Was Armond White right about Batman V Superman?

Was Armond White right about Batman V Superman?

His review is one of the few that actually attempts to understand the film.

Please read the whole review before posting. No drive-by shitposting.

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White had the audacity to approach BvS as more than just a videogame cartoon movie. Other critics didn't.

There's no real substance in this. It flows nicely as prose, but I don't have any more sense of what the film's moral meaning really is, or how what it's saying differs from what Nolan was saying, than I did before reading it.

A film rejected by the critics it mocks. How fitting.

>or how what it's saying differs from what Nolan was saying
Nolan movies had only a part of the equation. Batman was the fear of the criminals. He was the whip that kept Gotham in control. But they lacked the symbol of hope. Something that would make men strive for great things. Something that would give them a sense of meaning and purpose. This is why White rejects the Nolan films.

He's not right, the allegory of good v evil, divinity v mankind is constantly thrown in our face, multiple times. It's like saying the same lines again and again, Snyder isn't the first one that did it in superheroes movie and surely he's not the one that did it better.
However I liked the aesthetics of BvS, pity there wasn't any screenwriter that told Snyder "no don't do that, that's retard".

And then there are the Marvel movies that White hates even more for being cynical and overly insulting.

The thing is, taken seriously, all Batman can be is a right-wing law-and-order fantasy. I mean, he is essentially Donald Trump.

Can we just stop trying to "gain a deeper understanding" of comic book crap churned out by hollywood to make money? There is no deeper understanding. They started with moneymaking points (introduce characters x y z, vehicles for actors a b c) and tried to make a story around it, then threw millions of dollars at the screen to try to make it watchable. That is the deeper understanding, there is nothing more.

Other than Donald Trump being a fat lazy fuck who eats mcnuggets and never lifted a finger to help anyone else in his life, totally. You nailed it.

This is an agenda often spread by Marvel fans to justify their awful saturday morning cartoon movies.

If you want that, then just stick to Marvel. Nobody's stopping you.

#IMFAT representin'

Wanting to be different doesn't mean you did things right

BvS wanted to be something else, but failed miserably due to plot holes and ridiculous "mini-trailers" for future films

You sound like you know Trump personally?

He has personally gone and helped people facing natural disasters.

Nothing you say is true though. It didn't fail miserably. You failed miserably in understanding it.

The movie would have been a masterpiece if it actually explained more things like the dream sequence in the desert which was left unexplained such as was Bruce dreaming when Flash appears because he was having like a dream-ception and also after the building blows up, people are supposed to believe that Superman did it?

Well a few minutes later into the movie, no one seems to remember this incident at all and once Doomsday appears, the film's entire 2 first acts are forgotten as everyone is mourning Superman.

>Oh no I am in danger from this natural disaster that is happening
>There's Donald Trump with a bunch of security guards and a TV crew, thank god I am saved

Dumb fucks like you ruin this world

NO U

You can't try to make a thought provoking movie and then try to please the plebs with the brain numbed by the Mouse and his minions.

Either you do the political and ethical thriller or you do two dressed up guys punching a CGI monsters, seeing both is awkward

Watch this. It explains all the film's plot holes
youtube.com/watch?v=kxrlKqkW5IY

What are you talking about?

He has personally helped more than Obama.

No explanation/analysis could make the email character setups, the cgi monster and basically the whole third act suddenly good somehow.

Those points in the movie will stay atrocious forever.

There is nothing wrong with the third act and Doomsday is Doomsday. What did you expect him to be?

It's telling the movie is actually good because it has Marvel shills on a 24/7 shitposting campaign against it. It frightens them. They know BvS is everything Marvelshit will never be. So they are here doing desperate damage control.

>Doomsday is doomsday

I don't know how he is portrayed in the comics, but even if he's also a characterless generic monster plot device in the comics that doesn't mean he should be the same in the movie.

Why make the whole third act just yet another capeshit "let's fight but oh shit it's the end of the world gotta team up and save the people", I had hopes that it would be original by the look of the first half of the movie.

What I don't understand is why they hate the movie so much. I mean I could understand someone not liking it, it was something like a 5.5/10 to me and I'm the biggest DChad in this board, but to keep coming after a year still triggered as the first day, what a sad existence

He's the sword of ALEXander that cuts the Gordian Knot. It's not out of nowhere. It's part of the story. Doomsday is the destroyer of Superman in the comics. And the movie was fairly faithful to his comic-book look. The third act is definitely not out of nowhere.

They fear BvS will become the proof that Marvel is cancer and keeping the genre forever in an infantile state. Imagine being an MCUck and having all your threads die after five posts and three failed forced memes. And then you see BvS threads have momentum and they might lead to something big. Of course it would be in their interests to halt this. It's about the narrative. And the shills have an agenda. Always.

So if Donald Trump looked like Christian Bale and did a photo op dropping a coin into a wino's cup, you'd have supported him, eh?

Interesting.

Gives rise to reflections.

But it's generic as fuck. It is the same shit like Marvel with the end of the world scenario. The fact that "it is the same in the comics" doesn't change a damn thing.
The third act even get's a sudden high quip count like in Marvel, throwing corny jokes while the monster wrecks the city.

It is a huge tonal shift from the rest of the movie and it falls apart completely.

based Bale loves Trump

The genre is forever in an infantile state because superheroes are by their very natural only dramatically satisfying to infantile minds. We now have a culture so babied that when you grow out of a product, you blame the manufacturer.

It's miles beyond what Marvel does and if you don't see that then you don't understand the movie. The only thing you can say is bad about the third act is Wonder Woman. Everything else is perfectly in line with what the movie builds up to; Lex wanting to debunk the myth of God. Batman regaining faith and Superman's sacrifice. This is in line with what the movie builds up to from the very first scene.

A consistent story doesn't mean the execution of it is automatically good.

You can take the same storyline and give it to different directors and it would result in very different movies.

The execution of BvS is poor, tries to throw all these low on the nose biblical symbolism right at your face and then shits all over it with all those other useless characters like ww, flash and the whole email thing.

But atleast it was ambitious and somewhat original in the first two acts, I'll give it that.

>like ww, flash and the whole email thing.
In a three hour movie and you still obsess over this five-minute scene. Sounds more and more like you're wanting to find a reason to be upset more than anything.

How do you even tolerate Marvel movies when all they do is advertise sequels?

BvS is one of the best movies of the last 20 years. People are slowly beginning to realize it. Give it 2-3 more years and it will get the praise it deserves

Where did I say I like or even tolerate Marvel?
I don't tolerate most capeshit in general, BvS had some hope and it turned into just another generic capeshit movie in the third act.

And no those five minutes are not the only flaws
>The high use of on the nose biblical symbolism which makes the movie definite in meaning
>Snyder copying the comics frame by frame with no originality, stating that as a good thing
>The sudden tonal shifts where we should laugh in one second and be all serious in the next one
>Jesse Eisenberg's weightless delivery of lines
>No Batman killing motive explanation (why doesn't he then just blast Doomsday with some high power artillery, he sure has the money to)
>"Martha!"

The only thing I am happy about is that capeshit is in it's downfall and people will look at todays capeshit like we look at the massproduced 80s zombie movies.

Yes, he is right, and his review is worded in such a way that it still lets the viewer uncover the truth for themselves. This and MoS transcend the derisive label of "capeshit" by treating its source material with respect and using it as the very best of comics do - as modern myth with all its power to inspire and edify.

All of this is either nitpicking or blatantly false. Not fooling anyone MCUck.

If you were talking about a movie clearly intended to be stand-alone film, you'd have a point about unexplained things. It isn't, though, so you really don't. If you level such criticisms at this film, you should also apply them to such works as LotR and the Star Wars films.

As far as the bombing goes, no, Bruce doesn't have to believe he was complicit in it to feel he's responsible for it. He sees him as a focal point for conflict and an existential-level threat by simple virtue of existing.

But he said he wasn't a Marvel shill surely someone that copypastes the same nitpicking every thread is honest guy ;)

I love how the religious imagery, on top of all the other heavy lifting it's undeniably doing, also distracts people from realizing what Superman actually represents in these first two stories.

Batman vs Superman is the Shawshank Redemption of our time. Ignored, laughed at when it is released, but then becoming a legendary film as people believe to realise it is true kino.

>Was Armond White right about Batman V Superman?
Of course.

I loved MoS and BvS and can't wait for more. My only worry is that the studio will try to make future movies more "audience friendly" and completely dismiss what made those movies so great in the first place.

90s-00s Trump was a liberal

Find that same exact post in the archive then please.

>but you said similar things like others

Yeah because we saw the same movie, just like you like the same things as most BvS fans.

Also please deliver some actual contra arguments to that post rather then just spouting buzzwords at everyone.

Not only is he that, he's also a good working stand-in for the guilt Clark's not been confronting since MoS. And if that was all he was meant to represent, that would be plenty, but it so, so isn't.

No it's actually telling you're the same person. You fucked up whining about it being frame to frame like the comics. It was the intro and it was a homage. You're the guy buttmad that Civil War looked like shit compared to the vivid pictures of the comics.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I think it will work out, at least where Snyder's unofficial trilogy is concerned. I don't think the man's capable of not taking his work seriously.

To all of you absolute plebs circlejerking over Snyder's symbolism, here's a quote about symbolism from Tarkovsky himself:

>"I am an enemy of symbols. Symbol is too narrow a concept for me in the sense that symbols exist in order to be deciphered. An artistic image on the other hand is not to be deciphered, it is an equivalent of the world around us. Rain in Solaris is not a symbol, it is only rain which at certain moment has particular significance to the hero. But it does not symbolise anything. It only expresses. This rain is an artistic image. People always try to find "hidden" meanings in my films. But wouldn't it be strange to make a film while striving to hide one's thoughts? An image cannot be a symbol in my opinion. Whenever an image is turned into a symbol, the thought becomes walled in so to speak, it can be fully deciphered. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite"

?

>what is different schools and philosophies of art

What's Tarkovsky have to say about symbolism that isn't symbolism?

To clarify, what do you think the imagery is even there to convey?

((((Salkowitz))))

Does anyone have that image comparing BvS and Civil War to their comic counterparts? I only remember Civil War looking lame as fuck.

I stopped reading when it said batman represented Sup Forums

fuck off idiot.

When did Armond say that?

q u a l i ty

c o n t r o l

...

It does

You're not wrong, but that's not the only mindset he represents.

Armond White keeps BTFO liberal bloggers it's wonderful.

it was an absolutely great super hero movie.

this movie was not liked for political reasons or for Advanced Nerd Autism (IT'S NOT IDENTICAL TO MY FAVOURITE COMIC BOOK RUN READ BY 20-30k PEOPLE)

what plot holes

so it's right, they are attacking this movie as part of their cultural war scheme.

go figure

>"mini-trailers" for future films
Those were less than two minutes in total and were fairly well-integrated in the movie.

White even predicted it in his own review. BvS went head-first into the culture wars and it lost bitterly. Why? Because the people that write reviews and dictate the RT score and word of mouth isn't the average filmgoer. It's most likely a liberal who has been molded into rejecting conservative ideals in film. And then it became a snowball effect where shitting on a movie you hadn't seen became the cool thing to do. This is a testament to much influence the wrong type of people have.

If you think BvS deserves 20% on Rotten Tomatoes while complete trash capeshit can get up to 90% for simply following an easy formula, then you need to rethink.

Where they fell in the timeline was literally my only criticism of them. They broke up the momentum into the confrontation, but given that interruptions seem to be a recurring motif, maybe even that was intentional.

I actually liked the placing, it got me pumped up for the showdown and the WW appearance. But fair enough.

but liberals ultimately lost. Maybe Bvs was a victim (even if people in the real world liked this movie... guess who hated it among the real people I know? Hard-core leftists... makes you think) but they lost the war on videogames for example, and now they lost the last election.

So to recap yes I agree that Bvs was attacked for political\cultural reasons plus nerds who hated it because it was not identical to their irrelevant favourite story in a 80 years old multi-medium franchise but on the other hand the movies is genuinely good and these pieces o' shit are actually losing the battle for Culture and Ideas. SO fuck them is all that I'm saying, maybe- maybe they'll smear the reputation of an individual movie but overall they are losing, they are losing badly.

But maybe they are even losing on bvs ... for every stupid "bvs was a bad movie" snide, 10 pages limit reaching thread appears

The left loses in poltics but wins in culture since the 1960s. Trump's election isn't going to make BvS more successful than the Marvel films.

If I were to criticize something about BvS, it would be Wonder Woman. The others took up so little air-time that I was fine with. But Wonder Woman has no thematic relevance to BvS whatsoever despite a decent amount of air time. The whole character reeks studio intervention. Even Armond White criticizes the inclusion.

When people talk about BvS, nobody really talks about Wonder Woman. Everything about the movie is so interesting. Superman is great. Batman is great. Lex is great. Even Lois Lane is surprisingly witty and refreshing for her usually backburner character. It's a shame DC are so eager to take the Marvel game. It's awful. It's cancer. I hate it. Snyder seems to be one that is atleast willing to fight the tide. Atleast for now.

>Everything about the movie is interesting
*everything except WW that is

It's not a pleb filter, but more like a pleb barrier or pleb invisibility. The complaints are so surface level, that it becomes hard to understand.

A normal thinking person looks at someone acting strange and thinks that it's a plot point about how this person has changed. Yet some people look at the changes to Batman's character and can only think it is different because it is a poor adaptation. Or the complaint that Lex is basically the Joker from TDK but yet no one has explained how other than a glib, "you see it don't you?"

It's barely even surface level because it's not even about the film that's on the screen.

I think that without WW they could have made the S vs. B battle the highlight of the film, and made the thing closer to the comic book source material (not that it's good in itself, but in this case it would have meant less excess fat).

Oh well, that's what you get when you try to make a Marvel-style mega franchise.

Well I think the fact that a movie like Suicide Squad is destroying Doctor Strange in the box office on the same budget is because the same reason, or one of them, Trump won. People are tired to be told what to do by numales and ugly girls with blue hair.

Word of mouth after BvS was mainly something like "what the fuck, this wasn't that bad" and to defend BvS for its good parts became something of a resistance against an establishment too, and that carried over to SS which is a much MUCH worse film. Hence the "DC is the Trump of capeshit" clickbait articles

What's even more interesting is that the core message isn't even all that conservative. It's more a conservative statement in what the world needs: more communication.

If I were to sum it up, I'd say it's basically this:

If the East wants to stop being perceived as a threat by the West, it needs to step up to the microphone and unambiguously state what it is and what it believes. If it wants to be seen as a hero, it needs to start leading the fight against the monsters being born of what the West perceives as its culture.

If the West wants to stop being perceived as a villain by the East, it needs to lay aside torture and brutality and stop subverting its own justice system. It needs to see past the blinkers placed on it by fearmongers and the filters of media bias and do a better job of listening to what is being said. It needs to stop blindly chasing its obsession with vengeance.

Until those things happen, the ultra-rich elite will continue to play each side off the other to serve their own selfish ends and continue making deals with the *real* Devils in the world.

>trump president
>intelligent bvs thread

Pigs are flying, truly.

>Was Armond White right

Let me stop you right there. The answer is "no". Armond is ((our guy)), his '''reviews''' are an exercise in advanced trolling.

Both of these are infantile attempts to graft meaning and value via critical theory onto a painfully childish and stupid cartoon. It's fucking garbage. The film is fucking garbage without deeper meaning of any kind. It's a fucking buddy action flick, with a couple of bones thrown in for girlfriends who get dragged along to these things (the romance with Lois Lane) and feminist retards (the Wonder Woman character, a vapid, possibly even sarcastic, paint-by-numbers deification of the dumbest fantasies of all the dumb girls who wish they could game, code, and fight).

How anyone can look at these corny-ass, cringe-inducing lines ("The Bat is dead. Bury it."; everything uttered by Lex Luthor), stupid fucking premises (let's just leave a massive alien spaceship just sitting around unguarded in the Indian Ocean), and dorky cheeseball action sequences of laser light and Spandex and see a good film is utterly beyond me.

Zach Snyder is a cheesy, cornball hack idiot. This is a fucking dumb film. All of his films suck, and his superhero ones especially, because he desperately tries to make them seem sophisticated and deep and relevant, when all they are are the hamfisted attempts of a dork who likes comic books to make all comic books seem as if they were written by Alan Moore, when in fact Moore himself despises most comic books and superhero comic books in particular. And you know why? Because they're childish power fantasies enjoyed by childish men.

What do two parentheses mean? Is it a new thing?

How the fuck did you manage to drag GG into this

REEEEEEEE

STOP THIS IS SO DUMB GO WATCH MARVEL INSTEAD GIVE MORE MONEY TO DISNEY OVERLORDS

You dismissed like three hours of discussion in this same thread by saying "it's shit lmao"

Just think about it

>tfw liked BvS but hates Sup Forums

His review doesn't touch that much on the subject of the film other than
"millenials don't understand it due to post 9/11 grief". And what the fuck is 9/11 grief? PST?
I live on the other side of the world, and still found the movie okay. It wasn't deeply philosophical or anything. I liked it more than most of the campy Marvel movies, but it was also a little too try hard.

What's infantile is your criticism, seriously it reeks of a bitter person who enjoys nothing. Even through your mindless hate you acknowledge that the movie attempts to be sophisticated and deep and relevant, which is certainly an admirable thing.

Regardless of the "overall quality" it's impossible to deny there are interesting things unique tot this movie.

i.4cdn.org/wsg/1479237120086.webm