Ambition Vs. Marketing

Ambition Vs. Marketing

By: Erreh Svaia

“Being non-commercial is never an ambition. Movies come together at different points for fortuitous reasons. You do them as you get the opportunity, as opposed to doing them when you choose to or design to.”

Ethan Coen

In the world of comic books, a crossover was when two or more superheroes meet at one point in each of their respective books, Spiderman and Daredevil on Marvel, or Batman and The Flash, the stories took place on both of the characters books, so in a way you were forced to buy both books, it was an abusive marketing strategy, considering that comic books were mainly for kids, crossovers normally took a famous character and it crossed with another less known one, it helped to push the weaker titles thanks to the ones more popular, or introduce new characters, it was abusive marketing, and I always considered it too rude, because there was no real worth to these type of stories, except selling more and more books.

Now, let me get back to something I have said many times before, Ben Affleck is a lucky guy, he had Matt Damon, Jennifer López and the gorgeous Jennifer Gardner in the space of a few movies (the Damon thing is a joke!), he directed and starred two awesome movies, which I happened to like a lot, The Town and Argo, and if that wasn't enough he played not one, but two of my favorite comic book characters (yes, I was a big comic book fan as a kid), Daredevil and Batman, but this last thing was not exactly the most successful and smart thing he have done, Daredevil went really bad in the editing room, the movie was dark and gritty, but the storyline was too weak, Affleck wasn’t as sympathetic as Charlie Cox playing the blind attorney, but Affleck was really lucky to have another chance, this time as Batman, unfortunately, this time, he was a part of those crossover movies, more a long commercial on the Justice League movies about to come, making his shot at playing Batman, not the most successful one an actor had at playing the role, believe he won´t be as memorable as Michael Keaton or Val Kilmer, and obviously he didn’t had the chance to inject as much substance as Christian Bale was able on the Nolan directed movies (Nolan is a producer here, and obviously Bale wouldn’t be comfortable taking a substance less Batman like this one).

The problem with Batman v Superman is that too many things happen here, they simply don't sum or add up to the legend, you have an amazing dream team of characters and amazing crossover of one legendary story, and another very popular, first, The Dark Knight Returns, written by the one and only Frank Miller, a story line that blew me away as a teenager, second The Death of Superman, another obvious commercial stunt, but anyway immensely famous one, now that's enough material for an awesome event, the trouble is when you have little time, in Hollywood terms, to resume so much stuff, consider the superfluous apparition of Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg characters and a curious twist on the Lex Luthor, kind of like mixing The Joker played by Heather Ledger and Mark Zuckerberg, and you are just very close to a disaster of epic proportions, did I also mentioned the cameos by Vikram Gandhi, Andrew Sullivan and Neil deGrasse Tyson? Does the average people who went to see the movie know them?

Yes, I'm paper it looks like the sort of epic stuff only a guy like Peter Jackson would dare to film, in reality it was done by an equally experienced man, Zack Snyder, Snyder's curricula nearly specializes in superheroes and comic books, in fact he has made movies on highly acclaimed comics like 300 and Watchmen, in a way Batman v Superman has things of those both previous films, watching Batman's preparation to fight Superman has a lot in common with Leonidas (300 central character) and his 300 Spartans fighting superior forces and a god like Xerxes, and the moral dilemma of superheroes connects directly with the more radical theories in the Watchmen (Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias mainly, but also The Comedian, Night Owl and Rorschach), it's a little bit funny, that both in Watchmen and Batman v..., Snyder uses the same actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, for the opening scenes, here he plays Bruce Wayne's father, and just like in The Watchmen, where he plays The Comedian, he got murdered within minutes.

Admit it, Batman v Superman has very powerful images, from the beginning it's clear the references to very painful North American subjects, Guantanamo torture stories, Metropolis devastation scenes, which look very close to 9-11 events, the use of Middle East locations and terrorists in action, bring to mind Isis and the Iraqi intervention, while some daydream Wayne's scenes are powerful arty reminders of the work of Luis Buñuel and David Lynch.

Snyder uses Superman as his own Marvel´s Captain America in order to recriminate USA's brutish foreign policies and North America interventions and so called collateral damages, Superman gets the same treatment of Dr. Manhattan, the almighty god like character in The Watchmen, he is cold and distant, power making him more and more paranoid about his duty, holding back his feelings and confused by his own invincible condition, the Batman is also not something new to Snyder, as he had a chance to practice big time with The Watchmen's own Night Owl.

Snyder manages to get his controversial messages around, despite the film´s obvious teenager audiences, he discharge powerful and daring ideas about multinational corporations impossible to control by government, North American interventionism and even populism, if it wasn't for the big crossover it precedes and shameful marketing, Snyder could have a personal triumph with Batman v Superman, if not an artistic declaration, and that corny Martha thing simply rested power to his whole vision, resting balance and intensity to his ambitious vision, here Snyder tried to embrace too much, but he lacked the strength to make it hard enough.