Misunderstood mythology of superheroes by Bea
These examples allow us to understand a specific frame of critics’ minds when they were watching BvS – its pathos and seriousness, coupled with the complete lack of the ”tongue-in-cheek” approach had rendered everything they saw completely ridiculous, pretentious or dumb (”In a word, exhausting. In a few more, overblown, overstuffed, repetitive, bombastic, and sometimes just dumb. (Never mind dreary to look at and punishing to hear)” – RT Top Critic Matthew Lickona, San Diego Reader). In fact, BvS is an antithesis of this highly praised approach – delivering a one liner ”anytime there is a danger of someone giving a cliched, worthy speech about power & responsibility”. It isn’t ashamed of dealing with the most fundamental themes or human emotions & feelings (yes – Martha!) with complete sincerity, and demands equal sincerity from viewers. It doesn’t work for everybody, and this approach definitely doesn’t work for people who perceive it as stupid or ridiculous for lack of self-deprecation. The problem of evil as the villain’s motivation must be deemed pretentious in a superhero movie, if seen from this perspective. I suspect the whole rooftop scene and ”must there be a Superman?” montage is viewed as the epitome of absurdity by those people.
It’s a matter of perspective. For example – the introductory scene (the death of Waynes and the funeral accompanied by the monologue about diamond absolutes and a beautiful lie) is perceived differently by various people. For many viewers and critics/journalists it’s preposterous, unnecessary and redundant (we’ve seen it a hundred times!) (8). Young Bruce lifted by bats is stupid and laughable for them, but it’s a beautiful allegory for others (even my daughter, who was ten years old at the time, understood it was an allegory after she had noticed a pearl falling near Bruce’s hand in the pit). The beautiful, mythological-looking fight with Doomsday (which I love, despite the fact that I’m not fond of fights with monsters) becomes a ”numbing smash-and-bash orgy of CGI”. There is so much contempt in some professionals that it was expressed even over one and a half years after BvS premiere (e.g. ”…with all its portentous “Mankind is introduced to the Superman” chapter cards..”; ”Didn’t that seem like a sensible length in which to accommodate all those portentous scenes of Batfleck roaring the word “Martha” at the moon like a wolf with a sore foot?” (9). Critics and journalists want us to believe they provide a fair, professional and unbiased assessment of a movie quality, but there is too much evidence of their strong cognitive (especially confirmation) bias. Are we supposed to believe a critic who wrote ”It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it was pretty bad” (Steph Cozza, Aggressive Comix) approached the movie with an open mind? Is it rational to assume that a critic who proudly and publicly expressed her hatred for Zack Snyder and determination not to give him any credit ever was open minded and fair while watching the movie? What about objectivity of a critic who spent three years after Man of Steel (MoS) premiere writing articles describing how awful MoS was and how abysmally bad BvS will be (after its announcement)? Are we supposed to trust people who bashed BvS in their reviews, giving it a ”rotten” score and later expressed their regret about what happened to the movie (or Zack Snyder in general) without acknowledging their own culpability? One of them tweeted almost a year after BvS premiered that the movie was treated too harshly and was a victim of year 2016 (a year, not biased critics and journalists!). Another one wrote an article this year showing regret about Zack Snyder’s departure and presenting an understanding of Snyder’s intent and boldness/uniqueness of BvS that was completely missing in his ”RT-counted” review.
There were many mocking comments from critics and journalists about the declaration that BvS was made for fans (as an absurd excuse for a low RT score). Let’s have a closer look at this ”absurdity”. At one end of the spectrum, there are many critics, journalists and audience members who perceived BvS as a portentous, howlingly pretentious, self important and strenuously empty movie. There are many people full of disdain, perceiving those who think and feel differently as idiots. These people create and fuel a popular narrative that BvS was garbage and nobody liked it. There are also people who despise superhero movies, see them as a stupid stuff for kids, a threat to low budget ”ambitious” films and want a comic book movie era to end (10). This disdainful attitude towards comic book movies (as a waste of time and money, and a threat to the ”high culture”) and their fans (as stupid), was expressed implicitly by many professionals and explicitly by some of them. The article by Rhymer Rigby ”No self-respecting adult should buy comics or watch superhero movies” (The Telegraph), published on the occasion of BvS release, is the best example of such a conviction:
”Another month, another superhero movie staggers to the silver screen, lurching under the weight of its own self-importance, groaning with the expectations of fans, and burdened with a nine-figure marketing budget. I am, of course, talking about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, to give it its full, clunkingly portentous title. Can we all please grow up? Can we acknowledge that Marvel and DC have scraped right though the bottom of the barrel? Can we call time on superhero films? Films which are too dark for kids the comics were originally written for, yet too dumb for any thinking adult […] I’m sure the thinking that went into Bruce Wayne and Clarke Kent’s upcoming get-together was every bit as deep as “These are two really successful brands we’ve been milking for years and the audience is starting to notice that they’re a bit long in the tooth […] The trouble is the source material. In the case of Batman and Superman, this was originally written for ten-year-old boys. A man who can fly with lasers in his eyes. A man who dresses as a bat dispensing justice to bad guys. It’s fun but it’s fundamentally very silly stuff; it has pre-teen built into its DNA […] In the 80s and 90s, people used to worry about “dumbing down”, where complex ideas in spheres like politics and literature were simplified in order to make them accessible to people who were unwilling or unable to deal with sophisticated thought (tellingly, the term originated in the film industry). These days, I’m more worried about dumbing up, where you take something that’s pretty stupid to begin with and then throw money and talent at it until it has a semblance of intelligence and sophistication.”
It’s not surprising that the more mature, complex, and meaningful the movie themes are, the more idiotic, pretentious, and laughable it is for such people. However, there is also another end of the spectrum – fans who love MoS and BvS and refuse to succumb to the generally accepted opinion. We are called delusional, stupid, childish, and toxic morons who refuse to see the truth and are stuck in their own echo chamber. Ironically, the truth is that MoS and especially BvS, are the most important movies for many people, because Zack Snyder touched and inspired them like few others did. It’s the reason why we discuss these movies and share our love with other fans every day.