Translate

Sunday 12 July 2015

Batman V Superman: Comic Con Trailer Review

batman-v-superman-imax-event
Well Star Wars was exciting, but there’s no escaping the fact that the biggest event to some out of Comic Con so far has to be the Batman V Superman Trailer. The first one suffered by being leaked the same week as the second Force Awakens trailer and that really overshadowed it and made it looks as if there wasn’t a lot to talk about. This one however promises a lot more to look at and a much better platform of analysis.
First of all, though I had my fair share of complaints against ‘Man of Steel’, the destruction of Metropolis was not one of them, because I suspected that this carnage may be used against Superman is subsequent sequels, and now it has (take that internet). Clearly both the government and the public, though grateful to Superman for saving them want to know if he can promise a safer structure and an allegiance to humanity. It’s probably this widespread and creeping fear the Lex Luther (Jesse Eisenberg) uses as leverage to gain government support to carry out… whatever he wants to.
Actually, thinking about it, the trailer did a good job of not giving away too much plot, in fact I don’t think it really gave away anything we didn’t already know. We discover that Bruce Wayne was at the battle of Metropolis and witnessed the destruction first-hand, Luther is influencing various government official and mostly just brooding, with hints at some deeper scheme. Clark Kent is rebuffed by his editor for writing articles that criticise the Batman and Bruce Wayne is receiving threats of a menacing nature (as if there are threats of a nice nature), possibly from the Joker, okay scratch that, certainly from the Joker.
There’s a definite sense of a differing opinion between the two heroes. Batman seems suspicious of this strange entity that appears from the sky and wreaks destruction upon earth (as you probably would) and is our admiration the only thing that stops him destroying us while Superman seems to take a view that if Batman is a force for good, why does he work in the shadows, and should such responsibility be dealt with by a human?
There’s also a good balance between both of them, earlier worries centered around who would be the focus of this film and by skipping a batman solo movie first, would he be the more prominent figure in the story. But based on this it appears that they both have an equal amount to say and do. Of course, there’s also the fact that we see them fighting, which is exciting. There are only a few snapshots but I could guess that they’re staying true to the comics in the sense that Batman is on the back-foot, immediately having to use all of his tactical and technological tricks to try and topple the scales against Superman’s obvious physical advantage.
There’s a slightly odd bit of dialogue at the end as Luther says playfully ‘the red capes are coming’. This seems a bit out of place at this point in the trailer but maybe they also want to emphasise the charisma of Luther here, remember this guy is also a skilled politician as well as a criminal mastermind, though the two are often the same thing (am I right, yeah, fight the system etcetera, etcetera). Charisma would be a wonderful inclusion as most of the DC character shots just have the expression of Alex DeLarge from the start of ‘A Clockwork Orange’.

There was a lot of pressure from DC to get this right, and they did. The trailer delivered in a lot of great ways that is full of great shots, good action set pieces, keeping a sense of ambiguity and from what I’ve seen the characterisations are excellently done. There are also dozens of easter eggs such as Kryptonite, a Robin suit, Zod’s corpse and so much more. Change the status of this film from ‘mildly curious’ to ‘actually quite excited’. 

No comments:

Post a Comment