Zack Snyder's JUSTICE LEAGUE on HBOmax in 2021!

[Rev9]

He didn't try that hard. There were instances in that fight (like when Batman stops and starts to back up with a "oh ****" look on his face when the Kryptonite ran off or when the guns ran out) where he could have regained control of the situation and communicated. But this Superman sucks at communication and doesn't show much interest in it. The UC is better when it shows him helping survivors of the bomb explosion, but he still just flies off and only has himself to blame by not trying to communicate with anyone and explain what happened. One would think he has a martyr complex (though there are all those crucifix poses...)

I'd like Batman to do some actual detective work, but i guess we have to accept that he sucks now from PTSD due to events were are only vaguely told about but not shown, so we have no reason to care about him or said events. We just have to accept he's a murderous thug now with not much in the brains department.

Then that means Bruce thinks Clark had human parents but they suck and aren't worth considering...until he learns that another person on the planet is named Martha (my mom's name is Martha too, I'm just like Batman and Superman!). Which is stupid as all get out. You'r still doing mental gymnastics to make this line lifted from the comics work in the context of the film, but the smarter choice would be to show some restraint and not include it at all. Because it's just dumb fanservice.

Obviously the fact that their mothers have the same name triggers PTSD but that does not automatically mean Bruce would not be startled by any other name.A different name in the same circumstance could work because in that moment he sees Kal as an alien who has no selflessness to put a human life before his own.His own father died trying to stop the gunman who could have killed Bruce as well,to see that kind of bravery in despair was not new to Bruce plus he had earlier taunted Superman that only men are brave,just like his father was and here we see true bravery Superman trying to save someone else -resigned to his own death as long as that other is saved.That act alone was enough to give him pause ,obviously Martha is the 'Chekhov's gun' here but the act mattered just as much as for who it was displayed

[Jokerz79]

Obviously the fact that their mothers have the same name triggers PTSD but that does not automatically mean Bruce would not be startled by any other name.A different name in the same circumstance could work because in that moment he sees Kal as an alien who has no selflessness to put a human life before his own.His own father died trying to stop the gunman who could have killed Bruce as well,to see that kind of bravery in despair was not new to Bruce plus he had earlier taunted Superman that only men are brave,just like his father was and here we see true bravery Superman trying to save someone else -resigned to his own death as long as that other is saved.That act alone was enough to give him pause ,obviously Martha is the 'Chekhov's gun' here but the act mattered just as much as for who it was displayed

Except Lois yells it's his mother's name and Bruce says when he leaves Martha won't die tonight.

There was no deep realization by Bruce that Clark is willing to die as long as a human lives it was all about Bruce's parent issues over their deaths.

[Midvillian1322]

Except Lois yells it's his mother's name and Bruce says when he leaves Martha won't die tonight.

There was no deep realization by Bruce that Clark is willing to die as long as a human lives it was all about Bruce's parent issues over their deaths.

I dont mind Zach Snyder visually. Think these movies coulda been alot better if he just didn't write them. I mean just think about this one of the big complaints is the Pa Kent stuff. They tried to make them more realistic parents, thats fine. But when Pa Kent dies by Tonrado a child actor shoulda been playing Clark. He shoulda been 15 or younger. But the fact its grown ass man Canvill who sits there while his dad dies just ruins it. You have a young child who's afraid and just following his dads orders it would work way better. Simple fix to help the audience not turn on you while supermqn lets his dad sacrifice himself.. but they used Canvill in that scene who is probaly suppose to be young but hes canvill so no ones buying it.. Also Snyder is bad with hdaneling themes you can find films student essays on YouTube about Man of steels issues. All that said I'd rather watch MoS twice in a row then BvS once. For starters Zod and Jor El steal the show and I actually think we're pretty great.

[Rev9]

Except Lois yells it's his mother's name and Bruce says when he leaves Martha won't die tonight.

There was no deep realization by Bruce that Clark is willing to die as long as a human lives it was all about Bruce's parent issues over their deaths.

Lois would say it's his mother's name even if it was a name like Deborah,sure Batman wouldn't perhaps demand to know why he said the name,and Lois wouldn't even probably need to say what she says but her presence there alone means he gets to relive his childhood even without the name being the same,he is about to kill a man right in front of someone for whom the man is dear, in the scene Lois is the one trying to protect a superpowered being,she shows him not all humans fear or hate Superman as he does in the moment,he finally understands his own error.

So 'I failed him in life,I won't fail him in death' ...is also about Batman's parents? It really is improbable that Batman finally saw the good in a man and admits the failure of his own hypocrisy and tunnel vision. As I keep saying the movie's narrative shows you the reality but if you don't see it ,it's not up to me to make you see it

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It’s amazing to me that people still don’t get the point of the Martha scene. The whole film is about Batman dehumanizing Superman to justify his crusade paranoia against him and that was the moment that unsettled him and made him realize he was someone’s son just like him and how far he went. It’s not rocket science or deep ****.

[80sbaby]

It’s amazing to me that people still don’t get the point of the Martha scene. The whole film is about Batman dehumanizing Superman to justify his crusade paranoia against him and that was the moment that unsettled him and made him realize he was someone’s son just like him and how far he went. It’s not rocket science or deep ****.

And it's even more amazing that people don't get that the scene is understood perfectly, just not well liked/executed to some. Especially when they've explained it so many times in this very topic.

[SiegePerilous02]

And it's even more amazing that people don't get that the scene is understood perfectly, just not well liked/executed to some. Especially when they've explained it so many times in this very topic.

Yeah, the Martha scene and the intent behind it isn't difficult to grasp. It is just done in a hamfisted way and doesn't land. The performances and the dialogue just make it come off as ridiculous. There's a reason memes erupted from it, and it's not because people were too dumb to grasp it.

And that's just that one scene, Eisenberg seems to have stepped out of a completely different campy movie and pretty much ruins almost every scene he's in. There were a couple early on where he seemed appropriately menacing, but as the film goes on he becomes so OTT that he doesn't mesh with the morose tone and wooden acting coming from everyone else.

[Agent Z]

Batman's skills as a detective have always been greatly overrated by fans. More often than not, he's dealing with people who aren't exactly subtle about their crimes and in some cases actually want him to know it's them. And this version of Batman still did more detective work than most film versions. Thing about detective work however is that it is done best when a person is mentally stable and free of bias. The latter doesn't apply to this Batman and the former is commonly not the case with Batman.

As for Superman not talking with Bruce, he'd already tried that and between the sonics and Kryptonite, it was clearly difficult to think let alone talk. Funny thing, communication generally not something people do very well when they're either trying to defend themselves from violence or have just experienced a traumatic event.

[SiegePerilous02]

Batman's skills as a detective have always been greatly overrated by fans. More often than not, he's dealing with people who aren't exactly subtle about their crimes and in some cases actually want him to know it's them. And this version of Batman still did more detective work than most film versions. Thing about detective work however is that it is done best when a person is mentally stable and free of bias. The latter doesn't apply to this Batman and the former is commonly not the case with Batman.

As for Superman not talking with Bruce, he'd already tried that and between the sonics and Kryptonite, it was clearly difficult to think let alone talk. Funny thing, communication generally not something people do very well when they're either trying to defend themselves from violence or have just experienced a traumatic event.

How is it overrated by fans? It's not like he exclusively only fights his well known rogues who want him to know it's him. He has a long history of stand alone stories of one-and-done crimes without repeat villains who weren't trying to attract his attention, you know. And over his broader history, "mental instability" is only really associated with the modern one of recent decades. And those takes suck, so it's not a good reason to put more of it out into the world.

We're also not talking about other film versions of Batman. The other versions not doing much detective work is bad, but that doesn't magically make the minimal detective work he does here better. Batman is not supposed to be a psychotic idiot who doesn't do much research as he plots to murder someone who hasn't explicitly done anything wrong yet. Yeah he is suffering from PTSD, but we do not know this Batman well enough to care. The film is relying on us to bring our preconceived notions and love of these characters in with us to do the heavy lifting of making us care while not doing much itself. And then tries to deflect criticism by saying we can't bring our preconceived notions into it. It wants to have it both ways.

Clark says there is no time, but then proceeds to to shove Bruce back when the latter gets up into his face. He then shoves Bruce into an alley without as many traps, then proceeds to just walk over silently...and then tackle Batman into a building. And he wasn't stumbling around or anything, these were all deliberate actions, so don't say he wasn't mentally coherent. He gave up after like 5 seconds and a couple half assed attempts. "The characters aren't meant to be behaving logically" can sometimes be a lazy excuse for why characters are acting stupid when the screenplay is to blame. A fight had to happen, how we got there not so much apparently.

[Blind Wedjat]

We're also not talking about other film versions of Batman. The other versions not doing much detective work is bad, but that doesn't magically make the minimal detective work he does here better. Batman is not supposed to be a psychotic idiot who doesn't do much research as he plots to murder someone who hasn't explicitly done anything wrong yet. Yeah he is suffering from PTSD, but we do not know this Batman well enough to care. The film is relying on us to bring our preconceived notions and love of these characters in with us to do the heavy lifting of making us care while not doing much itself. And then tries to deflect criticism by saying we can't bring our preconceived notions into it. It wants to have it both ways

Exactly. BvS didn't do the necessarily character development and worldbuilding to justify not only Batman's new behaviour (because the film states it is new) but why Batman's violent ways are bad and that he needs to change from them. Yet at the same time, it expects the viewer to know who Batman is in detail to understand the character up until that point so it can skip over all that stuff and get to the story it wanted to tell. No one can convince me otherwise that the entire point of BvS and Snyder's take on these characters was simply to say and show that he could do it, and not because he genuinely had a great story to tell from it. And sure, he's within his artistic rights to do that, but he and whoever supports or agrees with him does not get to deflect the criticism by saying we can't bring our preconceived notions into it or "oThEr bAtMeN kIlLeD tOo!" It's lazy and considering I am yet to see or hear a good justification as to why he went that route, I believe what I believe.

Clark says there is no time, but then proceeds to to shove Bruce back when the latter gets up into his face. He then shoves Bruce into an alley without as many traps, then proceeds to just walk over silently...and then tackle Batman into a building. And he wasn't stumbling around or anything, these were all deliberate actions, so don't say he wasn't mentally coherent. He gave up after like 5 seconds and a couple half assed attempts. "The characters aren't meant to be behaving logically" can sometimes be a lazy excuse for why characters are acting stupid when the screenplay is to blame. A fight had to happen, how we got there not so much apparently.

I doubt you'll get a reasonable explanation for such contrived writing. People have been criticising this aspect of the fight for years now and I haven't read a single sensisble explanation for it. As someone who isn't really that big of a Batman and Superman fan, it's moments like these (and there are many) that made me dislike BvS even more upon my recent rewatch. I've gotten over the way the characters were adapted but it is just how awful the screenplay is that makes it a truly bad film.

Honestly, what was the point of the Knightmare sequence? What even was it? Why is Wonder Woman in that movie? Why does that movie need a Justice League set up (and pause the entire movie for several minutes to show it)? Why does the film spend several minutes with Clark investigating Batman when it becomes completely irrelevant as to why they fight in the first place? There's way too much going on in that film that every aspect of it gets short-changed.

[Blind Wedjat]

And it's even more amazing that people don't get that the scene is understood perfectly, just not well liked/executed to some. Especially when they've explained it so many times in this very topic.

The one thing I don't even see people address is that BvS has absolutely nothing to say about the relationship between a mother and her son before the Martha scene and after it.

The three men in conflict with each other (Clark, Bruce and Lex) all repeatedly talk about their fathers instead and what they taught them. Each of them are the men they are today because of their fathers as the film repeatedly states in each character's dialogue and interactions. Lex never talks about his mother. Bruce only has one weird dream about her that doesn't say anything. Superman only has one conversation with his mother which is about whether he should be an active guardian or not (which has NOTHING to do with why Batman hates him). The mother-son relationship is never a theme or discussion in BvS before the Martha scene happens, which adds to a long list of problems as to why it comes out of nowhere.

The only set-up the scene has is during the Wayne killing flashback when Thomas says her name as he dies (and honestly, I think it's pretty bad that "Martha" was Thomas' last words instead of something related to Bruce instead). None of that is enough to hinge an emotional climax and resolution on. People can point out the very obvious explanation for it, but it doesn't change the fact that Batman and Superman stop fighting because their mothers share the same first name. Hinging an emotional climax of a film on a coincidence most people don't talk about is just being lazy.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Honestly, what was the point of the Knightmare sequence?

The point was to foreshadow the potential dark future where Darkseid has taken over Earth, and by extension taken over Superman that would become a pivotal plotline in Snyder’s two-part Justice League arc. Snyder did say the Knightmare sequence was going to be explained in his version of Justice League, and Bruce would mention this vision to Wonder Woman. We know by the end of the sequence, Bruce saw a vision of a wrathful evil Superman under the control of Darkseid pull his heart out. In the Snyder Cut of Justice League this is originally why Bruce wanted to revive Superman since he believed Darkseid’s army planned a revival of Superman in order to control himC and use him as a puppet to take over the world, so he basically needed to beat Steppenwolf to the clock and revive Superman in order to prevent him from falling into Apokolips’s hands. So basically it was a race against time situation.

This kind of mirrors an episode from Superman: The Animated Series called ‘Legacy’ where Superman for some time was brainwashed to serve under Darkseid’s army and helping him conquer the Earth. The Knightmare sequence may still be addressed in Zack’s version of the movie coming next year.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

And it's even more amazing that people don't get that the scene is understood perfectly, just not well liked/executed to some. Especially when they've explained it so many times in this very topic.

That’s nice, but the vast majority of the states criticism around that scene is “duh plot was rezolved becuz their moms have the same name”. So yes while it being hamfisted was a valid criticism worth exploring, when the majority of people have their baseline criticism as that, it loses weight as an argument.

[SiegePerilous02]

I doubt you'll get a reasonable explanation for such contrived writing. People have been criticising this aspect of the fight for years now and I haven't read a single sensisble explanation for it. As someone who isn't really that big of a Batman and Superman fan, it's moments like these (and there are many) that made me dislike BvS even more upon my recent rewatch. I've gotten over the way the characters were adapted but it is just how awful the screenplay is that makes it a truly bad film.

Honestly, what was the point of the Knightmare sequence? What even was it? Why is Wonder Woman in that movie? Why does that movie need a Justice League set up (and pause the entire movie for several minutes to show it)? Why does the film spend several minutes with Clark investigating Batman when it becomes completely irrelevant as to why they fight in the first place? There's way too much going on in that film that every aspect of it gets short-changed.

This may actually give your criticisms more weight than, say, mine because they are my two favorite big name characters (along with Wonder Woman), so I'm bringing a lot of baggage in with me that is inevitably going to lead to some bias. But even non-fans (or non-die hards) can pinpoint some of the issues here. There really is no logical reason for Clark to bury the lead when he first confronts Batman: lead with your mother being kidnapped and Lex is threatening to kill her, you dumbass.

If the clock is ticking, he really has no time to be posturing in the rain, taking shots and wasting his breath saying stuff like "you don't understand" instead of actually speaking. Once the Kryptonite enters the equation, it makes a bit more sense since he's actively being threatened now, but before that it's like he got hit with a stupid stick. If he at least attempted to articulate what was happening and Batman still was gung-ho about killing him, then we could at least say we tried and only one of them was acting like a moron instead of both.

The point was to foreshadow the potential dark future where Darkseid has taken over Earth, and by extension taken over Superman that would become a pivotal plotline in Snyder’s two-part Justice League arc. Snyder said, the knightmare sequence was going to be explained in his version of Justice League, and Bruce would mention this vision while talking to Wonder Woman. We know by the end of the sequence, Bruce saw a vision of a wrathful evil Superman under the control of Darkseid pull his heart out. In the Snyder Cut of Justice League this is originally why Bruce wanted to revive Superman since he believed Darkseid’s army planned to revive Superman and use him as a puppet to take over the world.

This mirrors kind of mirrors an episode from Superman: The Animated Series where Superman for awhile was brainwashed to serve under Darkseid’s army.

The difference is that Superman the Animated Series got to do it in a serialized format.

This set up for future films is just awkwardly dropped into this film without any warning or clarification. We know Snyder was setting up a further arc that would be clarified later, but it's not like this was a quick bit of subtle foreshadowing, it was a disruptive and confusing sequence that doesn't add anything to the film it is in. Doing something that heavy and relying on future films (which may not get made) to explain it isn't very wise storytelling.

And no, I wouldn't say it's always great in MCU films either.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

How is it overrated by fans? It's not like he exclusively only fights his well known rogues who want him to know it's him. He has a long history of stand alone stories of one-and-done crimes without repeat villains who weren't trying to attract his attention, you know. And over his broader history, "mental instability" is only really associated with the modern one of recent decades. And those takes suck, so it's not a good reason to put more of it out into the world.

We're also not talking about other film versions of Batman. The other versions not doing much detective work is bad, but that doesn't magically make the minimal detective work he does here better. Batman is not supposed to be a psychotic idiot who doesn't do much research as he plots to murder someone who hasn't explicitly done anything wrong yet. Yeah he is suffering from PTSD, but we do not know this Batman well enough to care. The film is relying on us to bring our preconceived notions and love of these characters in with us to do the heavy lifting of making us care while not doing much itself. And then tries to deflect criticism by saying we can't bring our preconceived notions into it. It wants to have it both ways.

Clark says there is no time, but then proceeds to to shove Bruce back when the latter gets up into his face. He then shoves Bruce into an alley without as many traps, then proceeds to just walk over silently...and then tackle Batman into a building. And he wasn't stumbling around or anything, these were all deliberate actions, so don't say he wasn't mentally coherent. He gave up after like 5 seconds and a couple half assed attempts. "The characters aren't meant to be behaving logically" can sometimes be a lazy excuse for why characters are acting stupid when the screenplay is to blame. A fight had to happen, how we got there not so much apparently.

Simple.... compare a good detective story to the average Batman story. The majority of the time a detective aspect is he snuck in a building at night and found one central clue the entire plot resolved around. In the old days Robin did better detective work. Look at all the major stories. It’s mostly action stories that if you are lucky have a slight mystery that is either revealed to him by the villain or so basic it barely qualifies as some impressive detective skills.

Take two of the bigger stories where there is a mystery of who the villain is. Long Halloween and Hush. Batman catches Alberto to figure out he was Holiday, has Dent tell him he is Holiday, and never finds out about Gilda. Thomas Elliot tells him he is Hush but doesn’t confirm until another story and his “detective work” on the Riddler was that he wasn’t really involved in the plot and he used the same name as a guy who invented the cross would puzzle and all that was enough to assume it was a fake. Then he needed Riddler to tell him every single thing about the plot.

That’s about as good as it gets. In Morrison’s run he basically just wings it in RIP, has to travel through time to kinda but not really figure out who Hurt is and he doesn’t even really get the entire story.


Those are some of the most mystery heavy Batman stories. He’s never lived up to his Greatest Detective moniker