Batman

Batman v Superman: Trainwreck of Justice

  • Title: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
  • IMDb: link

Batman v Superman: Dawn of JusticeWhat did I just watch? Returning to the scene of the crime while building on the shaky foundation of 2013’s Man of Steel, a film which turned DC Comic’s moral center into a cold-blooded killer, director Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer expand DC’s bleak, joyless universe with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Shot in Snyder’s “cinematic” style of making every shot look like a music video, the incoherent plot makes poor use of its stars who attempt in vain to keep this Titanic from heading straight towards the iceberg at full speed. Cobbled together from a number of sources, most notably Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman, DC’s attempt to jump-start a Justice League franchise is an uneven mess of goo thrown against a wall in the vain hope that something might stick.

What’s surprising, given my dislike for Man of Steel, is the fact that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t an awful movie – just an incompetent one. While it’s certainly not good, the movie introduces several interesting ideas (even if it doesn’t quite know what to do with any of them).

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Batman: Bad Blood

  • Title: Batman: Bad Blood
  • IMDb: link

Batman: Bad BloodBatman: Bad Blood is the third straight-to-DVD movie in the series that began with 2014’s Son of Batman. Following the events of Batman vs. Robin, the third movie continues to adapt previous comic storylines (this time both Dick Grayson‘s temporary stint as Batman and the events of “Leviathan“) while growing Batman’s supporting cast. Written by J.M. DeMatteis, Bad Blood begins with Batman‘s (Jason O’Mara) disappearance from Gotham while saving new vigilante Batwoman (Yvonne Strahovski) from an attack by the League of Assassins led by the Heretic (Travis Willingham).

Realizing Gotham needs a Batman, Nighwing (Sean Maher) takes on the mantle of the Bat while working along with Batwoman and Damian (Stuart Allan) to keep Gotham safe while investigating Batman’s whereabouts. Like most of Grant Morrison’s later work, “Leviathan” is messy, over-complicated, and flawed. DeMatteis takes the best aspects of the story, boiling it down, and merges it with Dick and Damian’s entertaining time as the Dynamic Duo.

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Dark Knight III: The Master Race – Book One

Dark Knight III: The Master Race - Book OneYou know what they say about a tree falling in the forest? Well, can you truly have a Batman comic without Batman? And if it you could, would it make a sound? Taking place an indeterminate amount of time following DK2, Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello team-up with artist Andy Kubert for the first issue of… well, something. Far removed from The Dark Knight Returns, Dark Knight III: The Master Race may play in the expanded universe created by Frank Miller’s original mini-series but the magic of the original (at least from what we see in this first issue) is nowhere to be found.

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Coming Soon – Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

  • Title: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
  • IMDb: link

DC Comics and Warner Bros. rolled out its first full-length Batman v Superman trailer which gives us a better look at the animostity between Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) and more of both Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) as well as something I can only assume is supposed to be some kind of screwed-up version of Doomsday? The longer trailer doesn’t do much to quell my fears that we’re in for another Zack Snyder trainwreck but at least this looks like it could be more fun (i.e. bat-shit crazy) than Man of Steel. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opens in theaters on March 25, 2016.

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