The DC Comics TV & Movie Thread - A Thread for Talking about Detective Comics Comics Television Shows and Movies

The design of everything Kryptonian is such an imaginative fantasy. Hans Zimmer forges his own path with the soundtrack rather than staying in John Williams' shadow. The use of visual allusion is top-notch. But the core of this movie is Clark Kent, the same age as Jesus, who wants to do the right thing with his great power but is deeply concerned about how.

It is in many ways of its time (2013), exemplifying some timely tendencies that its sequel (2016) backs off on. By the mid-2010s, American filmmakers felt comfortable making entertainment that reflected 9/11; the World Engine's attack on Metropolis quotes documentary footage of ground zero. And unlike many fantasies of urban destruction, no attempt is made to depict it as bloodless. More than just a harrowing aesthetic, it is about the trauma of that kind of sudden mass destruction. It falls within a trend of movies with a lot of military characters, romanticizing military discipline and using military vigilance to drive its plot. (See also: "Godzilla" (2013))

The soldiers of Man of Steel are presented admiringly. The sober caution of General Swanwick (who's said to be J'onn J'onzz, keep an eye out for it), the unflinching courage of Colonel Hardy, the precise insights of Dr. Hamilton, the various grunts who feed the audience cues that this is Superman and he's someone to be respected. But at the same time, it depicts them as not just ineffective, but actively harmful. They can't keep Clark or Lois out of the scout ship site, their handcuffs are like tissue paper, they shoot up main street in Smallville because they can't tell the friendly foreigners from the enemy foreigners, they launch missiles that land on fleeing civilians. Not a single bullet fired in this film accomplishes anything good, and they fire plenty. Zod's followers recognize them as kindred spirits, a bad sign.

The juxtaposition of unimpeachably professional conduct and Keystone Kops effectiveness is no accident. It's not only that it falls within the culturally acceptable parameters that you're allowed to criticize the military but not the troops. When it comes to violence, Zack Snyder always tries to have it both ways (to varying degrees of success). In "300," the Spartans were horrible arrogant infanticidal fascists and physically flawless badasses doing sicknasty stunts with heroic framing. In "Watchmen," every fight scene is cooler than the source material even though its participants are no less repulsive. Some students of cinema have remarked on the seeming impossibility of making an anti-war movie, because to depict violence (so the theory goes) is to glorify it. Snyder seems to have concluded that it's better to be hung for a sheep than for a lamb, so to speak, and tries to get as much glory out of it as he can, seemingly in the hopes that the audience can separate their moral judgment from their aesthetic judgment.

Tonally, it's a very serious movie. There's maybe three jokes in the whole thing, nor does it indulge in glitzy glamor. This makes it unique among cape flicks. It's somber throughout, with harrowing apocalyptic visions and bold pronouncements about the fate of the world. The uplifting message of hope at the end is that Superman is here, he is operating openly, and he trusts you. He trusts humanity, despite everything.

which is about the aftermath of the trauma of the revelation of Superman. It shows us a Batman who has no trust left in him, no idealism, a Batman who has lost his path. It takes the death of Superman (whom the audience knows will be resurrected) to set him back on it, to change from "How many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?" to "Men are still good." He starts off in need of redemption, and by the end he has accepted his redeemer.

BvS is a more moderate film in structure, tone, and conceit. Doomsday is not traumatic for Earth, so they fight him on a convenient uninhabited island. But he is traumatic for Clark. Literally made from the corpse of his greatest regret, one of the first thing this monster does is hit him with a chunk of a monument listing the names of people who died in the attack on Metropolis. And he dies to defeat that devil.

But there's overall more levity. More cool shit that's simply cool. More wit, more eccentricity. Future cameos. Amid all this, though, Clark is coming to terms with the fact that the world sees him not as a powerful man but as some sort of god. How can he live up to that? He fears the unintended consequences his father warned him of. He feels alienated, and he fears what it would mean for him to lose his connection to humanity. And that's what the Knightmare sequence is all about: a vision of a wrathful Superman as a tyrant and an agent of Darkseid.

A widow of a slain prisoner states the theme (I paraphrase): "One man decides who lives and who dies. Is that justice?" To me it seems Clark is so obsessed with investigating Batman because he seems to embody someone in a similar position to him who made the opposite choice. A man of great power who is seen as something supernatural, who put himself above the law to dispense justice as he sees fit. The Bat symbol is even designed to look like a Kryptonian crest. The bright idealism of Metropolis and the dark cynicism of Gotham, separated by a body of water.

And, good lord, the water imagery in this movie. Immersion in water resurrects Zod, accompanies Lex's mind-shattering revelation of space devils. When the world engine is pulled up from the sea, it change from an instrument of genocide into kryptonite; and when the kryptonite spear is pulled up from the well, it changes from a weapon to kill Superman to a weapon to kill Doomsday. Jonathan Kent's life-defining trauma, which only love could begin to heal, involves a flood.