Doomsday "absorbed power", but that's meaningless: the world in which they nuke him has no additional casualties than the counter-factual world in which they didn't nuke him. Except Superman, I guess, but they were willing to accept his death anyway.
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Batman v Superman Spoiler Thread: Don't believe everything you read, Son
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Doomsday "absorbed power", but that's meaningless: the world in which they nuke him has no additional casualties than the counter-factual world in which they didn't nuke him. Except Superman, I guess, but they were willing to accept his death anyway.
Even with a disclaimer:
and the use of a conditional, you still manage to take it literally.
Bra-vo.
Poodlestrike
Banned
It still produces essentially the opposite result that they intended.
GOAL: Neutralize the threat of Doomsday
OUTCOME: Doomsday is more of a threat
I'd call that a backfire.
Many people outside of your post have said the same thing about Snyder and the same thing about that specific plot point and hyperbolic or not it's just not true. Maybe use something else to illustrate your point?
longdi
Banned
There were plenty of synderlism going on with the show. Such as supes could have floated in the air and talk out bats from dueling, or what's the point of bats setting up traps to attack supes, why did he not go straight to the Krypton gas and spear, hell why did he kept the spear far away from his reach..
Maybe read my post instead of trying to use what other people say to convey meaning into my actual words. My point is illustrated the way I wanted it and I stick by what I said.
The fact that you took it literally even when I specifically stated that it wasn't supposed to be is on you, not me.
Poodlestrike
Banned
He landed because that's how you talk to somebody. Batman set up traps because hey, you never know, it might work, and if it doesn't it'll lull Superman into a false sense of security. The Lance was far away because if it was closer, Superman might realize something was wrong and bolt before it could be used.
Next.
There sure is a lot of attacking Snyder's intelligence and assuming the guy has no clue what he is doing when not only does the movie back up the arguements, but Snyder outright discusses these things in various interviews.
The film doesn't convey that at all though. The entire opening sequence is about the destruction Superman is (indavertantly) wreaking. That conversation with Alfred reinforces what Bruce saw from the opening. So I disagree there. And while we do see Bruce make the existential threat argument, we never see him reject it.
In the end, the writers couldn't figure out how to create a reasonable arc in which they fight for plausible reasons. They set up why Bruce doesn't like Supes (for any number of reasons), and a couple why Supes doesn't like Batman. In theory, their fight is the physical clash of those clash of ideas and ideals. But the actual fight is decidedly not a clash between those ideas, because they never once communicate them to one another. They're left as abstract ideas while the plot looks to other reasons for the fight to take place.
Having failed build the conflict between them, the fight is both sparked and resolved by things that have nothing to do with any of the reasons they presumably don't like each other. Superman is blackmailed into the fight, and it's ended because their mothers have the same first name. There is no narrative thread in the film that those two events fall into, Superman's objection to Batman's crime fighting methods is not addressed, and Batman's anger at Superman for the destruction in MoS and any other issues he has with Superman are never once bought up or addressed.
What's frustrating about the film is we even have to discuss this. Characters should have clear motivations, and if they fight, the fight should flow from those motivations. That just doesn't happen with BvS (which is why they had to have Lex nab Martha).
This makes even less sense, really. Superman didn't do anything remarkable, he just died trying to take down an enemy. He didn't even make any kind of special connection with Batman except the one he made up with the mother's names situation.
You know, even if you bend you're understanding of the situation enough that it logically lines up for you, it's hard for it to be convincing when it's so goddamn impersonal. Superman is just doing his thing, and batman makes his personal life philosophies and validation based off the guy's sheer existence or nonexistence. The most you can say is that Batman got really shocked by Superman's actions, but having his life changed by someone said maybe a grand total of 50 words to him, most of them not particularly meaningful, is just so inhuman. Despite Affeck being a good actor, it's impossible to pull off them having a meaningful relationship when they barely talk.
Superman's death via taking down Doomsday has no reason to be meaningful to Superman than if Superman had made it out of that fight.
"If you look at the end there, he definitely made it down the stairs and continued walking, so that was a successful execution of walking down stairs!"
So you're now saying stupid people don't exist then? Or are atleast statistically small enough that people could go through their whole lives not meeting them?
Because it doesn't change that Batman is an idiot for going full throttle with the "ALIEN THREAT" in the first place as opposed to trying to fight against such prejudices, and that the small bit of humanization made him see him as a having the right to life shows how incredibly narrow minded he is. He went from wanting to denegrade and humiliate the guy as much as he could before murdering to wanting to either be an ally that's atleast amicable enough to refer to being friends with Superman's close relative, and that's all BEFORE Superman dies.
The guy is an idiot, is the point being made here. An intelligent person, even one that falls for stereotypes, wouldn't have his entire worldview shaken by the fact that "omg, supes is just a guy like me, maybe I shouldn't sadistically slaughter him like my cattle"
Can you stop saying what I'm trying to communicate so much more eloquently? You can be as bad as Bobby Roberts about that.
I agree with you GhaleonEB, but it feels like this rendition of Superman would never pick a fight with Batman, anyway. that's why they involved Ma Kent. It feels like Batman was the one with the 'real' reason (taking the position of those against aliens), while Superman was just protecting earth from yet another insane dude.
also..how did he know that supes would plow him though a building to where the spear was?
(sorry just saw the movie today, all of these plot holes is burning though my brain lol)
Poodlestrike
Banned
Except... that's not how Alfred's conversations play out at all. He accuses Bruce of acting irrationally because of Metropolis, he says that Superman is not their enemy. Batman's rejection of the existential threat is pretty clear from him working with Wonder Woman, assembing the JL, and "not failing him in death like he did in life." It's also backed up by the rest of his ending monlogue; the existential threat argument is predicated on the idea that people are what they are, someone who wants to destroy you for any reason will attempt to destroy you no matter what, so you must take such harsh measures. At the end, it's "men are still good." How we can rebuild ourselves, redeem ourselves. Cheneyisms have no place there, how could they?
I got that all loud and clear from the movie. It's what I was thinking about as I walked out the doors, how it's a repudiation of Frank Miller's fascistic, paranoid Batman.
As for the rest:
It just... feels really tautological to me. It's got no narrative thread because it's not addressed, and the reason it's not addressed is because there's no narrative thread. It is addressed. That stuff is right there.
"More of a threat" is an empirical question tho. Doomsday doesn't do anything after "powering up" that he couldn't do before. He isn't more aggressive, he doesn't seek out civilians, Batman's grenades still work on him, Wonder Woman can slice him etc. The only change he undergoes after the nuke is... he's a little bit bigger?
Even once he lands on Stryker's: it's unclear if he was going to go seek out destruction after that. Maybe he would've just chilled there except that Batman picked a fight with him. Maybe the nuke worked just fine at de-escalating his fury.
In any case: they fire the nuke intending this outcome: we kill Doomsday, there are no more casualties, Superman dies as collateral damage. And even if they didn't achieve that directly, that's still the end result. They have no reason not to try it again except that it's just kind of pointless.
That's not a rejection of an existential threat, that's just a shifting of it. Batman doesn't worry about the medium sized fish because there is a large fish swimming up to gooble him up now. It doesn't mean the medium fish problem is solved, it's just not prioritized.
No, he's saying because it's not addressed, there's no reason to believe it's there from whats evidenced in the film. You can project more meaningful stuff onto it, but that's you putting in the work of assuming it's there, because there is no concrete textual evidence it's there. You can talk about the philosophical cohesion of the film all you want, but at the end of the day, Batman has no idea that Superman has an issue with his methods, and Superman has no idea of Batman's hang ups about him aside from "not being a real man" because at no point do these characters just talk with each other. It's just one guy seeing the other as a loon and the other seeing him as a threat (to the world and his perceived penis size), and while the characters may stop headbutting each other for reasons unrelated to those issues, that doesn't make those issues resolved.
That's Batman. It's a movie. It's like asking how did Kevin knew the burglars would go through his shit in Home Alone... you just believe it.
I think that was well done. It was very Comic Books-like.
You put it really well. I think one of the many reasons Batman comes out almost unscathed from the many criticisms in the movie is that they give him a very good groundwork to connect with the audience. People understand Batman right away, and from there the understanding of the many other motivations, actions and resolutions become more and more difficult to discern.
Prep time ;P
I mean, that's kind of Batman's thing. He had a plan and it worked out. He really should've just had it with him from the beginning, but eh.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I dunno man, I think dropping the terrifying monster back on your doorstep would be regarded as a little worse than just pointless.
No, that's what it means. He has no idea of the scale of the upcoming threat, there's no way for him to know or to prioritize. The only reason to team up with Wonder Woman is if he's become aware that that's no way to look at the world.
And this is where we're at? Strict textualism? He doesn't straight up say it so it doesn't count?
My take was that he didn't necessarily know that Superman would put him near the spear (and in fact it wasn't all that close). They show Batman training by dragging the giant tire around in the same way he later drags Superman. The plan was to use the krypto-grenades, then beat his ass, then drag him to where the spear had been placed out of sight.
Not so much a doorstep as an abandoned back alley.
If anything; the whole excercise is a net win, lol. They managed to test a nuke against Superman without pissing him off or irradiating some patch of earth.
Why would he need to know the exact threat? He just has to consider it might be large enough that he needs a bunch of super powered beings to be ready for it. Now, that could be just paranoia and stupidity at work, as we are not given any reason for Batman to even believe Lex's insane ramblings (DING DING DING DING), but when has the Batman of Snyder's verse ever been paranoid or stupid, right? Oh, I'm sorry, my mistake, I meant 'psychologically hung up'.
Hey, I said multiple times that projection is a perfectly valid way of viewing the film.
Just recognize that it IS projection, and that it is inherently personal to the individual making it. Just because you decided to finish writing the script for Snyder doesn't mean anyone else has to.
It does count, but only for you.
Scrooge McDuck
Member
If that's the case, then it should have never been a "Batman v Superman" movie in the first place. Just have them scuffle a bit at the start and then fight a common enemy for the bulk of the movie. As it stands, rather than building tension towards a supposedly climatic, titular fight, the movie just felt like piling excuses why the fight should happen.
D.Lo
Member
What the fuck was Lois doing in that scene, urgh.Some gorgeous concept art
That last one could be made into a poster for the movie tbh.
Lois is such a crap character in this universe.
Yeah, btw, how is it that it didn't happen? Doomsday was within enough of Earth's Gravitational Orbit enough that even a nuclear explosion didn't send him flying out into space, right? So how is it possible that that radiation will not fall to earth?
Scrooge McDuck
Member
Doomsday didn't fall. He simply flew down, propulsed by pure hatred and rage.
It's easy. The same defense he gives to Alfred, "We're criminals, we've always been criminals." At this point in time, Batman's the enemy, the villain, he literally can't discern Superman isn't an enemy even when explicitly told.
Under those "new rules" it's OK to kill so long as you're "going to war"... once the war is over and the new rules revoked, he realizes Superman was "a friend" and that he "failed"... he goes back the "old rules."
At some point, we just gotta accept that when movies invoke Space they're just invoking Magick, lol.
I hated her in both movies. She has nothing important o do and they just force her into all these roles.
I was hoping to see the end of her as a major character but turns out "Lois is the key" -_-
D.Lo
Member
Exactly.
And Clark, a god, is obsessed with this plain, unintelligent, boring, uncharismatic whiny person. The scripts keep forcing her into situations and keep trying to tell us she is important but she adds nothing and usually detracts from things.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
We have no idea what kind of warhead it was, what yield it was, and we don't really know how high they were. There would be no fallout in the conventional sense of irradiated soil and particulate matter, since there's no soil and no debris except for a bit of skin off Superman. The physical components of the missile would be scattered to the four winds, but the quantity of radioactive material that comprised the missile's body and the materials that failed to fuse or divide in the warhead itself is negligible on a planetary scale.
Direct radiation effects 200km up in the sky won't amass to anything by the time it hits the ground. The inverse square law applies since it radiates out in a perfect sphere. Not only is over half of the energy shooting straight out into space or going sideways into the other parts of the upper atmosphere, but the stuff pointing down gets weaker at an extremely rapid rate. Taking the intensity at 10m distance as the baseline, at 20m the intensity is only 1/4 as strong, at 30 meters the intensity is 1/9 as strong, at 40m the intensity is 1/16 as strong, and so on.
Since the yield is unknown, and this might only have been a 2kt weapon designed for tactical work against Kryptonian space ships rather than a 1mt citybuster, we can't really say how big of a boom it would be making. That the generals involved seemed to think it was ok is basically all we need to know as an audience. This is the stuff usually reserved for reference manuals and visual cross section books.
Fair enough. I'm no physicist, so I have no idea how nukes work. I wouldn't have thought it'd make sense, but if it does, then it does.
This actually is a pretty good example of what I mean by projection can only work for an individual.
You can actually say that he flew. Now, the film I don't think at any point established flight to be part of Doomsday's powers, since he seems to jump everywhere.
However, he has gained most of Zod's powers. So while the movie doesn't explicitely say such a thing, I can allow that Doomsday flew back from space using Zod's old Kryptonian powers, and just can't control it very well.
But if someone says that it's not established Doomsday can fly, I can't really say otherwise. I'm just being easy on the movie by writing in an explanation where the movie forgot to give one.
They should've said this in the movie.
Team Filler
Member
Why? What good would adding that much exposition do?
Escape Goat
Member
Im still laughing at the "Its abandoned!" And "its virtually deserted at this time." Lol. Are they going to do this in every movie now?
Batman definitely killed a lot of people. Keaton Batman not looking so bad now as far as body counts go.
Why did Lex send mercenaries with experimental guns into the setup in the desert? Regular guns would be too practical? Did he read the script too?
Wonder Woman, why are you in this movie?
Its like Snyder filmed a bunch of scenes, dumped them onto the editing room floor and let the intern assemble this travesty of a film.
Batman definitely killed a lot of people. Keaton Batman not looking so bad now as far as body counts go.
Why did Lex send mercenaries with experimental guns into the setup in the desert? Regular guns would be too practical? Did he read the script too?
Wonder Woman, why are you in this movie?
Its like Snyder filmed a bunch of scenes, dumped them onto the editing room floor and let the intern assemble this travesty of a film.
longdi
Banned
Lois is like Gwen Stacey of ASM1&2, hope she gets killed or make irrelevant in JL movies
Neogaf's perfect movie would be so boring, everything would have to be explained or to be perfectly, to the millimeter, true to reality.
Gwen Stacey is better in those movies than Lois Lane is in these movies IMO.
Considering the amount of things that were explained and then still missed they'd have to explain it like 5 times.
Actually I think the perfect movie would be something so simple it would need no explanations.
Those lines in particular exemplify the disconnect between Snyder and the audience.
Man of Steel's destruction could have just been an oversight that could have been easily corrected by superman simply not having the ability to concentrate in the midst of the toughest battle of his life.
But then Snyder did that interview where be showed he's baffled that people weren't up in uproar over the death count of tfa.
But he knew he had to address it somehow, so he threw in some lines of buildings being empty. He thinks the audience just doesn't want to think of the people that might be dying. The actual problem was superman's indifference toward that loss of life. Having the arena be empty might side step the problem of superman being complicit in hundreds of deaths, but it doesn't solve the problem of him being an asshole that isn't mindful of the destruction and possible death he wreaks.
Scrooge McDuck
Member
I agree with what you are saying, but just in case: I was joking. I know nothing about Doomsday outside of this movie.
Oh, You don't need to. When I said that it isn't an established part of superman's powers, I just meant in the movie. You may have been joking, but your explanation does work if your willing to be generous to the film, and I just used it as a good example of how projection works.
He didn't just throw in some lines. The consequences of Superman's actions is a major theme in the movie explored both by Superman and Batman's character arcs. It's a huge part of the movie. Superman trying to solve the problem of being complicit in destruction that he didn't think of is literally part of what his metaphorical conversation with Pa Kent was about.
Sometimes I feel like people are taking Snyder interviews and losing their goddamned shit about them for some reason and then throwing some stuff against him into their interpretations of the movies.
D.Lo
Member
Except the Gwen is hot, sassy and charismatic, and doesn't look as old as Clark's mother.
yeah, Snyder just had him not be in a situation where people died this time, instead of dealing with it properly.
No, you missed the point. Yes it tried to deal with what happened last film.
But then this film you don't get any growth, you don't get him struggling to save people which makes him lose/risk something else (say Lois or his Mother, or getting injured or killed). You just get throwaway lines about there not being any people there so he's off the hook this time.
And the Pa Kent stuff was nonsensical crap just like it was in the last film. This Pa Kent is a stupid selfish asshole.
No, I'd be saying he has the same disconnect just going by the film itself. The interview just expounds whats in the film.
Escape Goat
Member
At least Snyder Lois isnt Margot Kidder bad. That Lois was a bitch to Clark and Clark was all too willing to take it cuz she wanted the super dick.
I dunno, I just find it odd. I have literally heard 0 Synder interviews before watching the movie. I got most of my interpretation without hearing the dude speak at all. Heard a few interviews a few days after, but that's it. Meanwhile a lot of the hate crew seem to really lean on these interviews of him to a degree I find unhealthy.
Lois beig a bitch to Clark was pretty in line with the comics, especially at the time of the Reeves films.
I saw the movie this afternoon and thought it was the worst ending I've ever seen.
I actually thought the movie was OK until the creation/fight with Doomsday. The early parts of the movie that I liked was Bruce Wayne acting like James Bond and trying to get access to Lex's computers (which I don't get why there wasn't another James Bond like moment where Bruce Wayne fought with Mercy). Instead Lex's security is pretty incompetent and Mercy noticed something and seemed to look away after she left.
Ben Affleck I thought is one of the better Batmans. You can actually hear him as Batman, which as I much as I love the Dark Knight films, you can't say the same for Christian Bale as Batman. Jeremy Irons was perfect as a rough and tumble Alfred.
But the last 30 minutes pretty much ruined everything about the movie for me. Batman 'stopping' his fight with Superman over hearing his mother's name was a bit of 'deus ex machina' for me. The fight with Doomsday served no purpose other than to have Zack Snyder destroy more CGI buildings.
I didn't really want this movie to tell me every little thing, but I do want what I saw to make sense. What really bothers me is the movie felt like it would be mostly symbolic and a meditation on some deep subjects -- like philosophy, religion, and the nature of good and evil. In some respects, it did do that with Batman and Lex Luthor. It's just the rest of the movie felt like it wasn't even the same movie.
I actually thought the movie was OK until the creation/fight with Doomsday. The early parts of the movie that I liked was Bruce Wayne acting like James Bond and trying to get access to Lex's computers (which I don't get why there wasn't another James Bond like moment where Bruce Wayne fought with Mercy). Instead Lex's security is pretty incompetent and Mercy noticed something and seemed to look away after she left.
Ben Affleck I thought is one of the better Batmans. You can actually hear him as Batman, which as I much as I love the Dark Knight films, you can't say the same for Christian Bale as Batman. Jeremy Irons was perfect as a rough and tumble Alfred.
But the last 30 minutes pretty much ruined everything about the movie for me. Batman 'stopping' his fight with Superman over hearing his mother's name was a bit of 'deus ex machina' for me. The fight with Doomsday served no purpose other than to have Zack Snyder destroy more CGI buildings.
I didn't really want this movie to tell me every little thing, but I do want what I saw to make sense. What really bothers me is the movie felt like it would be mostly symbolic and a meditation on some deep subjects -- like philosophy, religion, and the nature of good and evil. In some respects, it did do that with Batman and Lex Luthor. It's just the rest of the movie felt like it wasn't even the same movie.
I have calculated exactly the way a doomsday like body should have went after a nuclear explosion in a non-gravitational space and he should have went right, not fall back on earth. Worst movie ever 2/10.
The film was okay, a few plot holes like in almost every movie but nothing to get annoyed about. The two worst one are the bullet, which I think was used to make Lois relevant, and the Martha one, which was just unnatural.
I feel like people are butt hurt because Snyder took some liberties with Superman and Batman and he has become the butt of the joke.
I for one am glad we have these movies, such a refreshing take on superheroes compared to all the marvel's movies or older batman. He also finally succeeded in making one of the most boring superheroes in my opinion (Superman) a bit interesting.
And that Batman, man, just the best we ever had.
And it's Snyder, the story suffer from plot holes but visually it's still very impressive.
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