PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological, metaphysical*
Before I geared up to review BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF
JUSTICE—henceforth “BVS”—I wrote this short history of both Batman and Superman
in live-action cinema and television. Said history hits only the high points;
the points that most pertain to Warner Brothers Pictures' current ambition to restructure its two best-known franchises for the prospect of launching a “DC
Universe” in the film-world. This marks the company's first
major attempt to take on the cinematic version of the “Marvel Universe,”
cosmos-to-cosmos—or perhaps “cosmoses,” since the Marvel properties have been
spread out over three different film-studios.
I’ve seen a number of comics-fans trounce BVS for continuing
many of the visual tropes seen in the most recent live-action movie-versions of
“the Dark Knight” (all directed by
Christopher Nolan) and “the Man of Steel” (directed by BVS’s helmsman Zack
Snyder). Given that both the Nolan Bat-films and 2011’s MAN OF STEEL were both
financially successful—and that BVS is a direct sequel to the earlier Snyder
film—it was pretty much a given that Snyder would use most of the same visual
tropes seen in the earlier Bat-Super films—gritty, hyperviolent
action-scenarios, dingy and muted colors, and a mordant world-weariness that
conflicts with the characterization of comic-book superheroes as vehicles of
light-hearted escapism.
Many fans have complained about Snyder’s continued
pursuit of these narrative strategies. What many have not realized is that this
time they are being used not in opposition to the mythology of the superheroes,
as was the case with the previous four films. I regard all of these as “hired gun” films, in the sense that the directors and writers involved were engaged to do
nothing but to make viable franchises out of Superman and Batman respectively,
not to make them function within any larger continuity..
But in BVS, the game plan has been
changed. BVS is a “tentpole movie,” designed to launch other Warners projects
like WONDER WOMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE. Yet it’s not only that. BVS is also an
attempt to build a cosmos by modeling it after a
particular comic-book mythology. Even MAN OF STEEL, technically the precursor to BVS, did little more than reshuffle a few elements of the Superman mythos that were largely familiar to a mainstream audience. In the "universe" produced by
Marvel Studios from the properties not sold to other movie-makers, the mythological
structuring-event was the formation of the Avengers. Here, the event is the
formation of the Justice League—but told as if it had come about because of the
events of Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.
For some hardcore comics-fans (or maybe just me), this restructuring might suggest a
delicious level of irony. Miller’s story of an aging Batman, coming to terms
with a world that had rejected superheroes, was what Miller himself called a
“brass band” funeral for the superhero genre. The same hardcore fans will
undoubtedly note BVS’s many quotes from TDKR: the Batman-Superman conflict
itself, a scene where a nuclear attack reduces Superman to a withered
almost-corpse, before sunlight restores him, a quote from Batman to the effect
that “We [superheroes] have always been criminals.” But the most important
thing that the Terrio-Goyer script takes from TDKR is Miller’s extremely convoluted argument about the nature of power.
The “hired gun” films by Nolan and Snyder were not concerned
with the pros and cons of power. Nolan’s stance is distinctly ultraliberal: his
script turns the Bat-mythos inside out for the purpose of scoring political
points against the perceived conservatism of that mythos. Snyder loosely emulates this
pattern in MAN OF STEEL, but his pre-Superman work makes clear that he
has never been as doctrinaire as Nolan. He apparently found just as easy to
direct 300, whose theme concerned the glorification of a warrior-clan’s power,
as WATCHMEN, whose storyline interrogated the power-aspects of the superhero
fantasy.
I won’t dwell on the plot of BVS, though I’ll point out that
ever since 1992’s BATMAN RETURNS it’s become routine for big-budget superhero
flicks to force too many irons into the fire, and that BVS’s plot is no worse
than the chaos of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.
BVS must juggle not only the intimations of other superheroes in the
world, but three separate plots that account for Batman’s animus toward
Superman, Superman’s mutual hostility, and villain Lex Luthor’s confusing
scheme to manipulate the two heroes against one another—while at the same time
said villain also plots to unleash a second menace, Doomsday. This somewhat
tacked-on subplot also derives from a famed comic-book narrative, the 1990s
“Death of Superman.” However, the Doomsday sequence, and the death that
results, don’t really concern the theme of power. Naturally I suspect that the
hero killed at the film’s end will resurrect in his next film just as
predictably as he did in the comic books. For all that I know, said
resurrection may even be the key to the assemblage of the Justice League.
BVS does not explore exactly the same issues of power as
Miller’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, but the film shows a Miller-like sense of
power’s ambiguities. The Superman of Richard Donner and the Batman of Tim
Burton are imposing presences, but they’re not scary. Despite the difference in
the levels of power controlled by the two heroes, their use of it is visceral
and unsettling, and very much in tune with the way superheroes of comics’
Golden Age were depicted: as holy terrors to evildoers. Early in the film, an
African warlord holds a gun to Lois Lane’s head, to make Superman back off.
Superman literally puts the man through a wall. The audience is obliged to assume that the warlord survives the hit, since nothing about his death is
stated—but the abruptness of the violence will make most viewers feel as if the
evildoer was reduced to a pulp by the Kryptonian’s inhuman power. And even
though Batman is fully human, he’s seen shooting a vast number of henchmen in
BVS, including a scene that’s a direct swipe from a similar one in TDKR, right
down to Batman’s concluding phrase, “I believe you.”
At the same time, even though their power is fearful, the
Terrio-Goyer script allows both of them moments of humanity, showing that they
unleash violence only to protect others. In fact, the two
heroes become enemies because each sees the danger in the
other’s uncontrolled violence. The script misses the chance to say something
meaningful about the nature of power and the issue of collateral damage, but it
does show Superman’s guilt and regret when, as a result of his righteous
actions in Africa, the local government’s re-asserts its power by slaughtering helpless people. Batman is more directly responsible for inciting violence for having placed a “bat-brand” on some of the crooks he captures: this brand at least causes said crooks being killed in prison. Yet the hero also shows some
regret for his precipitate actions, at least by the film's end, where Batman threatens an imprisoned Luthor with the deadly
brand—and yet, at the last moment, spares the super-villain from that fate.
Though some reviewers have caviled at the film for its
splashy scenes of spectacular violence, I found Snyder’s spectacle-scenes
somewhat more artful than those of the Nolan films. Nolan specializes in scenes
of slick, high-octane violence; scenarios, that oppose their diegetical
“reality” to the fantasy of billionaires who cruise around town in tricked-out military vehicles. A similar intellectual aridity pervades Snyder’s MAN OF
STEEL, where both Superman and his Kryptonian foes have no more mythopoeic
status than a weatherman’s reportage of a colossal storm. But in BVS. Snyder at
least allows a few sparks of superhero symbolism to cut through the murk of
sociopolitical determinism. The
interpolated subplot of Wonder Woman—who’s pursuing a course not related to the
Gotham-Metropolis struggle—is of some help in this, though her rich mythology
is barely suggested. Given the brevity of her appearances, I can't understand why any reviewers would claim that she 'saves" the film, though I think her non-costumed scenes outshine her costumed ones as far as communicating her Olympian poise.
BVS is not by any means my ideal live-action chronicle of
the first encounters of Batman and Superman, and the best that I can say for
the principal actors—Affleck, Cavill
Gadot, and Eisenberg—is they generally acquit themselves well with what
they’re given, though only Eisenberg really puts a definitive stamp on his “manic Bill Gates” version of Lex
Luthor For me scenes of head-scratching confusion probably outnumbered scenes
of wonder and awe. And yet, the mere fact that the production chose to steal
from the best, from Miller’s definitive Batman work, suggests that the new
Warner-DC Universe might be able to formulate a superhero universe with its own
unique tonality, rather than doing what a lot of DC comic books did to poor
effect—simply copying the Marvel method of doing things.
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