And the film wars continue:
I understand I’m on the side of a real underdog in DC right now. Suicide Squad was a big “ehh” and despite the public praise I actually found Wonder Woman to be a terrible disappointment. Perhaps my hopes were too high. I have yet to see the Justice League film and thanks to a trusted friend’s report I expect that to be an even greater disappointment in need of a director’s cut. Despite all of this, I’m sticking to my guns on BvS.
ScreenCrush had this to say about the film (BvS). Clearly me and their writer/narrator Ryan Arey were watching two very different films. Though I would agree Civil War was generally a good film, as a movie standing on it’s own, I could have done without it. Maybe if I had followed all of the Avengers films I would feel the the emotional impact of Civil War more so, but as a stand alone film it doesn’t stand up to BvS. Civil War felt like just another superhero film, which is why I don’t have much to say about it. I barely cared how it ended and almost stopped watching before I got there. BvS on the other hand was very impactful. It was, in a word, inspiring. I was actually moved by the “Martha scene” and though I love sharing powerful scenes, I would be doing that one a great deal of disservice sharing it out of context. For me it was crystal clear why it was necessary, but apparently not everyone got it.
I honestly don’t know why exactly so many people aren’t on board. Maybe the lens being used to view the film is simply flawed. Perhaps some are so conditioned to Marvels comic tone they’ve lost the ability to evaluate cinematic gravity. While Arey says he gets it in his explanation, he still fails to acknowledge the full significance of the scene, suggesting he doesn’t. I’ve discussed it all in detail in my critique, though perhaps I also fail to flesh it out. Maybe some people didn’t make the proper connections leading up to the scene because they were so upset about how the film portrays Superman. It seems there’s something escaping the popular imagination here, and it’s indicative of a perhaps fatal failure in communication. It’s like people don’t know how to watch a serious movie anymore and when DC tries to go silly for profits sake they fail.
I appreciate BvS so much because it is deeply psychological and philosophical. If you try to analyze BvS in the same way in which you would analyze a Marvel movie in general, you’re just not going to get the full picture. BvS doesn’t have such a straight forward narrative. It’s a thought process which keeps introducing new ideas in it’s development. Rather than coming up with resolutions and guiding the audience through their own process it poses questions, meant to provoke us to think for ourselves. This is precisely why I appreciate the film so much as a sequel to Man of Steel and a continuation in the spirit of the process introduced in The Watchmen film. It is theoretical work. The audience is rewarded for digging deeper and so I encourage you dear viewers to keep digging.
