MoS and BvS are both deconstructions. Deconstruction has the core project of asking us to consider: what would it look like if superheroes actually existed
in our real world? Would that truly be a good thing? Is it something that we would really want?
You can hate that they’re deconstructions, and that’s your taste, that’s fine. But it’s a complete misread to say that Snyder doesn’t understand the characters because this is what he’s doing with the material. By examining what superheroes might look like if they could really exist, deconstruction sets out to shake the reader or viewer up. By so doing it nudges us to reflect about what superheroes mean to us individually and also generally, psychologically and culturally speaking. To ask basic questions even if the answers are ultimately always experienced personally and subjectively inside each of us.
In your case, you’ve arrived at your own conclusions based on what you’ve watched, and that’s great! In a sense, mission accomplished. But it’s not intended to give you a comfortable, secure space, actually.
If this interests anyone, some recommended reading on the subject:
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/za...oyride-through-decades-of-comic-book-history/
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/fr...superman-ii-is-key-to-understanding-the-dceu/
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/ma...superheroes-justice-league-reconstructs-them/
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice-4-years-later-movie-debate/
https://snyderversetrilogy.wordpress.com/bvs-is-a-watchmen-like-deconstruction/
https://thesnyderverse.com/bvs-the-clash-of-postmodernism-and-modernism/
https://snyderversetrilogy.wordpress.com/batmans-story-in-bvs-as-monomyth/
https://thesnyderverse.com/zsjl-a-mesmerizing-unification-of-reconstruction-and-elegy/
Actually while I’m at it I would also highly recommend the following for analysis of Watchmen which is the seminal deconstruction in the comic book genre:
Aaron Langerman’s thought provoking analysis of the meaning of the Watchmen run, what’s going on in it:
Cartoonist Kayfabe’s outstanding analysis of the comic book craft of the run:
And if you really want to dote on it, there are these as well:
Cartoonist Kayfabe’s piece on the book “Watching the Watchmen”:
The motion comic of the Watchmen run:
I’m very much aware of Snyder’s intent and there was a time I even appreciated it, but the further removed I got from things, I came to two conclusions: 1.) Snyder’s simply not smart enough to pull off his own ambitions and 2.) in the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, “they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could do something, they never stopped to think if they should.”
Superheroes, and DC Superheroes, in particular, are rife for revision. Ask anybody what their favorite Batman is and you’re going to get a litany of answers. Not just in movies, either. Some will prefer Miller, some people will say O’Neill and Adams; others might say they liked the classic Kane and Finger iteration or the Happy-Go-Luck Sprang version that was evocative of what they liked about the Adam West show as kids. There are no wrong answers, it’s all subjective, and I’ll confess to being partial to all of them in many ways.
However, I think one needs to consider a variety of environmental factors in relation to Snyder’s interpretation as to whether it was a good idea or not. First off, history. Superman hadn’t had a genuinely good movie since Superman II’s release in 1980. That’s 33 years of nothing but Smallville, Lois & Clark, and dud after dud after dud after dud (despite my belief that Superman III is some primo comedy from Pryor and that the robot lady at the end was nightmare inducing for little batfan).
Batman had a better run of things, but where was he left? With another deconstruction. Nolan envisioned the identity of Batman as a radical form of shock therapy for Bruce Wayne to address his own trauma, movies like The Dark Knight evoked the post-9/11 political landscape by using its plot to ask central questions about the nature of freedom vs. security and how far was too far to do what you deemed right. Hell, the last movie ends in an unprecedented move: a physically broken, aging Bruce Wayne neglecting his duties as Batman in order to live a full life and get his happy ending after 75 years of emotional stagnation.
Then comes Snyder. I find it funny that you bring up Watchmen because I find Watchmen to be a litmus test for how I perceive people, to be honest.
For one thing, if someone waxes on like comic book guy from The Simpsons about how Watchmen is the greatest comic book ever made or how it’s on the “Time Top 100 List of Greatest Novels of All Time” or if they call it “a Graphic Novel” instead of “a comic book,” it feels a lot like the plot of Carrie if Carrie, now covered in pig’s blood and seeing her entire class laughing at her, opted not to burn down that gym, but rather, to be completely oblivious and laugh with them without getting that she’s the butt of their joke.
Watchmen should not be considered the greatest comic book of all time because Watchmen is a gigantic piss take on why comic books are dumb, mindless drivel for children and emotionally stunted adults that fill their heads with pseudo-fascist ideals of how “might makes right” and every problem facing the world can be solved with extreme violence and psychopathic tendencies. It’s not a celebration of the medium, it’s an indictment. It’s no accident that the book ends with a pastiche of Starro the Conqueror (the villain that introduced the world to the Justice League in 1960), a giant squid, killing everybody.
What makes it brilliant, though, is that it’s also darkly comic and extremely biting satire that uses its medium and its intent to say something about what our enduring love of superheroes says about us as a nation. He doesn’t just deconstruct the idea of an emotionally stunted orphan who deals in moral absolutes and obsesses to the point of being homeless and unhygienic. He deconstructs the Reagan Era, the Cold War, Vietnam, and Watergate. I truly love Watchmen and it’s a seminal piece of work from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, but I don’t love it as a comic book fan.
And that’s my problem with the Snyderverse. Because one can’t look at his DCEU and what his intent was without looking at what he learned from making Watchmen and, in my honest opinion, what he learned from Watchmen? Was absolutely nothing. I’ve grown increasingly weary of that film since I first watched it as an out of touch 14-year old to the point where, today? I loathe it because it’s utterly tone deaf. People will say “but it’s literally a shot for shot adaptation in so many ways,” and I’ll say “but it’s not even smart enough to be an adaptation, it’s a lift from another medium that’s utterly tone deaf.” And it is. “It’s like if somebody made a Country Music Cover of ‘Straight Outta Compton’” is how I’ve always described my thoughts on Snyder’s Watchmen to people. “The lyrics are there, but the intent’s all wrong.”
He gave Dan Dreiberg a rousing boner set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” That was a triumphant moment for him and that’s all that needs to be said. Neglecting all the slow motion, gratuitous action scenes and the creative choice to use elaborate Hollywood costumes instead of clearly homemade super suits draped awkwardly over shlubby, middle aged bodies. Hell, even the fact that he took Moore and Gibbons’ take on Rorschach as a subject of ridicule. I mean, this is a character that’s clearly a pointed jab at the absurdity of Ditko’s obsession with Randian objectivism in his conception of Mr. A and The Question and Snyder managed to turn it into a manifestation of how badass he thought the concept was (this is a dude who’s wanted to adapt The Fountainhead for like two decades, so, that says it all).
But setting all that aside, his Watchmen is defined by “Hallelujah.” He took a moment that was meant to highlight Dan’s emotional and physical impotence; a moment clearly meant to be ridiculous: “this middle aged fat guy can’t get it up unless he’s dressed up like an owl and getting into fist fights,” and he played it absolutely straight in the basest, Tim Allen-grunting-on-an-episode-of-Home-Improvement way possible. As though to say, “HELL YEAH! LOOK AT THAT! THAT’S A REAL MAN! BEATING PEOPLE UP AND GIVING IT TO HER GOOD! OH YEAH! NITE-OWL! HE’S A SUPERHERO! HE’S ROCK HARD!”
That’s the mind deconstructing Batman and Superman for mass audiences and he handled them with an equally deft touch. Superman as a wandering, questioning, constantly doubting Jesus in a molded body suit, Batman as the jilted cuckold who sees the obsession he’s devoted his life to reduced to little more than a foot note in the wake of seeing a God that can do everything he did in 30 years in the course of a day (the movie should’ve just been called Mid-Life Crisis on Infinite Earths). I’ll touch back around on this a little later because, honestly, I’ve tired myself out with everything I wrote before about it, but the gist is there are different creative constraints for different mediums.
You can explore different aspects of characters and different deconstructions in comics because…if you make an Elseworlds about Batman having a mid-life crisis? People can pick that up off the shelf and still have, like, 5 other traditional Batman titles in their pull to sate the traditionalist in them. Movies come around once every 5 years, if you’re lucky, and you’re the only game in town and maybe it’s a different story for a very vocal, very jilted, male corner of Twitter, but for the most part, when people go to see a Justice League movie? They don’t want to see an emotional support group full of broken personalities in capes. They want hope and optimism and adventure in the face of an increasingly hopeless, cynical, and mundane world and as the custodians of these characters and their collective legacies, it’s your job to give that to them. Not to try to mold that into your pet project. Because these movies were never meant to be deconstructions at a studio level, so, at some point, you have to ask yourself, what’s the point?
An actual deconstruction wouldn’t end with a giant CGI, studio mandated monster battle to bring the team together, but yours did. So, if your deconstruction only exists within the confines of what the studio allows, what’s the preference? To deliver a rousing crowd pleaser that gives fans of these characters across a spectrum of different demographics a vision of what they’ve always dreamt of? Or to still be slave to your own obsessions to the point where you deliver a tepid and toothless husk of your own ambitions that leaves everybody, save for a particular subreddit, scratching their heads and saying “what the hell was that?”
