After the successful opening of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) in "MAN OF STEEL" (MOS), in order to catch up with Marvel, director Zach Schneider took advantage of the hot iron and launched the second dceu work, which is BATMAN v SUPERMAN (BVS)
Batman v Superman
But the final result is very unexpected, this movie that is highly expected by all fan audiences, the final reputation is very low, the foreign Rotten Tomatoes film review network fresh index is only 28%, even IMDB, MTC and many other famous websites are very low ratings.
The Rotten Tomatoes index is only 28%, and the audience popcorn index is only 63%.
In addition to word of mouth, BVS box office performance is also very general, BVS North American first day opening box office as high as $81 million, comparable to "Jurassic World", but the final "Jurassic" North American box office of 652 million US dollars, the global box office of 1.671 billion US dollars stepped into the top ten clubs of film history, while BVS North American box office is only 330 million, the global box office is only 873 million, almost 2 times killed by "Jurassic".
BVS's first day u81 million is on par with Jurassic and only 3 million lower than Avengers 2
BVS box office results
Jurassic World box office performance
Even, BVS is the only film in the history of cinema that has grossed more than $100 million (166 million) in North America, but has less than 2 times (1.99 times) of box office momentum.
So, what exactly is wrong with this movie? Why is it that both word of mouth and box office have not achieved the expected results?
<h1>The meaning of BVS</h1>
To understand the reasons for the failure of BVS, we must first understand what the film means to the DCEU and its owners Warner Bros.
From the outside of the play, in 2016, Marvel's third phase has begun, and DCEU has just launched its second work, and the progress is already a lot behind others, so if the film fails, there is no time for DC to slowly recover.
Marvel has come to Civil War and is in its third phase
Because of this, BVS also takes on the heavy responsibility of developing the worldview of the DC Universe, because the sequel to the planned plot bordering BVS is "Justice League" where DC heroes gather, and the Flash, Aquaman and Steel Bone in "Justice League" have not appeared before.
Heroes such as Aquaman had not yet appeared
Of course, in addition to the Flash and others, the protagonists Batman and Superman, and even Wonder Woman are also the key, as the DC Triumvirate, these three heroes are bound to become the core characters of the entire DC Universe in the future.
Dc Big Three
In addition, BVS, as a work that inherits from the top to the bottom, also needs to leave a sustainable development for the entire DCEU, after all, as a movie universe, development is the most important link, why can the Marvel Universe almost continuously launch movies? In fact, it is because the development of the film universe is handled quite well.
Because BVS is so important, the film received a lot of support from Warner Bros. and DC at the beginning of filming, including:
Up to $250 million budget (one level with Avengers)
Director Zach Schneider has full power over the selection of materials and casting.
DC has a choice of all comic book story themes for the past 80 years.
Up to 3 years of production time.
The production cost was $250 million, the highest level in Hollywood
In fact, the BVS movie also has a lot of innate advantages, including:
Superman and Batman, the world's best partner, shared the stage for the first time.
The day of destruction of the strongest biological weapon in DC history is announced.
Batman vs Superman's gimmick.
Wonder Woman debuts.
From the perspective of resource investment and innate advantages, it can be said that the "hardware" of BVS is very complete, and there is almost no possibility of failure, so the final results of BVS are obviously irrelevant to factors such as production budget and duration.
Why did it fail?
Therefore, to explore the reasons for the failure of this film, it is always necessary to look for the reasons from the film itself.
<h1>Completely crashed into the rhythm of the movie</h1>
In fact, from the perspective of the movie itself, BVS and the previous MOS can almost be said to be in the same vein, MOS has some shortcomings, and even more expanded.
In the previous article analyzing MOS, it was said that a big problem with MOS is that the rhythm of the movie is not controlled enough, the literary drama is all piled up in front, and the martial arts drama is all piled up behind, so that the audience can watch almost 90 minutes of literary drama to see the big scene, resulting in a bad look and feel.
The battles in MOS are very enjoyable, and to some extent make up for the poor sense of rhythm
BVS did not correct the problems of the previous game, but intensified.
In the director's cut, BVS has a total of 3 hours, but the battle between Batman and Superman does not really begin until 2 hours after the film.
120 minutes of literary drama.... Only after that came to this
And the previous 2 hours? It's basically all literary drama, and there is only a short Batman car chase scene around the 70th minute, but because the design is very ordinary (after all, most action movies have a car chase scene, the audience has become accustomed to it) and the scene is very dark at night, so this car chase scene can not serve as the "seasoning" for the first two hours.
The audience was numb to this car chase
Even after the edited theatrical version, the battle between Batman and Superman officially began after 1 hour and 40 minutes.
MOS also has the problem of unbalanced rhythm of the film, but the good villain is not as serious as BVS, and more importantly, the action scene of MOS is almost perfect, which makes up for the rhythm problem to a certain extent.
In terms of martial arts, BVS not only loses the visual impact of the fist-to-flesh sonic boom effect of MOS, but also has a very problematic design of itself.
<h1>Sandbag turn-based with free watching VR movies</h1>
After 2 hours into the film, viewers can finally see Batman fighting Superman.
After all, the battle between the two is a gimmick in the promotion of this movie, and many viewers buy tickets to enter the theater to see this scene.
That's what the audience is all about!
However, the result is very disappointing, because this so-called big war has basically followed the routine of the old Superman movies in the past.
To put it simply, as long as the other party takes out superhuman's weakness kryptonite, Superman will be beaten as a sandbag, and once the effect of kryptonite has passed, the other party will be used as a sandbag hammer by Superman.
Batman and Superman's battle is designed to be so, when Superman inhales the smoke made of kryptonite, instantly transformed into a sandbag, Batman almost wants to abuse how to abuse, this kind of one-sided battle caused by scheming, it can be said that there is no look at the head, the audience wants to see the big battle, not to see the sandbag.
Sandbags....
In the original work, Batman's power armor combat effectiveness is very strong, of course, this set of armor is actually not as good as Superman, but in the case of weakening Superman can still fight with one, it could have been designed as Superman inhaling kryptonite bullets and still having a very fierce and wonderful battle with Batman wearing armor, but in the movie, this set of armor was weakened into a set of ordinary armor that only resisted the impact, so Batman also completely lost the condition of "playing wonderfully" with Superman.
This armor is a waste of copper and rotten iron in front of Superman
As a gimmick, the super bat battle, coupled with the audience waiting for almost 2 hours to see the big battle, is designed so perfunctory, how can it be satisfactory?
In addition, the design of the second half of the showdown is also confusing, in the final stage, Superman and Batman, Wonder Woman vs. BOSS Doom Day.
That's right, the one who has the ability to be immortal, can evolve indefinitely, and can slap Superman to the day of destruction.
Even Superman can be killed on Doom Day
I believe that everyone can also know what is uncoordinated, since Batman's armor has been weakened into that, why should he let such an ordinary person go head-to-head with a boss of the level of Doom Day?
Sure enough, throughout the showdown, Superman and Wonder Woman took turns fighting against Doom Day, while Batman watched the whole time, as if watching a VR movie.
Batman: This VR movie is good
Generally speaking, if there is a character with obviously inferior hard combat effectiveness when playing a boss, it will open up a second battlefield and arrange another BOSS that is not known for its combat effectiveness to let him solve, which is the most commonly used and reasonable routine in Hollywood movies, including movies such as "Teenage Mutant Turtles: Age of Variants".
In "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", the heroine and supporting roles are not hard to carry the BOSS, but to find trouble with scientists
And does BVS have such conditions? Yes, because the other villain of the film, Luthor, is not known for his combat effectiveness, it is entirely possible to design a plot for Batman to deal with him, while Superman and Wonder Woman are facing each other and destroying day.
Luthor was originally the best boss in the Second Battlefield
In the case of such a big flaw in the design of martial arts, it further aggravated the bad perception of BVS, the audience came into the theater, watched a full 2 hours of literary drama, and finally watched such a perfunctory action scene for an hour of the anticipated battle, how could this possibly give praise?
In terms of martial arts, the only thing BVS can praise is that the atmosphere is indeed very good, but unfortunately it does not help.
<h1>The pattern is from large to small, deviating from the core of the human design</h1>
After talking about martial arts, let's look at literary drama.
BVS has been praised by some people for its many metaphors, including various places with many metaphors for religion, and for example, there are many scenes that are completely copied from comics.
Religious metaphors
But in fact, these points can not be a factor in evaluating the quality of a film's story, just as Xiao Sai wrote an article before "Please make a good movie first, and then make a metaphor", the so-called religious metaphor, or the Easter egg that copied the original picture, is just the icing on the cake, provided that the story and people are well told and stand firm, these factors can make people smile, otherwise it can only be put before the cart.
The story framework of BVS, in the first half of the film, is actually quite ok, with the collision of batman and Superman's two different concepts, coupled with the villain Luthor's covert operation, making the conflict between the two more and more intense.
The clash of ideas is well portrayed
Unfortunately, in the second half of the film, this correct path is not completely implemented.
Why? Because the reason why Batman and Superman finally started fighting in the movie is not the conflict of ideas between the two, but Luthor's kidnapping of Superman's mother and forcing him to fight Batman.
Finally, there is the kidnapping routine
Since the reason why the two eventually fought was because of this kidnapping, the divergence and collision of the two concepts that the previous film spent two-thirds laying out seemed meaningless in an instant.
What's the use of spending so much time depicting the conflict of ideas between the two? In the end, it was not for this fight.
At the same time, the reason why the two finally reconciled is because Superman and Batman's mother are both called Martha, which has evolved into a terrier and circulated on the Internet, for reasons that everyone understands that this way of reconciliation is too forced and embarrassing.
Is this reconciled?
The film does not begin with a scene depicting Batman's obsession with his mother, but there are many scenes showing his deep dislike of Superman's belief that he wants to put him to death.
Batman's determination to kill Superman
When Superman is about to be killed, the line he says is, "You're helping him kill Martha." ”
It was also forced to say the name Martha
Well? Don't ordinary people say things like please save my mother? Superman, why do you want to say your mother's name? In the previous MOS, you superman didn't call her Adoptive Mother directly Martha but Mom.
Awkward, very embarrassing, forcible, very forceful.
A name, the sworn enemy directly reconciled, the previous idea conflict is all floating clouds
In addition to the story, BVS also has big problems with people.
Superman, smiling at the end of the MOS, seems to indicate that he is going to go in the direction of light, which is correct, Superman the hero is originally sunny.
In BVS, however, his personality went in the opposite direction.
He saves his girlfriend Louis at the hands of terrorists, but because of the excessive rudeness and the villain Luthor's marriage, the media has an opinion on Superman, and when Louis persuades him, Superman actually says this:
"I don't care what they say."
God, are you still that sunny town boy? Are you still the man of tomorrow?
A single line that directly causes superman's human design to completely collapse, is this still the superman who hopes to use his own good deeds as an example to lead humanity in a better direction?
Can a superman who only cares about his own female ticket and does not care about other human beings at all really be able to take on the task of leading humanity forward?
For a superhero, the core spirit of the character can never be changed, you can use many different ways to perform (such as MOS), but if even the core spirit changes, then the character is no longer himself.
At the same time, the death of Superman in BVS was also a very big failure for two reasons:
Superman only had one movie of his own before, the audience did not accumulate deep feelings for it, and the death of Iron Man and Wolverine was preceded by more than ten years of audience affinity, so it was so tear-inducing.
Because the planned BVS sequel is "Justice League", and everyone in this movie knows that Superman will definitely appear, in other words, Superman will be 100% resurrected.
Superman's death was wasted
Such a death can only be said to be meaningless.
In addition to Superman, Batman's human design is also very problematic.
Most typically, BVS Batman can kill people, and director Zach Schneider also claimed in an interview a few months ago that he thought Batman should kill.
Zach Schneider claimed in the interview that Batman should kill people, and that batman should not kill people is dreaming
However, Batman's principle of not killing is the core spirit of this hero, so if so changed, is this still Batman?
Therefore, on Twitter, various main writers of Batman comics and decades-long animation writers and screenwriters have come forward to accuse Zach Schneider, claiming: "Anyone who knows American comics should know the difference between Batman and the Punisher." ”
Batman's veteran screenwriter directly claimed: "Fortunately, Zack Schneider will not touch DC movies again." ”
As for Wonder Woman, in the setting, she gave up 100 years of humanity for unknown things, which is obviously not a positive direction, and because Wonder Woman is going to launch a prequel personal film after that, this setting limits the final ending of her personal movie.
This setting was later deprecated in Wonder Woman's solo film
In the case that the rhythm of the film itself is very problematic, BVS's martial arts and literary dramas have such a big problem, it is no wonder that most of the audience gives this film such a low evaluation.
From the perspective of the DCEU, the failure of BVS has made DC completely lose the opportunity to catch up with Marvel, and it can be said that the blow to DC is very huge.
But despite this, the road of DC movies continues, and DCEU, after BVS, also began to find a path that really suited its heroes.