Superman/Batman film announced

I haven't seen Man of Steel yet but I hear it's better than Sucker Punch so it must be pretty ok. Snyder can make pretty cool movies (sometimes) so I wouldn't write this one off just yet. Plus, if Christopher Nolan produces, one could hope that it won't be too big of a disaster.

Snyder is the Rob Leifeld of movies. So of course DC loves him.

Also, fuck Zack Synder.

I really like Dawn of The Dead, Watchmen and 300. He's good at making movies out of existing material. Haven't seen Man of Steel yet (I've heard good things) and don't really care to see Sucker Punch but I think Snyder can probably do an alright job with this.

This. He seems to believe he can cover up movie and story issues with being moody with CG action which is pretty but leaves me thinking "this is pretty dumb".

Michael Bay is a notch or two below bad though

Awesome.

Damnit.

Justin Timberlake as Batman?

@benpicko: Well Michael Bay has made a few decent movies amid all the garbage so I think its a fair enough comparison; Michael Bay is 90-95% bad, Zack Snyder is more like 60-65% bad.

Lol damn that's a shitty logo.

The Dark Night Returns please.

I'm just not interested in a Superman/Batman buddy cop movie, which is exactly what this would be.

Zack Snyder directing doesn't bother me. Dawn, 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel, the dude has some pretty great movies under his belt. Sure he made Sucker Punch but hell, Nolan made Inception. Every filmmaker has a stinker or two in their filmography.

Sidenote: the comic book fandom seems to love riding Nolan's nuts for his Batman movies. Why? The first two are good, sure, but I'm not seeing how stripping everything fun or heroic out of a character and making the film dark and broody nets him fans when anyone else who tries it gets burned at the stake.

Over/under 90% on how many people who say it looks like shit will go see it the first week?

Stealth reboot of Batman to move the character away from the tone of the Nolan films? I'd be all for that instead of another origins film.

Comparing Sucker Punch and Inception is a laughable concept. One is a garbled mess of action scenes and lame characters that was critically panned and barely made it's budget back. The other was beloved by both critics and audiences and made almost a billion at the box office. Come on. You may not like Inception but they aren't even remotely comparable in quality or success.

Screw up Super-D-Duper man all you want, but stop making bad batman movies, PLEASE. Christopher Nolan made Batman cool again, lets keep it that way.

I dunno... I found Bale's Bruce Wayne to be kind of a bitch in Rises.

At best this movie can only be average and boring. And, as someone who barely reads comics, crossovers like this seem dumb as hell. These universes couldn't be more different in my mind. Why they would be combined escapes me.

Because they're not different universes. Bruce Wayne owns The Daily Planet and Clark Kent's apartment building. Marvel and DC both do it. It's why the Avengers and the Justice League exist.

They're in the same universe, however throwing them together like this with the whole "Your favs are teaming up!" angle is a little weird.

I figured they would at least do a JLA movie before something like this to establish the relationships between the characters and the universe a little better. Snyder reading that DKR quote has me worried, since if there is one story I DON'T want Snyder's hands on it's Dark Knight Returns. That being said and having expressed my distaste in Snyder as the director, I'll give him some credit. The guy who did the Dawn of the Dead remake is in there somewhere trying to get out.

@andorski: I'm with you on Rises, that movie didn't sit well with me after a second viewing, and what was eating at me was just how lame Batman had become. Also Batman doesn't quit being Batman.

Shoot it in black and white and have it all be about Lois Lane's abortion and Batman addiction to heroin. Surprise me Zack Snyder.

Man this is like hearing Strider is getting an HD remake and then finding out Double Helix is working on it.

That said I will watch this regardless. :(

I used to believe in Snyder. I believed he was capable of making a good movie. But now I'm done with him.

@fredchuckdave said:

You and I have very different definitions of the word "mediocre", then, because Michael Bay is waaaaaaay better than most people give him credit for. :P

I don't know. The Transformers movies are pretty god-awful. Transformers 2 also happened to be racist as fuck.

@chaser324: I thought that the pacing in all three of those animated movies was weeeeird. Dark Knight Returns kept in a lot of the darker stuff, which I was super surprised about, though.

The only Zack Snyder movie I have ever seen is Dawn of the Dead, and that was a'ight.

Same.

In fact I don't remember much else from that film.

I'm happy. Visually Snyder has been one of the most influental directors of the last decade. For some reason, it's become hip to hate on his work. Outside of Suckerpunch, which was all flash and no substance, all of his works are either great (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen) or good (Guardians of Ga'Hool, Man of Steel). Watchmen Ultimate Cut is currently my favorite movie, I give it a watch every year or two.

Superman/Batman will be awesome. It's not likely not go down the Dragonball Z route like the latter half of Man of Steel, and I really liked the character building bits at the beginning of Man of Steel. Looking foward to see the rivarly and friendship between Batman and Superman develop, and how Snyder will show how Batman can keep up with Supes. That's going to be rad.

Also - please let there be Martian Manhunter.

Synder and Bay get too much shit from the supposed "intellectual" movie community... They both make popcorn movies like no others and they both have flair. Unlike that piece of shit Del Toro recently released... Super stoked about this new movie.

1) it's funny that people are saying Zachary Snyder can't do batman. When I first saw the opening to sucker punch, the first thing I thought was " why isn't this Gotham city!?!" It was perfect and exactly what was missing from Nolan's awful batman films.

2) this movie will suck. What makes batman vs. superman interesting isn't a slugfest. It's the conflict of the character dynamics and the deep psychology at play. Neither character has been well established enough in movie form for any of this to play out. It has to be the worlds strongest vs. the worlds smartest, and batman has never been all that smart in the films. Nolan batman was honestly really putzy.

I didn't say they were equally bad. I said both Nolan and Snyder had stinkers in their filmography. Inception was a stinker. It's a bad movie. It, like Sucker Punch, is pretentious. They both aspired to be something meaningful and they both failed at it. That makes them pretty similar.

Next you'll be gauging the success of the Transformers franchise to say those are good movies. Christ.

I imagine it'll be like that feature length episode of Superman: TAS, only less awesome. Perhaps even not awesome.

I think Inception is vastly overrated but still think the comparison to Sucker Punch is laughable hyperbole. Inception is morally questionable and overly self-satisfied but at no point is it poorly directed, shot badly or a fucking mess of a film. Sucker Punch is all of the above.

Then again, you seem to think Man of Steel, Watchmen and 300 are decent films so your yardstick for film reviews isn't exactly in line with most critical thought.

Other than being blatantly ripped off by Shyamalan in The Last Airbender, Snyder being "influential" is a joke.

The dude could be a solid art director, he has a great eye for composition and style, but his ego compels him to take the director's chair where he just makes utterly vapid pretty pictures.

@vitor: Inception is a pretty meh movie. Majority of the film is spent listening to the info dump character tell everyone what is actually happening. More or less stereotypical American film. Hall scene was neat but meh.

Wouldn't the Wachowskis be the influential ones? Zack Snyder's main "thing" (random slow-motion hits) is basically ripped from the Matrix, isn't it?

@vitor said:

You're absolutely right. I should lash myself for enjoying popcorn movies as popcorn movies. Every film I like doesn't have to be Citizen Kane, man. There's no problem with liking a popcorn movie like Pacific Rim or 300. I can enjoy Lethal Weapon and still like Rashomon. There's no law that says I can't and this idea that because I do enjoy popcorn movies I can't have a worthwhile critical opinion of films is fucking juvenile. Maybe that's not what you meant by that critical thought comment, but the insinuation remains, all the same.

Anyway.

Inception isn't a good movie because it has a plot that makes no sense. It's a bad movie because it's ultimately a heist film with a clever hook that feels like it should probably say something poignant about reality and dreams and people in general. It's, as you said, self-satisfied and I think it's probably the biggest insight into Nolan's opinion of his own work. It's smug, pretentious, and ultimately rambling. Is it shot well? Sure, it's shot well. That doesn't make it a good movie, or any less of a bad movie than Sucker Punch, however.

And as for Sucker Punch, it's a fucking mess. I don't think I've ever defended that movie. It may be visually distinct, but when you've got a director who knows visual art and doesn't understand story telling, that's what happens. Like Inception, Sucker Punch tried to be something more than it is. It tried to be poignant, and yet it fell flat because its author isn't equipped with the experience or the tools to tackle subjects like child abuse, rape, misogyny, and mental health with any degree of tact. It's taking a sledgehammer to a nail. It's a film wrapped up in allegory and blunt analogies that smack the poor viewer upside the head repeatedly. Whether Snyder made the film like that on purpose, not trusting his audience, or he made it because he's really that blunt I don't know.

Ultimately, I dislike this idea that because one movie is a good looking mess, and one movie is a weird looking mess, that means the weird looking mess must be worse. It's bullshit. They're both bad movies for different reasons. That doesn't make them anything more than bad movies.

i'm sure i'm just adding the chorus of 'meh' ( the internet like to complain, and i'm just another horrible cog in this terrible machine), but i'm so burned out on superhero moves, this is like like chocolate sauce on top of chocolate cake, the entirety of which is encased in solid chocolate. actually- that sounds pretty good. but at a certain point you're not even going to be tasting the flavour any more.

@mellotronrules: No, there's just been so many. And they won't stop until the money dries up sadly.

Whatever it takes to keep these dumbasses entertained.

All things aside I like the logo and I'll probably end up seeing it. I have come to peace with the fact that the DC characters I know and grew up with are dead and have been replaced by facsimiles that have a vague "Attitude Era" quality about them.

Now we get to see Batman let millions die too!

Yeah?........Hmm, yes. Yeah!

@gaminghooligan: @mariachimacabre

I understand that they are the same universe technically but my brain says their tones couldn't be more different. Adding them together for a story, especially a movie, seems dumb. But that's just how my brain looks at it. And I'm a grumpy old man.

Not sure if Batman will make a Superman movie better, or if Superman will make a Batman movie worse. Not being a big Superman fan, I thought Man of Steel was just ok. I enjoyed the fight scenes and special effects. However, the movie jumps around so damn fast between the present and flashbacks. I don't know what to think of this team-up until I see what direction they're going to take the new Batman in.

You guys realize that Christopher Nolan wrote The man of steel, snyder just directed it. And i enjoyed it, so this should be dope.

Sucker punch is one of the worst movies i've ever seen. But i liked 300 and Watchmen a whole lot

Wow, I didn't realize people hated Zack so much. I thought most people loved 300 and Watchmen?

@levio said:

They did. Ever since Sucker Punch it's been like the Internet is lining up around the block to get their licks in.

Lets all bitch about a movie we havent even seen a trailer for yet! BITCH BITCH BITCH!

I disagree, I think he's a perfectly good, even great, director, he just doesn't direct (or write) movies with any kind of human element or emotion (beyond the extremely broad strokes of 300 or Dawn of the Dead). But he's a fine action-movie director.

I do agree that this likely won't be very good based on Man of Steel.