Batman v Superman

I know the new Batman/Superman movie has taken a lot of grief for being... not Batman enough, or not Superman enough, or not iconic enough, or just confusing, or not a well-told story, or whatever.But I have a different take on it.

I can't give my take without spoilers, so consider this your warning

If you haven't seen the movie yet, read on at your own risk...

or, you know, if you just don't care about spoilers because you weren't planning to watch the movie anyway

First things first, I love Batman. He's my favorite superhero. Hands-down. The only other one who maybe comes close is... erm... I dunno, everyone else is in second. Maybe Thor. Or Cap. But Batman is my favorite.Batman Begins is still my favorite Batman movie - and probably always will be.Okay, now that that's out of the way, the new movie.I really enjoyed Batman v Superman. It was not Marvel, and I appreciated that, because DC has a very different feel to it. I know that historically they were more similar, but I didn't live in the 60s and I don't read comic books, so all I have to go from are the 90s — present cartoon depictions. So take everything I say with that in mind.The thing that I enjoyed most about Batman v Superman was the absolutely brilliant and stunning use of what we call in literature: "The Unreliable Narrator."

An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. Definition taken from Wikipedia

I have no idea if this is what the movie makers were going for, and I haven't seen anything about it mentioned in other reviews or discussions of the movie, but I would argue that whether they meant to or not, the Unreliable Narrator is the epicenter of this film's strength.Because without it, nothing in the movie makes sense.If you have seen the movie, I'd like you to consider WHO is doing the narrating of most of the film. Whose eyes are you seeing events unfurl through?I would argue that for the majority of the film you are seeing everything through Bruce Wayne's perspective. And he is being pushed to the edge of his sanity breaking by Lex Luthor. He's following clues and reading news articles and doing classic Batman detective work, but unbeknownst to him, he is being fed carefully laid breadcrumbs designed to lead him to a specific conclusion. And all the while, Lex is pulling other strings to fuel Bruce Wayne's guilt over not being able to protect his people and his rage at Superman for putting his people in danger in the first place. He doesn't know he's being played or messed with, that is the brilliance of Lex shining through. Throughout the entire movie his perspective AND actual events are all being subtly maneuvered and manipulated by Lex.For the first half of the movie, the writers and directors even had ME questioning Clark's motives. And that's pretty impressive.But this use of unreliable narrator is impressive for several more reasons:1. It allowed Clark and Bruce to meet on more even ground2. It allowed them to set up one of the most brilliant Lex Luthors ever depicted in a live-action movie, and that's important, because Lex is supposed to be an evil genius and slightly unhinged. He's Superman's Joker, to some extent, and I almost never feel satisfied by his portrayal in movies. This Lex was not only intelligent as all get-out, but also truly terrifying, and I really enjoyed that aspect of the movie3. It allowed us to see Batman the Detective in action, while also making him follow an intricate, but ultimately misleading, trail of breadcrumbs that did nothing to cast aspersion on his detective skills or intelligence4. It let the fans see the show-down between Batman's intellect and Superman's strength that everyone has been wanting to see since the rumor of the two of them in the same movie first leaked out, but also allowed their meeting to destroy Lex's carefully crafted plan and for them to eventually come together as the awesome team they were always meant to be.Sure, there were things I didn't love about the movie. Clark Kent and Lois Lane living together was annoying. This is, unfortunately, a movie coming out of Hollywood, set in present-day, and Hollywood (along with much of the secular world) has bought into the lie that love is purely a physical emotion and that marriage means nothing. So, yes, I was annoyed and bothered by it, because I felt that it was very untrue to everything I know about the original characters... and I do wish that ALL the super hero movies would try a bit harder to be kid-friendly *sigh* but it didn't surprise me.There is a scene where Lois is in the bathtub and I was very concerned that she was going to fall out of the bathtub, but she doesn't... which is the only redeeming thing about the scene.The randomness of Wonder Woman and the "teaser clips" for the next movies in the Justice League series were a bit strange, to say the least. I would have preferred to keep Wonder Woman, but have her not open the file Bruce sends her... because that would have been an epic "post credits" scene. Though I can understand not wanting to be accused of "copying" Marvel in that way. I think it would have been better for her to either 1) not open the file, 2) open the file in a teaser post-credits or mid-credits moment, or 3) open the file, but not let the audience see what she sees there. Of course, they didn't ask for my advice, so it's thrown in randomly and I guess it's what makes her realize that there are bigger things to worry about than anonymity? I'm not sure what was going through her mind...Also, I'm just not a huge fan of Lois Lane in this movie. I liked her okay in Man of Steel, but felt that she was... kind of "meh" in this movie... which is a shame, because I love Amy Adams in most of her other roles. But again, I think that's mostly because this particular movie was all told from Batman's perspective, so the snippets we see that he's not privy to are maybe supposed to be unclear and a little lackluster? Did you see Batman v Superman? What did you think of it? What's your favorite superhero movie so far?I meant to schedule this for tomorrow. Oh well, you get it a day early, lucky you! And I get to go see Civil War tonight, so lucky me!