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^98% of the humor was inserted (add funny meme here) by Joss Whedon, hence it sucks.
Whedon doesn't get humor. He is addicted to snark. Snark is funny once. Once. Then you just need a slap.
But it is entirely possible, even fun, to build bits of humor into action movies. See Die Hard. See Raiders of the Lost Ark. See STAR WARS. See ALIENS. See Death Hunt. See The Outlaw Josey Wales. See Dirty Harry. You can build humor into scenes and have them work without having to force it. Watch movies that did this well. Stop watching Joss Whedon.
Whedon doesn't get humor. He is addicted to snark. Snark is funny once. Once. Then you just need a slap.
But it is entirely possible, even fun, to build bits of humor into action movies. See Die Hard. See Raiders of the Lost Ark. See STAR WARS. See ALIENS. See Death Hunt. See The Outlaw Josey Wales. See Dirty Harry. You can build humor into scenes and have them work without having to force it. Watch movies that did this well. Stop watching Joss Whedon.
The humor in those films are rooted in characterization. That's how you do it. When Carl Weathers goes "You want some of this buffalo woman?" it's funny, because it's unexpected, and then you realize what's been going on in the cabin the whole time.
Batman isn't supposed to go "Oh, yeah, something's definitely bleeding." That's just silly.
Batman isn't supposed to go "Oh, yeah, something's definitely bleeding." That's just silly.
Yup. In fact, there's a pretty good rule: Unless you're Adam West, Batman isn't funny. Joker can be funny. Robin can be funny. Even Alfred can be witty. Batman? Nope.
What Zack Snyder's DCEU Was Really All About, And Why So Many People Rejected It
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Putting aside all of the hostility and simplistic assertions rooted in narrow attitudes and silly personal resentments, I think the biggest problem has been an approach that often contradicts the prevailing mainstream public impressions and expectations for several of the central characters -- specifically, Superman, and to a lesser extent Batman. Keep in mind, I am discussing these issues while personally liking these films, so anyone tempted to dismiss this as "hating" on DCEU need to learn how to discern the difference between an attempt at objective analysis of how other people reacted to a movie, and assertions of personal taste. And while at face value the issue of characterization seems obvious, the underlying conflict between expectation and deconstruction in the films is worth exploring more deeply now that it's all essentially over with (as far as that particular era of the DCEU is concerned).
Superman was the main issue, in terms of the disconnect between audience preconceptions and the DCEU portrayal. Man of Steel certainly reimagined many of our general expectations, such as Pa Kent's approach to teaching his son how to restrain his use of powers (one of my own primary complaints about the film), and Superman killing Zod at the end. However, overall the movie managed to walk the line between meeting our foundational expectations for Superman's character and personality while challenging our impression of the world in which he would exist. That was, of course, the whole point of the story, to challenge those ideas and instead ask how the world would really react to the arrival of a superhuman alien in our midst.
Meanwhile, Batman too was subjected to similar deconstruction, taking the more extreme cynical and violent iterations from the source material and portraying them in ways mainstream audiences hadn't seen before and to a large extent weren't prepared to experience. Batman hating Superman and actively, literally trying to kill him is a pretty huge step away from even the somber, adult-themed portrayal in the Christopher Nolan movies. Sure, Batman has killed bad guys on screen before and in the comics, but here we saw him seemingly taking enjoyment at times in cruelty and infliction of pain, a sadistic turn for the hero that many people simply weren't comfortable with. But that alone wasn't the real issue, it was how those thing combined with his hatred of Superman and attempts to murder Superman that really pushed a lot of viewers of the edge of acceptance into mixed or outright negative reactions. And then add in other secondary considerations such as Batman drinking heavily, Batman acting consistently cynical and rude to people, and you get a portrayal that is deconstructing Batman's character by forcing us to consider what this guy really might be like and what he might turn into, if just a few little things went the wrong way.
In Batman v Superman, then, we saw a Batman who'd lost the underlying optimism and hope that existed even in most of his darker and more violent incarnations -- even Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" imagines a Batman who is at once older and jaded and more extreme, but precisely because he lost his sense of hope and is aggressively doubling down on his efforts to rediscover that sense of hope an symbolism so he can save Gotham and reignite the city's own belief in itself. Time and again, despite his best attempts at maintaining his serious and dark, gloomy tone, Miller's Batman can't help letting a smile slip onto his face and believing in victory over evil even when all seems lost.
But Batman v Superman's Caped Crusader lacks that underlying optimism and hope -- which is, of course, the entire point, that Batman HAS crossed a line and become the bad guy in this tale even though he didn't realize it until confronted with Superman's humanity and his own inhumanity in that singular moment as he stood over Superman's helpless body and was reminded of himself as a little boy helpless to save his own mother and praying someone would save him and save his dying parents.
Likewise, during the fight Superman stops even attempting to talk to Batman or explain anything, and it becomes a pure violent expression of their mutual contempt and distrust, with Batman representing (in Superman's eyes) all of the cynicism and unfairness and cruelty of a world without hope, and with Superman representing (in Batman's eyes) all of the failure and fear and meaninglessness in the pursuit of humanity to improve itself and do anything meaningful (and of course, Batman's own specific failures in a world where hopelessness and failure and loss and the triumph of evil are around every corner).
Both men, though, have a moment of clarity and epiphany -- Batman realizes Superman's own humanity when he sees him as son begging for his mother's life, his final words a plea to his enemy (Batman) to save his mother. That her name is Martha is often mocked, but obviously (if we are trying to be honest and serious about the issue) the point wasn't merely that their moms had the same name, it's that this crystalized for Batman his ability to perceive himself in Superman and to relate completely to Superman's situation. Which, then, subtly but inherently meant Batman perceived himself as something terrible, truly his own worst nightmare -- he'd become the man who killed his own mother, the villain in that dark alley who stood over a helpless little boy and stole his parents from him, letting them die and leaving that boy tortured forever by his inability to do anything to save them. Batman became Joe Chill, and once that comparison burned into his brain it wouldn't stop. It broke him out of the spell that had taken him over, that obsession with killing Superman to slay the demons in his own soul and feel his life's pursuits weren't an absurd hopeless waste of time. Batman sought redemption and to regain his feeling of hope and optimism by killing Superman, when instead he found redemption and hope in that moment where he stopped fighting and understood Superman's humanity at last.
That's when Superman, with no more hope of saving his mother, lying on his back about to die, had to reach out and ask his enemy -- the man about to kill him -- to save Superman's own mother. And miraculously, the man stopped being his enemy, helped him to his feet, and said basically, "I will save your mother." This man who, to Superman, represented all of the refusal of the world to understand or care or do the right thing out of sense of hope and faith, who was Superman's mortal enemy moments ago, now embraces hope and cares about Superman and Superman's mother as much as his own. And that's how Superman begins to reclaim his faith in the world and himself again, the final hurdle overcome and his father's message on that snowy hill (a few scenes earlier in the film) resonates fully: sometimes you try to do good and the world gives you only pain in return, sometimes your good deeds don't go as you expected, sometimes to save one person or one thing you wind up sacrificing another or being unable to save another, but in the end you cannot despair and you must find a way to believe again and to feel there are things worth loving and fighting for and saving in this world. Because while the darkness and loss and pain sometimes make it harder to see the hope and good in the world, in our darkest and most trying moments it is the hope and good that will see us through and help us overcome our despair and show us the way forward again.
Batman v Superman presents a Superman and a Batman who have lost faith, who exist in a world that acts as if it no longer wants or needs or trusts heroes, a world that tries to tear down heroes, and so they struggle and they trip and they fall, just as Jor-El told Superman humanity would do and so of course it's also what heroes will sometimes do. But in the end, Superman and Batman confront their inner demons -- representing those demons for one another, at first -- and in the midst of overwhelming despair and pain and darkness they help one another regain hope and so together they are able to see a way forward again.
That is the real lesson of Batman v Superman if we listen to what it's really saying. However, the problem for many viewers is that it takes a long time to actually get us to that point in the story where the challenges and upending of expectations and cynicism and loss finally start to give way to the redemption and hope. So for most mainstream audiences and a lot of longtime fans, the weight of everything that comes before winds up too oppressive and makes it impossible for them to appreciate the changes at the end.
And I understand those reactions, even if I don't personally share them. I loveBatman v Superman, but I "get" why others don't (although I simply cannot understand why anyone argues it's literally a bad movie, as opposed to just saying they didn't personally enjoy it or felt it handled the characters and themes wrong etc). Audiences can obviously tolerate and enjoy and appreciate darker filmmaking for superheroes, that's why Nolan's Batman movies were such a huge hit, it's why Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Solider or Avengers: Age of Ultron were huge hits, it's why the X-Men movies are hits, and so it's not accurate or fair of us to say people simply didn't like darker, mature, serious superhero filmmaking.
The issue was simply that Batman v Superman went a step further in its attempt to turn the deconstruction into not only an approach within the film itself, but as a larger overarching longterm narrative for the DCEU -- it started with Man of Steel, and then continued and became more extreme in Batman v Superman, and was supposed to really undergo substantive final change again in Justice League, a longer process in which the darkness wasn't balanced out and undercut at times with other more hopeful narrative themes and events, and without the main characters at least starting out more hopeful and then returning to that sense of heroic faith. Batman v Superman had a very different conception of deconstruction in mind, and pursued it in a way no other superhero movies have done before, and it did so with a lot of extreme examples and moments to define the breakdown of expectations and extent of how low the lowest moments can go before a light appears at the end of the tunnel.
And then, even within the ultimate climactic return of hope and heroism, what happens? Superman dies. His sacrifice is of course an ultimate example of heroism and his renewed love of this world, and Batman's sense of loss and guilt and shame over how he treated Superman is a sign of how much he will work to honor Superman's sacrifice. But nothing will change the fact that after two hours of taking apart these characters and their world, the ending redemption and return of hope STILL includes killing Superman, and that's a shocking and dark thing to do, and for a lot of people it severely undercut the attempt at hopefulness in the end. Again, I might not share that reaction, but I do totally understand why others felt that way.
I think there's a mistaken impression among a lot of people (including many film critics, unfortunately) that "deconstruction" means taking it apart and breaking it down, when in reality it means taking it apart to see how it really works and what it's really made of, and then putting it back together again. Our assumptions are challenged not merely to subvert them for the sake of unmaking them, but rather to see which parts hold up and are strong enough to survive the direct and bright light of truthful examination, to show us the true nature of the thing and force us to consider whether our feelings and assumptions about it were correct and worthwhile, or if they can change without destroying either the things itself or us in the process.
Zack Snyder loves deconstruction in his films, and he is greatly inspired by comics from his young adulthood that first challenged and deconstructed his perception of comics and what comic book stories could be. If you grew up in the post-1980s or post-1990s era of comics, then it's hard to understand just how transformative and important the mid-1980s were for comics. Yes, plenty of comics in the past had serious themes and great storytelling, but the 1980s were when comics underwent a radical reassessment by the mainstream public and press, with a new generation of artists and writers who grew up and came of age in the 1960s and 1970s bringing those influences to bear on their own comic book work and pushing boundaries in entirely new, unexpected ways.
Snyder -- like me, personally -- was a teenager during the era of "Watchmen," "The Dark Knight Returns," and other 1980s comic book moments that launched a new era of comic storytelling and ushered in the first stage of true mainstream interest and embrace of comics. It was this 1980s era that finally convinced studios to consider superhero movies as potentially serious filmmaking that could attract not just kids but also adult audiences. 1989's Batman wouldn't have been made were it not for Miller's seminal adult-themed Batman story in 1986, and if not for that Batman movie we wouldn't have seen the subsequent studio interest in making more comic book movies. After all, the original Superman movie franchise had fallen apart by 1987 and studios were perceiving comics not as a serious source of future genre filmmaking.
Those comics deconstructed our impression of superheroes and of comic book storytelling, taking apart the past and reassembling it into something stronger and more recognizable for a modern world. It requires a great deal of faith and trust and hope for a comic book fan to dismantle their heroes and disassemble their favorite genre, and then try to put it back together again into something that reveals new truths to us all, that gives us a new perspective about what it is to be a hero, and that shows us a new side of these characters.
That's what Snyder was doing, and he envisioned something ambitious and bold -- an entire superhero cinematic approach that starts off by positing a new type world in which superhero exist, deconstructing the genre itself right in front of our eyes and building something unlike any we'd seen before in superhero cinema. The genre already existed and had dozens of entries by this point, so Snyder realized it wasn't enough to start off with just another template-style approach which would be deconstructed later -- doing it from the outset, with the knowledge audiences already have a built-in map of the genre and of the most famous of these characters, and from the outset challenging all of their assumptions so this otherwise familiar genre and familiar set of characters could not be taken for granted, and instead would surprise us time and again, was the goal.
To work, though, there had to be a full commitment to letting it take shape as intended, and to stay the course even though it might be so unexpected at first many people would be unsure what to think or expect. The hope was, by offering a visionary new take not just on the characters but on the entire genre, by ambitiously pursuing a deconstructive narrative that spans multiple films, and by demonstrating a willingness to kill off the heroes and provide stories consistently shooting for the moon in terms of scope and epic cinematic presentation, audiences would overcome their own expectations or any initial uncertainty and embrace such a unique, unexpected, bold approach.
It turned out, however, people didn't want so much deconstruction so soon, and the appeal of such an approach in terms of the specific characterizations and storytelling is more limited than expected. Mainstream tastes for this genre can embrace variety, as the past success of many different superhero movies has proven, but it's important to understand where the limits are when it comes to pushing viewers to set aside preferences and expectations, and to be willing to try to meet expectations and preferences at least in balance with the attempt to subvert and challenge them. There are ways to play against expectations while ultimately coming full circle and delivering a version of what's expected even within a new approach that incorporates different elements the filmmakers hope to merge into mainstream tastes and expectations.
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I can't help thinking some day, years from now, many people will look back at the early DCEU and revisit the longer director's cut ofBatman v Superman and of Suicide Squad, and then look at what Snyder's full vision for Justice League had originally been -- including the plans for two back to back films -- and think maybe we should've been given that, maybe it would've been far greater than we realize. I for one already wish they'd released a version of the Batman v Superman Ultimate Edition (with a few edits to trim down the car chase sequence a few other bits, to get it down to maybe 2 hrs 45 minutes) and the original cut of Suicide Squad, and then regardless of the reactions to Batman v Superman just let Snyder make his two-part Justice League project too.
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