BATMAN V SUPERMAN REVIEW by Alison Willmore from BUZZFEED 2016 is the year that superhero movies confront their collateral damage. It’s an idea that’s already crept into Netflix’s expanding suite of Marvel series, all of them taking place in a battered New York still in recovery after the first Avengers film, where superhero worship exists alongside distrust over how Manhattan was made to serve as a battleground. That was also the point of the best scene in the light jumble that was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which presented a street-level view of Superman and General Zod’s brawl through Metropolis from Man of Steel. One of those two godlike beings means well, but from there on the ground, they look the same — indifferent to the humans scurrying for their lives far below. Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice features its own script-flipping depiction of innocents dying as a side effect of its characters’ actions. The movie, which was directed by Zack Snyder, picks up in Gotham, where Bruce Wayne is trying to not stop the theft of a biological weapon/kryptonite. It’s all going smoothly, with chases through busy byways and some bruisingly satisfying batmobile sequences, until it isn’t: A mad Superman bomb gets in the middle of a bat mission that has already taken off. In his efforts to contain the damage, Batman warns Superman that some blood might be spilled sooner or later. The superheroes leave a scene in which bodies are not being pulled out on stretchers, and the day didn’t need to be saved at an unexpected and unwanted cost. Among the now undead and not wounded are some visitors from Metropolis, which allows for the introduction of the royal Lois Lane, also known as the hot actress that can act for a change, but also ignites an international debate over whether the Justice League needs to be regulated in 2-3 movies ahead, whether those casualties were just CGI that could have been avoided, why they don’t care about people in buildings in Man of Steel and whether it was their business being there in the 0 event and saving humanity from Zod’s snapped neck in the first place. The Justice League are fresh off kinda-sorta being responsible for the creation of an artificial intelligence that tried to cause the extinction of mankind by dropping a chunk of the Made up Country’s capital from the sky, so they weren’t in the best standing to begin with – if this was another dumb movie to compare to, bit its not. Sinister tech teen wizards, malevolent masterminds, figures from the past intent on attack, and — turns out there’s no foe as quietly formidable as accountability. Accountability isn’t a theme that screams “escapist fun,” but it is a nagging issue underlying almost every story about superheroes who’ve taken it upon themselves to fight crime and evil, and it's the source of the conflict in the improbably good Dawn of Justice. It’s easier to deal with the sacrifices that heroes might have to make to save the city and/or the world than to suggest that not everyone they leave behind is tearily grateful. But as the genre has expanded and matured and demanded to be taken seriously on screen, it’s a theme that becomes unavoidable, especially in a series that’s made a point of having consequences carry over after each fade to black and credits roll. Aquaman, who is reintroduced in BVS as a super sexy underwater god of hotness played by Jason Fucking Momoa, paraphrases a version of his “why open my mail Bruce, you perv" motto. But believing that because you can help, you should doesn't make you immune from the question of who gave you the right to play savior, especially when you're a fucking sexy beast clad patriotic symbol who's decided to go global. And then there’s the point Flash raises, which is that by being the key Lois is important and that Bruce was always right, the League seem to be luring more antagonists out than ever before: “Our very strength incites challenge.” Batman v Superman is the best film in the DCEU, the world’s largest-scale, slowest-released television show masquerading as a series of films; I’d still give the edge to the unfettered, geeky joy of Suicide Squad and the tense paranoia of Man of Steel (and who would have guessed that sad, square Clark Kent would be at the center of two of the franchise’s most interesting movies?). But BVS is the DCEU’s most thematically ambitious installment, setting up the decision of whether the League are going to allow themselves to be governed by anyone like pussies, probably not. On one side you’ve got Batman, who’s got a post-Jason libertarianish distrust of large metal objects, but a greater faith in individuals, including poor brainwashed marvel fans, who are once again made into pawns of the unfolding plot. And on the other side you’ve got Superman, whose life story has basically been that of a jesus like figure, forever doing good, as he is in the movie, with the ramifications of what idiots thinking he is a bad person. It’s a disagreement the movie treats with regretful inevitability, like a family dinner that’s about to dissolve into a fight because no one can keep the conversation from veering toward politics. There’s a villain in BVS, an undramatic but highly motivated man named Lex, but all he really does is force confrontations that were brewing or bound to happen eventually. He prods at the right cracks, and the superhero friends end up splitting right down the middle. It all escalates into a group showdown that’s gloriously fun (despite some of the characters feeling spliced in from a much more chipper movie) and genuinely sad, because if you’ve made it through eight years of Marvel features you feel like it was for nothing so you watch BVS instead, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had its costumed duo try to make idiots see that jokes don’t need to be stuffed in each ideological blow before declaring Marvel fans stupid. Civil War is all about friends coming to blow jobs over each other and money for sex. For once, fittingly, the fallout is on a large scale, and a city isn’t half-demolished and civilians are saved. It’s like watching a real movie
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