Regarding "BvS"
By October of 1993, X chromosome bearing individuals were becoming the most important thing in life but I still spent a fair amount of time at the only comic book store I could walk to. I was there the day that the final issue of The Death of Superman came out. On March 19th, 2004, I tottered out of Zack Snyder’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’ a changed individual. I saw each of his films opening night but with ‘Man of Steel’…well, what matters is that I had a friend at the theatre and the not-paying factor led to me seeing MoS nine times (but only twice in 3D).
On March 24th, 2016, my renewed obsession with comic books (definitely re-ignited by Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men films) reached a new height at the Smithsonian Airbus IMAX theatre at the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy center (fifteen dollars even, no tax for the Absolute Best screen and sound system in northern Virginia). My love for that movie was exceeded only by Zack Snyder’s Ultimate Edition.
But, it goes without saying there are always people who disagree, nitpick about any given aspect of any given artist, or song or movie, etc. With BvS, there was no shortage of criticism – even if some of them ‘technically correct’ – a lot of people had only criticism for some aspect of the page to screen translation; nearly all of that was people skeet shooting not duck hunting. One thing I was denied was a Zack Snyder-style montage of Kal-El saving people around the world but we already know he saves people all around the world all the time so yeah.
That being said, each and every one of the perceivable aspects of BvS are strengths (no pun intended). I loved that Jeremy Irons’ Alfred was instrumental to the fight sequences (Michael Gough’s Alfred was awesome in the end battle of Batman Returns). I also liked the prominence of our X-chromosome bearing characters: Lois connects Superman to humanity, both mothers having the name Martha was great but I liked the unspoken aspect: how did Lex say it? “Every boy’s special lady is his mother.” And Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman outright stole the show.
I also liked the fact that BvS adapted the Doomsday/Death of Superman story because the inevitable net-chatter – ‘do you think Doomsday will ever show up? Will Zack kill Superman?’ – was nipped in the proverbial bud. I also wanted to point out that Superman killed Zod in Superman II (both versions). Still incredulous that people would use that as an example of why MoS was not good. This is already running longer than I planned so I’ll close with a few bits that made me laugh.
- Lauren Cohan (Martha Wayne) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Thomas Wayne) are both onThe Walking Dead – and in those roles, they were definitely were the walking
- The Neil DeGrasse Tysoncameo
- Joe Morton (Silas Stone) creating cyber-biotech; much more benevolent than SkyNetbut Miles Dyson had no way of knowing what would happen (until Arnold Schwarzenegger told him)
There is a lot more I want to say but my point here is that Zack Snyder’s films are amazing. Especially BvS. Especially Gal Gadot in BvS. Haters are a necessary evil and what I see is that Zack did not let anything stop him from trying. And succeeding. In closing: I shot this for Zack when it was announced he would be directing Justice League.
Johnlee 04:29:18:10:29:54
PS: for Zack and Fiona … #ReleaseTheSnyderCut !!!