Early impressions start rolling out for Batman v. Superman

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Going to address this because I'm one of those crazy Superman evangelicals you hear about that knock on your door in the mid afternoon over the weekend to ask you if you've heard the Good Word of Jor-El.

So, originally, superman could not fly. "Leaps tall buildings in a single bound" was the thing. It was just a feature of his prodigious strength. In fact, all of Superman's initial powers had much closer to a semi-reasonable sci-fi explanation. For example, his enhanced vision came from Krypton having a thicker atmosphere supposedly, so Kryptonians developed eyes that could see through shit, more or less. That got simplified into "X-Ray vision" for ease of explanation. Eventually, writers forgot that the power was not literal X-Rays coming from Superman's eyeballs and they invented heat vision as a sort of focusing of the X-Rays like he was microwaving dinosaurs and giant robots. Slowly, that developed into actual frickin' lasers shooting out of his frickin' head.

That kind of game of narrative telephone extends to all his powers. Superman could jump really high because the mass of Krypton is much greater and his body is built to resist higher G's than that on earth. I imagine that's where his toughness first came from as well. Jumps developed into kind of an in-between area where he'd leap and change direction somehow in the air (unexplained) and finally, they just gave up all pretense and said, "Yeah, Superman can fly." As a point of comparison, early stories with the Hulk have him leaping in the air and seemingly swooping in to land in a very similar way to that in-between state Superman passes through.

Ok, but all those explanations for his powers? They don't make sense anymore. Krypton in modern comics isn't a super-dense world with pea soup atmosphere. So, the writers retroactively made up some mumbo jumbo about how his incredible powers come from a really quirky interaction between Kryptonian physiology and earth's yellow sun. Some comics have implied that modern comics Kryptonians actually might have an internal organ that (somehow) generates gravitons that they can propel from their body. This might even make sense with a super-dense Krypton as just being enough to keep a normal humanoid up and walking around and gets supercharged under the yellow sun.

So anyway...

TL:DR - His powers don't make sense anymore because no one's powers make sense after fifty years of retcons.

Hi Max Landis
 
I can't keep track of who in this thread has seen the movie... but I feel like if you had seen it you would know exactly the type of stuff I'm referring to.

Stuff will go over casual viewers heads and they won't realize they missed anything, which is exactly what happens in MCU films and even the later Harry Potter films.
 
Going to address this because I'm one of those crazy Superman evangelicals you hear about that knock on your door in the mid afternoon over the weekend to ask you if you've heard the Good Word of Jor-El.

So, originally, superman could not fly. "Leaps tall buildings in a single bound" was the thing. It was just a feature of his prodigious strength. In fact, all of Superman's initial powers had much closer to a semi-reasonable sci-fi explanation. For example, his enhanced vision came from Krypton having a thicker atmosphere supposedly, so Kryptonians developed eyes that could see through shit, more or less. That got simplified into "X-Ray vision" for ease of explanation. Eventually, writers forgot that the power was not literal X-Rays coming from Superman's eyeballs and they invented heat vision as a sort of focusing of the X-Rays like he was microwaving dinosaurs and giant robots. Slowly, that developed into actual frickin' lasers shooting out of his frickin' head.

That kind of game of narrative telephone extends to all his powers. Superman could jump really high because the mass of Krypton is much greater and his body is built to resist higher G's than that on earth. I imagine that's where his toughness first came from as well. Jumps developed into kind of an in-between area where he'd leap and change direction somehow in the air (unexplained) and finally, they just gave up all pretense and said, "Yeah, Superman can fly." As a point of comparison, early stories with the Hulk have him leaping in the air and seemingly swooping in to land in a very similar way to that in-between state Superman passes through.

Ok, but all those explanations for his powers? They don't make sense anymore. Krypton in modern comics isn't a super-dense world with pea soup atmosphere. So, the writers retroactively made up some mumbo jumbo about how his incredible powers come from a really quirky interaction between Kryptonian physiology and earth's yellow sun. Some comics have implied that modern comics Kryptonians actually might have an internal organ that (somehow) generates gravitons that they can propel from their body. This might even make sense with a super-dense Krypton as just being enough to keep a normal humanoid up and walking around and gets supercharged under the yellow sun.

So anyway...

TL:DR - His powers don't make sense anymore because no one's powers make sense after fifty years of retcons.

You forgot to mention mild tactile telekinesis.
 
The other big thing I keep thinking about with this movie is how much of it is going to make zero sense to people who aren't super into comics.

Yep. I haven't read Superman that much. Snyder wasn't explaining things to a viewer like me. I guess they had to work JL into the script very fast, so it left the whole script that incoherent.
 
''There is a storm coming, Mr. GAF''

You guys ready? It's gonna get bloody. Think I'll lower my score even more; 45%. on RT.
 
How the hell did this thread become the Heresy Olympics?

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You think my love of Knock Knock is heresy?
What is this!

Oh and I will say this.
Tables will be flipped if Wonder Woman can't fly. I've had an inclining they'd do that for some time now.
 
I can't keep track of who in this thread has seen the movie... but I feel like if you had seen it you would know exactly the type of stuff I'm referring to.

Is this the one where Spider-man shows up? Or the one with the TV spin-off?

... I'm still shaking my head that DC hasn't the slightest desire to unify their movie and TV media in any way, whatsoever, especially since WB is one of the few companies that could actually do it and do it right.
 
Germain Lussier of io9 weighs in:

Batman V Superman is a huge letdown. It's bloated, unfocused & dull with serious character missteps. A few good moments can't save the rest.

edit: Weird that the IGN review is being touted as a negative when the subhead flat out compares it to Watchmen.

Go in expecting less of DC's version of The Avengers and more of a variation on Watchmen.

Also, why would you go in expecting Avengers anything? What a fuckin' dumb frame of reference.
 
Germain Lussier ‏@GermainLussier 1m1 minute ago
Batman V Superman is a huge letdown. It's bloated, unfocused & dull with serious character missteps. A few good moments can't save the rest.


it begins boyz
 
At the very least I hope we get some good gifs from it.
The Pa Kent wave is still one of the greatest gifs ever. I hope something in this movie can live up to it.
 
Comic Book Resources review
Overambitious and overlong, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" aims to tell a collection of stories instead of focusing on one. In doing so, it underserves its classic characters, undercuts its battle scenes, and disrespects the audience who has been waiting decades to see this epic showdown on the big screen.
 
Devin faraci called it worst modern comic book movie ever.


Overambitious and overlong, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" aims to tell a collection of stories instead of focusing on one. In doing so, it underserves its classic characters, undercuts its battle scenes, and disrespects the audience who has been waiting decades to see this epic showdown on the big screen.

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