We're falling behind on the Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks. With one kid out of the house and the other usually going to opening-weekend screenings with friends, the family trips to the cinema are basically in the past now, which means anything recent is DVD/Blu-ray or On-demand, or just cable. We caught Deadpool recently, but Captain America: Civil War still isn't out, so we went with a double feature of Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice, the DC stuff we hadn't bothered with yet.
Marvel has been doing this a bit longer, so it's no surprise that their flicks have found a "tone" that I consider superior to DC's. There's an inherent contradiction in trying to transform comic-book source material to the big screen in a "realistic" way, but a certain amount of humor and some engaging characters goes a long way in helping the audience overlook shortcomings elsewhere. DC's distraction solution seems to be "blow more shit up!" I now understand the one critique I seemed to hear more than anything else regarding Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice. Huge amounts of property damage and presumed deaths, which, granted, are a part of comic-book stories, but with Man of Steel it just seemed completely over the top.
Then in Dawn of Justice, they addressed that, which was good, but I couldn't help recalling The Incredibles, which is something like a tribute to and parody of comic-book movies all in one (it didn't help that there was a reference to both Superman and Batman wearing capes, causing everyone in the room to shout "No capes!" in our best Edna Mode voices). Superheroes are
probably mostly good, but they're not us, they're super powerful, and look at all the destruction! It's their fault! I know what they were going for, and they handled some of it pretty well, and some of it not so well.
Overall, not a complete waste of time, though. I was reasonably entertained throughout each one. It helped that Amy Adams and Diane Lane are two of my favorite actresses. Yeah, you knew an Orbert review had to have some overt sexism to it. Amy in a bathtub scene to start Dawn of Justice was a cheap way to get the guys on board early, but hey, it worked.
Took me way too long to remember that Wonder Woman was in this one, even after that one girl's name (Diana Prince) was mentioned. But I got it, just a few moments before they dropped the anvil on everyone else's heads, so I give myself partial credit.
So that was yesterday, and today by complete coincidence I saw a comic that dealt with one of the questions from the movie. I like this answer better: