Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - What the Flick Reviews

Below are two video reviews of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice by the reviewers over at What The Flick. The first review is spoiler free, but the second is not, so choose wisely. I may eventually share some of my own thoughts on the film, but for now these reviews are as close to my own opinion as any.

Spoilers Below:

Deadpool: Movie Review

Deadpool is a superhero/comic book movie that dares to be different, except when it doesn’t, which is most of the time. Based on the Marvel Comic book, ostensibly inhabiting the same universe as The X-Men (who are present) and The Avengers (different studio), Deadpool is the story of wiseass mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) who seeks radical treatment for advanced stage cancer only to emerge with Wolverine style healing powers and a serious case of the uglies. Motivated by revenge against the generic slimy British guy who cured/cursed him and the need to rescue his girlfriend, Deadpool dons his red and black suit and kills a whole lot of people. He does this in the most graphically violent way possible, and unlike most comic book movies there in no sanitation of the violence, language or sex. This movie earns its R rating. It also manages to be funny, and is full of self-referential moments and Deadpool’s trademark shattering of the fourth wall, which is all fairly entertaining.

Warning: this redband trailer contains violence and language.

But Deadpool never manages to swim out of the shallow end with regards to character or story. Outside of the title character almost everyone else feels like a prop. The prop villain. The prop girlfriend. The prop superhero sidekicks. They all have their little moments, but none of them ever add up to much. Leslie Uggams cameos as Blind Al, Wilson’s sightless roommate, but for some reason she gets less screen time than his pointless bartender buddy Weasel. And the story follows the same standard superhero origins outline we’ve seen dozens of times now, even leading to the big final showdown set piece where the hero saves the day. Sure the budget must’ve been too small to destroy an entire city, but they still manage to cause significant property damage, not because that was remotely the best way to conclude the story, but because all of these productions are trapped in that ‘massive property damage’ paradigm. So for all of the boundaries it pushes with regards to violence and language Deadpool only ever manages to be a standard superhero/comic book movie. B

Destruction By Formula

It can come as a surprise to no one that The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which opened last Friday in theaters across the country, as already taken in $92 million at the box office. As a genre, the Superhero Comic Book movie remains a staple of Hollywood’s Summer Block Buster season. This year, we’ve already seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and in a couple of week X-Men: Days of Future Past will premiere. Behind us is the wreckage of dozens of major cities and landscapes at the hands of the special effects wizards who have brought us all the Thor, Iron Man, Superman, Batman and Avengers movies. Based on the profit margins we’ll no doubt have another decade of mass destruction ahead of us.

Back when this 21st century version of the genre was still finding it’s legs, with the premieres of the first X-men and Spider-Man movies, the superhero movie was somewhat free to present a story with something of an original plot. Yes, they usually still required a grand climax that brought the hero into direct conflict with the villain, but did not require the overwhelming levels of destruction that the genre cannot seem to do without these days. The pinnacle of this frenzy of destruction can be seen in last summer’s Man of Steel, which essentially leveled Metropolis and significant portions of Smallville. Whatever human story the producers, writers and directors of these films are inspired to tell, they basically get the first two thirds of the film to do that before setting up these large destruction/action set pieces to finish.

The big problem with the emergence of this genre convention is that these films have largely become an indistinguishable orgy of destruction. And while there are very few visible deaths, most of the destruction is so absolute that you know thousands of people would be killed if it occurred in the real world. And it’s really gotten kind of boring. There are only so many smashed vehicles and collapsing buildings that you can look at before it all looks pretty much the same. But I guess as long as these films continue to break box office records, Hollywood will continue to feed us this formula of destruction.

Caper

Rather than continue to complain about The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest and discuss Detroit: An American Autopsy, I'm going to fill space this week with the premiere episodes of Geek and Sundry's new web series Caper. Caper follows four superheroes with less than wealthy alter-egos who turn to crime as a means of making ends meet. Promises to be very entertaining, and almost anything featuring Beth Riesgraf is worth watching.