While it’s still possible that “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice” could enjoy some kind of tongue-in-cheek camp revival some 20-odd years down the line, at this point it feels safe to say that Zack Snyder’s mega-sized sequel to his Superman flick “Man Of Steel” was not the most warmly received blockbuster of 2016. The film split fanboy opinion pretty much down the middle, and as far as the critics went, well, they were less conflicted (the film holds a damningly low Rotten Tomatoes score of merely 27%).
Of course, DC has been doing course-correction in the wake of Snyder’s cartoonishly grim sequel — though if the company’s idea of lightening up means more movies like “Suicide Squad,” then there’s still clearly much work to be done. And sure enough, the trailer for Snyder’s upcoming “Justice League” movie already has more of what the critics say ‘Dawn’ lacked: more laughs, more quippy side characters and a lighter tone overall.
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A new video essay from Nerdwriter argues that all the levity from here to the next “Guardians Of The Galaxy” movie couldn’t save “Justice League,” the reason being that Snyder, like many (but not all) directors who have graduated from music videos and commercials, is obsessed with the moment above all else — sometimes at the expense of actually building a scene. A movie moment is designed to give an audience an involuntary thrill, while a scene provides us with context as to the characters, setting and conflict at play. ‘Dawn Of Justice,’ comparatively, plays like a string of disconnected, sometimes visually rapturous moments that are curiously bereft of weight and sometimes don’t even bother trying to connect to one another.
The video focuses on a few key points, like how limp the Daily Planet stuff in ‘Dawn Of Justice’ feels. There’s a small handful of scenes set in Clark Kent’s metropolitan news office, but few of them last longer than literally 60 seconds and none of them give the viewer a sense that this is an actual, lived-in location where people clock in to work every day. The narrator also takes time to note the Hawkeye farm sequence from Joss Whedon’s “Avengers: Age Of Ultron” as a solid example of what Snyder doesn’t seem to be interested in: character-building so that the action has a sense of emotional consequence. Like “Dawn Of Justice,” ‘Age Of Ultron’ is a wobbly, overstuffed enterprise, but Whedon has never let the humanity of his work be dwarfed by mere spectacle. Snyder, meanwhile, is frequently praised as a great visual stylist — which, of course, he is. But the video argues that Snyder’s devotion to awe and blowing the audience’s mind every five minutes comes at a greater cost: the cost of telling a worthwhile story.
What do you think? Is ‘Dawn Of Justice’ better than this essay suggests? Or do its problems run deeper than Snyder’s directorial vision alone? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.