it play out in any major way. It all gets overshadowed by the action and by the gadgets and all that. And also in
01:27:44
Speaker
you know, The Dark Knight. Yes, yeah. You know, we do see the Christian Bale, we do see him doing actual detective work, some clues together and stuff like that. Like doing ballistics tests and all that kind of thing. Exactly, you know, which is what I like, you know, I mean, I think it's...
01:28:03
Speaker
important to show that Batman is a detective, which is why I'm looking forward to this. What is it? Who directed this new one? Oh, Matt Reeves. Yeah. Yeah. Because they say that in this one, yeah, we do get that aspect of Batman. Yeah. But we see him doing detective work and putting clues together and stuff like that.
01:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, because always in these movies is Batman went through superior technology a fire power. So, um, well, that's not, uh, that's still going to be like, what, another year away, isn't it? Yeah. March 4th, 2022. Probably. But yeah, I'm looking forward to that. It'll be, it'll be really, really cool to see a more detective based Batman. Right.
01:28:52
Speaker
Cause we see that in the trailer where it's like a room full of cops and Batman's walking around India and like nobody like bats and I, you know. Right. Yeah. It's like, you know, like you mentioned, like those scenes in the animated series when he's showing up at crime scenes and talking with Gordon and everything. Exactly. Cause he goes over to commissioner Gordon and you know, so, you know, apparently he's called him in to consult on a crime. So I said, Oh, okay. Now see, that's cool. Like you said, that reminded me of a scene from any episode of the animated series.
01:29:20
Speaker
Yeah, or the Denny O'Neill comics. He did that kind of stuff a lot in there, yeah. Right. So yeah, I mean, it's a credit that Affleck is able to do as good of a Bruce Wayne as he does with all the limitations that the script puts on him. Because again, we have this thing where, and it was the same thing in Watchmen, where Zack Snyder read the comic book, but it's clear he didn't quite understand the comic book.
01:29:48
Speaker
because he thought The Dark Knight Returns was all about Batman becoming a psychotic, murderous vigilante, when he wasn't. It wasn't that at all. No, who are we? Psychotic. The one thing, and again, this is a movie. Okay, we get to the moment where they get ready to have the big throw down.
01:30:17
Speaker
Superman flies to where the bat signal is shining, and he lands right in front of Batman, and he says, clear as day, I need to talk to you. Lex Luthor is behind, and Batman just said, fuck that shit. And he just unloads up. I said, wait a minute.
01:30:37
Speaker
You're telling me you couldn't wait five minutes to listen to what the man has got? Lex Luthor right then and there should have triggered you, triggered you. Wait a minute. Okay. You already got all your traps and gadgets and everything to say. You can take them out anytime. You mean you couldn't take five minutes to listen to what the man had to say? Well, so I still, I'm still kind of weird on the whole, I'm going to use my bat signal to summon Superman. Well,
01:31:05
Speaker
Remember he had that line where he told him, he said, well, next time they shine your signal, don't answer. Yeah, but the thing is like, it's just such a weird way that it happens here because it goes on right after Lex Luthor tells him, kill Batman or I'm gonna kill your mom. Yeah, and, okay. And, gosh, why? Okay, Lex Luthor already has, because doesn't he have the Kryptonite? He had the Kryptonite.
01:31:34
Speaker
No, Batman stole it. Batman stole it. Remember, there's that scene at the Lexcorp facility when... Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. But, okay. First of all, okay. Why was Lex Luthor so obsessed with having Batman kill Superman? I have no idea. I mean, it's...
01:31:59
Speaker
I mean, maybe, you know, maybe with like, you know, his eccentric personality and just like his lack of logic with anything, I think Lex Luthor is actually John Peters. That's a good one.
01:32:18
Speaker
I mean, it makes absolutely no sense that he has this obsession with Batman. What would make you think that Batman is capable of killing Superman? I mean, it's a boost to his ego, sure. But what would make you think, why would you give somebody else the satisfaction of doing it? Yeah, yeah. It's just another one. And it's like when everyone says this move, the Ultimate Edition,
01:32:42
Speaker
makes the whole story so much better. It doesn't really, like there's still all these, you can still drive a dump truck through all the plotholes in this movie. I love how they go out of their way.
01:32:54
Speaker
after Doomsday shows up, which is the reanimated clone body of General Zod mixed with Lex Luthor's DNA. He shows up, okay. He tears up half of downtown Metropolis. And then Batman shows up and gets a smart idea to lead him over to Gotham City so he can tear up half of Gotham City as well. Okay, well, now that we're to level half of Metropolis, now let's go get, you know, let's go prepare.
01:33:23
Speaker
And then they go out of their way, I guess because of the backlash from Man of Steel to stress that, well, this is the warehouse area and nobody's here right now. So again, doesn't make a lick of sense. No.
01:33:40
Speaker
And then we get the most infamous moment in superhero cinema history. I will give you five minutes of unchecked time to air your grievances, my friend. Martha. First off- Don't get him. Go get him, son. First off, you're Superman, right? You're trying to convince Batman to let you go.
01:34:09
Speaker
Why would you use your mother's name instead of just saying they're going to kill my mom? Matter of fact, there's a half other thing. How about Lex Luthor is making a fight. Lex Luthor is behind this. This is a setup. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's got all the time to go through this whole strange thing about save Martha. You can't say like, Luthor's doing this. There's a half other things he could say.
01:34:38
Speaker
that would make more sense in the stress of that moment. Or like you even said, yeah, save my mother, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh, what? See that, see Batman, what, mother? But see, even still like the whole thing of like Batman being moved by the fact that Superman has a mother doesn't make any sense because he goes through that whole thing at the beginning of the fight where he says, oh, I bet your parents taught you that you were special and all that, right? So he knows he's been raised by parents.
01:35:08
Speaker
And wouldn't you believe that the first time I saw this movie was the first time that I realized that their mothers had the same first name? Yeah, because it's- It never hit me before for some reason. Yeah, because it's such a stupid thing. It's be like if, because Civil War came out the same year as this, right? Imagine that Cap and Iron Man resolved their differences in Civil War because
01:35:33
Speaker
Cap's like, oh, Bucky's name. First name is James. And then Tony's like, my best friend's name is James, too. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it is. It's the exact same thing. But see, the difference between Civil War is that we've had a whole bunch of other movies where we've seen the relationship between these two characters so that when Iron Man and Captain America fight, it really means something to us. Yes. The fight in this movie doesn't mean a day
01:36:03
Speaker
First of all, it's a very clumsy fight. There's really no imagination to it at all. It's just the Beaufort and just slamming each other up against walls and, you know, and, you know, Batman hitting them with kryptonite grenades and everything like that. There's no suspense because we know they're not, you know, we know they're not going to, well, we know Superman's going to die.
01:36:24
Speaker
He's Superman. He's coming back in the next movie. Yeah. You know, well, I mean, the whole death of Superman story is such a stupid thing to waste on a movie like this because you know, Justice League is coming out. You know that he's not going to stay dead. Yeah. I mean, it's the worst. It's the worst kept secret since. What's his name? Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan.
01:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Of course he was gonna be, or what's his name, from Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, playing Blofeld. Kristoff Waltz. Kristoff Waltz, right, yeah. Everybody knew, as soon as they said, oh, Kristoff Waltz is gonna be in Spectre, you knew he was gonna be playing Blofeld. And just like this, when you see Superman die in this movie, you know he's gonna be coming back in Justice League. You know he's coming back, because like you said, we know Justice League is coming up.
01:37:16
Speaker
Yeah. They told us before this movie came out, well, this is going to lead into Justice League. Yeah. Oh, well, Superman is coming back. Yeah.
Wonder Woman's Role in Batman V Superman
01:37:23
Speaker
So, OK. So what's the point? You're wasting our goddamn time, really. Yes, yeah. Yeah. And you expect us to have all of this pathos, overseeing Superman getting killed when we know he's coming back. It's like, OK, we got another 40 minutes left to go.
01:37:42
Speaker
Let's get it over with. Yeah. Matter of fact, the only surprise that we get in this movie that was worthy of it is when we get to see Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. She shows up in the fight. The one bright spot in the movie. Yeah.
01:37:59
Speaker
And she's, I love that scene where Doomsday knocks on her ass and she actually smiles. Yeah, yeah. She said, okay, I love this shit, you know, because she's able to cut loose. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. There's also that weird scene when Wonder Woman comes up and then Superman looks at Batman and she's like, is she with you? And Batman's like, oh, I thought she was with you. It's like,
01:38:22
Speaker
Bitch, you just spent like half the movie interacting with her. Yeah, I mean, come on. Again, this is another misguided attempt at you. Yeah, yeah. But I do have to admit, it was nice finally seeing Superman Batman and Wonder Woman for the first time on screen together. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was a nice moment. I just wish it had a much better setup.
01:38:49
Speaker
Yes, and I wish I had a much better set up because this movie is,
Superman's Death Scene and Plot Holes
01:38:57
Speaker
I don't know, like I said, I was watching it today and I'm sitting and I'm, you know what, I'm just watching it. I'm not engaged with the story, you know, cause story made no sense. You know, I know where this is going. So, I mean, this is,
01:39:15
Speaker
This movie is what I like to call chewing gum for the brain. You know how you take a stick of chewing gum and you chew it and...
01:39:23
Speaker
Uh, the flavor is there for about 20 minutes. And then after that, you're just chewing on rubber. Yes. Okay. That Superman versus Batman. Yes. Yeah. You know, it's chewing on for the brain. There's flavor while you're watching it, but then you turn it off and 20 minutes later, you can't remember what the flavor was. Yeah. Yeah.
01:39:47
Speaker
And just like the whole way that they did, even just like the way they decided to kill Superman is just so stupid, right? Because you got the kryptonite spear. Superman's vulnerable to kryptonite. But you've also got Wonder Woman right there who's just as strong and can also drive the spear into him. Why not just throw her the spear and say, let's just take this and stick to it? Matter of fact, she knows how to use the spear better than you do. Yeah, yeah. It's Amazon. She just stuck them in the brain.
01:40:17
Speaker
And also like, I got to wonder too, because now here's something else I didn't get watching the funeral scene for Clark Kent, right? So as a writer, okay, if you know that you're gonna be bringing Superman back in the very next movie, then you know you're gonna have to deal with the problem of you just killed Clark Kent as well. Right. So why would you write yourself into that situation in the first place? Okay, here's what I don't understand. Okay, now we see the scene,
01:40:48
Speaker
where Clark's body is in the Kent house. They got him laid out. And his mother puts a picture of him and his father and his mother. Okay, so we know that they bury Clark Kent.
01:41:05
Speaker
Whose body was a Superman's casket? No one, because Bruce said at the end, he's like, they're burying an empty casket in Metropolis. Well, didn't anybody, well, how did they explain what happened to Superman's body? They didn't. I don't know how he figured, how he did that, but yeah, that's another one of the things they just don't explain. Like the close explanation is like, oh, it's an empty casket.
01:41:27
Speaker
And nobody asked anybody where Superman's body at. I mean, what? I don't know what, did the Kryptonian fairies come and take it away? And I don't understand how they even, why Superman's even getting such this. I mean, he was considered a national pariah just like yesterday. We just saw that.
01:41:49
Speaker
they had the Capitol building was blowing up and they were blaming him for it. Why are they giving him a hero's funeral? So much stuff in this movie happens because it's supposed to happen, but they don't give any thought to why it's supposed to happen. One other example is, sorry, go ahead.
01:42:09
Speaker
No, I'm sorry, that bothers me because, okay, if it's empty casket, somebody had to say, well, what happened to Superman's body? What did Bruce Wayne say? Okay, well, I took it away for study or, you know, or Star Labs has got it or, you know, something, you know, oh, well, it's empty casket, you know, and nobody thought to ask what happened to Superman's body.
01:42:32
Speaker
Well, even the Superman comic books, they did that, right? When he died, they put his body in the tomb and then his body went missing. And there was a whole story point of like what happened to Superman's body. And then when they did bring him back, because they knew they were going to be bringing Superman back in a year. So they arranged it so that Clark Kent was not dead, he was missing.
01:42:54
Speaker
Right, because they actually, cause as a matter of fact, I remember that storyline and they actually said they could never find Clark's body. Right, yep. Lost in all the rubble and everything like that. Which would have made more sense to me here. Yes. You know something? We couldn't, you know, we didn't find Clark's body. Yeah. You know, and let him be buried as Superman. Yes, yeah. You know, that would have made more sense to me that we see that, you know, we get this Michigash and, you know, and we get that, like you said, that throwaway line.
Film Structure and Justice League Setup
01:43:22
Speaker
Well, we buried an empty casket.
01:43:24
Speaker
So y'all going through all of this rigmarole giving him a hero's welcome. A hero's funeral. And there's nobody in the casket. And nobody asked what happened to the body. Surely the government, because they took Zod's body, right? Yeah, yeah. The government surely would want Superman's body. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay. I'm just saying, you know. And I'm trying to figure out, too,
01:43:49
Speaker
Like, and then I'm trying, I don't really know how Luther got arrested either at the end. Cause there's not really any evidence linking him to anything. So. Exactly. Why is it doing jail? Yeah. Oh God, this movie, it's just, you know what?
01:44:10
Speaker
A lot of times when you watch a bad movie and you watch it in the moment, and like you said, when you go back and you watch it again years later, you're more objective when you're watching it, right? And I found that with a lot of these movies. Like I found that with Batman and Robin, for example. There were things I really found that it was actually an enjoyable movie. I did not find that with this movie. It's still a steaming pile of shit. My opinion,
01:44:35
Speaker
Even after seeing it all this time is still the same thing. When I first saw this movie in the theaters, I wished it had been Batman and Wonder Woman and no Superman, because everything that's got to deal with Batman and Wonder Woman, I like. Anything that got to do with Superman and Lex Luthor and Lois Lane, I can't stand. I don't know. If this was a Batman, Wonder Woman movie,
01:45:03
Speaker
I'd have loved it. Those are the best parts to me. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I give Snyder credit for giving us Gal Gadot. Like I do give him credit for that because she's been amazing as Wonder Woman. So I do give him credit for that. I don't understand all the story choice that led up to this point.
01:45:27
Speaker
And also the, this is another thing that kind of thought was really, like they made this whole big push about, oh, we're gonna see Aquaman in this movie and we're gonna see the Flash and we're gonna see Cyborg. And all we get is these little video clips that Luther has on his hard drive. And why is Lex Luthor designing superhero logos? Listen, the same reason why Reed Richards designed superhero costumes.
01:45:54
Speaker
I mean, it's just, I'm looking at this and I'm just like, did he just have like this subscription to, you know, the Adobe Creative Cloud and he just felt he had to. Yeah, because he's assigned all of their superhero. Okay. He's a super fast guy, but you just so happy to give him a yellow lightning bolt and you assign that to him. Aquaman, you give him, I mean, really?
01:46:23
Speaker
It makes your head hurt, really. It does. Okay, so let me ask you something. Would this movie work for you if I said that basically it was nothing more than a setup for Justice League? No, because I knew that going into it. Even as a setup for Justice League, it's still just a terrible movie. Okay. All right. I was trying to get...
01:46:48
Speaker
I was trying to get the people who like this movie so because they're because you know surprisingly there's a whole lot of people that like this movie and it's completely it's completely inexplicable to me I do not and like even if you're
01:47:03
Speaker
And I've seen the argument being made that, oh, well, you know, it's a different Superman, it's a different Batman for a new dark. Even if you go with that logic, right? I think that's a poor reasoning, but let's give the benefit out. Say you go with that logic. The story still makes no fucking sense. The story makes no sense. Yeah, exactly. The story makes no sense.
01:47:24
Speaker
Yeah, it does. It makes no sense. But like I said earlier, that comes to the fact that it's a whole bunch of unrelated stories cobbled together and stitched together, you know, by the man Dr. Zack Snyder Frankenstein lab. Yeah, that's what this movie. It's a Frankenstein's monster of a movie. Yeah, it really makes me wonder just what we're gonna see in a few weeks when we see just is the Snyder Cut of Justice League.
01:47:55
Speaker
Oh God, you know what? At this point, I just want to see it so we could review it and put it behind us. But you know what I was reading today is that when I was looking at the news headlines, apparently it ends on a cliffhanger, which is expected because it was supposed to be the first of a two-part series. So I don't think we're going to hear the end of it because I think what's going to happen now is all the Snyder fans are going to be demanding that he be allowed to finish the part two.
01:48:19
Speaker
Oh, okay. And I guarantee you 10 bucks says that's the next flight. And we're going to be hearing about that for the next five years. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be another five years out of all lives. Oh my God. All right.
Praise for Performances in Batman V Superman
01:48:32
Speaker
All right. Anything left to say about Batman V Superman?
01:48:36
Speaker
Only that if you have not seen it, and you do have HBO Max, and you just want to watch it purely as a lead in to, you know, Justice League. Yeah, by all means, I mean, listen, you're sitting in your house, you're paying for it anyway.
01:48:53
Speaker
If you haven't seen it, why not watch it? It's not gonna kill you. You may wish that you had your three hours back by the time you get to the end of it. That's true. Because there's no joke. This movie is three hours long. Yes, three hours long, which is why I said, you know, because usually I try to watch movies that we're going to review. I try to watch it the day before, but I couldn't watch it the day before.
01:49:20
Speaker
Like I said, since I knew it was three hours, I watched it early this morning instead of waiting until the afternoon. I said, because something might've come up and I wouldn't have watched it. But yeah, folks, this is like three and change. It's like three hours 15 minutes long. And for a movie that's three hours,
01:49:42
Speaker
and 15 long it is so dense and so ponderous and so serious and so full of angst and it takes it so so serious and everybody is so serious and surprisingly devoid of action.
01:49:57
Speaker
Right? I mean, like the big fight between Superman and Batman last like, what, like 10 minutes? Yeah, we really don't get a lot of action until, you know, the end of the movie. Like you said, we get the Batman-Superman fight, which we've been waiting for. We get the warehouse fight. We get, you know, the Superman-Batman fight, and then we get the fight with Doomsday. Like, boom, bang, bang, all in a row. You know, really the only other action we get is,
01:50:25
Speaker
The Batmobile chase. It's a Batman trying to hijack the truck. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's it. There's no, yeah, you're right. There's not a lot of action in this movie until we get to the end. So that's the long time for me, especially when, like, again, I got to say, folks, this is a ponderous movie because everybody is so serious.
01:50:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's not like Endgame where, you know, you have, you know, three, three hour and change. And then the last hour is like all action. And also Endgame felt like an hour. Yeah. Yeah. It moves at a much brisker pace. Yeah. You know, this, this is like, you know, like mud, a mudslide. Yeah. That's the paces movie. A frozen mudslide.
01:51:16
Speaker
Yeah, a frozen month. It's just it's just so it drags so much and it they make you feel every second of that three hours.
01:51:23
Speaker
But again, I have to say that I recommend it for Ben Affleck as Batman, Bruce Wayne. You watch this movie and it makes you want to see him in his own solo movie. Yeah, with a better director. With a better director and a better screenplay. Yeah.
Henry Cavill's Potential as Superman
01:51:43
Speaker
Unfortunately, we did get that with Gal Gadot, right? She was able to get her own solo movie with a better director and a better writing team. And it was amazing.
01:51:52
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Wonder Woman is after this one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I came after this one. Yeah. And then it came before Justice League. And then, and also Jeremy, like Jeremy Irons is Alfred, Ben Affleck is Batman, and Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman. That's really, those are really the only three reasons to sit through this movie. And also, I think that we should say, we should give him his credit because you know what?
01:52:17
Speaker
And I got a tremendous amount of respect for this guy, Henry Cavill, because he's not been served well. No, he could be, he could be one of the great Superman that we, you know, we could we could be talking about him in the same way we talk about.
01:52:32
Speaker
you know, Christopher Reeve, Brandon Ralph, you know, Tyler Hoechlin. Yes. You could be talking about if he had a director that gave him a story that could actually let him be Superman. If it was written by someone who actually liked Superman. Yeah.
01:52:50
Speaker
Because, you know what, Henry Cavill, he gives a performance. And I think that if he was allowed to be Superman, you know, the way Superman should be played, yeah, he'd be a classic for the end. Well, I mean, we got flashes of that. We got very brief flashes of that in Justice League.
01:53:07
Speaker
Yes, we did. And we, you know, CGI lip aside, we saw what Cavill's performance is capable of. And we have seen him in other movies where he's just charming as hell, right? Like Man From Uncle. He was the best. Man From Uncle is a completely forgettable movie. I don't remember anything about that movie except for how charming Henry Cavill was in it.
01:53:30
Speaker
I saw that movie, the only thing that I could think of, get this man into a tuxedo and let him play James Bond as soon as possible. Yes, yeah. When I saw a man from uncle. That was the first thing in my mind, get this man into a tuxedo and make him the next James Bond. Yes, yeah. I would love to see that. Yeah, you know what? Henry Cavill is one of these actors that he hasn't found.
01:53:53
Speaker
And God knows he's been trying, but he has not found that character that
Preview of Upcoming Episodes
01:53:57
Speaker
is click for him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's done Superman. He's done, um, he did man from uncle. He did. He's doing the Witcher. So yeah.
01:54:07
Speaker
Yeah, but I really do hope, just like we saw Brandon Ralph finally got to be able to be the Superman that we know that he could be. I'm hoping that, yeah, one day the same will happen for Henry Cavill. Yeah, same here. Because I get the feeling that, you know, like interviews and seeing him, that he really does like being Superman. Yeah. But he wants to be a different type of Superman.
01:54:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so that does it for this week. As Derek already mentioned at the start of the show, there's no suspense in it. Next week, his pick is Avengers Age of Ultron. So we'll be watching that to coincide with the WandaVision finale.
01:54:50
Speaker
So your homework assignment is that if you have not yet, watch WandaVision. And I know some of you have been waiting until the whole thing has been, you know, so watch WandaVision and watch Age of Ultron and you'll be all set for us next week. Yes, absolutely.
Podcast Conclusion and Social Media Promotion
01:55:06
Speaker
Uh, until then superherosinafiles.com is our website, supercinemapod on both Twitter and Instagram. If you want to follow us and superhero cinephiles search for us on Facebook and feel free to join the group.
01:55:18
Speaker
And that about does it for this week. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for watching. And we'll see you in one week when we talk about Age of Ultron. Thank you. Good night. God bless. Take care.
01:55:28
Speaker
You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com.
01:55:51
Speaker
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