Slight Batman v Superman Spoilers Below
When Batman Vs. Superman was announced at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013, NPR’s Stephen Thompson joked, “Wow, they’re combining the grim, self-important joylessness of Dark Knight Rises with the grim, self-important joylessness of Man of Steel.”
Now that the unfortunately re-titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is here it might just be the biggest “I told you so” in recent movie history. Every Hollywood insider, blogger, hardcore comic book enthusiast and film critic who has been fearful of this project’s imminent failure as a film, as a piece of branded entertainment and as a profitable start to the DC Cinematic Universe has seemingly had their opinion validated. The film’s opening weekend total at the box office is the missing piece in the ingredient so far, but for now it appears to be everything its critics had feared.
But forget that for a second. Hold back your disagreements if you are someone who loved Man of Steel and loved or at least greatly enjoyed Batman v Superman. Let’s table any kind of reflection on the financials behind Batman v Superman until the box office totals come in. Instead, let’s talk about trust.
It is very easy to be cynical about the film industry. The corporate conglomerate-owned film studios must produce product to generate profit throughout a well orchestrated, worldwide value chain. So the studios produce homogenized films which emphasizes language-neutral spectacle over narrative to better appeal to places like China. Financial risk is discouraged, and the fickle whims of the stock market must be satisfied.
As such, the turnover rate at the studios in the executive ranks is as steady as the wind, and key creatives who used to make movies now make fantastic TV shows. That means most of the the studios fail to present a cohesive artistic vision which lasts longer than a couple of years, and TV dramas and comedies have overtaken their film counterparts in quality and cultural impact (though, to be fair, that particular transition is not simply because of a brain drain).
Plus, there is a lasting cultural assumption, regardless of its accuracy, that most Hollywood executives are money-obsessed coke fiends who view The Wolf of Wall Street as aspirational. That might be why I’ve already seen several articles joke Warner Bros. executives will only be concerned about Batman v Superman‘s reviews once they pull themselves away from their piles of coke to look at the box office results.
Maybe it’s tempting to give in to such snarky reactions because at its core the film industry pretends it’s about art when it’s truly about commerce. Maybe it doesn’t help that we have years and years of examples of Hollywood churning out cheap knock-offs of other successful movies. The endless streams of discouraging diversity statistics has certainly contributed to our collective cynicism recently. But maybe because that one studio made that one movie you really hated that one time you’ll never trust them again.
That brings me back to trust. We typically place our trust in specific directors and actors, taking comfort in the assumption that their involvement will make a movie watchable. However, in this era of hyper-branded cinematic universes we must believe that Sony knows what it’s doing with Ghostbusters or that Paramount’s looming Transformers cinematic universe isn’t the desperate cash grab it appears to be. However, Sony previously asked us to trust their vision for Spider-Man, and then they turned around and canceled everything, choosing to restart with Marvel Studios’ help.
That’s the problem. In order to earn our trust, these emerging cinematic universes must appear to have a cohesive vision. That can only come from a trusted central figure overseeing everything. Star Wars has that with Kathleen Kennedy (have you seen how many classic movies she’s produced?). The Marvel Cinematic Universe obviously has Kevin Feige. Warner Bros.’s DC Universe has…Zack Snyder?
“I have done really well in my career betting on Zack Snyder. If I can bet on him once or twice a year, I’d love it,” is what WB Film studio president Greg Silverman told THR in 2014, attempting at the time to explain away the studio’s run of box office bombs by pointing to its apparently bright future with its DC Cinematic Universe.
A glance at Snyder’s actual career box office totals calls bullshit on Silverman’s assertion (beyond 300, of course), and paints a picture of a filmmaker who has somehow failed upward. Now he’s been handed the keys to the DC Cinematic Universe along with his producer wife Deborah Snyder. We’re supposed to trust these two?
Well, yeah, if you liked Man of Steel, 300 or Sucker Punch. If not, you’re pretty screwed.
THR sagely argued in its Batman v Superman review, “But after Man of Steel three years ago, the studio had to know what it was getting with director Zack Snyder.” He has made a drab, joyless and completely wrongheaded affair with a jumbled narrative and CGI mess of a final act. Now he’s more or less refusing to apologize for the more controversial bits in which iconic superheroes display no aversion to killing.
Well, no shit. He’s Zack Snyder, and he made a Zack Snyder movie. Snyder’s excuse for why his Batman is a sociopath who gets off on not directly killing but instead creating the circumstances which bring about death (e.g, it’s not Batman’s fault if you happen to be standing next to thing he blows up) is essentially, “Frank Miller did it.” In the three years since Man of Steel, Snyder has repeatedly defended his decision to have Superman kill, revealing that both Christopher Nolan and WB insisted that Superman should not kill anyone. However, he managed to wear them down.
And, honestly, that’s fine. As NPR’s comic book critic Glen Weldon recently argued, these characters have been around long enough to inspire all sorts of different interpretations. Snyder’s not actually wrong about the Frank Miller Batman, and even the Christopher Nolan version chose to let some people die rather than saving them. Don’t rail against Man of Steel or Batman v Superman because they don’t represent your preferred versions of the characters. Rail against them because they’re bad movies. Point out the plot holes. Criticize the endless. blunt Christ imagery. Tear apart the sloppy editing. Call the director out for casting Jesse Eisenberg and then not reigning him in enough. Argue how truly pointless the big future dream (?) sequence was to the overall movie.
But, mostly, if you don’t like it blame Zack Snyder.
However, it might not actually be that simple. As THR’s Kim Masters wrote last April, “But exactly who is in charge of the DC universe remains blurry. Snyder, now finishing Batman v. Superman, is a key player, along with his wife, Debbie. Also in the mix are producer Charles Roven and a team of Warners executives, including president of creative development and worldwide production Greg Silverman and executive vp Jon Berg as well as DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson and DC chief creative officer Geoff Johns. In addition, various filmmakers will oversee individual movies.”
That was the report where a Warners insider flipped the middle finger at Marvel by claiming the DC universe would be “filmmaker-driven.” However, it was also the report where agents representing screenwriters hired for DC movies said things like “they just haven’t been thorough about their whole world and how each character fits and how to get the most out of each writer’s time by giving them direction” and it “felt like they were throwing shit against the wall to see what stuck.”
That last bit describes a lot of Batman v Superman, but if they are truly filmmaker-driven then Patty Jenkins’ vision for Wonder Woman will be completely different. However, Snyder is also set to start filming Justice League: Part One in a couple of weeks. There are already rumblings online about whether or not it’s too late to remove him entirely or perhaps exert more oversight. However, after Man of Steel what else did WB really expect? They saw a guy who totally knows his splash pages and Frank Miller, and they said he seemed like their perfect Joss Whedon. Now they’re stuck with him, and whatever trust we had in them is dissipating.