The marketing for this movie has left me vacant at best. The first teaser and SDCC trailer just try so hard to narrate to the audience the gravity of having these two icons in share the frame for the first time in live action. It all just tries so hard to be both taken as “serious” and “cool”; a pair of vaguely specific terms often used without justification. And then the latest trailer came out, and it made the film look like it had a pulse for the change. Jesse Eisenberg just chews scenery as Affleck and Cavill smolder at one another. It made everything look like an actual blockbuster (and Zack Snyder movie) for a change.
The TV spot runs 30 seconds and is pretty much one small scene from a larger chase sequence. It’s Batman and Supermans first costumed encounter. Wherein, Batman tries to run over Superman with his car. Superman just looking at this mad man dressed up like a Bat dumbfounded at the insanity. Batman, ever eager to prove he is most definitely a man and not emasculated, stands up to the big blue bully that ripped the doors off the Batmobile like we tear open an envelope and asks “Do you bleed?” That line, used as the capper for the first trailer, has just put me in stitches since its first utterance. Originally shown out of context and now shown somewhat in context in this spot, reveals it to be what I originally thought it was. The questioning of a man who is trying just too hard to be taken seriously: as a threat, a man, a hero. Batman is over compensating and protesting too much.
It’s a joke, you can’t take it seriously and neither does the movie. Look at the dumbfounded and perplexed look on Superman’s face as he flies away from this crazed lunatic. He effectively disarms and deescalate the situation – how truly heroic of him.
Slowly but surely this is actually looking like a movie – not something good or bad –that I will want to see and not just out of intellectual curiosity.
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