Going through this thread just put me in the mood to watch the BvS UE. And what a fine movie it is. I really do like it more then ZSJL. It's such a freaking epic movie. Of course, it does have its faults, but it is glorious.
One thing I hadn't quite picked up on was the parallels between how Clark sees Batman and how Superman is framed/accused. When Clark meets the wife of the guy Batman branded she asks him "one man decides who lives, how is that justice?", echoing what the woman from the African village asks in the Congress hearings about how Superman decides who lives.
And I wonder if the references to Excalibur are about how Arthur lost his way/his soul and it wasn't until Gawain made him understand that he and the Land were one, and that echoes how Batman has lost his way, and needs a "pure Knight" to show him the way again.
Also, I think Snyder's a pretty good actor's director, he certainly gets great stuff from all three (Affleck, Cavill, Gadot).
For whatever it’s worth, I enjoy BvS more than ZSJL as well. There’s just so much to dig through and unearth in it, and the examples you give are excellent.
Things like at the very start of the film, in the prologue’s voiced over narration scene flashing back to Bruce’s parents’ murder visually speaking it’s chockfull of “falling” imagery, e.g., snow flakes, sparks, Thomas collapsing after being shot, the bullets casings bouncing on the pavement, Martha’s pearls, her life leaving her through her eyes, etc. And the message of the dialogue is of course the same.
The “falling” metaphor represents that the character concept when honestly placed in the real world—which is what deconstruction does—Batman… well, almost by definition, really if this is undertaken in good faith… must “fall” from the ideal plane of the comics, i.e., those ideals are ”perfect things, diamond absolutes.” But as Bruce notes, “things fall, things on earth… and what falls is fallen.”
This is counterintuitive: but from a purely artistic perspective the goal of this is to upset many people! (Not from a business standpoint of course!) That is exactly what a deconstruction
should do. I have zero doubt that strictly as an artist, as an auteur, Snyder knew full well that this deconstruction would powerfully disturb, even anger, many fans. But he wants us to examine what the characters mean to us in real life psychologically as a symbol, and to think independently about that, and discuss and debate it. That’s the effect that Alan Moore wanted his comic run Watchmen to have on readers, and Snyder applies the same project to Batman and Superman in this film.
I’ve never undertaken it, or seen it done by anyone, but I’d love for some You Tuber out there to comb through BvS for possible references to Excalibur and point them all out.
One thing many have noticed is that there’s a kind of bookend sort of mirroring of themes, often conveyed through visual imagery but also in terms of concepts as well, throughout the movie. One example is the bullet casings bounce off the ground in the prologue and the 21 gun salute canon casings bounce as well at Superman’s funeral.
@abake noted the mirroring of Batman’s morally problematic vigilantism and Superman’s independent use of his superpowers (especially when it impacts geopolitics on the world stage) is also morally problematic. In the Watchmen 12 comic run/graphic novel, there is an chapter dedicated to Rorschach titled “Fearful Symmetry” (note that the test’s inkblots have bilateral symmetry). There’s an excellent YT analysis series by Cartoonist Kayfabe where those two artists break down Watchmen in terms of comic book craftsmanship, and they point out that not only the chapter (positioned in the middle of the run) is composed that way, but it is also repeated and echoed all throughout the entire run. I think Zack Snyder did something very similar with BvS! I’d love to see a YT analysis of that one day by someone.
Anyway, imo BvS will be analyzed in film studies classes for many years to come. I recently heard… people are saying it although I have not seen the source…. That David Zaslav has referred to BvS as a “masterpiece.” When I first heard this I wondered if it was just some people taking the LA Times article that WBD reportedly vetted for publication that describes BvS as an “epic” and embellishing that. But anyway, hopefully Mr. Zaslav does enjoy and respect the movie for all the right reasons, and wants to help rehabilitate it’s public image!
