Dawn of Justice

[Floatyworm]

The movie was pretty good.

It's not my favorite, not even close, but pretty good.

I don't get all the hate on Man of Steel either. I thought it was very good. To each their own I suppose.

This movie had some good things, some awesome things, and some down right stupid decisions.

I'll say that Affleck was better at Batman than I'd thought he'd be, but no where near as good as Bale. Still he did a solid job. I walked away feeling like he did a great job as Bruce Wayne though. Funny how sometimes actors can be good at one aspect of a character but not as good at the other. Still he was very good.

I did not like the new Alfred at all. I just couldn't get into him. Great actor but I just didn't like him in this.

The highlight of the movie, for me, was Eisenberg as Luthor. He was damn good, IMO. I loved him in the roll and I feel like he was by far the best part of this movie.

Too much CGI....the last half hour completely killed the film for me. Totally unrealistic.

And...(probably nitpicking)....In too many movies now...all you see is flashbacks. Can't anyone tell a story without having to jump back and forth through time anymore?

@ least for the most part BVS had a storyline that stayed in the same time period.

 

[jrumann59]

Eventually the somebody dies and not lock em all up stuff will be played out too I guess.
Next step, everyone dies. After that plays out, don't know what will be next.

Blackest Night story line.

 

[DallasEast]

Too much CGI....the last half hour completely killed the film for me. Totally unrealistic.

And...(probably nitpicking)....In too many movies now...all you see is flashbacks. Can't anyone tell a story without having to jump back and forth through time anymore?

@ least for the most part BVS had a storyline that stayed in the same time period.

Man of Steel was an origin film. Do you feel MOS would've been a better movie if Snyder had not included the flashbacks of Krypton and Clark growing up in Smallville?

 

[TellerMorrow34]

Not so sure its a matter of laziness. Just dream up a new gadget and most problems solve themselves. Of course, I certainly think there's a limit to the ever increasing number of fantastical ways that Batman could dispose of criminals before the audience is asked to overlook the fact that the guy is supposed to be human. At some point, how do you even present a formidable opponent when Batman has all the answers in his utility belt? Also, it's not like they have tiptoed around the rule. Gonna save Ra's al Ghul from sliding off the cliffside.......then we'll deliberately let him plummet to his death in a train car.

Fair enough all around.

I didn't like that he let him plummet to his death there either.

That's just me, I'm sure, but that particular part of Batman is the core of the character and should not be messed with.

 

[DallasEast]

I don't get all the hate on Man of Steel either. I thought it was very good. To each their own I suppose.

There are a number of reasons why MOS doesn't appeal to some moviegoers. Plots are interconnecting events. I think moviegoers like and appreciate when events are presented chronologically. Flashbacks disrupt anticipated flow and some moviegoers don't appreciate them, especially when a director incorporates a number of them. I must admit that the frequency of flashbacks bother me but they do not turn me off if they fit the storyline of the movie.

What superheroes should or should do is another sticking point. I think some moviegoers think superheroes should be able to prevent bad consequences regardless of the circumstances staged within a movie. I would argue that the movie industry has had various levels of success conditioning moviegoers over decades to think bad consequences are automatically negated because a hero will save the day. Christopher Reeve saved everyone from the wrath of three equally powered Kryptonians. Stands to reason Henry Cavill could save thousands from the wrath of a dozen Kryptonians armed with futuristic technology capable of transforming or destroying worlds. Reeve used his heat vision to destroy a skyscraper steel beam thrown at him. Thus, Cavill could stop Zod from using his heat vision to destroy skyscrapers--or from vaporizing a terrorized family standing a few yards away. And stop Zod without killing him--someone hellbent on destroying every living human being on the face of the planet.

Humanity has witnessed human beings cause unspeakable destruction of all kinds, imaginable and unimaginable, for untold millennia. Some refuse to accept it occuring in the entertainment they chose to watch and expected to enjoy--especially if the chaos is manufactured by fictional characters. And it does not matter to some moviegoers that what they're seeing on the big screen comes from material they have little or no knowledge of. It's automatically judged as bad by some.

I'm waiting in anticipation of X-Men: Apocalypse. IF Bryan Singer can deliver the story that the movie derives from (this time), what happened in MOS and Metropolis will be child's play. The comments from moviegoers should be very VERY interesting (fingers crossed).

 

[DallasEast]

Not so sure its a matter of laziness. Just dream up a new gadget and most problems solve themselves. Of course, I certainly think there's a limit to the ever increasing number of fantastical ways that Batman could dispose of criminals before the audience is asked to overlook the fact that the guy is supposed to be human. At some point, how do you even present a formidable opponent when Batman has all the answers in his utility belt? Also, it's not like they have tiptoed around the rule. Gonna save Ra's al Ghul from sliding off the cliffside.......then we'll deliberately let him plummet to his death in a train car.

Bruce Wayne saved his mentor, an assassin who was mainly a mortal threat to him and members of the League of Shadows while he trained with him. Wayne may have thought compassion and mercy would transform his killing ways. The assassin revealed later that he was Ra's al Ghul, a mass murdering mastermind willing to kill hundreds of thousands (or more) in Gotham. On one hand, Wayne had a choice of saving a murderer who might learn from his compassionate act. On the other hand, Batman had the choice of saving a genocidal maniac, who wouldn't stop simply with Gotham to change the world according to his sense of what was suitable. Some choice.

 

[AzorAhai]

I wouldn't necessarily define current superhero movies as a byproduct of previous filmmaking being played out. It's simply caught up to the realism Hollywood adopted as far back as the 1960's. Once upon a time (and still alive on Turner Classic Movies ), westerns, for example, included gunfire, where heroes and villains got shot, with very little trauma conveyed to the audience, and sometimes even less visible bloodshed. Actual shootings aren't so pristine. Eventually filmmakers wanted to reflect actual cause-and-effect and revolutionary westerns (around 1970 or so) like The Wild Bunch were born.

Personally, I blame the Comics Code Authority for indirectly slowing the growth of realism in comic book movie adaptations. The CCA neutered comic book writers' creativity to protect moral integrity at the cost of realistic subjectivity. Decades of comic book stories were shackled, showing what would happen in clashes between "good and evil." It was all so superficial. Collateral damage was practically nonexistent. It was pure fantasy.

Well, creators began slowly bucking the established system, rebuking the creative restraints, and interlaced more logic into their works of fiction. Fictional superheroes, like heroes in real life, do not want innocents to be harmed. But real heroes cannot prevent every consequence of evil acts. They're not omnipotent. Why should superheroes be regarded differently? It's not very realistic to think so.

The creators and studios of today's superhero movies of the past decade or so finally embraced what comic book publishers took control of 30 years ago. They stopped treating their stories like classic Disney films, where the hero/prince vanquishes the evil queen and everyone lives happily ever after. Instead, they look back on humanity's past, see the events unfolding in humanity's present, accept the consequences of what happens when conflict between good and evil occurs, insert superheroes into their fictional scenarios, and weigh what those superheroes can and cannot do. I'm glad Hollywood caught up in this aspect.

I agree. It's darker by superhero standards, but in todays world, it's just realistic. You can't have Superman and Doomsday fighting in a city block without collateral damage. Wolverine can't slash mutants up without blood and some deaths. You can apply that to just about every superhero character. It's unrealistic to expect no casualties either from civilians or bad guys to happen and I for one like seeing these movies with shades of gray.

 

[LittleBoyBlue]

I agree. It's darker by superhero standards, but in todays world, it's just realistic. You can't have Superman and Doomsday fighting in a city block without collateral damage. Wolverine can't slash mutants up without blood and some deaths. You can apply that to just about every superhero character. It's unrealistic to expect no casualties either from civilians or bad guys to happen and I for one like seeing these movies with shades of gray.

Didn't Bat make it a point to say that it was abandoned part of city?


MoS was actually pretty good. Sometimes you have to watch these movies a few times.
Going in to movie for first by time.... A lot of minds are made up beforehand or just not ready to enjoy the 2 hour journey,

 

[AzorAhai]

Didn't Bat make it a point to say that it was abandoned part of city?


MoS was actually pretty good. Sometimes you have to watch these movies a few times.
Going in to movie for first by time.... A lot of minds are made up beforehand or just not ready to enjoy the 2 hour journey,

The doomsday fight? Took place in a variety of areas. Started out one place and moved a bit a couple of times. The whole fight didn't seem to take place in abandoned areas though. The part where he let out the big energy burst was around a bunch of tall buildings with lights on in them. I would imagine there was some collateral damage even though it wasn't explicitly shown or stated.

 

[Floatyworm]

Man of Steel was an origin film. Do you feel MOS would've been a better movie if Snyder had not included the flashbacks of Krypton and Clark growing up in Smallville?

IMO it just jumped around too much...there was no continuity to the story....until the end...and then you got that awful CGI blob of a fight. Could have been so much better if they had just slowed everything down..and made it more realistic.

 

[PJTHEDOORS]

IMO it just jumped around too much...there was no continuity to the story....until the end...and then you got that awful CGI blob of a fight. Could have been so much better if they had just slowed everything down..and made it more realistic.

Slowed down? You want the Christopher Reeve Superman when it comes to his use of speed? Flash uses super speed, doubt people would want him to slow down.

 

[DallasEast]

IMO it just jumped around too much...there was no continuity to the story....until the end...and then you got that awful CGI blob of a fight. Could have been so much better if they had just slowed everything down..and made it more realistic.

I'm creating acts from my recollection of Man of Steel:

Act 1: Krypton (prologue/not really a flashback/recounts Superman's extraterrestrial birth).

Act 2: Grown Clark Kent (present day) rescues oil rig workers with superhuman abilities.

Flashback 1: Clark is in elementary school, exhibiting superhuman abilities like super hearing and heat vision that surprises him.

Flashback 2: Clark is in junior high, exhibits superhuman ability of super strength/Jonathan tells him of his
extraterrestrial birth and challenges his son to explore the world in order to discover his purpose in it.

Act 3: Clark re-appears after rescuing the oil rig workers working in a diner. He overhears a possible clue about an extraterrestrial object being studied in the Artic and heads there. Side note: Pig pisses him off and Clark decides to trash his rig before hitting the road.

Act 4: Lois Lane arrives in the artic to report on the mysterious object. She meets Clark for the first time because he arrived there and got a job before she flew in.

Act 5: Lois witnessed Clark's superhuman abilities of x-ray vision and heat vision. She didn't care much for his heat vision though. Clark leaves Lois to be rescued and he flies off in the Kryptonian ship.

Act 7: Lois makes her way back to Metropolis but her account of what happens gets stonewalled, so she slips the story to a competitor.

Act 8: Meanwhile, Clark passes all the identity verification tests that the ship puts him through and he finally discovers his Kryptonian heritage, his purpose that Jor-El wanted for him, and fully tests his superhuman abilities like flight for the first time.

Act 9: Lois starts her search to discover Clark's identity by going back to the artic, gets clues about the diner, heads there, gets clues about his job as a fisherman (e.g. customary Pulitzer Prize winning investigative work), tracks Clark back to Smallville, and asks him to let her tell his story. He starts explaining his fear based upon Jonathan's concern...

Flashback 3: Clark witnesses his human father act heroically to save others and perishes in the attempt because Jonathan loved his son so much he prevented Clark from saving him. He sees Jonathan would rather die to protect his son's secret until it was safe for the rest of the world to accept him.

Act 10: Lois accepts Clark's reasoning, returns to Metropolis and Perry, who's pissed about her leaking out the story but glad she's letting it go due to the story's implications and public reaction.

Act 11: Clark tells Martha about his Kryptonian heritage.

******

That's it. With the exception of Zod's "telepathic" explanation to Clark explaining his group's arrival on Earth and later discernment of the Codex, there aren't any other chronological interruptions in the film from Act 11 forward.

Flashbacks are an established method of continuity editing. They can be bothersome sometimes. Personally, I think Snyder's flashbacks and montages (another form of continuity editing) in DOJ were more bothersome but MOS never lacks continuity.

 

[LittleBoyBlue]

The doomsday fight? Took place in a variety of areas. Started out one place and moved a bit a couple of times. The whole fight didn't seem to take place in abandoned areas though. The part where he let out the big energy burst was around a bunch of tall buildings with lights on in them. I would imagine there was some collateral damage even though it wasn't explicitly shown or stated.

Good point.

He "tried"

 

[TheCount]

Slowed down? You want the Christopher Reeve Superman when it comes to his use of speed? Flash uses super speed, doubt people would want him to slow down.

Oh, they are going to do a TON of slowing down with Flash. It worked pretty great in X-Men with Quicksilver.

 

[PJTHEDOORS]

Oh, they are going to do a TON of slowing down with Flash. It worked pretty great in X-Men with Quicksilver.

Quicksilver moved fast. But of course to show what he was doing during the Pentagon scenes (with the guards), he had to be in slow mode.

 

[TheCount]

Too much CGI....the last half hour completely killed the film for me. Totally unrealistic.

And...(probably nitpicking)....In too many movies now...all you see is flashbacks. Can't anyone tell a story without having to jump back and forth through time anymore?

@ least for the most part BVS had a storyline that stayed in the same time period.

The most realistic part of the movie is when Batman peeks over a building and is watching "Gods" go at it. Ain't too much in the tool belt for that one, he just hangs out, fires one shot and goes right back to watching.

I'm also not a huge fan of the idea that the greatest detective the world has ever known was fooled by a few letters and is unable to reason that Superman was fighting to defend himself and the city from Zod.

 

[TheCount]

Quicksilver moved fast. But of course to show what he was doing during the Pentagon scenes (with the guards), he had to be in slow mode.

Yeah, that's what I mean, I think there will be some of the same with Flash.

It's going to be interesting. They basically had to take Superman out of play for a bit because he's so overpowered, I wonder how they're going to handicap The Flash.

 

[PJTHEDOORS]

My fav part of the movie is the beginning when the destruction by Sups and the Kryptonians is demolishing all the buildings and yet, Bruce Wayne has to call one of his buildings to tell to "get everyone out." lol. Nah, it's work day, let's stay around and watch whats going on. Which people did in Man of Steel. Even out on the streets they'd stop and watch. Never mind fleeing for their lives and getting out of the city.

 

[DallasEast]

My fav part of the movie is the beginning when the destruction by Sups and the Kryptonians is demolishing all the buildings and yet, Bruce Wayne has to call one of his buildings to tell to "get everyone out." lol. Nah, it's work day, let's stay around and watch whats going on. Which people did in Man of Steel. Even out on the streets they'd stop and watch. Never mind fleeing for their lives and getting out of the city.

Yeah. The whole sequence was very Independence Day-ish. I always wonder if it's an accurate representation of how people would react to something like that happening whenever I see it done in movies or on television. Then again it bugs the heck out of me when a fender-bender occurs on the highway and the people ahead of me drive one mile per hour to gawk at the scene. They make the situation worse for police or ambulances trying to make it through the idiot created traffic. It makes me think there will always be some people who are involuntarily compelled to stop and stare regardless of the immediate situation to others or themselves.

I did like how the sequence was done from the ground perspective. I kept trying to run the same sequence of events in MOS from Kal-El and Zod's vantage points through my mind's eye at the same time as DOJ's sequence was playing out. It wouldn't surprise me the heat vision beams that Wayne saw cut the building in half were timed and angled exactly as they happened when Zod first manifested the power in MOS. I'm thinking of doing a split screen splice of both movies' sequences after DOJ's release and see if I've guessed right.

 

[TheCount]

My fav part of the movie is the beginning when the destruction by Sups and the Kryptonians is demolishing all the buildings and yet, Bruce Wayne has to call one of his buildings to tell to "get everyone out." lol. Nah, it's work day, let's stay around and watch whats going on. Which people did in Man of Steel. Even out on the streets they'd stop and watch. Never mind fleeing for their lives and getting out of the city.

People did the same thing during September 11th. Today it's easy to understand that an entire sky scraper can and will collapse and you need to exit immediately and vacate the area, but that wasn't always the case.