This one is coming in a little hot, and is rated only for mature audiences.
Superhero movies are looooong. And now, you can’t just watch one version, each one has a director's cut that adds at least an hour more. And what does the extra time get you? For each 1 part of character development you get 10 parts additional big booms.
Language warning. If you don’t like raw honest profanity, stop reading here.
I’m really fed up. This is a genre that is not looking to have wide appeal. It’s looking to outdo itself over and over. And if the thing that people came to see was the bigness of the booms you gave them, then you have to have bigger booms in the follow up. Where does it end? How many times can you blow up the world? Uhm Marvel and DC, did anyone point out to you that Team America: World Police lampooned your 21st century movies before you even made them? Right in the the opening credits even. First the Paramount Pictures credit explodes, followed by the title of the movie, which then explodes fantastically, and when that’s done, the focus shifts to planet Earth...which then proceeds to completely explode. The movie hadn’t even started yet. Cut to the first scene in Paris, on the planet that we just saw explode because LOL shit blows up and it doesn’t matter, we just move on. We’re that desensitized. Then Team America shows up to “save” Paris pretty much exactly the same way Man of Steel “saved” Metropolis. For fuck sake, destruction of the world is a 1:1,000,000 year event. It isn’t interesting to turn it into a 1:18 month event. Unless you’re DC or Marvel. To them, that stuff is pure heroin.
Here, Hollywood. Watch for yourself how Trey Parker and Matt Stone made a joke out of the movies you think are awesome before you even conceived them:
Does it matter if Zod throws a bus at Superman implying that he may have been crushed by or if he goes all the way through a skyscraper with sufficient enough force to cause total collapse if in either case, Superman is still unharmed? The bus shook him up more, and compelled him to find another way to defeat Zod. What’s interesting in this sequence is not how powerful the hit is, but rather how the character responds to it. He can react in kind, or he can find a better way. One way is entertaining (if you’re an unimaginative idiot) and the other way is interesting. Let’s just say unimaginative idiocy carries the day today.
The most important light saber dual to take place in any Star Wars movie was not the most visually spectacular one. Why was it important? It was a moment of truth that set everything in motion for where the series most important character would go from there. It didn’t have to be spectacular visually. It’s also one of the only times I remember feeling intensely scared at the movies. Not frightened, but deeply invested and aware that the outcome would be a major turning point and said outcome suddenly seemed very uncertain.
The only time I ever had the same feeling was when I watched the Buckeyes kickoff against Alabama on January 1st, 2015. Alabama was an unbeatable machine. But for two years I was swimming in confidence that my Buckeyes were on the same level, especially after the season they’d just finished up. Now they would finally get their chance. Right up until the moment when foot met ball on the early evening of New Years Day, I believed we were destined to win. Once that ball was up in the air, the speculation was over. We were going to find out for real. It was both thrilling and terrifying, and I clearly remember thinking “Oh Shit, what are we about to get into?!” Can you guess what lightsaber dual out of the countless ones portrayed in the Star Wars universe had such a visceral affect on me? Hint, it was not from the era of CGI special effects.
Luke the wunderkind who blew up the Death Star using the skillz he acquired “bulls eyeing womp rats in his T16 back home” suddenly was about to be toyed with like a cat plays with a mouse before killing it. Luke and all of his fans watching all just learned that he’s green as Hell, and now there’s no turning back. Interesting. No boom. Boom would break all of the tension and ruin the scene. You see, when the writing is strong, you don’t need the boom. I'm not suggesting at all that Marvel and DC movies have an issue with premature booming and it would be a terrible shame if they were to get such a reputation.
What does a superhero movie need to do? It needs to thrill and terrify and shake my confidence in the outcome. General Zod is a thrilling and terrifying character when played by Terrance Stamp. Conversely, he is a cartoonishly powerful plot device in Man of Steel. Perhaps even more terrifying than Stamp’s Zod, is his lieutenant Ursa who takes some type of sadistic delight in killing, especially a child. Man of Steel Zod also had a female lieutenant named uhm....I forget. She was cartoonishly powerful too though. Not scary, but badass in a not so memorable way.
Man of Steel becomes the most boring fucking destruction fest from the moment Zod shows up in the opening scenes where we learn that Krypton is really just a planet filled with just as many arrogant assholes as Earth is if not more, the only difference is they have a lot more technology and took longer than we did to cause an ecological disaster on their home planet. At this very moment, all character development stops and a bunch of things go boom everywhere. Then we get a break to find out our man Clark Kent is a grown man who has been taking a lot of shit his whole life (via flashbacks) and has had to suck it up. This is actually good story telling when it takes the time to unpack it. But just when you think things are starting to go somewhere, Zod shows up again and proceeds to conquer the plot and wreak havoc on Smallville, but his real target is the movie's credibility and he is merciless in that regard. And when there’s nothing left, a lot more shit elsewhere goes BOOM. And when that’s done, well then it’s time to go BOOMBOOMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM because “WORLD ENGINE BITCH!!!!!" (file "world engine" in the 'Whatever the fuck that is' section next to "codex"). Then, a little shit talking between the combatants followed by 20 more minutes of BOOMTHEFUCKOUTOfTHISBOOOOOOOoOoOoOoOoOoOooOoOoOoOooooooooooOoOOOoOooOooShakalackafuckingBOOoOoOoOoM! I now have a migraine, am trying to remember if I put the trash out before I left the house, and am thinking about whether this is going to end soon because I still need to get the checkbook updated and make a few payments, and also make sure the kids finished their homework before bedtime and this fucking movie won’t end. Also, I didn’t mow the lawn because I wanted to take a break and go to the movies so I’ll have to do that when I get home from work tomorrow evening which will cut into the only free time I have tomorrow. I also have to take a serious piss.
This Zod isn’t scary. He’s just a guy who booms. He is a huge waste of my time and I don’t give a fucking rat's ass about him. He sucks, and that jackoff owes me $20 and 3 hours of time performing chores at my house that didn’t get done. If that's not reason enough to hate him, he sets the stage for Steppenwolf, a big ugly asshole with horns who goes boom and I hate everything about him not because he’s a scary villain, but because he takes up even more screen time than BoomZod while being equally if not more fucking boring. I saw Hulk Hogan go back and forth with Andre the Giant in 1987 and the only part of it that mattered was the last 15 seconds. At least those two had the courtesy to wrap it up in 12 minutes. I don’t need to see a 4 hour Snyder Cut version of The main event at Wrestlemania III to know that it won’t change anything fundamental about it. This Superman and I agree on 1 thing:
I don’t lie awake at night worrying about characters like Steppenwolf unless it’s one of those days where I heard Born to Be Wild on the radio on my commute home and can’t get it out of my head. I do worry that the world has people like Ursa and StampZod in it. I do worry about aviation accidents. I do get terrified at the thought of my child going over a railing at Niagara Falls. I am terrified by Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker because of the places it can take my imagination to. So was Heath Ledger (RIP).
A superhero movie can invest me in characters where I care about them as people and their story compels me to emotionally deal with a villain. When that happens, I care about not just whether the villain is defeated, but why they need to be defeated because of what we stand for as people.
I see speculation of a new Superman is coming, as well as a new Batman series. I’m numb. Batman was already done perfectly by Nolan and Superman has been creatively poisoned to death and resurrected as a zombie by Snyder. For these guys to be heroes, they need to be portrayed both as inspiring and fresh, as in something the world has never seen before. I don’t think that’s possible right now. The well has run dry of water and in Superman’s case, been refilled with raw sewage that we can't unsee and unsmell. We need time to forget for a while. And we need to let Nolan’s Batman trilogy be Batman’s story without trying to outdo it. That can’t be done.
When it is time to come back, these classic heroes need to be something that we are yearning for that’s missing in the world, a presence that speaks to our authentic fears, real or imagined and shows us something special. Certain movies of this genre broke through because families could enjoy them together whether they knew anything about the comic versions of them or not. Kids can look at them as exciting figures to emulate. Parents see something that they can use as an example of values for their kids that go beyond what their more basic instincts might tell them to do.....while still being entertaining for adults. Or they can find ways to go BOOMBOOMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM bigger than the last one did. Good luck with that, but I’ll stay home.
Take your 2.75 hours and trim it down to 1.5 by shortening each 20-minutes-of-boom sequence to no more than 2-4 minutes. After that it’s diminishing returns. I’m not fucking kidding and I’m angry that you Hollywood Jack holes don’t understand that at all. If you must have a climactic boom scene, 10-15 minutes is more than enough and it needs to advance the story. You can build it back to ~2 hours with character development of the main and supporting characters, especially the villain(s). If you lose a few dorks who only like booms, you’ll make up for it in droves from folks who haven’t been watching your shows for two decades. If you must, save your booms for your fucking directors cut. No matter how much they bitch on Twitter, the dorks were still going to watch the theatrical version and buy the director's cut. Stop letting the inmates run the asylum and worry about making good movies. History will reward you. Right now, it can hardly remember you because it is bored to fucking tears and wonders when this will end so it can go take a piss.
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