Double_Oh_7

That all SOUNDS interesting, but I have zero confidence he could have pulled it off competently. Did he have any explanation for that Martha bullshit??

gryffinmaster

Sorta, actually, yeah.

fujishig

So basically

"You nerds are living in a dreamland if you think these heroes are all pure and innocent. They have to be corrupt, like real life. But oh I wrote myself into a corner, I just knew I wanted these guys to fight and I didn't know how to get them to stop, so I just threw my hands up and went, hey, it's a mythological construct, who needs realism or logic?"

Mike86

devilshalo

It's so Step Brothers.

Batman: Let's play a game. Alright? On the count of three, shout out your mother's name. Ok ready? 1, 2, 3..
Both: Martha!
Superman: What?!
Batman: Did we just become best friends?!
Superman: Yup!!

Jason

Snyder is referring to the team in Batman v Superman where the Flash tells Batman that "Lois is the key," which is never referenced in Justice League. And the director said that Warner Bros. was on board for the overall story he wanted to tell, but "the details of how and why" the Justice League broke up made them nervous and needed to be changed.

I thought Lois was "the key" to returning undead Clark to sanity after they resurrected him in the most dangerous and irresponsible way they could think of.

Michael Corvin

I'm sure that was just tying up a loose string once it was clear DC wasn't down with Snyder's giant overblown plan. Or maybe it was something Whedon came up with.

fujishig

But clearly Lois was the key in avoiding that post apocalyptic future that Batman dreamed up, that they totally and completely ignored after that movie. She wasn't the key in defeating Steppenwolf.

Michael Corvin

Maybe, maybe not. Superman handed Steppenwolf his ass to him in a sling after the rest of the team struggled. That wouldn't have happened if Lois didn't reign in Pet Sematary Superman.

fujishig

So you're saying that that dream was Steppenwolf taking over? Weren't the bad guys wearing Superman's emblem though?

brayzie

I remember him talking about how he grew up reading Heavy Metal magazine as a kid and when his friends brought over Marvel and DC comics he was disappointed there was no over the top violence or nudity. Then he came across Alan Moore's Watchmen and was like, now this is a comic book!
He comes across as a little immature superficial when it comes to stories. He's like the director version of 90s Image Comics.


I'm a big comic nerd and none of that sounds interesting except for using Flash to time travel back.

Abob Teff

fujishig

That's actually in the video in the link gryffinmaster posted above (it's at the exact spot to pick that up too). I think (hope) he was joking (if you watch the video, he seems to be). I mean he had to be. He had to. Please let him be joking.

Paul_SD

The solution to this couldn't have been more obvious.
You have another character who is going to make a big flashy entrance fifteen minutes later. That character has the "lasso of truth". Just move up her big entrance, having her rope that raving psycho in mid killing stroke, and show him the light...literally.

brayzie

Wow, the solution to their problem was right under their nose the whole time.

Anyway, that little clip of Snyder just reinforces my opinions about him.

But first off, I do feel that the idea of superheroes having "a no killing policy" can come across as outdated or unrealistic.
In Batman Begins Bruce has a strict "no killing" policy. The film went out of its way to show that Bruce wouldn't have brought his parents back simply by killing their killer. He refused to kill a murderer but in doing so fake Ra's Al Ghul gets killed, most of the ninjas get blown up, and I'm pretty sure the murderer died in the chaos too. On top of all that, at the very end, he finds a loop hole in his own moral clause: "I won't kill you...but I don't have to save you either."
In The Dark Knight Rises Batman prevents Catwoman from killing early on, but at the end she saves his life by just shooting Bane with a missile and killing him, and it's just shrugged off. He even ends up getting with this killer at the end, happily ever after.

With that said, Snyder doesn't seem to get Alan Moore's Watchmen, if he's comparing his films to it. The Batman-like character Rorschach was revealed to be some mentally disturbed loser runt, who lives in a dump, a homophobe who is probably in denial about his own homosexuality, and has no social life whatsoever. He's literally a crazy person on the street wearing a sign. When Rorschach kills for the first time, we see it has consequences. Prior to that he was a traditional crimefighter on the surface, and after that he started to neglect his hygiene, his speaking and social skills deteriorate, and he becomes more violent. In fact, the idea of killing to save others fucks him up so much in the head that he'd rather die than go on living.
In Batman v Superman, there's nothing like that. Bruce Wayne is still the same handsome, billionaire playboy, flirting with attractive women, and goes on to do more superheroing by the end of the film. The moral and philosophical conflict is nothing like Watchmen. It's more like an issue of Marvel Team-Up where the heroes are obligated to fight each other over a misunderstanding, and end up teaming up to fight the villain.

fujishig

Superheroes are a childhood fantasy that doesn't hold up to careful scrutiny. I wouldn't say the notion of a no kill rule are outdated at all. Unrealistic, sure, about as unrealistic as a vigilante dressed in a cape not being taken down by police. If you have Batman kill random thugs, for instance, what separates him from a vigilante like the Azrael who took over for him after Knightfall, or an early Red Hood? Why doesn't he just kill all of his enemies, if he's willing to kill at all? There's a villain who apparently killed Robin, who we see in another movie is basically roaming free, so why not kill him?

That said, there are ways to break this rule, but especially with characters like this you really have to know what you're doing and make it a big deal, not a casual "oh it's ok to kill thugs because hey things happen." The problem with MoS isn't that he kills Zod, it's that the only reaction we get is his scream, in the next few scenes he's right back to cracking wise with the US government and taking on a civilian identity. There's no examination there. Same with BvS, you can have a Batman that is older and jaded and kills but you have to have time to explore the character and then have it be an eye opening moment when he realizes where he went wrong. You don't really get that in the movie.

Someone once presented an argument that Bruce Wayne is suffering from PTSD throughout the movie, and he comes out of it partway through. That he's not a hero to be cheered in the early part of the movie. That would actually be an ok take on it, but if that was really what Snyder was going for he failed to present it clearly.

Of course, this is also a problem I have with Aquaman who kisses while people are blowing up around him and it's presented like fireworks, and who basically just wholeheartedly slaughters his own people.

brayzie

I just meant outdated in the way it's presented at times in film. Like it's just put there "just because" or for tradition.

The challenge of adapting an old character like Superman and Batman to a modern day live-action film is being able to make those core-concepts work for modern audiences, like their moral codes for example. Stuff like Miracleman and Watchmen work because they're using analogue versions of those characters to critique and deconstruct what Superman, or the JLA would be like in the real world. They're also stories that have an ending, so there can be serious consequences.
Miracleman changes the entire planet forever. The Batman/Blue Beetle character in Watchmen is killed by the Superman/Captain Atom character. You can't do that in Batman or Action Comics where everything has to stay generally same every month.

Snyder cites Alan Moore as his reason for making Batman v Superman a certain way, but even Moore never had Batman or Superman killing when he actually wrote those characters. And I've said this many times before, but the build up for the Batman/Superman fight in Frank Miller's TDKR was so much better than in BvS. We get background on the vigilantism in that world and the history between Superman and Batman.

The two characters have strong ideological differences and that's what brings them to a confrontation. It's not just a misunderstanding manipulated by the villain.

One more thing I just realized. Zach Snyder is playing into the cliche "Women in Refrigerators" trope. The death of the hero's girlfriend motivating the main character. Poor Lois.

Iron_Giant

Have watched the movie many times and still enjoyed/loved it.

Issues I have had with the movie:
1. Lex
2. Doomsday should have been 2 or 3 movies down the road

No movie is perfect, but I loved the tone and filming of MoS, BvS, JL (because of the two directors, it was a bit off)...WW was awesome, Aqauman was fun to see them pull this off (Hard to do an underwater movie).

DJariya

I'm tired of this thread being bumped since the movie is pretty irrelevant now. But, I saw this today and it's worth showing.

Mr. Flix

From the looks of that, Cavill not only had to keep his mustache but his stubble as well. No wonder Superman's entire lower face looked so fake in so many shots.

Michael Corvin

Looks like his hair is styled different too.

Jason

Wouldn't it have been easier to glue that cheap pornstache back on him rather than (poorly) CGI it out?

gryffinmaster

Of course, but that wasn't Paramount's problem to deal with.

Why So Blu?

The total shape of his head is different and they had to "bronze" him up, too.

OldBoy

Holy god was this not an interesting movie at all. Frankenstein’s Monster? Really? Ezra is terrible as Flash and Fisher adds nothing as Cyborg. Even Steppenwolfe is bland as hell. You would think better from writer and director of what this essentially rips off in The Avengers’ Joss Whedon. Even these boxes are rips of infinity stones. Terrible, but has some entertainment value. Reviews were right, this not so good.