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Batman vs Superman: World's Finest Three-Year Wait
- Thread starter Marion Cobretti
- Start date
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BadAss2961
Member
Really, Superman's reluctance to hurt Bruce is all Batman needs. That's always what it boils down to.
Shining Sunshine
Banned
He only lets them die.
Yep. It's pretty much the only reason why Batman won in TDKR.
karasu
Member
Off of the top of my head Superman has two villains in armored suits either powered by Kryptonite or with a kryptonite weapon of some sort. Lex Luthor and Metallo. Batman imitating them just isn't a very exciting idea. Batman is a character who is supposed to be extremely intelligent and tactical, yet when it's time for the writers to prove it they give him the most bland plans imaginable. Like a kryptonite ring. But this is why I hate the idea of the two fighting anyway. It cheapens everything.
So there's a really obvious and effective way to turn the tables on Superman but Batman shouldn't do that because reasons?
karasu
Member
Well it's not that obvious since Kryptonite hasn't been introduced in the movies. And it's effectiveness is overstated. The best Superman stories/fights have never been about someone using Kryptonite to threaten him.
unholyrevenger72
Banned
Bring Krypto the dog
TheVampire
Banned
Even if kryptonite was introduced Superman should just take out the person with it from a distance with his eye lasers or super breath.
What? That was the plan, "I'll distract Clark while you hit him with an arrow", no complexity.
Edit: Also Kryptonite suit is beatable with things like lead. Not to mention Superman has beaten Batman when Kryptonite Man infected his body. Kryptonite is not a slam dunk plan.
He doesn't have to save them.
Discotheque
Banned
Did anybody else not find that batman/superman fight badass in the comic? Miller made batman look like an asshole
I swear there's a moment when superman stops and is like "damn bruce are you okay?" And then proceeds to get socked in the face
I dunno if it will play out like that in film. They might just pull an iron man vs thor and make it look like somehow its kinda a fair fight because he has the powered up suit
I swear there's a moment when superman stops and is like "damn bruce are you okay?" And then proceeds to get socked in the face
I dunno if it will play out like that in film. They might just pull an iron man vs thor and make it look like somehow its kinda a fair fight because he has the powered up suit
Yeah, a lot easier said than done. What made the confrontation interesting at all is all the little tricks Bruce had to use to keep him occupied.
I actually really liked the Watchmen movie and think it's far and away Snyder's best work, but agree that there were a lot of instances -- particularly the exaggerated, choreographed fight scenes -- where it seemed like he was missing the point.
Shamrock7r
Member
Legit curious, can you give me some examples of some of the things Snyder mis interpreted in the translation?
The violence, for one thing. A large part of the problem is how the violence is used. The owlship sex scene for example occurs after Nite Owl and Silk Spectre don their costumes and come out of retirement. Prior to this, they try to have sex but Dreiberg is "impotent" and can't get hard while still just a civilian. This is all in line with the comic but Moore was making a commentary on the fetishism of sexualized heroes solving problems with violence. Snyder highlights the violence in exaggerated fashion and has it culminate in a giant orgasm in a very over-glorified manner. This doesn't mean that the movie couldn't be violent or that the sex scene needed to be cut but the way it's shot, prolonged, and the choice of music is offensively bad considering the source material. Snyder is saying "Holy shit! This is awesome! Oh my gawwwd you guys, everyone wants to be a swole superhero and fuck people up and fuck Silk Spectre with their massive dick!!!!!"
The change in the ending is also unfortunate but a lot more understandable. It makes more sense for audiences who don't want to really think about symbolism which is par for the course for popcorn movies. Watchmen isn't a "popcorn" comic book though so it's personally disappointing. The tentacle monster is a physical manifestation of the "other" that humanity is so prone to seek out and destroy. Changing that to Dr. Manhattan is convenient but misses out on some the subtext in the comic by making "the enemy" yet another man.
There's a ton of other stuff you could analyze but the movie is a very close transposition from the comic to the screen so a lot of the things Snyder misses is represented more in the execution and not so much the plot.
That's what happens when you make a perfect character with one obvious weakness. Superman fans get upset when he's "nerfed" but there's nothing else to do when he has been made indestructible with every power known to man.
Shamrock7r
Member
Except he isn't perfect and has had a variety of enemies able to hurt him both physically and mentally without kryptonite, but if you want to keep believing that false narrative go right abead
Clark was barely even invested in the fight because he was more concerned about Bruce's health and wanting to talk.
Edit:
He has several obvious weaknesses, one just comes in a form that's "easy" to get a grasp on: Magic, red sun energy, psychic attacks, physical attacks strong enough to hurt him (he's not indestructible, just super durable), etc. All that has come into play various times in comics, kryptonite is just the one that sticks to mainstream fans.
Hyperbole.
Edit 2:
Creative in the DC Movie Universe or period?
Bats have been my favorite animal since I first read Stellaluna when I was four, and I've been following the spread of White Nose Syndrome and its effects on the bat population (particularly that of the Little Brown Bat) across the US for the last few years. I have to say it almost brought a tear to my eye to see Snyder, Affleck and company bring this problem to light and help spread awareness. Really, really cool.
As long as I'm talking about it, Bat Conservation International has a lot more information and resources if anyone wants to learn more about it.
Father_Brain
Banned
guek said it better and in more detail, but just compare any of the fight scenes in the comic to their counterparts in the film. The former are realistic, brutal, and often make the viewer almost wince looking at them; the latter are full of speed ramping, slow-mo, improbable feats of agility, and other stylistic touches that feel calculated to make the viewer go "holy shit, Rorschach is a badass!"
Not coincidentally, these are among the few scenes where Snyder actually seems to be having fun and not trying to slavishly imitate the source material, which makes it all the more striking how thoroughly they undermine the themes of the work he's attempting to revere.
Lionel Mandrake
Member
While I'm not going to call Watchmen a perfect adaptation (Although I will say it's as successful as any other attempt I can imagine; fuck your HBO miniseries), I don't really agree with this point. I think it's more of a scapegoat that people have invented to easily explain away their actual problems with the movie, which I will get to in a moment.
The fight scenes in the movie are big and over-the-top and most likely there to keep the casual audience from being bored, but I don't think any action sequence feels superfluous to the actual story. They are longer and more drawn out than anything in the comic, but comics typically don't have long action scenes. Each panel is depicting a second in time, and so to do an action scene in a comic you're only going to draw a couple of the key seconds within the sequence, because nobody wants a flipbook in the middle of their comic. When adapting a comic's action scene into film, you're going to have to fill in the gaps.
Here is a fight scene from the comic:
And here it is in the film, in which someone has cut out all of the intercuts with Dr. Manhattan's talkshow appearance. From the first swing, to the thugs hitting the floor, it's just about 40 seconds, most of which is in slow-motion (which is necessary to fit in with the Manhattan scene), so the whole exchange is really about 20 seconds or so of real time combat. All of which is bloody and disturbing. Much of the violence in the movie is heightened with lots of blood and loud sound effects of tissue and bones being crunched into, probably to emulate the vivid blood splatters of the original artwork and to recreate the perception of fast, harsh movement in reading a comic.
I haven't read the comic in years, but I seem to recall the prison fight being pretty much entirely made up for the movie. I can see how fans could take issue with that, but I don't feel like it does anything detrimental other than not be in the source material. It doesn't conflict with anything set-up in the movie, and logically it flows with the story. Dan and Sally are back in hero-mode reliving their glory days and so they beat up some rioting prisoners. It fits right in with their rescuing the tenants from the fire. Obviously, someone who read the comic will know that the scene was added to beef up the action, but it does so without conflicting with any of the subject matter.
You say that the action has an almost orgasmic quality that the comic is lacking, but I disagree. First of all it's an Alan Moore comic, it's not off-base to try to find some connotation of sexuality in literally everything he writes. But in Watchmen it's explicitly made clear that Dan is literally impotent until he starts getting back into his Nite Owl persona. There is this thrill and pleasure that they get from being superheroes. It makes absolute sense for a movie adaptation to accentuate this quality, and that can really only come out in the action or a character just saying "Man, I love being a superhero."
And let's not pretend that the original comic didn't try to make its limited action-violence aesthetically pleasing...
Two of the most beautiful pages in comics said:
These action scenes should reveal the euphoria that the characters are feeling. The enjoyment of the action is the only time we can truly relate to that experience. And when the violence is less "heroic" then it should be played more straight.
Earlier I said that I feel like this criticism is something concocted for ease of critique. What I actually feel is the problem is more superficial. Following the release of 300, Zack Snyder suddenly had a "style," and that "style" was slow-motion, as well as those speed-ramping cuts that are kind of uniquely "his." I think this is what people ACTUALLY don't like about the action in Watchmen. While the rest of the movie is directly adapted from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic, the action is totally Zack Snyder. It pulls people out of the experience, not because the effect itself, but the unfortunate subconscious connection that people have that states: "Zack Snyder directed this." This thought occurs every time the action goes from slow to fast, and people hate it. That's the real problem with Watchmen's action.
P.S.: I actually saw the second post first and then went back to the original post without fully reading it. Upon going back to see if I'd adequately addressed all of the points, I realized that I didn't address the literal sex scene. Instead of going through the trouble of finding a logical place to insert it in my original argument, I'm just going to lazily shove it in here.
Complaints with the sex scene I've never felt strongly on one way or the other. Moore ended the scene with the flamethrower=orgasm sight gag. It was always going to be kind of awkward. I don't know why people have such a problem with the song, but then again, I actually like Leonard Cohen and was familiar with the original version of the song before I saw the movie. When I saw it in theaters there were laughs, but I figured there were supposed to be. While you can relate to a fighter's pleasure through visually stimulating action, eroticism isn't as simple, especially when it involves a man dressed as an owl banging a woman in a hovercraft. These two people are really fucked up. We're seeing two crazy middle-aged people who can't function unless they're running around in latex beating up criminals in 1985 New York. No movie featuring such a scene would connect to audience's on an erotic level, so the scene had to be filmed with an intent of absolute dissonance. It's the audiences chance to realize how ridiculous superheroes are as a concept.
Again. I have some problems with the movie. These just don't happen to be among them.
In the DC movie universe of course. No one here has actually given a legitimate answer.
Right now it's a bigger stretch for Batman to channel the powers of the red sun, use psychic powers or magic especially in this universe. It's definitely less likely for Batman to come up with something with enough power to actually incapacitate Superman without all of the above. Kryptonite is the most practical solution here and really the only two hurdles for Batman to use it are the following:
*Have some way to acquire Kryptonite (most difficult part for the movie to explain).
*Figure out that Superman is weak to it (it's not hard for the world's greatest detective to figure this out but it becomes harder when you don't actually have Kryptonite to work with)
So the movie only has to explain the existence of Krytponite on Earth... Batman will do the rest from there.
I don't know about you, but I wince every time I see Silk Spectre break that dude's elbow backwards in the movie. Yikes.
OneEyedKing
Member
So I guess Affleck's trainer is denying ever giving that information about the armored Batsuit with Kryptonite and missiles etc.
And also Zack Snyder called into that Detroit radio station again. He didn't say anything new, just thanked the city, (jokingly) talked about expanding the Justice League to feature Blue Beetle played by one of the hosts, and praised Jason Momoa, saying he called the station before to defend Aquaman in order to protect them from Momoa's wrath
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/10...thank-detroit-drop-hints-about-the-franchise/
And also Zack Snyder called into that Detroit radio station again. He didn't say anything new, just thanked the city, (jokingly) talked about expanding the Justice League to feature Blue Beetle played by one of the hosts, and praised Jason Momoa, saying he called the station before to defend Aquaman in order to protect them from Momoa's wrath
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/10...thank-detroit-drop-hints-about-the-franchise/
Recreate the Kryptonian atmosphere in some capacity. Supes got somewhat used to it at the end of MoS but it still affects him in the Universe and there's plenty of exploded Kryptonian technology around to piece together something.
Not Kryptonite as they're different things, it's about atmosphere as opposed to irradiated pieces of the planet. And a weapon that creates an artificial atmosphere is a lot more creative than "steals Kryptonite from Lex Luthor and builds suit out of it".
broncobuster
Banned
What's funny is how when Arrow's creators asked to use Ted Kord this season, they were told DC had other plans. Follow the money.
How is that creative when it's a retread of what MoS did?
An example of a creative way that Batman can incapacitate Superman would be let's say a special sound frequency emitter that only Superman can hear only Batman cranks it up so high that Superman is completely deafened by it (but since Batman can't hear it due to his human senses he is fine) and starts getting insane pain in his head because of it. It uses one of Superman's strength against him. After incapacitating him he can use a defibrillator that can output a ton of electricity to at least cause an arrythmia against Superman to make him pass out.
Only problem with this is that it's never going to work on Superman because he's Superman and he's as strong/durable as the writers need him to be. And if it did, the fans would complain that Zack Snyder nerfed Superman to make Batman look better.
An example of a creative way that Batman can incapacitate Superman would be let's say a special sound frequency emitter that only Superman can hear only Batman cranks it up so high that Superman is completely deafened by it (but since Batman can't hear it due to his human senses he is fine) and starts getting insane pain in his head because of it. It uses one of Superman's strength against him. After incapacitating him he can use a defibrillator that can output a ton of electricity to at least cause an arrythmia against Superman to make him pass out.
Only problem with this is that it's never going to work on Superman because he's Superman and he's as strong/durable as the writers need him to be. And if it did, the fans would complain that Zack Snyder nerfed Superman to make Batman look better.
It's more about ingenuity than innovation, it's something tangible for that Universe. They haven't shown what affects Supes so out the blue WoWo using her magic items to hurt him and it's just like "what?". This is something established that would be reverse engineered and believable because we've seen its affect on Supes.
No, that doesn't work because we've established Supes can drown out some sounds from MoS. But, let's go with that, Supes now can't attack, what's next? What does Batman do to take him down now? Unless the pain is intense enough to make Superman pass out there's nothing left.
Edit:
One more problem with this, how does he know this frequency works on Superman?
Growing up I loved Blue Beetle comics, but in this day and age he'd be called an Ironman rip-off.
The real answer is that Batman cannot do anything in his power to take down Superman with any technology that is currently available to the human race. And that's the point. He would have to engineer some bull shit never before seen gadget to do something against Superman. Even the metal suit itself is a giant ass pull because one hit from Superman and Batman will turn to mush inside.
Even in TDKR, the comic that people used... look at the stuff that Batman had going in his favor:
*Superman got hit POINT BLANK by a god damn nuclear missile. When he was fighting Batman he was in a vastly weakened state and the comic makes that very clear.
*The nuclear fallout caused Gotham to be blotted out completely meaning no sun for Superman to gain more energy from. Again this was specifically mentioned in the comic.
*Batman shocked Superman point blank to his brain with so much electricity that it caused Gotham to nearly have a blackout.
*Batman used a sonic emitter to disorient and even hurt Superman.briefly (Superman quickly grabbed and crushed the weapon).
*Batman wore a suit that took some hits from Superman (a giant ass pull by itself) but the suit was also powerful enough to hit Superman and actually move him.
*Batman made a weaponized Kryptonite and had outside help so that he made sure that Superman got the full effect of the Kryptonite.
*Superman was holding back on purpose as to not kill Bruce. Mentioned specifically in the comic.
Even with all the bull shit gadgetry, prep time, outside help and the environment/circumstances working in Batman's favor.... he got whooped by a nerfed Superman who was holding back. If he didn't get his ass saved by Kryptonite at the nick of time Superman would've taken out Batman.
And that's the point.
Even in TDKR, the comic that people used... look at the stuff that Batman had going in his favor:
*Superman got hit POINT BLANK by a god damn nuclear missile. When he was fighting Batman he was in a vastly weakened state and the comic makes that very clear.
*The nuclear fallout caused Gotham to be blotted out completely meaning no sun for Superman to gain more energy from. Again this was specifically mentioned in the comic.
*Batman shocked Superman point blank to his brain with so much electricity that it caused Gotham to nearly have a blackout.
*Batman used a sonic emitter to disorient and even hurt Superman.briefly (Superman quickly grabbed and crushed the weapon).
*Batman wore a suit that took some hits from Superman (a giant ass pull by itself) but the suit was also powerful enough to hit Superman and actually move him.
*Batman made a weaponized Kryptonite and had outside help so that he made sure that Superman got the full effect of the Kryptonite.
*Superman was holding back on purpose as to not kill Bruce. Mentioned specifically in the comic.
Even with all the bull shit gadgetry, prep time, outside help and the environment/circumstances working in Batman's favor.... he got whooped by a nerfed Superman who was holding back. If he didn't get his ass saved by Kryptonite at the nick of time Superman would've taken out Batman.
And that's the point.
The real problem is that it's a fight that Batman knows barely anything about Superman. In their canon and non-canon fights Bats has known Supes for years and has even given Bruce information about Kryptonians that only Supes himself has access to. This movie should honestly be Supes curb stomping Bats because that's the only way a first confrontation can go.
Still, Kryptonite, from reports, it being CREATED by Lex Luthor, Bats making some bullshit atmosphere thing from the many scattered remnants of the Kryptonian ship/World Engine is much less ass pullery than just making Superman's most well known weakness.
Still, Kryptonite, from reports, it being CREATED by Lex Luthor, Bats making some bullshit atmosphere thing from the many scattered remnants of the Kryptonian ship/World Engine is much less ass pullery than just making Superman's most well known weakness.
Reizo Ryuu
Gold Member
I'm guessing people are assuming batman had his satelites look straight into zod's ship and saw what happened in there, and then pointed his is other satelites at the world engine and saw supes coughing; conclusion: kryptonite!
Really though, if kryptonite is in this movie then it can just really go fuck itself, even the atmosphere is implausible because this weakness isn't known, it's only saving grace will be the fight scenes, but everything else will be dumb as shit
Team Filler
Member
I thought Snyder said way back during production for MoS that he didn't want to bring Kryptonite into his Superman movies, has that changed?
Reizo Ryuu
Gold Member
I remember that. He utterly failed there. You can't just substitute kryptonite for "Krypton atmosphere" and thing people won't notice.
Really? I thought that made a helluva lot more sense than a green glowing rock.
To be fair, he only said in that movie... never anything about sequels... and he kept his word.
Only problem is how they explain it in the new universe.
Unless it's something silly like being able to reverse-engineer the effects of Krypton's gravity from the recovered world engine or something
The rock makes more sense to me since Superman's powers are tied to radiation - solar radiation powers him up, kryptonite radiation powers him down - which is why traditionally he can be shielded from kryptonite with lead.
Of course, I'm using the word "sense" as loosely as possible
The rock makes more sense to me since Superman's powers are tied to radiation - solar radiation powers him up, kryptonite radiation powers him down - which is why traditionally he can be shielded from kryptonite with lead.
Of course, I'm using the word "sense" as loosely as possible
I think of it like this. If he were on Krypton would a tiny piece of Earth give him his powers? To me, that sounds really dumb so I was able too hook into the atmospheric explanation more.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
Well, if it flew through the sun possibly.
Remember its not that its a piece of the planet, but the fact it gets irradiated on the journey that makes it a weakness.
Sure, it's comic book science, but it has always made sense.
What never made sense was when it was in such numerous supplies for story sake.
Should have run out eons ago.
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
The same red sun radiation that depowered the people kept kryptonite depowered as well.
Outside of those conditions it is super toxic, especially to Kryptonians.
Not sure if it that's ever been an official excuse, but there's a way to move forward with the concept.
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