Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

2/4

The Zack Snyder cut of Justice League – something the fans clamored for after the original’s lukewarm reception – is overpadded and badly paced. Nearly two and a half hours go by before the story emerges from its first act and when it finally does it turns into a meandering exercise in repetition. The final climactic battle between the heroes and Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) doesn’t feel like a climax at all as it is barely distinguishable between any of the other fights in the movie. They fight him again and again and again and then the film just kinda stops suddenly. While I didn’t particularly like the original theatrical version when I saw it in theaters I like it better than this one. The original’s final act was poorly written and made too many awkward unfunny attempts at humor, but what it had going for it was a real sense of being climactic. Pacing is more important than length in any movie, and at 4 hours and 3 minutes Zack Snyder’s Justice League is just plain boring.
An issue I had was its use of intertitles that divide the film in a series of parts. It comes across as pretentious and the fades to black to show us these only drag the movie’s pacing even more. I was taken out of the movie each time they appeared and they seemed to serve only as a reminder that the movie was still going.

The plot revolves around a new villain named Steppenwolf – an armored CGI giant straight out of Diablo – who has fallen out of favor with his nephew, Darkseid, and now wants to redeem himself. Steppenwolf is seeking three macguffins called Mother Boxes with which Darkseid wants to gain ultimate control of all life in the universe or something. I mean, look, macguffins and villain plots are not that important in most superhero movies because the resolution is always the same. The heroes win some, lose some, and then ultimately win some again and then the movie is over. We know who the bad guy is and we know who the good guys are and we want to see them fight each other. It’s like PPV wrestling or a video game without interactivity or an ability to skip the cutscenes. The Roger Moore Bond era had the same problem. No one cares what the bad guy is doing, just grab a pair of skis and stop him like always.

One of the Mother Boxes is in the possession of new JLA member, Cyborg (Ray Fisher), who was created with it after suffering injuries from a car accident. This same Mother Box is used to revive Superman (Henry Cavill) who now dons a black suit with a silver S.
Superman’s revival makes for the best and most interesting part of the movie. He awakens with no memories of who he is at first and starts attacking the Justice League before being snapped out of it by Lois Lane (Amy Adams). My favorite shot during the attack is when the Flash (Ezra Miller) tries to get around Superman at high speeds. Whenever he does this he disappears and the rest of the world goes into slo-mo similar to what happens to Quicksilver in the X-Men movies. As he passes, Superman’s eye slowly shifts in his direction revealing that he is able to keep up with the Flash at all times.

The majority of the movie’s first few hours is Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) meeting with the future Justice League members and trying to recruit them. He meets with Aquaman (Jason Momoa) in Iceland who makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with whatever Batman and co. are planning. Obviously he comes around later.
The writing and casting of Aquaman in the DCEU is a conscious effort to distance the character from the memes and jokes that have been made at his expense on the internet. Shows like Big Bang Theory and Family Guy are largely to blame. There is now a consensus among non-comic readers that a man from Atlantis with a three-pronged spear, who can control the power of the seas, and talk to sharks is somehow lame. Here, Aquaman is a rough brawler who drinks heavily and tries to intimidate everyone with his surliness and physique. Momoa’s performance is good enough, but this choice is definitely an odd one.
Batman’s first success is with Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) who is first introduced in the film stopping terrorists from blowing up a building full of schoolchildren. It’s the usual plot armor gimmick with a bomb with a timer that goes down at a varying rate. If you actually try to count the remaining seconds you realize everyone should have been blown up a minute ago.
Gadot’s Wonder Woman is not strong on personality. She gives dull pep talks and plays at being serious. She is not convincing as a character and her action scenes continue to suffer from special effects tricks that don’t look real.
Cyborg is more reluctant to join than perhaps even Aquaman. He doesn’t relish being in the suit he is in and his prolonged isolation from society has left him bitter and angry. What makes him more interesting than the other characters is that his origin story is ripe for a villain. The circumstances of his condition and his anger says a lot about free will when he ultimately joins the good guys anyway. He has the ability to tap into any network, computer, and camera feed making him an asset that rivals the resources of the Batcave. Before joining JLA he tries to find purpose in life helping poverty-stricken single mothers by hacking their bank accounts and making them millionaires overnight. Even when he is being bad he does it kindly and with pure motivations. Bruce Wayne tells Flash in the movie that his superpower is being rich. But all we have seen him do with that is pay for Clark Kent’s funeral. What does he have to say for himself?
Lastly is the Flash played by Ezra Miller. In the established lore he is prone to causing crisis events, coming in and out of reality, and being an overall nuisance to the space-time continuum. But enough about Ezra Miller.
The Flash character in Justice League is written as comic relief. He is eager for friends and to be liked, but is socially awkward and tends to say the wrong thing or too much at the wrong time. Occasionally he can be funny, but often his bits don’t land and his utterances make me wince. The funniest moment is when he tries to say goodbye to a Russian family, but says Dostoevsky instead of do svidanya. Sadly that moment was cut in this version. Miller puts in the best performance of any of the other actors in Justice League, but he could have been given better lines.

As far as the action set pieces, special effects, and cinematography go, the film has the same problems I had with Batman v Superman. They’re dimly shot, over-reliant on cartoonish CGI, and use so much fast-cuts and quick editing that I doubt even Flash could understand what he was seeing without pausing it off and on again. With the far superior Wonder Woman (2017) released between this movie and BvS it is clear that this is just Zack Snyder’s style. I’m not a fan. His films tend to look drab and ugly and they’re soullessly written.

This movie certainly didn’t anger me the way Suicide Squad did. But it is not exciting like Wonder Woman or as interesting as Batman v Superman. The theatrical version is slightly less good than Man of Steel (another film I disliked), but the Snyder Cut fatigued me. What made movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Gone with the Wind justify their run-times was that there are no wasted shots and the writing is engaging throughout. With Justice League the reincorporated footage and added pickup shots are just mere padding. Stuffing everything back into a movie for a vanity project doesn’t make it good. It just makes it long.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: Chris Terrio, Zack Snyder, Will Beall
Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Ben Affleck, Wesley Coller, Curt Kanemoto, Benjamin Melniker, Christopher Nolan, Jim Rowe, Chris Terrio, Emma Thomas, Michael E. Uslan, Madison Ainley, Marianne Jenkins, Tamara Watts Kent, Madison Weireter, Andrea Wertheim, Gregor Wilson
Cast: Ben Afflect (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Henry Cavill (Superman/Clark Kent), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg/Victor Stone), Jason Momoa (Aquaman/Arthur Curry), Ezra Miller (The Flash/Barry Allen), Willem Dafoe (Vulko), Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Connie Nielsen (Hippolyta), J. K. Simmons (Commissioner Gordon), Ciaran Hinds (Steppenwolf)
Composer: Tom Holkenborg
Cinematographer: Fabian Wagner
Editors: David Brenner, Carlos M. Castillon, Dody Dorn)

Suicide Squad (2016)

1/4 stars

Suicide Squad barely qualifies as a movie. It plays more like a feature length trailer for a movie that doesn’t exist. I said as much to my family when the movie was over. When I later looked up some info on the movie and found out that the film’s editing was outsourced to a company whose specialty was, indeed, making film trailers I felt fairly vindicated. Its original editor dropped out midway through post-production and the studio opted not to give director David Ayer final cut. The nicest thing I can say about Suicide Squad is that there is good evidence that Warner Brothers sabotaged it.
The entire movie is nothing but the sort of highlights of action and comedy that one sees in marketing. It never takes a break, but keeps moving from one thing to the next, never stopping to flesh out its characters or settle upon a theme. It’s essentially a heist/task force movie; a genre that has put out more garbage than gold most of the time.

Suicide Squad was an endurance test on my patience the entire time I was watching it. When a film has its characters written this thinly, what you get is a boring movie. It doesn’t matter how many action scenes you cram into it. There is no emotional investment in this movie at all. The motivations and drives of its leads are limply delegated to a few short vignettes which don’t do the job. These scenes are also thinly written, serving only to tell us how the characters feel, but the never showing it convincingly. It misuses its cast unforgivably.

Following the death of Superman in Batman v Superman, the film’s plot – or what passes for one – tells us that the US government is concerned about how to combat evil meta-humans going forward. At the Pentagon, intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) comes up with the brilliant idea (and by brilliant I mean stupid) to create a specialized response unit comprised of some of the worst criminals and super-villains in the world. However, the only thing she accomplishes by doing this is, is to create the very problem that the Pentagon feared. One of them goes rogue almost immediately and poses such a serious threat the remaining members of the team are assigned to take her out. The incompetence on display here is staggering. What makes Waller all the more infuriating is she never takes any ownership of the mess. She remains arrogant and overconfident throughout the film, and worse still, she outright murders Pentagon personnel for overhearing information about the Suicide Squad they weren’t cleared to hear. These individuals probably had families to go home to and they are killed to protect a group of gangbangers and thugs. Waller ought to face court martial and a firing squad for this.

Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) is an ancient witch spirit who possesses the body of a woman named June Moore who just happens to be the lover of one of Waller’s subordinates. Enchantress summons her brother Incubus and creates an army of possessed former soldiers in order to destroy the human race. What else is new?
The members of the Suicide Squad are six prison inmates. Deadshot (Will Smith) is a paid assassin and family man who wants to see his daughter again. Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is a sewer-dwelling lizard man whose sole reason for joining is because he wants to negotiate getting BET on the TV in his cell. El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is a fire-wielding gangbanger who accidentally killed his family years ago and is now mildly sad about it. He refuses to use his powers at first, but later comes around. Good for him, I guess.
The most interesting of the bunch – yet still woefully underwritten – is Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). She’s an exaggerated caricature of Mallory from Natural Born Killers who maintains a cutesy flirtatious lilt to her voice even when murdering people. She’s the Joker’s (Jared Leto) girlfriend and was at one time his therapist until he brainwashed her by forcing her into an electro-shock therapy machine. Her weapon of choice is a baseball bat which she preposterously brings to gun fights. The other two are Slipknot and Captain Boomerang whose contributions to the film leave them not worth talking about. There is also added to the mix a Japanese swordswoman named Katana (Karen Fukuhara) whose dead husband’s soul lives in her sword.
Joker is one of the weakest points of the movie. His screentime is shockingly minimal and Leto plays him more like a flamboyant mob boss than the master of chaos and insanity that we know. His appearance – slick-backed green hair, white makeup, and shirtless tattooed body – reminds me of someone you’d see in an emo band.

These characters are introduced in quick succession with a few sparing minutes given for each to provide them some semblance of backstory. The movie’s plot gets moving and doesn’t stop as soon as its begins. Suicide Squad barely has a first act which is crucial if you want to tell a story and have the audience give a damn about it.
Instead of plot the film is more obsessed with violent imagery, edgelord humor, and squeezing in as many back shots of Margot Robbie in booty shorts during its runtime as it can get away with. The whole thing is a childish mess and doesn’t deserve to be called a movie. It was made with 12 year old boys in mind. The sort who play a lot of GTA, listen to rap and metal, and who just discovered internet pornography for the first time recently. Not only does Suicide Squad have nothing to say about real people, it isn’t even made for real people. Certainly not people I’d leave alone with my kids.

I find it hard to believe that Suicide Squad is supposed to be connected to Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. Those movies, while imperfect, are far more charismatic and wholesome than this piece of juvenile trash. It has all the delicate plotting of a Friday the 13th movie, but even less entertaining. After seeing what Warner Brothers had done to Batgirl I wished they could have shelved this one as well. This is one of the worst superhero movies I have ever seen. I hated every disingenuous moment of it. I hated its thoughtless and pointless approach to violence. I hated the sleaze that went into its writing. Suicide Squad fails on every level, including the simple requirement of being a movie. I would have rather just watched the film’s trailer and pretended it was a short film. The full picture was time wasted that I will never get back. Rarely is a movie so bad that I cannot imagine myself watching it again at some point. But, if I never think about this movie again it won’t be soon enough.

Director: David Ayer
Writers: David Ayer
Producers: Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Geoff Johns, Steven Mnuchin, Deborah Snyder, Zack Snyder, Colin Wilson, Bruce Franklin, Andy Horwitz, Alex Ott
Cast: Will Smith (Deadshot), Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn), Viola Davis (Amanda Waller), Jared Leto (Joker), Jai Courtney (Boomerang), Jay Hernandez (Diablo), Adewale Akkinuoye-Agbaje (Killer Croc), Cara Delevingne (June Moone/Enchantress), Joel Kinnaman (Rick Flag), Adam Beach (Slipknot), Karen Fukuhara (Katana)
Composer: Steven Price
Cinematographer: Roman Vasyanov
Editor: John Gilroy

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

3/4 stars

note: This is a review of the Ultimate Edition, an expanded edition of the film not initially shown in theaters

When I first saw Batman v Superman ten years ago I hated it. A lot of people did. Many still do. But, having seen it for a second time a decade later I find myself in the awkward position of being one of its defenders. Bear in mind, the Ultimate Edition is the only cut of the film I have seen, so I can honestly inform the reader that the extra thirty minutes are not what made the difference to me.
No, what I think happened this second time around was a mixture of acceptance and comprehension of what the filmmakers were trying to do. Being dark is not necessarily an issue for me. What made Man of Steel a bad movie was that its darkness extended to its main character as well as the plot. Putting Superman in a dark story is fine. Wholesome, good people live in a dark world and how they adapt to it and learn to live in it is ripe for good storytelling. But, in Man of Steel Superman comes right off the bat as someone angsty and angry which suited him not a bit. The kinder more winsome Superman of old would have made that film more palatable since light versus dark is what he is all about.

Superman (Henry Cavill) is not much better in this movie either, but, perhaps I have got used to him. He is not as unsure of himself as he was in Man of Steel for one thing. And, also, Batman v Superman is not all about him. It’s not really about Batman (Ben Affleck) that much either. The angsty Superman is here to stay and the movie accepts this and moves on without dwelling on his character as much.
For me, BvS’s saving grace is that the dark tone is not just a gimmick like it was in Man of Steel. This movie has something to say for once. What made many people angry, I suspect, is that they purchased their tickets and expected to see a superhero movie. Can’t really blame them there. But, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – an admittedly awful title – is not a superhero movie. It’s an epic social thriller that takes the subject of Superheroes (or meta-humans as the film calls them) seriously. It’s a commentary on what the ramifications of beings like this would have in a world that is post-9/11. In many ways I view the movie as a companion piece to Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.
Much of the film’s scenes are set in newsrooms, congressional hearings, and foreign lands falling apart under unstable regimes. The frequent cameos of real life figures like Charlie Rose, Nancy Grace, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson commenting on the existence of superheroes is just another way the film tries to posit how a world inhabited by meta-humans would react to them.

The film is set two years after General Zod wrecked devastation on Metropolis and now the world is questioning whether it needs another all-powerful Kryptonian living amongst them. Superman is a good man who is on the side of humanity, but that fact is not unquestionable to the many people who were maimed and lost their loved ones in the fallout. It was Snyder’s conscious decision to spend more time on this subject than on the pure unadulterated superhero flare we have come to expect in these sort of movies. Just before I rewatched it I read this comment from director Zack Snyder that he made about the movie in 2023: “I think that probably is what caused the movie to be so polarizing. I think … a lot of people went into the movies for going like, “Oh, it’s the superhero romp, right? Let’s have fun with it.” And we gave them this sort of hardcore deconstructivist, heavily layered, experiential modern mythological superhero movie that … you really need to pay attention to. That was not cool. That’s not something anyone wanted to do.”
At first when I read that comment I got annoyed. I thought it patronizing and a failure to take ownership of the issues that people actually had with the movie. Watching it again, though, I hearken back to that comment and understand somewhat of what he was trying to say. I believe he was mostly right, but a few people did have other reasons for not liking it. The characterizations of Superman, Batman, and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) are hardly traditional. The film still languishes under its fast-edited action sequences and unconvincing special effects. And a lot of people bristled at the reason for Batman sparing Superman’s life being that their mothers’ names were both Martha. The latter issue was meme’d and mocked to death back in 2016 and a lot of people still complain about it today. I am not as angry about it as they are. The scene intended to give Batman an understanding of Superman’s humanity that he had not seen before. He had a mother. The scene only failed because of a lack of subtlety and Batman’s animosity died down too quickly to be believable. I thought Batman’s issues with Superman were not wholly addressed here. Having a mom named Martha should not have been enough to convince him that Superman was not a threat and the movie should have resolved this concern a bit more. I also believe the addition of visual flashbacks to Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot was too on the nose and the scene would have been better received without them. But, the fact that Supes also had a mom named Martha being a turning point in Batman’s relationship with Superman didn’t bother me. It’s not as stupid as people say it is. It just needed some adjustments to its execution. But, people like their bandwagons, you know.

Batman is a big point of contention, and I do understand why. He is a bit hard to swallow. He is much more brutal and violent than any previous incarnation of the character we had seen on screen before. He also shows a shocking indifference to human life. Much of his actions are reckless and indirectly cause the deaths of the men he is fighting. The reason I still am able to accept him, however, is that the reinterpretation of the character is not so jarring as it is with Superman. Clark Kent and his alter ego don’t align at all with what he is supposed to represent, whereas Batman has always been a more edgy character. Making Batman this grim was the only logical thing the filmmakers could do if he is to contrast with Superman as he is presented here. It helps that he is not the movie’s main character. Batman serves the majority of the plot as an antagonist who has become misguided by suspicion and paranoia. The movie focuses most on the loneliness and the near sociopathy of the character which, let’s face it, has been with Batman since the beginning. Batman has always been the sort of guy whose trauma and internal rage at injustice had driven him to becoming a violent vigilante who beats the wicked and corrupt to a bloody pulp. Must I also point out that he dresses up in a vampiric bat costume and has the power of fear and the cover of darkness as his primary weapons? I can forgive the movie for knowing what everyone else knows that such a man in real life would likely be mentally ill.

The actual fight between the two is instigated by Lex Luthor. Instead of the usual self-congratulating Bond villain played by Hackman and Spacey, Jesse Eisenberg plays him…well…as Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg is not a bad actor, but he is a one-trick pony. He only plays one guy in all of his films and that is Jesse Eisenberg. His Luthor is neurotic, talks fast, and eats up attention like a child eats up sugar. He clearly loves the sound of his own voice and becomes grandiose and prone to demagoguery. He thinks of Superman as a sort of god in the classical sense and wants him dead on that basis alone. Instead of cutting his teeth on Sesame Street and Dr. Seuss like most normal people, he lives by cherrypicking the philosophies of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. I’ve known people like this and they aren’t much fun at parties.
By staging a number of terroristic plots that are deliberately centered around Superman’s presence he turns him into a controversial figure. A vocal minority of the citizenry are now leery of Superman and Batman is convinced that the world will not be safe and secure until he is dead.

Another newcomer to the franchise is Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) who spends most of the movie in disguise as Diana Prince. Her purpose in the film is limited and she is there by and large as a justification for the “Dawn of Justice” part of the movie’s title. She is meant to foreshadow the eventual rise of the Justice League. The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman also make very brief appearances, but they don’t inundate the movie with too many characters as a lot of superhero movies do with their villains. Secret archived footage is shown of them on computer screens to give us our first look at them before they make it to the main event.
Gadot’s performance is a bit bland, but she is not given a whole lot to do in her defense. As Wonder Woman she doesn’t spring into action until the final climactic battle and when she does she contributes little. Action movie directors must find writing for women hard or something, because I complain about this often.

The final battle is where the movie tends to fall apart. It’s a CGI-laden mess. The three heroes get tossed about frequently, transitioning from CGI models to actors when they land. CGI is supposed to be like a magic trick and when done poorly the trick is revealed to the audience and takes them out of the illusion. Doomsday, a monster made of kryptonite designed by Luthor, looks like a cartoon. It stomps about, roaring its head off and fighting the heroes in front of bluescreen that is so obvious it’s more like watching a video game.
The modern filmmakers have seemed to forget that fight scenes need personality as well as action. There is a lot of emotion involved when fighting someone. There needs to be a personal connection that has to be shown during the fight and not just in the moments leading up to it. This is done through simple emoting, facial expressions, and signs of physical exhaustion as the conflict becomes prolonged. What this movie fails to do is show us any of that. It’s all fast blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kinetics, explosions, loud noises, and whole shots where not a single thing on screen is real. All of which is dimly lit for reasons I suspect have to do with disguising the fakeness of the special effects. It’s more exhausting than entertaining.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is at its strongest when it is not trying to fulfill its obligations as a superhero movie. The social commentary is brilliant and the pacing of its first act is near perfect. It suffers during its action scenes, but provides a much more profound experience when it is being serious. It’s not perfect, but I rather liked it.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer
Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Wesley Coller, David S. Goyer, Geoff Johns, Benjamin Melniker, Steven Mnuchin, Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Michael E. Uslan, Trevor Christie, Curt Kanemoto, Bruce Moriarty, Jim Rowe, Andrea Wertheim, Gregor Wilson
Cast: Ben Affleck (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Henry Cavill (Clark Kent/Superman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Holly Hunter (Senator Finch), Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Scoot McNairy (Wallace Keefe), Callan Mulvey (Anatoli Knyasev), Tao Okamoto (Mercy Graves)
Composers: Junkie XL, Hans Zimmer
Cinematographer: Larry Fong
Editor: David Brenner

Man of Steel (2013)

2/4 stars

I believe that movies are best viewed on their own and on their own merits without constantly comparing them to other movies that they were not intended to be like. So when Warner Brothers finally saw fit to reboot the Superman franchise there ought to be a little latitude for reinvention. But, while Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is not beholden to the Christopher Reeve canon, it is still beholden to Superman as a character. And that is where the movie fails.
Superman is more than Christopher Reeve. By a long tradition of comic books, movies, video games, and television series Superman has entered the cultural mythos as an established character whose lore, values, and personality have become sacred.

My objections to Man of Steel are not solely due to my preference for Christopher Reeve. What I object to is how the heart and soul of Superman has been so thoroughly sucked out. Even his costume is drab and colorless. Henry Cavill plays the role without personality. Instead of the idealistic boy scout we have grown to know and love, he is angsty and much too serious. His performance is like that of a robot. Instead of being Superman as I know him, Cavill plays the sort of impersonal hero that I would expect to address everyone as “Citizen!” As Superman he is dull and emotionless. As Clark Kent he is constantly anxious and facing existential crises.
It is not until the end of the film that he dons the glasses and becomes a reporter at the Daily Planet. The scene is too brief to say much, but in those brief seconds I saw little sign of the winsome mild-mannered reporter that he is supposed to be. He strides in with confidence and makes a charming smile. He is more like an adolescent fantasy of a handsome intern.

Clark’s childhood in Smallville is handled differently than it is in the original film, Here it is doled out in a series of flashbacks that come and go throughout the first act. These scenes run parallel against his adulthood right before he puts on the cape and boots. Clark is unsure of himself and desperately wants to know what his destiny and purpose in life is. As a child we see him struggle to adjust to his powers and his relations with his peers is strained and distant. Pa Kent (Kevin Costner) raises Clark to try to find the right outlet for his powers and to maintain a sense of self-restraint. To the film’s credit these scenes do a great job at revealing how Superman came to be responsible with his abilities without becoming corrupted and tyrannical by them. There is a key moment where Clark has to contend with middle school bullies trying to get him to fight. Instead of refraining from violence out of sheer goodness of heart, the scene more realistically shows how difficult it is to maintain self-control when one is angry. While cornered he is gripping a fence behind him which, after the bullies run off, is shown to have been crushed by his hand. Pa Kent praises Clark for not giving into his baser nature, but admits that a part of him would have been satisfied had Clark knocked their blocks off. Being a good person is hard work and the film presents those difficulties remarkably well.
But the movie never quite develops him into the character that we know. Up to the very end his uncertainties and trauma remain with him. I would have much better liked seeing these pieces of his past add up to the kind and idealistic man he would later become.
One thing I heavily disliked about the flashbacks is how far Pa Kent takes the lessons in self-restraint. His dialogue and actions suggest that he doesn’t want Clark to become a hero at all out of fears for what it would do to society. After saving a bus full of schoolchildren his dad seems more concerned about the attention it would draw to Clark than the lives he saved. And the way the film handles the death of Jonathan Kent is unforgivable. In the original lore Pa Kent’s heart attack was a poignant lesson to Clark about the limitations of his powers and how he cannot save everyone. But, in Man of Steel his death is something easily preventable, but occurs anyway due to over-caution.

The film opens, like in the original, on Krypton. The planet is about to explode thanks to over-mining that has destabilized the planet’s core. Superman’s father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), is fed up with Krypton’s stagnant culture which is portrayed as being built on eugenics. The Kryptonians are grown in labs with preset destinies and roles to play. Jor-El would rather see his race breed freely without governmental controls. He steals a codex of DNA that he implants in his son in the hopes of reseeding the Kryptonian people somewhere else.
When General Zod (Michael Shannon) stages a rebellion he seeks to acquire the codex for himself so he can rebuild Krypton’s civilization under his rule. With Superman now safely flying in an escape pod for Earth, Zod is too late and his rebellion is quelled swiftly. As we have seen before Zod and his cohorts are sent into the Phantom Zone.

Back on Earth the adult Clark Kent makes his first acquaintance with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) when she stumbles upon an old Kryptonian scout ship that Clark was exploring. The movie dodges entirely the whole notion that Lane doesn’t know Clark Kent is Superman by having her uncover his identity early on. At the end of the film when he starts his first day at the Daily Planet she already knows who he is.
Man of Steel handles their love story even worse than the Reeve films did. Their first kiss comes out of nowhere, following only a small handful of meetings, all of which are professional and unflirtatious. The kiss is, in fact, the first indication that Lois was attracted to Superman at all.
Adams’ performance as Lois is markedly different than Margot Kidder’s. She is more like a journalist who stubbornly puts herself in dangerous situations for her paper. Kidder’s Lois Lane was more like a gossip columnist. Amy Adams plays the sort of stubborn journalist who sniffs out cover-ups and pesters the powers that be to find the truth. What is unfortunate is that that is all there is to her personality. Kidder was full of personality while Adams has virtually none.

During the final act, after Zod comes to Earth to take back the codex and terraform the planet for a new Krypton, the action scenes have the same problems that I have had with Superman Returns. The CGI, instead of being put to any artful use, is used to show things moving so fast that they are hard to make out. Superman zips about at high speeds, burning objects are hurled around in hundreds of shots per second, and explosions dominate much of the foreground. A lot of the action shots are also done in close-up which only furthers obscures a clear view. Computer generated special effects are at their best when they are used to show the audience things they haven’t seen before and couldn’t have seen otherwise. Too often they are utilized, like in this movie, to create highly kinetic action that is impossible to process and appreciate.

At the end of the day Superman is not an action movie star. Who he is as a character is just as important as what he does. Probably even more so. What the makers of Man of Steel don’t seem to understand is that when reinventing a character certain core traits need to be preserved if he is to be that character at all. What I saw was a very depressed and beleaguered man wearing a Superman costume. But I didn’t see Superman.
Back in 2013 I heard a few yea-sayers claim that “this is not your father’s Superman!” Perhaps we should consider that our fathers were right.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan
Producers: Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Emma Thomas, Jon Peters, Lloyd Phillips, Thomas Tull, Wesley Coller, Curt Kanemoto
Cast: Henry Cavill (Superman/Clark Kent), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Michael Shannon (Zod), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Russell Crowe (Jor-El), Antje Traue (Faora-Ul), Harry Lennix (General Swanwick), Richard Schiff (Dr. Emil Hamilton), Christopher Meloni (Colonel Nathan Hardy), Kevin Costner (Jonathan Kent), Ayelet Zurer (Lara Lora-Van), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White)
Composer: Hans Zimmer
Cinematographer: Amir Mokri
Editor: David Brenner

Superman Returns (2006)

3/4 stars

Superman Returns makes a solid effort to recapture the spirit of the original Superman movies. This is most clear in the film’s casting, where the performances are largely imitative of the original actors. It all makes for a conscious and deliberate attempt at producing a theoretical reconstruction of what a Superman 5 could have been had it been made back when Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, and Gene Hackman were in their prime. And it mostly succeeds.

Kevin Spacey, in particular, fills in Hackman’s shoes as Lex Luthor remarkably well. Spacey doesn’t stoop to parody, but makes the role his own while keeping Hackman’s mannerisms and tone largely intact. What he does best is recapturing the narcissism of the character. He portrays arrogance and indifference to humanity a bit more convincing than Hackman did, but he is not as charming or funny. Their respective performances complement each other, broadening Luthor as a character, while each puts their own spin on him.
Among the more minor characters like Jimmy Olsen and Perry White, the recasts involve performances so spot on in imitation that there isn’t much to say about them if you had seen the previous movies. Sam Huntington is the spitting image of Marc McClure as Olsen, aside from being slightly more animated than McClure was. Frank Langella meanwhile plays White exactly as I remembered him when Jackie Cooper played him.
Brandon Routh as Superman, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. He has the right build for Superman, square jaw and everything. But, Routh’s performance as Superman is a trifle dull. He has the physicality of the character down, but not quite the personality. As Clark Kent, he is a bit better, although his imitation of Reeve’s winsome mannerisms boil down to mere mimicry. Reeve’s behavior as Kent was more charming and believable than Routh’s which is flat at times and doesn’t command as much attention.
Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane is the most transformative of all the performances in Superman Returns. Margot Kidder was more charismatic and more fun than Bosworth, but Bosworth adds a level of maturity and emotion to the role that Kidder didn’t quite capture. Of all the recasts Kate Bosworth is the least convincing as a continuation of the character in the originals, but she is better written.

The film opens with a bit of expository text saying that Superman had left Earth some time ago – later revealed to have been five years – after learning that scientists had discovered Krypton, his homeworld. He had flown off to go find it, but the movie never quite makes it clear what he intended to do when he got there. When he returns he says the planet was completely barren of life and that he truly is the last of his race. Would he have stayed if he found living Kryptonians there? Superman never says.
What makes for a point of contention with his friends and family is that he never said goodbye to anyone when he left. Lois is still angry with him and we discover that in his absence she had written an article for the Daily Planet called Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman which earned her a Pulitzer for journalism. The contents of the article are not specified other than that Lois began to feel that the Earth’s reliance on a godlike savior was not in the people of Earth’s best interest. She later expresses some regret for writing it, although she obviously keeps the Pulitzer. I know I would have.
Clark Kent, speaking for Superman, tells Lois that perhaps the reason he had not said goodbye is because it was too painful for him. I find this flimsy at best. It’s not a strong and emotionally detailed explanation and I couldn’t but wonder about his poor mother, Martha. The old woman spent five years wondering if Clark was dead and I don’t think avoiding a painful goodbye justifies putting one’s widowed mother through that.
When he comes home he finds a lot of things have happened since he was gone. Lois is with a new partner (James Marsden) and she now has a son. The revelations of what Clark had missed while he was gone suggests that Superman was mistaken in thinking that his kinship with Krypton was more important than the relationships he had on Earth. The theme is not dealt with explicitly, but these events say something about what family really means. Family is not always blood.

Luthor, meanwhile, is involved in a plot to raise a new continent from the sea where he would be its absolute ruler. That’s good old Lex for ya. After acquiring several of the same Kryptonian crystals used to build the Fortress of Solitude – Superman’s base in the North Pole – Lex wants to use them in a similar way to create a new landmass in the Atlantic. The only problem is such an event would eliminate much of the American east coast and even destroy parts of northern Africa. Naturally, Luthor doesn’t care. But the return of Superman won’t make this easy.

Superman Returns is a breath of fresh air. It’s story is solid and ends the series on a poignant note. Director Bryan Singer, who had given new life to X-Men a few years prior, salvages the Superman series from the dimwitted dreck that characterized the earlier sequels. It is certainly the second best film in the series after the first one.
It’s only weak points are the occasional pale imitations made by some of the cast and I have some reservations about its visual treatment of Superman. In the original movies when Superman was flying and saving the world he was the central focus of the camera. He soared gloriously with each shot good enough to hang on a wall. But, by 2006 Superman in flight is achieved through CGI which was still a bit primitive at the time. To avoid these problems Superman is often shot from a distance or in shadow, obscuring a clear view of him. When he flies he zips past the screen quickly instead of letting the camera remain fixed on him like in the original movies. My favorite parts of the older films were when Superman would fly toward the screen, his fist thrust forward heroically as John Williams’ classic score heightened the excitement. That is sadly lacking here most of the time and I missed it. This movie was made in a time when CGI objects would move at high speeds to disguise the fakeness of the special effects. The older filmmakers, however, didn’t balk at the matte lines and obvious super-imposures the flying scenes entailed and they were better for it.

As throwbacks go, Superman Returns is satisfying and a joy to watch. The series at the time was in sore need of revitalization and Singer delivers. Binge-watching the series has altered the experience a bit, but in 2006 this movie was like revisiting an old friend and it was a happy reunion.

Director: Bryan Singer
Writers: Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, Bryan Singer
Producers: Jon Peters, Bryan Singer, Gilbert Adler, Loren Orleans (IMAX version), William Fay, Chris Lee, Scott Mednick, Thomas Tull, Stephen Jones
Cast: Brandon Routh (Superman/Clark Kent), Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane), Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor), James Marsden (Richard White), Parker Posey (Kitty Kowalski), Frank Langella (Perry White), Sam Huntington (Jimmy Olsen), Eva Marie Saint (Martha Kent), Marlon Brando (Jor-El [archival footage])
Composer: John Ottman
Cinematographer: Newton Thomas Sigel
Editors: Elliot Graham, John Ottman

Supergirl (1984)

1.5/4 stars

Some days I swear Hollywood thinks that women have nothing better to do. They don’t seem to be aware that the calling to fight for truth and justice or the vices of powerlust and ambition are the provinces of women as well as men. But, too often we see that attempts at creating female equivalents to male figures are not equivalent at all. Their priorities are portrayed as smaller and pettier than those of the opposite sex. The male Hollywood writers render feminism to condescension and being patronizing. And the women are not elevated to the same abilities and concerns of characters that are men.
The writer of Supergirl (David Odell) is, as his name suggests, a man. So is the film’s director (Jeannot Szwarc). In fact, looking through the credits on IMDB I have found that aside from casting and the performances there is not a bit of female input that was applied to the film’s making. Strange for a movie called Supergirl.
Had a woman contributed to the film’s writing I feel that the plot’s main villain would have proven a much more serious and existential threat as were men like Lex Luthor (Superman, Superman II) and Ross Webster (Superman III). Instead, in Faye Dunaway – whose talents are wasted here – we get a villain more akin to a Powerpuff Girls baddie than any foe that would have been worthy of Superman.

Both Lex and Ross were hellbent on world domination and had both the intelligence and apparatus to make it happen as long as Superman wasn’t there to stop them. And Superman himself was a man driven by a strong sense of justice and a moral desire to see the world become a safer place for everyone.
But, Selena (Dunaway) – a literal witch in this movie – has a plot that boils down to this: Selena sees a hunk doing yard work with his shirt off and wants him. But, Supergirl likes him too. And there we have the crux of Supergirl’s main conflict.

This is such a slap in the face to all the women and girls who have found inspiration in Superman. And to the boys, too, who surely must have known what Superman’s values are. Selena is presented as a woman obsessed with black magic which she largely uses for just common mischief until she sets her sights on Ethan (Hart Bochner). As a love interest for Supergirl (Helen Slater) he is more of a macguffin than a character. He’s a live action Ken doll, too oblivious of the situation to say or do anything interesting. Lois Lane and Lana Lang in the previous Superman movies were sincere personalities that Clark Kent was able to have meaningful conversations with and relate to. Ethan is just 200 pounds of meat. Besides seducing Ethan, Selena’s motivations in the movie never extend very far. When she gets her hands on a crucial Kryptonian power source she uses it mostly to enhance her powers and achieve the same aims she had before. Instead of ruling the world or obtaining great wealth, the power source – a swirling orb – is used to manipulate people into saying they like her very much.
To entice Ethan, Selena concocts a magical love potion (AKA a date rape drug, let’s be honest) and feeds it to him. The potion follows the rules of Cupid and Narcissus where the first person he sees he will fall madly in love with. Unfortunately for Selena, Ethan wanders off and, giving no quarter to logical consistency, he sees several people all at once with nary a reaction until setting eyes on Supergirl. Predictably he falls in love with Supergirl and alarmingly she goes for it. Remember, he is the one under the influence. Supergirl is not, but takes advantage of his affections even when it is obvious he is having some sort of mental break. This is arguably the first superhero movie with a female lead and also a woman serving as the main villain, and they are both rapists. But, apparently it is okay since when the spell is broken later in the movie his affection for Linda (Supergirl’s alter ego) remains intact. I guess this is to suggest that Supergirl is good enough to not need a love potion to fall in love with.
And this scene gives us one of the most idiotic moments in the history of cinema. Ethan doesn’t recognize Linda when she is wearing the Supergirl costume. I had always thought it silly that a pair of glasses was enough to disguise Clark Kent, but that pales in comparison to this kind of stupidity. Linda wears no glasses and her face is not altered in any way. Am I to believe that when this guy gets married he will become confused when he sees his bride in her wedding dress and ask who the hell she is? I can just picture his future wife walking home wearing a new sweater and this moron calls the police over a stranger entering his house.

Supergirl, herself, is given a much less noble backstory than Superman. He was sent to Earth when his homeworld of Krypton blew up and he was tasked with learning to use his powers for the good of the weaker earthlings. Supergirl – or Kara, which is her Kryptonian name – is said to be Superman’s cousin and prior to coming to Earth she was living in a sixth-dimensional alternate reality called Inner Space. This realm was created by a Krypton survivor named Zaltar who used the same power source that Selena had stolen to keep it running. He stupidly lets Kara play with it and she in turn stupidly drops it and it floats away from Inner Space into our world. Zaltar, like Selena, represents another wasted talent in the movie. He is played by the very talented Peter O’Toole who deserves better. He would have made a good Jor-El, I think.

Kara, as Supergirl, goes after the power source and in the climactic battle to wrest it from Selena we are treated to some of the most woeful special effects featured in this series to date. Much of it is poor use of super-imposures that are grainier than your grandpa’s old TV with matte lines thicker than the Washington Monument. About as bad as the effects are the performances which have not an ounce of sincerity or conviction to them. Slater smiles and frowns as the script dictates and she speaks in a constant carefree lilt. Dunaway and O’Toole phone every line in and I found myself wondering what sort of paycheck the producers enticed them with. Bochner plays his role well enough, assuming that sitting around looking dumbfounded all the time is all that was required of him.
Positively I can say the movie was at least well photographed. The camera work is quite good, actually. The cinematography is much better than Superman III; a shot of Supergirl soaring behind a thick foliage of trees, being just one favorite of mine. But well-photographed garbage is still garbage. And it stinks just as much.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc
Writer: David Odell
Producers: Timothy Burrill, Ilya Salkind
Cast: Faye Dunaway (Selena), Helen Slater (Supergirl/Linda Lee), Peter O’Toole (Zaltar), Mia Farrow (Alura), Branda Vaccaro (Bianca), Peter Cook (Nigel), Simon Ward (Zor-El), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), Hart Bochner (Ethan), Maureen Teefy (Lucy Lane)
Composer: Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematographer: Alan Hume
Editor: Malcolm Cooke

Superman II (1980)

3/4 stars

Superman II has all the excitement and visual spectacle of the original Superman film, but lacks its wit and plausibility. As a superhero movie it’s about as good as Tim Burton’s Batman or the first Avengers. But there isn’t much here of what made the 1978 Superman movie special.

In the first film it opened with three Kryptonian criminals being charged with sedition. General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O’Halloran) are condemned to dwell inside a floating disc called the Phantom Zone which floats off into space just as baby Superman’s escape pod leaves the planet. Now, in Superman II we find out what happened to them.
The sequel opens with Superman (Christopher Reeve) rushing to Paris after a group of terrorists with a hydrogen bomb take control of the Eiffel Tower. Superman saves the day by rescuing hostages and flying the bomb up into outer space where it explodes harmlessly. Unfortunately, the Phantom Zone just happened to be flying by and the shock waves shatter it, releasing Zod and gang. Ursa murders a couple of astronauts on the moon, and then the trio land in Houston, Texas. Zod wants to rule the planet and be worshiped by its denizens, but upon hearing stories of Superman he realizes that there is one threat to him and his ambitions that must be removed if he is to succeed.
The three villains have only a low kind of cunning and rely mostly on brute strength and their powers to get what they want. As movie bad guys go they have none of Lex Luthor’s (Gene Hackman) charisma and act more like playground bullies than anything else. Much of their scenes consist of wrecking havoc, causing property damage, and making comments about puny earthlings. Lex is regrettably given less to do. He joins forces with the Zod gang in the hopes of getting revenge against Superman, but he is forcibly sidelined by the new villains; his scenes little more than standing in a corner uttering some witticism.

Superman II’s subplot involving Clark Kent’s growing romance with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) is slightly more interesting. Lois, who has been growing increasingly suspicious of Kent’s true identity, finally uncovers the truth. Superman is in love with Lois, but he discovers that for the two of them to be together he must sacrifice his powers and immortality. We are not told why and Superman accepts it without question. The time they spend together as a human couple is sweet and hopeful, but is sadly short-lived. Zod and his friends threaten Metropolis and it becomes clear to Clark that the world needs Superman. Clark and Lois’s breakup, however, represents one of several different failings that Superman II has in its writing. The movie does not convincingly establish that Clark Kent and Lois Lane are in love at all. Their interactions throughout the majority of the film is not much different than the simple infatuation they had in the first one. That they are deeply in love is something we are told more than we are shown. Break-ups can take a serious emotional toll on a person, and for a moment in the movie’s final scenes it appears that something poignant will be made of it. Lois tells Clark that he is “a tough act to follow” after he tries to suggest that someday she may meet someone else. I think a lot of people following a break-up feel as Lois does, even when their boyfriend isn’t the Man of Steel. But, the film cops out of any further dramatic tension by Superman implausibly wiping her memories clean with a kiss.
This kiss is just one of several stupid moments in the movie. I cannot abide arbitrary powers being lazily introduced to get the main characters out of a bind, and Superman II is full of moments like this. In the original film, Superman’s powers, while impossible, are at least explicable to the audience. We understand that he has super strength, laser vision, and can fly. We also know why he has these powers, being an alien living on a planet with a different sun and atmosphere. But, in the sequel his powers expand beyond any plausibility. Instead of changing into his costume with super speed he now makes his civie clothes magically vanish as the Superman garb materializes out of thin air. When Non charges at him Superman pulls an S off his chest and throws it at him. The material expands into a sort of plastic wrap that temporarily takes Non out of the fight. These moments are pure dei ex machina, lacking any sort of explanation and occurring from a standpoint of quick convenience.

In the final act, Superman and the Zod gang do battle in the streets of Metropolis and later in the Fortress of Solitude. The Metropolis scenes as action set pieces are not very exciting. There is little energy to them, with most of the fight just smashing things one by one at a slow rate and some petty taunts from Zod. There is a sense of city-wide chaos one would expect that is lacking here. The fight feels more like an elaborate street brawl while the rest of the city remains asleep or dully watches on.
The real purpose of the Metropolis battle seems to be product placement. There is an annoying scene in the first Superman involving Cheerios, but it is brief enough to not detract from that movie’s greatness. In Superman II, though, we are fed a whole marching gallery of products obnoxiously shot to hold the viewer’s attention. In the span of a single minute I counted about four or five products strutting their stuff while Metropolis is under attack. These include, but are not limited to, KFC, Coca-Cola, and even Marlboro cigarettes. I doubt Superman would have approved.

When all is said and done I find Superman II to be a sufficiently entertaining movie. I was not bored by it by any means. And I can get behind its plot and adventure, if not so much its execution. But, as Lois said of Superman himself, the first movie is a tough act to follow.

Directors: Richard Lester, Richard Donner
Writers: Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Tom Mankiewicz
Producers: Pierre Spengler, Ilya Salkind, Alexander Salkind
Cast: Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Christopher Reeve (Superman/Clark Kent), Ned Beatty (Otis), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Sarah Douglas (Ursa), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Jack O’Halloran (Non), Valerie Perrine (Eve Teschmacher), Susannah York (Lara), E. G. Marshall (The President), Terence Stamp (General Zod)
Composers: Ken Thorne, John Williams (Superman Theme)
Cinematographers: Robert Paynter, Geoffrey Unsworth
Editor: John Victor Smith

Batman: The Movie (1966)

3/4 stars

I have heard it said that the 1960’s Batman television series existed in a more innocent time. I suspect that people say this to offer an explanation for the campy, childlike flavor of movies and TV in those days. But, I don’t think this is precisely true. The 60’s were no more innocent a time than the 2020s, but what made them different was the counterweight that superhero stories offered against the world, scary as it was at the time and continues to be today.
The first superheroes came on the scene in the late 30s when Hitler was rising in Europe, and their popularity continued through World War II, the counter-culture revolutions, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination, and Watergate. Hardly innocent times.
Instead the difference between Batman (1966) and the modern superheroes is not the times, but how they reacted to them. They are more cynical and reflective now, presenting the world as it really is and demonstrating morality as beleaguered and somewhat of a lonely companion. To stand against evil they must be tough, compromising, and angry.
But, in the Silver Age of comics books and comic book movies, people were more ready to accept goodness as an absolute that was capable of enduring scorn. It was a time when presidents and world leaders were respected figures, the police were more trusted, and antiheroes weren’t admired. It was not the times that changed. It was people who did.

The 1966 Batman movie starring Adam West was a product of the earlier time. This Batman (West) gets his moral values from Sesame Street. He is the sort who disapproves of gambling, believes in the potential for good in everyone, helps old ladies cross the street, goes to church on Sunday, and supports the local police. He is all about law and order, and even denies in one scene to being a vigilante. It’s explained that he and Robin, the Boy Wonder (Burt Ward) are formally deputized agents by the Gotham PD.

After narrowly avoiding a mishap involving a fake yacht and an exploding shark (a detailed explanation wouldn’t make it less ridiculous, I promise) he and Robin uncover a sinister plot to take over the entire world. Such a fiendish scheme, of course, could only involve the work of super-criminals and Commissioner Gordon (Neil Hamilton) discovers that not one, but four super-criminals are currently at large. With Batman’s superior detective skills (AKA improbably correct guesses a propos of nothing whatsoever) he realizes that all four of them must be responsible.
The four dastardly villains now working together are The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), The Joker (Cesar Romero), The Riddler (Frank Gorshin), and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether, replacing TV actress Julie Newmar who was recovering from a back injury at the time).
The movie juggles the four villains remarkably well during the 105-minute length, by simply keeping them together in the same room most of the time. They spend the majority of the movie bickering, laughing together, scheming excitedly, and then laughing some more. Singly on television or all together as in here, these characters are always a ton of fun. Meredith and Gorshin are my favorite actors to play Penguin and Riddler and I think a lot of it is due to the sheer level of enjoyment they have playing their roles. Riddler is constantly excited and laughing in high-pitched giggles. He is the most physical of the four, moving about like he has extreme ADHD. Penguin is laughably mean, squawking about and full of pure malice as he barks orders and complains on a regular basis. Meredith completely throws himself into the role and it is clear watching him on TV and in the movie that he absolutely loves playing it.
Joker contributes the least of all of them, generally going along with the plans and offering a funny comment here and there. Romero plays Joker like he is just happy to be here for the simple mischief of the whole thing, and to me that fits the character just fine; but he sadly gets a bit sidelined by the Riddler’s riddling and the Penguin’s masterminding.
Catwoman, however, plays a more central role this time around. She seduces Bruce Wayne by pretending to be a Russian journalist named Kitka in order to set him up for kidnapping. The wily scheme works and the evildoers wait for Batman to arrive to rescue him in order to trap and kill him. For obvious reasons this doesn’t work out very well and Wayne ends up escaping on his own. Meriwether’s role is fairly straightforward. She struts about in the catsuit all lithesome and seductive while moaning on occasion like a cat in heat. When she is playing Kitka it’s only a matter of silky tones in a fake accent and looking pretty. Catwoman’s eventual rise as a feminist icon is still a generation away.
Still, the combination of all four of them in one film pays off, and it shows that having multiple villains in a superhero movie can be done effectively if done right. A lot of other superhero flicks have struggled with this despite longer runtimes and less characters to juggle.

The super-criminals’ super-scheme to take over the world ultimately leads them to the United World Headquarters (an obvious stand-in for the UN) where representatives of several countries argue about world peace. The Penguin uses a diabolical machine to turn them into dust and it is up to the Dynamic Duo to reclaim the dust and restore the representatives to their original state.
The members of the United World Headquarters are only vaguely characterized. The hows and whys of world peace are not articulated, but is only spoken of in worshipful idealistic tones. There is a sense of moral naivete that is deliberate. Batman lives in a world where the buck stops at right and wrong and any thought of costs and necessary compromises are wholly alien to his philosophy. To him a spade is a spade. But, the Joker is wild and so are his companions. The nefarious villains are similarly single-minded in their badness. Without a touch of ambiguity they seem to be fully aware that they are bad people. The motivations of greed are only secondary to their childish desire to be a foil to Batman who is every bit as outlandish as they are. Without Batman these people would likely just go get desk jobs and give up on crime altogether because it wasn’t fun anymore. The 60s Batman show and the movie play more like an elaborate game of cops and robbers with each playing their respective roles with gusto.

Batman: The Movie is a highly innocent kind of film built up on the values of Dick and Jane and Mr. Rogers. As a straight-up adaptation of the TV series rather than an interpretation of the comics, it may very well be the most true to form Batman movie of all time. The comical tongue-in-cheek style adds to its charm and it is flawless in its intentions. It’s message of unambiguous morality is free and clear while it persistently goofs off. The gadgets are absurdly specific and convenient, the clue-finding is brainlessly non-sequitur, the characters are larger than life and costumed to match, and the action scenes are straight out of cartoons. The movie does more than capture the innocent moralizing of the Silver Age comic books. It also captures the fun.

Director: Leslie H. Martinson
Writers: Lorenzo Semple, Jr; Bob Kane, William Dozier
Cast: Adam West (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Burt Ward (Robin/Dick Grayson), Lee Meriwether (The Catwoman/Kitka), Cesar Romero (The Joker), Burgess Meredith (The Penguin), Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Alan Napier (Alfred), Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon), Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara), Madge Blake (Aunt Harriet Cooper), Reginald Denny (Commodore Schmidlapp)
Producers: William Dozier, Charles B. Fitzsimons
Composer: Nelson Riddle
Cinematography: Howard Schwartz
Editor: Harry Gerstad

Batman & Robin (1997)

1.5/4 stars

Reportedly, before every shoot while filming Batman & Robin, director Joel Schumacher would remind the cast and crew to “remember, this is a cartoon.” Perhaps he should have said toy commercial. It is certainly with toys in mind that we see throughout the movie’s two hour runtime frequent costume changes, new gadgets, vehicles, and no less than three new villains. Even the characters seem to know they are in a two-hour toy commercial. Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) mentions her own action figure in a scene where Batman tries to take her on only to find himself in the grips of Bane (sold separately).
This is a shameless picture with only one clear goal behind its making, and it is not to tell a story. Selling toys has always been an important consideration when making movies like this, but none are as cynical about it. The movie is practically a convention, every shot serving to show off the latest products at your local Toys-R-Us. In the climactic battle during the final act, Batman (George Clooney), Robin (Chris O’Donnell), and newcomer Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) manage one last costume change before appearing to save the day. There is a sense of urgency in the previous scene that fails to justify this. But, remember, this is a toy commercial.

Schumacher’s claim that Batman & Robin is a cartoon is not entirely unjustified. It certainly explains the movie’s tone. The comical villains, slapstick violence, and gaudy visuals of Batman Forever are taken to the max here with even the gothic undertones from before now a thing of the past. Clooney brings none of the broodiness of Bruce Wayne to the character, instead playing the part like an older brother or someone’s cool uncle. As Batman, he is hardly intimidating. The role is written more like Adam West; falling into one obvious trap after another, making improbable public appearances for charity events, and never without the right gadget to get out of any mess.
Also reminiscent of the 60’s Batman show is the film’s set design. They are shot with the same slanted angles and the same neon shades of lighting that only highlight their fakeness. The only thing missing are all the BIFFs, POPs, and POWs splashing the screen during the many fight scenes in the movie.

Batman & Robin’s story is really just an after thought. Surely, it is enough to say that the new villains are up to something villainous and Batman must stop them. Knowing that the evil Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wants to freeze the entire world with a ray gun or that Poison Ivy wants to reseed the planet with man-eating plants is not that important. You could watch this movie on mute and lose nothing. There’s a simple formula of baddies making an appearance and Batman and friends fighting them that requires no introduction. Even the movie’s subplot about Alfred (Michael Gough) being ill and needing a treatment is sufficiently told through visual cues that would make a lack of sound no challenge to understand.
While Alfred is suffering from a seemingly terminal ailment a new character is brought to Wayne Manor through Alfred’s niece, Barbara. The movie’s dialogue tells us she has come all the way from England to visit her uncle and that she is a bit of a rebel. I’ll have to just take the film’s word for it. Alicia Silverstone makes no attempt to affect an English dialect and she is shown to ride motorbikes fairly well. She is otherwise played with no personality at all and I suspect that somewhere in the movie’s development she was intended to recall Robin’s youthfulness in Batman Forever. But these themes, had they ever been present at all, must have found themselves on the cutting room floor.
Chris O’Donnell, in the meantime, brings no maturity to the Robin character at all; but spends the majority of the movie arguing and whining to Batman about how he feels like he isn’t being treated like an equal. To me, this presents a missed opportunity for Robin to take Batgirl under his wing and counter her brashness with memories of his own. But, Barbara is left by herself throughout most of the movie, while Robin and Batman bicker in a directionless subplot that ends abruptly when they realize their movie is reaching its climax.
Poison Ivy creates a sort of love triangle between them thanks to powerful pheromones she blows around like a magical pixie dust. Robin becomes convinced that Batman is jealous of him because she is in love with him instead of Batman. Batman, reasonably tries to remind him that Ivy is in league with Mr. Freeze and that her manipulative behavior is obvious, but Robin refuses to listen.
Mr. Freeze, another potential action figure, is slightly more interesting. Like Penguin in Batman Returns, he is presented as a tragic figure; but this time he is much more sympathetic, where Penguin was merely repulsive. The movie explains that Freeze’s wife is kept perpetually frozen to halt the progress of an incurable disease. This is said to be the same disease affecting Alfred, but far more advanced. Freeze needs special gems to power the machinery he uses to research and hopefully discover a cure. After an accident leaves him unable to live outside of sub-zero temperatures, he builds himself a special suit to keep himself cold and turns to a live of crime to steal more gems. By the end, Mr. Freeze is given more empathy than Penguin who was treated as irredeemable. It’s a not a deep story by any means, and all the schemings and rushings to save the day are just a thin veil to disguise the movie’s real agenda. Remember, this is a toy commercial.

Turning a beloved franchise into a big toy commercial is unforgivable, and as such, I had low expectations for the movie to have much of a story. But, as a marketing gimmick, I would have hoped for a better display of special effects. Instead, Warner Brothers, sells its toys with one of the worst looking Batman movies of all time. The sets are garish and cheap with even icicles appearing to be made of rubber at times. Outside of the sets, blue screen is used unconvincingly. The Batmobile and Robin’s bike ride against CG backgrounds, thick matte lines and all, like images poorly pasted over on Photoshop.
Batman & Robin has all the appearances of a movie that was cobbled together quickly with little thought. The story and characters play like Saturday morning cartoons with acting and special effects too shoddy to even properly enjoy it as mindless popcorn entertainment. Maybe the film would have been easier to stomach had it actually been a cartoon. Perhaps, collecting the toys is a better investment. I wonder how much they are going for on Ebay nowadays.

Director: Joel Schumacher
Writers: Bob Kane, Akiva Goldsman
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Mr. Freeze/Dr. Victor Fries), George Clooney (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Chris O’Donnell (Robin/Dick Grayson), Uma Thurman (Poison Ivy/Dr. Pamela Isley), Alicia Silverstone (Batgirl/Barbara Wilson), Michael Gough (Alfred Pennyworth), Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon)
Producers: Mitchell Dauterive, William M. Elvin, Peter Macgregor-Scott, Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan
Composer: Elliot Goldenthal
Cinematographer: Stephen Goldblatt
Editors: Mark Stevens, Dennis Virkler