Prelude to a Review of Batman v Superman / Mark Jarret Chavous
Prelude to a Review of Batman v Superman
Mark Jarret Chavous
One of the latest salvos in the cinematic superhero wars has come in the wake of the recent release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice by DC Comics and Warner Brothers. This movie has taken a bit of a beating from some critics; some fairly and some unfairly. I thought it was a decent-to-good film, though I realize there are issues. It wasn’t the great film people were hoping for, but it wasn’t the complete washout some are claiming. I thought it was entertaining, and enjoyed most of the performances; but I realize the flaws are getting most of the attention, more than the good traits. I will get into that later.
One of the frequent issues with mainstream critics reviewing superhero movies is that many reject the concept of a superhero entirely from the get-go, though few will admit to that. I think a lot of that stems from an unfamiliarity (to say nothing of a lack of interest) in the source material. Comic books? Why would a reader of Hemingway, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and O’Neil be bothered with comic books? Of course, when a new superhero movie comes out, they still have to do their job and review it anyway. It’s a real shame that so many haven’t at least read a few comics; if they had, they might better understand the material and stories and be better able to critique the film. They’d also be surprised to find that when it comes to narrative content, action, suspense, and character development, comics can hold their own with just about any literary genre.
When you make a movie from a novel or work of non-fiction, that one book serves as the sole source of the characters, plot and histories. Some books become a series featuring a common character, such as Ian Fleming’s James Bond or Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. But even then, each movie is usually made from just one book; rarely is reference made to the other books in terms of a character’s past history. Comics are different. As opposed to the one book or even a series of books that may have been published over a period of, say, ten years (some, like Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot novels, were published over a great many years), some comic books with iconic characters have been coming out every month for decades, and with different writers and artists contributing to their collective mythos. That’s a lot of legendary history and tradition that longtime readers of the books are quite familiar with. DC’s Superman and Batman go back to the late 1930s, with Wonder Woman and Green Lantern following sometime shortly after. Marvel began its run of iconic characters in the early 1960s with the introduction of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, and the Fantastic Four, along with re-introductions of Captain America and Sub-Mariner, to name a few. That makes it quite a challenge to write a script featuring superheroes, since some level of knowledge is needed to stay true to the history. Steven Attewell recently wrote about this kind of dilemma between Hollywood and comics for the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, and it is absolutely worth reading. [One can find it here.]
It can be just as much of a challenge for a critic to review these movies when they’re adapted from a comic-book series. It seems like a lot of critics take a dim view of comics in general, and not much changes when they come to the screen. Some of the reviews of this latest film that I’ve seen question the premise itself right from the start. ‘Batman v Superman’, really? Why is this a film?Superman could kill him without even trying. Often that attitude will pretty much color the rest of the review. But if you have even a cursory knowledge of the books, specifically the Batman and Superman titles, you would know that the DC editors and writers have worked out the parameters of this conflict for a long time, and have figured out a logical scenario as to the possible outcome. Without giving away too much about the movie (though most of you out there probably have seen it), I can say this: while Superman’s prowess (super strength, super speed, x-ray vision) is obvious to virtually everyone, Batman has a highly conditioned body—superbly trained in every fighting skill on earth—and gifts like a photographic memory. With technology, resources, and bravery at his command, the Batman is a superb strategist that has humbled even Darkseid (look it up). In the books, it is fairly well known that Batman has a contingency plan in place to defeat virtually all other heroes in the DC universe in the event that any—including heavyweights such as Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern—goes rogue. In other words, the Batman’s advantage and his greatest weapon (as writer/artist John Byrne put it) is his intuitive genius of a mind. What this means is that Batman being prepared to take on The Man of Steel, while lost on some critics, is old hat to the readers of the books. It is the reason why that in the books (and in Warner Bros.’ excellent animation efforts), the Batman is usually given a wide berth by others who are much more powerful than he is. The Batman is that fearsome and fearless, which is to say scary, and he likes it that way. If most critics were at all familiar with that history in the books, they would understand better why the Batman can more than hold his own against Superman and just about everyone else, and why the Batman backs down from no one.
When I saw Batman v Superman, I saw it with a close friend of mine, and we debated the film afterwards. He didn’t think it was a disaster, but found a number of things lacking that a non-comic fan might find difficult to accept. I understood that, but my point was, when you make a film like this, whom do you make it for: the comic fans or the general audience? That is a real dilemma, but my view is, if you don’t really get your talons into the comics’ readers, you will alienate everyone else. If the comic-book fans like the movie, your word-of-mouth marketing will go through the roof. Example: the new Deadpool movie—a homerun in just about every respect.
Another issue with superhero movies involves writers, directors, and producers insisting on inflicting their own personal take on the comic characters and their rich history of development. This often flies in the face of what the comics’ fans have come to expect, and is often the source for some real and legitimate fan discontent with certain plot devices in the movies. This is particularly of concern when it comes to death. In the X-Men film franchise, for example, we lost a prime member of the team in one of the movies; namely Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops. In the books, Cyclops is the de facto leader of the team when in action or when Professor Xavier is absent. [Xavier died too, but both were brought back in the last movie.] His death must have come as a shock to comics fans, since that rarely happens to a principal character in the books. I had the same reaction to Jimmy Olsen dying in Batman v Superman and Quicksilver dying in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Such a monumental waste. And in Man of Steel, Superman kills Zod—by breaking his neck. What? How could that happen?
When Superman and Batman first met in the ’50s under original DC continuity, they focused from the get-go on stopping a crime both had observed happening as Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, and worked together to stop it. In more recent continuities (after two DC reboots), the beginning of the relationship between Superman and Batman was full of suspicion, doubt, and even contempt. I think this new way of looking at the Batman/Superman relationship was conceived by Frank Miller in 1986 with his classic Dark Knight Returns, in which an older Batman regards Superman as a dated relic with ideals far past their prime, while he himself is still a warrior whose passion has outlived his body’s ability to aggressively engage and heal following intense physical conflict. DC apparently thought this a much more interesting dynamic between the two icons. But despite their initial reluctance, the one thing that bound these heroes together was a principled stand against deliberately killing anyone, even hated antagonists like Lex Luthor and the Joker. Superman, owing largely to his arrival on earth from a dying Krypton and the way he was raised by his foster parents in Kansas, finds the idea of killing unthinkable as a moral choice. Batman, who as a lad witnessed his parents’ murders, has drawn a line against killing anyone; finding it just as deplorable as murder albeit for different reasons. To be clear, Superman can come together and work with the Batman, knowing he sometimes plays it rough; but under no circumstances would Superman ever work with someone like The Punisher—at least the Superman of the comic books. Therefore the fact that Superman killed Zod in Man of Steel was a real disappointment for me, because it went against what Superman has traditionally stood for. Christopher Nolan handled this a little better in Batman Begins, when Batman battles Ra’s Al Ghul on a Gotham train; Batman insists he will not kill Ra’s, but doesn’t have to save him either.
This kind of thing is not uncommon in movie treatments of comic-book characters, where the movie-makers feel entitled by personal artistic license to force a singular and personal view onto fans who for years have supported a character—not only because of their power and ability to win the day, but also because of the values they have represented for decades. In the Steve Attewell article previously referenced, scriptwriter David Goyer is quoted defending his choices made in writing one of his many scripts for the DC movies:
“And it occurred to me that it’s one thing if you have super powers to say I’m going to be a good Samaritan and help people. But it’s another entirely, and in fact a little presumptuous to just put on a costume and call yourself Superman, and say I’m going to appoint myself the saviour of mankind.” (David Goyer, interviewed by Simon Brew)
This is an interesting quote. It is entirely presumptuous—Goyer’s own word—to interpret Superman as someone who just up and decided to don a costume and be a total boy scout. Over the years, Superman’s origin story has evolved in such a way so that he didn’t just jump into wearing red and blue, but rather started slowly by making himself unseen by means of his super speed (Thank you again, John Byrne), and eventually came to the conclusion that making himself very visible may do more to deter crime than actually fighting it. The Batman followed a similar path, going covert before deciding to create a symbol to be feared by the criminal community. To depict that twin evolution in a movie might require agonizing detail, and the director has just two to two-and-a-half hours to tell the tale, so I am very sympathetic to the pressure on Goyer and other writers to move the story along. But it is also where Superman and the Batman, along with the moral stand of not killing anyone, found common ground in the books. And it is very important when making a movie about characters like comic-book superheroes (who have such a long and nuanced history) that you respect their legacy. One can make the argument that the film must stand on its own merits regardless, and there is some truth to that; but as I said before, these movies are not based on one and done novels, but rather characters that have had years to work out the issues that writers like Goyer are facing for the very first time. If you make too profound a change in the characters, perhaps the non-comic fans might not worry too much, but you risk alienating the comics-fan audience, whose longtime support was the engine that helped get the superhero genre going in the first place. And you especially have to be very careful with Batman and Superman, because—with all due respect to Marvel’s rise to prominence starting in the 1960s—Batman and Superman represent the yin and yang of all comic superheroes.
Hopefully, in the years to come, Hollywood will avoid turning the other cheek to legendary comic-book character history and instead embrace it. There is plenty to work with within that history in order to craft a story to please the longtime comics fans while appealing to the audience at large. When DC Comics moved to Los Angeles to break bread with their Warner Bros. movie-making brethren, the idea was to get the two groups working closer together so the movies would reflect a deeper understanding that would translate into great live-action films. It’s time to start tapping into that potential.
Next: Batman v Superman – an actual review...?