The first battle of the expanded movie universes is over. And as the dust settles, we try to pick up the pieces and make sense of it all before the coming days.
Yoda said it best...
Yes, this summer saw the release of Marvel Studios and DC’s ensemble foreplay films, the movies that just get you wet for the upcoming comic orgies, Justice League and Avengers: Infinity War. Marvel has been building their expanded universe for years now with great success, albeit with a few minor setbacks.
I'm looking at you, Emo Hulk...
But while Marvel’s tongue and cheek template approach has given them Rocky Mountain piles of cash, DC’s fledgling universe, led by Zack Snyder, is taking a different approach. Rather than build a relationship over time, we had our first date with Man of Steel and went straight to third base with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, with tongue and cheek replaced by grit and rain.
And even though we have two intriguing universes to geek out on, fanboys are more polarized than ever. Go to any article on this site about Civil War or Dawn of Justice and the comment section will be filled with DC Bros donning their mech-insults while Marvelites hurl Kryptonite laced Gifs. Hell, even your grandparents have probably got in on the debate...
Underpants are worn on the outside, whippersnapper!
I'm neutral. I like me some Batfleck, and I love me some Iron Downey Jr. Sure, Marvel has had its hits and misses, and DC has had a "stumbling out of the gate" feel to its first few films. And for this editorial, I'm just focusiing on Civil War and DoJ. X-Men: Apocolypse, Deadpool, and Suicide Squad have to go hang out in back and collect rats and used condoms or something.
I say I'm nuetral, but that doesn't stop me from noticing things that don't make sense. When a filmmaker leaves holes in their plot, our brains attempt to fill those holes as logically as they can. Unfortunately, Zack Snyder created a supervillain in my brain called, The Mad Spackler, driven insane by attempting to caulk more cracks than humanly possible in a two and a half hour spans. Whereas, the Russo Brothers created their villain, Zemo, with the most diabolical superpower ever: Convenience! So, there are some questions about both movies that bugged me. With months of debate behind us, I was hoping some of these questions would have been answered. While some were, the ones that no one has brought up yet, and bothered me the most, seems to have been left lying in the street, dying for no reason…
1. BvS:DoJ: How did Clark Kent get that Daily Planet job?
"Dammit, Clark! You put letter size in the legal tray again!"
In 1978’s Superman (aka if Marvel made a Superman movie), it was fairly obvious. He crashed to Earth, grew up in Smallville, went to college to study journalism and got hired by the Daily Planet where he met the love of his life, Lois Lane, for the first time. Pretty simple, pretty sweet, right? In the new universe, I'm not given much to go on. It goes from destruction of Metropolis to 18 months later and bam! Job! I'm going to take a stab that it went something like this...
Poor college slobs that spent years studying to work at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world. Eat it!
2. CA:CW: Colonel Convenience is the worst intelligence officer…ever?
Performance wise, Daniel Bruhl did an amazing job as the phantom menace of the movie, Zemo. While some may complain that his plans relied too much on happenstance and would have failed immediately if events had happened slightly different, that's just the awesome power of Colonel Convenience and you just have to respect that.
The problem I had with Zemo was the huge ineptitude he displayed as a commanding intelligence officer of a Sorkovia kill squad. The job of a country’s intelligence agency is to know what the hell is going on at all times. While it’s true that Sorkovia was in the middle of political unrest, Intelligence officers are not the ones in the street busting protesters' chops. They’re usually in the smoky room in the back, being intelligent and stuff. So how HYDRA managed to set up a secret lab, under the guise of being SHIELD, in a prominent castle right next door to the Sorkovia capital without Zemo even noticing is a little tough to believe. Maybe he knew and didn’t care…
But you really can’t excuse…
Either way, being horrible at his job or knowing and just not caring makes it pretty much his own damn fault his family died, which he blames himself for already, but only for not telling them to get farther away from Ultronapalooza. Sorry, Colonel Convenience, poor job performance murdered your family, not poor proximity calculations.
3. BvS:DoJ: Is Lex Luthor suffering from dehydration?
One of the few “jokes” in
Batman v Superman involves a country colloquialism from Senator Holly Hunter, involving pee. Yes, really. At one point she says to Lex,
“You can take a jar of urine and call it Granny’s Peach Tea, but it’s still piss,” referring to his nefarious plans to make Metropolis great again or something. So when Senator Hunter is about to call out Lex to Congress, with Superman present, she sees this on her desk…
Several Bud Light Limes were harmed in the making of this scene...
But I held up this jar of leakage to the dehydration color chart, and what I found blew my mind. Well not actually, but it did tell me that Lex is quite a bit dehydrated, even after adjusting for Zack's dank lens filter...
This could explain a lot about Lex’s character. Two classic symptoms of dehydration are dizziness and confusion, both traits displayed by Lex throughout the whole movie. It could be, like Steve Jobs, that he prescribed to a fad diet. Maybe Lex was on a Jolly Rancher menu only.
This might also explain the big freaking question marks that are Lex Luthor’s motivations in this movie.
It wasn’t his fault, Batman! He was…dehydrated!
4. CA:CW: What’s in Bucky’s backpack?
It’s got to be important. Fake passports? Cash? Burn phones? Allen wrenches? What!?
I shouldn’t be vexed by this, but a good amount of focus was put on this thing. To put it in perspective, Backpack got two and a half minutes of screen time. Martin Freeman got one and a half minutes. Bucky smashes a finished floor to retrieve Backpack, throws it to another rooftop, fights multiple German S.W.A.T. officers and jumps 100ft to the adjourning rooftop to pick it up, fights Black Panther and picks it up again and has a high speed chase with it. Maybe if he had just forgotten about it and escaped through the sewers he could have made a (not so)clean getaway. But something in Backpack was holding him back. What!? It had better be explained in Infinity War, goddamn it.
5. BvS:DoJ: How does sex with Superman work?
Um...what was your question again?
Seriously, though. In 1980’s Superman 2, when Lois and Clark finally did the horizontal tango, Superman was depowered. He knew if he wanted any kind of physical relationship with a human, he’d have to kick it down a notch.
By "it", I mean his penis.
This was reinforced by a hologram of his Kryptonian mother saying, “If you’re gonna bone some humans, you gotta lose the powers,“ more or less. Now, Snyder made it pretty clear from the bathtub scene that a “fully powered” Clark and Lois were indeed doing the freaky and getting the nasty. And I'm not questioning whether Lois would be satisfied, but what about poor Clark? Okay. Here’s an experiment for the male readers. Get an erection.
Now, blow air as gently as you possibly can toward it. Feel that? Barely? That’s what it’s probably feels like for Superman to have sex with a human. You would need Wonder Woman strength Kegels for him to even feel anything. To further this experiment, I constructed my own life-sized “Lois” out of tissue paper and went to town. She flew apart pretty quickly, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience for me.
6. CA:CW: Why doesn’t Ant-Man kick all the ass?
You know who could have ended the climactic battle between Avengers factions in a few minutes?
Yep, that guy from the question I just asked. I know “powers” complaints don’t carry a lot of weight in comic book movie critiques. It’s the lowest hanging fruit of gripes. But in this case, I'm going to take the low road and call it out.
I bet you thought I was going to say it was Vision because of his unlimited strength, powers and abilities. The problem with Vision is, he comes off as a Buddhist monk who watches a bar brawl from the corner table. Oh sure, he’ll get up and throw a sucker punch to see how it affects the cosmic scheme, but then he’ll go sit back down to reflect on that. Scarlet Witch is also another heavy hitter and does kick quite a bit of butt, but she can’t be everywhere at once. But, Ant-Man can.
“But he became Giant Man, you doof! He did kick ass!” No. He became Giant Target Man and aside from being a really cool scene, getting his rump handed to him and serving his purpose as a distraction, he only tapped into a fraction of his awesomeness. Ant-Man controls ants. Ant-Man has enlarger and shrinking discs. So when Captain America and Iron Man’s teams start charging each other, I had expected Cap’s side to resemble this:
Many iron suits were defecated in that day.
That would have tipped the scales a little. Scott could have set an ant for each opposing member, even instructing the ants to just maim, don’t eat. Vision respects all life, he wouldn’t kill them. Most of the Iron Boys’ ordinance would have bounced off their exoskeletons. Black Widow’s signature neck-twist-with-dem-legs would be ineffectual. Black Panther would discover getting through giant ants is tougher than herding cats. Team Cap wins!
Even if he didn’t want to go with the Them route, he can still control ants. They don’t have to be large to cause some chaos. Last I checked, there are about 100 trillion ants in the world, give or take. Lang could have utilized some of the colonies around the airport to live out his favorite Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull moments:
If there is such a thing...
7. BvS:DoJ: How long does Batman wait like a chump?
Picture yourself as the Batman. Dressed like Mechagodzilla, you’re spoiling for the beatdown you’ve been dreaming about on the Man of Steel. Your traps are all set, your Kryptonite gas bombs and lance are primed and you've got the fever, the rage. You fire up the Bat-Signal to get that motherlover’s attention and then…nothing. You wait. You wait some more, still nothing. You wait…you wait…
In the movie, fifteen minutes pass between Batman lighting up and Superman finally showing his big, dumb, greasy hair. But given that a lot of plot things happen in that spans, Batman had to have been standing there an awkward amount of time. First, Lois Lane is kidnapped by Luthor’s goons. Now given the time it takes to smuggle a woman against her will from her office, getting her through downtown traffic to Lex’s helicopter, the helicopter ride and finally touching down on Lex’s rooftop, I’d say a good hour and a half has passed. Then Lex tells Lois deep thoughts and pushes her off and Superman (done with walkabout) catches her. Superman waxes bone breaking with Lex. Lois then travels all the way back to the Daily Planet, again making good time through downtown traffic. All in all, the rest of that stuff probably took another hour before Superman finally gets around to his Bat-date.
So that’s probably a good two and a half hours (coincidently the runtime of the theatrical release) that Batman was just standing around doing nothing. That’s kind of hilarious to think about. Here’s hoping he had Tetris on his Bat-HUD…