Movie Reviews: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

This first part will be spoiler-free for those who may not have seen it yet, I will warn you when I’m about to talk spoilers.

I know one more review probably won’t change anyone’s opinion on this, but I’m writing one anyway because Jesus Christ this movie is terrible, those who have me on Facebook (who, let’s be honest are the only people likely to read this) may have already seen my status. I did not like Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Zack “Oh my fucking god who keeps hiring this man?” Snyder, has had the better part of three years to work on this, during which, he must’ve been aware of the polarising reception to his previous outing, Man of Steel, and no, the fact that he didn’t personally write the screenplay for that or this, is not an excuse, the decision to keep the not one, but two writers from Man of Steel, was, ultimately, his call as Director. Therefore, Snyder bears the responsibility for the incoherent mess that comprised the script he was directing.

With the benefit of three years to finish this film, the end result, perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with the state of DC Comics movies. First of all, it seems the only superhero Warner Bros sort of know how to do is Batman, so when Man of Steel rolls around, “ooh, let’s make it all gritty and grim like Batman. When that doesn’t work, because of course it fucking doesn’t, because Superman is not Batman and what works for one will not work for the other, what’s his response? “Oh, I know, I’ll put Batman in the next one!” It was bad enough before when he was trying to make a “grim and gritty” Superman, when that didn’t work, rather than address what may not have worked, he elected to crowbar in as many things as possible to make it work the next time. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results, well then I cite this latest atrocity as grounds to have Zack Snyder fucking sectioned!

Batman v, Superman stubbornly doubles down on everything that didn’t work about Man of Steel, and jettisons any of the levity or light-heartedness that might have made it work, in favour of an unrelentingly grim, and insufferably self-serious clusterfuck masquerading as a superhero crossover, cramming in as many cameos as possible with all the subtlety and tact one would expect of a sledgehammer. There is a scene, *spoiler alert* in which Wonder Woman, in possession of a hard drive full of hacked security footage, actually plays videos of the eventual cast of the justice league using their powers (or in the case of Cyborg, being turned into a Cyborg) one by one. That is not foreshadowing, and it is certainly not world-building, in fact to call it an in-movie trailer would be too kind. What this is, is a fucking PowerPoint presentation on what movies we’ll be getting in the coming years, that Zack Snyder seemed to honestly think would be a good idea for a scene!

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned much about the story yet, that’s because there honestly isn’t much to tell. The entire narrative is a complete and utter mess, I don’t even think I could identify a protagonist in this movie, it’s not Superman, because he’s honestly not really in it that much, it’s not Batman because he’s almost completely reactionary and being positioned as an antagonist but doesn’t even manage that because the closest thing to an antagonist is Lex Luthor, played by a lanky twelve-year-old in his dad’s work clothes. Whoever keeps telling those in charge in Hollywood that Jesse Eisenberg is A) a full-grown man, and B) an actor, needs to stop lying to people, as he is clearly neither of those things. The only thing I’ve seen him in wherein his performance did not feel incredibly forced is The Social Network, in which he was playing an unlikeable obnoxious teenager, and thus, required little to no acting. (I think this is where I’m going to start talking spoilers by the way) Almost everything about his take on Lex Luthor is bad, gone is the proud, charismatic and cunning CEO steadfast in his convictions against the idea of humanity relying on an alien saviour. To be replaced with something that more closely resembles a mild teenage version of The Joker than it does Lex Luthor, only without the funny. (At one point in this film, he fills a jar with his own urine and places it on a senator’s desk in reference to an earlier conversation. All of this is played out completely straight-faced and seriously without a hint of self-awareness. I wish I was making that up.)

But I could forgive the liberal take on the character if even after watching the film I had some idea what his motivation was, as it seems to change from scene to scene. In the beginning, his motivation is the closest it gets to Luthor-esque. He wants to create a deterrent against Superman so that the world will not be at his mercy. To be fair. that sounds like exactly the kind of thing Lex Luthor would do, later in the film though, he completely loses sight of that in favour of some weird obsession with religious iconography.

He stops caring about the deterrent soon enough and starts talking about gods and demons with jarringly tangential links to Superman. After that he starts utilizing alien technology, then he gets all grandiose about “God bending to (his) will” when he threatens Martha Kent’s life in an attempt to get Superman to kill Batman. By the end of the film, he’s screaming “They’re coming!” it’s not made clear who he’s talking about. I can’t help but think a few important scenes must’ve been cut (which is alarming when you consider what they left in.) and a lot of context is either lost in the edit or flat-out missing.

Speaking of things that lack context, Batman’s main justification for deciding what he’s going to do, is that he has bad dreams about a potential future (which is essentially, the game Injustice: Gods Among Us coming to pass.) which, as motivations go, is lazy, contrived, and just flat out dumb. Especially when he was actually given quite a strong opening, which saw him running through the streets of Metropolis during the events of the battle in Man of Steel trying to save as many people as he can. Then he catches a glimpse of Superman forcing Zod backwards through a building, this is apparently what leads him to mistrust Superman. Which, depressingly, is just about the best-written part of this film.

Oh and Batman kills people in this by the way, like, a lot of people, so, that pathological fear of death and one rule against killing that he upholds above all else and is a huge and pivotal part of his character? “Screw that, let’s just show him shooting people between working out and hitting a monster truck tire with a sledgehammer bro!” I swear I’m fully expecting a deleted scene wherein Batman goes to Hooters and eats a ton of chicken wings, because “Dude, he’s so fuckin’ MANLY!” Also, he brands criminals now, BRANDS them! With a red-hot Batterang I think, because yeah who doesn’t remember Batman having a fetish for leaving scars?

You’re probably expecting me to round on Ben Affleck next, but I’m actually not going to, Ben Affleck was fine, in his defence, there is no actor in the world that could’ve made this god-awful script any better, I’m confident Ben Affleck could play Batman well, but not in a movie as terribly written as this one.

Also, the plot relies so heavily on convenience that you’d think everyone was a fucking clairvoyant. In preparation for the big match-up, Batman has made a pure Kryptonite spear, he stabs it into the ground inside a random building and leaves it there, later in the fight, he gets thrown into that very building by Superman, and pulls it out. No! there is no possible way he could’ve known the fight would end up going there! That is among the laziest writing ever, and it’s not even the laziest there is in this film.

Anyone want to guess the reason Batman eventually stops wanting to kill Superman and decides to trust him? If you don’t know already you won’t guess it, not because it’s clever or anything, quite the opposite in fact. The thing that stops Batman in his tracks when he has Superman dead to rights, is finding out that Superman also has a mother named Martha. At this point I forgot I was in a public cinema and shouted “WHAT!?” This was the stupidest, most contrived ceasefire I have ever witnessed in fiction. And it amounts to nothing because there’s another big-bad yet to fight in Doomsday, who in this movie is just Zod’s corpse given the Tyrant treatment from Resident Evil with alien tech, but that’s fine Doomsday is Doomsday.

The rest is explosions, Wonder Woman shows up for some screen-time and then a serious down-ending the film has not earned and I can’t take seriously.

In summary, this, unrelentingly dour, boring, over-long-yet-still-horribly-rushed self-aggrandising incomprehensible clusterfuck is the worst film featuring Batman or Superman I've ever been compelled to endure, and I'm counting Batman & Robin, AND Superman Returns.

Career Opportunities (the ones that never knock)

Hello all, this is actually gonna be more of a personal pet-peeve rant about the preconceptions surrounding my field of study, but the opportunity to use Clash lyrics as a title was just too good to pass up. This is just going to be something about my personal experience, which I hope is common enough for people to find relatable, but I won't be offended if you don't.

So I'm currently studying a course that falls under the Art, Design and Humanities faculty, from that alone most of you who are, or have been in that position will probably know exactly where this is going. Everyone who is not familiar with the workings of my choice of education pisses me off and I think that's an entirely reasonable reaction!

Perhaps I should elaborate, the thing that annoys me about being an ADH student (Performing Arts specifically) is the constant assumptions and pre-judgements people make on a daily basis, now I don't think anyone on one of these courses has to read any more than this, they will all be intimately familiar with everything I'm about to bring up, but I'm going to bring it up anyway because it annoys me, and, therefore, I feel entitled to annoy you with it.

okay first let's talk about "the talk" you know the one, the talk I and every other ADH student had with at least one of their parents when their choice in course was made, I can't speak for everyone's experience, but mine went something along the lines of "I'm gonna go ahead and apply for uni"
 "Studying what?"
 "Performing Arts, y'know the thing I studied at BTEC level for 3 years"
 (BTECs after all only seem to exist as a qualification to get one onto a university course, because a year of trying to find employment taught me it's good for absolutely nothing else.) and here's the kicker.

"What job is that gonna get you?"

Well, obviously I had a well-prepared answer for that, after all, who hasn't, upon choosing their course, thoroughly researched and attained omnipotent knowledge of all possible career trajectories and chosen one for themselves? I mean it's not as if finding that stuff out is THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF GOING TO UNIVERSITY or anything. of course I'm a sarcastic and snarky bastard by nature so that talk didn't last long, I eventually told them I was probably going to go into teaching just to shut them up (I actually might, but it was never "the thing" I wanted to do. To this day I'm still not sure what "the thing" I want to do is, I doubt I will ever reach that level of certainty.

Anyway that's just the parents, chances are if you're on a course like mine you'll have that talk multiple times a year, with varying degrees of arguing, Odds are even if your choice of education is different from mine, you probably will have had some version of "the talk" which simply stems from not doing law and/or business/accounting, because as everybody knows, the degree you have will guarantee you a six-figure salary from the off or doom you to wander the dread lands of job seeking for eternity with no middle-ground.

The unfortunate reality is that even with a degree it will be difficult to find employment, I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the "experience" problem, requiring experience to be hired, but being unable to attain said experience because nowhere will hire you without experience etc. It is difficult to find employment with a degree, but I've already found it impossible without one, having applied for many in the year between college and uni with no success. (admittedly my disability does make me unsuitable for a fair few entry-level jobs and that can't be helped) It's my understanding most places don't care what your degree is in, only that you have one, (obviously, it's ideal that it would match up with the job, I'm not including things like medical professionals there) I do fully intend to use my degree to find work doing the things I studied in one way or another but whatever the case you'll probably have to start at the bottom anyway, this is just how things are.

As it is with relatives, so too is it with strangers. God forbid you ever interact with someone outside of your field of study at university, the amount of times you'll hear the same old questions repeated ad nauseum, either asking or outright assuming you want to go into teaching, or what use your degree is. Or, if you're lucky you'll run into someone devoid enough of tact to say something along the lines of "ooh you can get a degree in anything now can't you?" I've heard that one a lot, and I don't think the people saying it realise how insulting that is.

I know the thinking behind it, of course, the preconception of most people I've encountered is that a degree in Performing Arts equates to "Let's go into a studio for three years of Jazz-hands and Shakespeare, right that's that done, here's a degree, fuck off!" Yes! I know, this preconception is only annoying to me, and those on similar courses, but damn it! I have spent three years at university and the very notion that any degree course would be that simple is more stupid than I can handle.

I've joked about the subjective and abstract nature of the course before, I think everyone has at some point, as an example, I've been taken aback by the absurdity of John Cage's 4 minutes 33 seconds and even now that I understand and better appreciate the thinking behind it, I still wouldn't have wanted to go and see it, I can imagine the unsuspecting audience for that first run would've been quite annoyed. Nevertheless, I've got to the point that I'm sufficiently proud of the knowledge acquired in my time here that such a casual writing-off of my chosen course by someone I could never reasonably expect to know better, not having studied it, annoys me, and I'm not apologizing for that YOU PHILISTINES!

and the writing off of my course and others like it as useless especially irks me, because it really isn't "well you learn nothing useful" people say, yeah I mean I don't suppose there's much call for confidence, creative thinking, analytical skills, obviously strong commitment or being good at working with people now is there?

State Of The Industry: Professional Wrestling: the struggles of being a fan

I was actually going to do a part 2 to my video-game one, and I still might in the future, but for now, in the name of variety, I thought I'd write about something else, something I'm going to have to be writing about a lot in the very near future anyway as it's my dissertation research focus.

The title is State of the Industry, but I don't know much about the global industry of wrestling, other than the fact that Lucha Underground and New Japan Pro Wrestling are apparently really good, but I haven't seen those yet, also, it's my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that TNA Wrestling has been continuously circling a drain and losing TV deals since I stopped watching several years ago (when last I watched I think Bubba Ray Dudley (then going by "Bully Ray") was the world champion, and there wasn't really much of an X-Division left to speak of. Which is a shame because I used to love TNA, it was great once upon a time.

The point there is, this particular post will focus on WWE, what with it being the biggest wrestling company there is (at least in the western world, I don't know if certain promotions are bigger elsewhere) and also the one I've been trying to get back into after deciding to write a dissertation on wrestling.

I had fallen out with this particular longstanding man-child vice around when I came to uni, I suddenly found I didn't have the time or patience to watch five-to-eight hours a week of the John Cena show featuring some other guys. (not a fan of John Cena) I still loosely kept up through friends telling me what was happening, and I still watched the Pay-Per-Views since those were the only shows where anything substantial happened. (early last year, or possibly late 2014 I don't remember, I watched one monthly PPV event, and didn't even think about wrestling until the next one, and I honestly didn't feel as if I'd missed anything in the 4 week interim, nothing had happened, everything was where it had been a month before.) 

it was in part due to the youtube show The Mark Remark by youtuber Martin "LittleKuriboh" Bilany. that I eventually got back into it. (if you haven't seen that check it out, even if you don't like wrestling, it's hilarious.) here's a picture of me meeting Martin at Alcon 2015, with me utterly failing to imitate his "Lawler Joke" face that he's doing. 

It didn't get me watching week-to-week again, NXT did that because NXT is great. 

There were other reasons I fell out with it, partly because being a part of Pro Wrestling fandom is exhausting, as much as I appreciate the craft I cannot escape the reality that a large portion of those who share my fondness for it appear to be children and young teenagers (physically or mentally) and the latter of those, the manchildren, let's call them, create an unfortunate image of "the wrestling fan." This image has actually caused me to feel embarrassed that I like the same thing as these people, not only that but in the product itself (at least in WWE which most people had heard of) well how else can I say it? the writing is dumb, welcome to the wonderful world of wrestling where there is no issue to great to settle with a fight, nor any too small to fight over. Not to mention the writers seem to be stuck in the 1980s in terms of cultural awareness. 

Case in point, right now, in 2016, there is a faction of villainous or "heel" wrestlers called the "League of Nations" Consisting of Sheamus, (Irish) Wade Barret (English) Rusev (who is portrayed as Russian despite actually being Bulgarian) and Alberto Del Rio (Mexican.) these men are currently being portrayed as an antagonistic force in WWE programming. Now, all wrestlers and factions have some kind of a gimmick, it's a universal truth of wrestling to the point that not having a gimmick is considered a gimmick in itself. so what is the gimmick of the League of Nations? Well, besides being evil boss Triple H's hired goons, basically...they're foreign...and...that's it...that's basically why they're bad guys...in 2016.

As you might expect, the League of Nations isn't getting a huge amount of traction, for a multitude of reasons, partly because they keep targeting Roman Reigns, who is the company's "pet project" but who really isn't that popular himself. But mostly, I believe, because you need more than just "evil foreigner" to make a compelling villain in 2016, again, might have worked in the 80s, doesn't really work now. 

This is frustrating because these specific people could have so much better reasons for running over everyone and trying to take over the company as a heel faction should (but that they haven't for some reason)

Firstly let's start off with Wade Barret, currently going by King Barret, he is the most recent winner of the "King of the Ring" tournament, a prize that once upon a time, meant something, the winner would receive a World Championship match along with the king gimmick, not so anymore. Wade Barret could easily be upset about being overlooked despite his accomplishments. A classic heel attitude is "I deserve better, if they won't give it to me, I'll just take it" and that, while a little unoriginal, is a very good reason for Wade to be in a heel faction, he did, after all, lead the Nexus, another such faction in 2010, with much the same ideals. 

Then onto Alberto Del Rio, now, this might seem strange considering I just decried the "evil foreigner" route, but militant Mexican might just work for him for one reason, see, in 2014 Alberto was fired from WWE, not as a work but in real life. I don't know all the details but from what I've heard this was due to a physical altercation between him and a backstage employee who allegedly made racist remarks towards him. I know WWE doesn't normally bring stuff like that into storylines, but Del Rio having been fired for, in his mind, standing up for himself, that's the perfect axe to grind with the company. It would mean the League would have to stop being Triple H's lackeys, but that's only a good thing in my opinion. 

Similarly, Rusev, who used to be a much more emphatic onscreen presence, has been essentially demoted and punished for getting engaged to his fiance, because it conflicted with a WWE storyline, might take a bit of tweaking to make that work within kayfabe (storyline), but that's perfectly useable frustration.

Then there's Sheamus, his is simple, in spite of his accomplishments (4 time world champion etc,) all he hears when he hits the ring are chants of "you look stupid" and there we go, fully realised heel faction of people with legitimate gripes with the company or the fans, and I put very little actual thought into that. So how much thought can possibly be going into it now? 

this lazy, often predictable writing is another example of why I stopped watching, I just couldn't bring myself to be compelled by it, I was more in it for the actual wrestling, as a mode of physical storytelling there's just something about a great wrestling match that is innately fascinating. Of course at the best of times, the physicality is backed up by a number of other factors, we've covered the writing, a compelling story can make the drama of the match itself much more palpable. There's also commentary. A good commentary team can keep the audiences focus on the match in such a way that even an hour-long slug-fest doesn't get old. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be a lost art, as the current commentary teams are...just terrible. For some reason there are now three commentators on RAW and it's even worse than two, and none of them help, between talking about everything EXCEPT the match going on in front of them and them just being irritating (I swear to god JBL if you go "Waah waah waah" one more time I will find a way to somehow convince Brock Lesnar to suplex you so hard that your hat becomes a permanent part of your head from landing on it) 

Back in the days of people like Joey Styles or Jim Ross being lead Play-by-Play commentator, well we actually got some play-by-play commentary for a start, now the commentator's job seems to be mostly to distract us from what we're watching, and if we're lucky they might mention a move or two between shilling the WWE Network. talking about parts of the show not currently relevant and JBL workplace-bullying Byron Saxton, this is not a conducive accompaniment to the goings-on in the ring. 

I just noticed I haven't yet mentioned the women's division, and by extension the  rampant sexism inherent in the WWE product. okay, so short version. Female wrestlers tend to be hired by this company for their bodies and not their ability, essentially hiring models and trying to pass them off as athletes, this started with Trish Stratus, now, to be fair to her, Trish learned her craft admirably and became one of the best performers of her time, she is now a retired former 6-time women's champion, in the hall of fame, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, her success appears to have led the WWE to think that they can train anyone to be a good wrestler, this is not true and led to an era of terrible female wrestlers, from which the division is only just now starting to recover. Also, they call them "Divas" which I think is demeaning already, without the "Divas" title belt resembling a fucking butterfly, and this replaced the Women's championship, which looked like an actual wrestling title belt. fortunately, with NXT being great and being the place most new people come from now, this is getting better.

Unfortunately these problems that caused the decline in my interest still persist to this day and that's not even mentioning Roman Reigns (in short, an otherwise decent wrestler is being shoved down our throats over more deserving performers because Vince McMahon who is in charge wants to try to force us to like him as much as he does) but that's not to say there aren't good things, as I mentioned before, NXT is great, the performers are all good (with the exception of Eva Marie, she is the worst, I mean, even worse than Kelly Kelly years ago. I don't remember the last time someone being so bad and yet getting pushed made me so angry.) apart from Eva Marie, there is a phenomenal women's division, and since most of the new talent on RAW these days comes from NXT, that same women's division is slowly migrating to the main roster and fixing that problem. Also, the rest of the roster have on average a much higher performance standard, NXT fits more good wrestling into one hour than Raw often does in three, (I'll just mention apropos of nothing that a solid hour of Raw's three-hour runtime is entirely ads)

The commentary is nothing special, but is basically inoffensive, which is still objectively better than the main show, so they even win there. Basically, it's a sad day when the developmental show is better than the main one, Even though Raw has a lot going for it, The New Day have taken the lackluster gimmick they were saddled with, (black preachers basically) and made it work spectacularly, which is a huge testament to all three of them as performers (Big E steals every segment he's anywhere near) A.J Styles has had great matches with Chris Jericho, and I think they're setting up for one more at Wrestlemania (I don't mind I could watch those two go at it every week)

So in summary, there are a lot of problems with wrestling, and being a fan thereof, the unfortunate association with other fans, and basically the writing being dumb as a bag of hammers with brain damage, and WWE in particular being INCREDIBLY racist and sexist, seriously I've barely touched on that in this post. but it's also a great method of physical theatre in my opinion, and deserves to be appreciated for that, professional wrestlers put their bodies through hell to entertain people, so it makes me sad that so many dismiss it as a "silly fake sport" despite the fact that it's arguably more physically demanding than most "real" sports out there. I think it starts feeling a lot less silly if you stop thinking of wrestling as a sport, because it isn't one, it's physical theatre.

In any case, that's basically just a few thoughts I have on the current state of the largest pro wrestling company in the world, if you disagree on anything I'd love to hear it in comments