Now that the reviews of Batman v
Superman are out, and it has been pretty much broadly agreed that the movie
does not live up to the gigantic hype generated by the title – hard core DC
fans might disagree – let’s look at something slightly more complex, something
about the way the two of our superheroes have been projected by Zack Snyder and
team.
Why is Batman angry with
Superman, why does he want Superman finished? Yes, we are shown right at the start
why Bruce Wayne doesn’t view Superman very favourably. We can understand anyone
feeling a bit antagonized when they or their dear ones are caught in the
collateral damage of a big fight. So he
nurses that angst for nearly 2 years before he gets a sniff at a chance of
going up against Superman without a certainty of death.
The first hour or so of the movie
tries to reinforce again and again as to why the Batman is so angry
with the
Superman. He says that ‘even if there is a 1% possibility that this guy can
become our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty’. That is a logic
that is hard to accept because even that 1% possibility has not substantial
evidence, and the Bat of Gotham works on evidence and data rather than gut
instincts and hunches. Actually, this version of the Batman shows him as
someone far more practical and more evidence-based vigilante than previous
versions. Look for example the amount of data he tries to gather about Lex
Luthor before launching any action at all. Phone call data, encrypted disks, a
Kryptonite consignment –the Bat waits for the jigsaw to fall into place before
he swings into action. Yet, when it comes to Superman, the Batman needs one act
of collateral damage to decide that he
has to be counted as an enemy. That does not convey the image of an
impassionate and objective superhero, this is a superhero who lets his heart
get in the way.
We all know that the Batman,
whichever version it is, has bad childhood memories that haunt him time and
again. In fact, it is those childhood memories that haunt him and drive him
towards becoming a vigilante. But, never once have we seen the Batman act on
the behest of those childhood memories and insecurities. He always does what is
right. But in Batman v Superman, the motive behind his angst towards Superman
seems to be driven a lot by his insecurities. We have dream sequences where the
Superman unmasks the Batman after having him captured, we have another dream
where people asking him to save them from Superman. It is almost as if the
deep-seated mental insecurities of Bruce Wayne dictate the targets of the
Batman. That is not the sign of a true superhero, that is the sign of a
fallible, feeble mind, which is not how we want to see the Batman. The
overwhelming feeling I got while watching Batman v Superman is that the Batman
was actually jealous of the Superman, jealous of the fact that a more powerful,
more omnipresent superhero had taken over from him. It was like Batman shared
the insecurities of many ordinary people around him, the insecurity that comes
in the presence of someone overwhelmingly powerful. That makes Batman just
another person like you and me, which is not how anyone wants to see him.
You might ask, isn’t it the same
thing that the movie does with Superman? He too assumes Batman as
a nuisance
vigilante just because some newspapers say so. Right, but Superman is much
different from Batman. Superman is a reactive superhero, he has always been a
reactive superhero. He is the guy who wears his cape when he sees something bad
happening on TV and flies to the scene of action and blasts every bad guy with
sheer power. We do not expect any great calculative moves from Superman, he
just reacts! But, Batman is not so! He analyses, he makes plans and he chooses
his adversaries. He doesn’t let situations dictate his actions, he is always
one step ahead of the bad guys. Batman is a proactive superhero, and it is this
aspect of Batman that was completely messed up in Zack Snyder’s film. He made
perfect plans for Superman without analysing whether he was really an enemy,
and he analysed Lex Luthor a lot without having any plans for him. That is just
not like Batman and we hope DC sets it right in movies to come.
The greatest gladiator match on earth - Son of Krypton
against Bat of Gotham, this is not one to be missed, this one has to be
witnessed on the big screen. If Marvel redefined the scale of Superhero movies
by bringing their biggest characters together, DC has now begun rolling out its
own version of heavy duty multi-superhero flicks, and it is reason enough to
get excited. But the hype ends the moment you enter theatres. From that point
it is only the quality of the movie that can decide whether it wins over the
viewer. Does this scripting coup win the viewer?
It starts when Superman is first introduced to humanity,
from Man of Steel. We have Bruce Wayne
watching from the sideline as the new
hero gets the adulation. What does he feel? The Bruce Wayne from Nolan's
universe would have been relieved that he can finally retire, rest his cape and
mope around in peace. But this is Zack Snyder's universe and we are not sure
about what Bruce feels. Is he insecure, is he confused, or is he jealous? We
are not sure at first. Turns out that is how the entire world feels about
Superman. It is this insecurity that Lex Luthor wants to prey upon.
Batman vs. Superman starts slow and is in no hurry to pick
up the pace. Both Batman and Superman view each other with suspicion, and
someone's stoking the fire quite strategically. This though takes quite a long
while. The proceedings are dull and we are left searching for moments of
adrenaline. The story does keep moving ahead, you can see the isolated dots
coming together slowly, but very few moments get the excitement going. That
Batman is someone with deep seated psychological insecurities due to a
childhood tragedy is well known. Zack Snyder probes that hard, giving us a
couple of sequences that are obviously dreams, which seem to slow things down
further. You begin to feel that things are taking too long, when finally the
Bat and the Superman come face to face. That is really when the film clicks
into gear after a fair amount of drifting.
The plot thickens and comes together soon after that.
If Bruce Wayne’s haunting childhood
memories are inseparable from Batman movies, so is Krypton inseparable from a
Superman movie. The Kryptonite angle is built up slowly and surely around Lex
and then there is the final showdown. The usual graph of a superhero movie!
What should appeal here is the Batman vs.
Superman angle, which one feels is explored more at a psychological
level rather than a more entertaining popcorn level. That could have been very
interesting in the hands of a skilled director, more Nolan territory. Subtlety
is not Zack Snyder’s forte and so much of it looks more forced than fluid.
And once we are at the business end
of the movie, that is when the protagonists have all come to the
right side and
are now up against the anatagonist, Zack Snyder jumps onto his style of film
making – large scale destruction. If you think he had peaked with Man of Steel,
think again before you see this one. We don’t know how many cities he has blown
up in the final showdown, frankly we lose count because it movies all the way
from some port to Gotham city, burning almost everything in its path. For
audiences who are accustomed to the usual Hollywood superhero movie, this is
more yawn-inducing stuff as there is little or no originality in the way these
confrontations are conceived. Die hard Batman and Superman fans can whistle for
a while, but even they go quiet after a while. DC needs someone more inventive,
not a technical behemoth like Zack, at the helm of things.
It is obvious that the plan is to
dazzle us with a lot of action - big, bombastic action. But with so many
superhero movies these days, it is a hard thing to impress audiences that way.
What we do enjoy are the little moments, like the ones we saw in the trailer,
the ones where the Batman smartly takes down a dozen or so guys, like the one
where Batman and Superman fistfight each other, or the small game of wits
between Bruce Wayne and the Wonder Woman. The Script, however, does not allow
enough room for more such moments because the big action cannot wait. Also
disappointing is the complete lack of cheer or brightness in the movie. The
Nolan shadow of grim and dark superhero movies hangs on over DC – get rid of it
already, please. That’s something only Nolan can do well. Here, we get a movie
which looks and feels like it is always waiting for doomsday to happen, as if
it is inevitable, as if there is a sword hanging over the world, when the audience
can’t frankly see it. We are here to have a good time, but the movie just won’t
have any of it, it is too busy being serious. Hardly anyone smiles on screen,
except of course for the megalomaniac villain.
That brings us to Jesse Eisenberg who
gets to play perhaps the first big ticket character of his career
after
Zuckerberg, that is. He is required to play someone one dimensional, and even
though he tries to do that with subtlety it doesn’t look that great, the shadow
of the Joker lingers on, one guesses. The thoughts that he echoes are also
quite similar to what the Joker said, like how someone all powerful cannot be
all good and vice versa. Someone who does abominations for the sake of it,
someone who couldn’t escape the abominations of his father! The set up of
Wonder Woman too has fleeting similarities to that of Selena Kyle from the Dark
Knight Rises. These observations just show how big a shadow Nolan cast with his
trilogy and how hard they are to forget. This script does not challenge its
lead players much. Henry Cavill has to look morose or angry, while Ben Afleck has
to look pensive or angry, and there is nothing much in between. The epilogue,
even though stretched a bit, gives us glimpses of how the Justice League is
going to come together in the coming years and who their adversaries are going
to be. The way it panned out gives us hope that this franchise will get better,
that this was just the first act of a grand play, the one that sparked off
bigger things. But DC will have to rethink its strategy of making superhero
movies. If they are going to go all out on heavy duty VFX action with cities
crumbling like packs of cards, they must remember that they are very close to
saturation. Watch Batman vs. Superman because it is a dream union of
superheroes, there are moments (even though only a few) where you can scream
your lungs out, there are genuine goose bump moments, but it all does not add
up into a great movie. Worth a watch nonetheless.
2.5/5
Dream duo, grim setting, heavy VFX,
middling movie!
The title of the movie makes you
think, ‘here comes another Hollywood action flick’. It is the Hollywood
counterpart of the Tamil masala film, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes downright
predictable. So, you need reasons to go watch such a movie. Robert De Niro is a
good enough reason to go watch any movie, and that’s why most people came too,
judging by the claps and whistles in theatre when he was introduced on screen.
The opening couple of minutes of
the film tell us that this is very much a routine action flick, with a gang of
masked guys hijacking a bus, and then we flashback to ‘one week earlier’! It
was as if the writers had no better ideas to give the movie an interesting start.
The plot is as clichéd as it can get for a Hollywood flick. Casino, lots of
money, snubbed employee, seasoned criminals, and then the heist. You can see it
coming miles ahead. Of course, there are reasons why one guy is joining the
heist and you figure that the script will find a way to return to that reason
before the end.
But, as the title tells you, the
movie is not about the heist itself, but the bus that somehow gets
involved in
the heist. Whether the involvement of the bus was planned or not is a cloudy
area that is not answered clearly enough in the film. The heist happens very
early, and much to our disappointment, it happens far too easily, without much
planning at all. That is the biggest let down of Bus 657. The main act looks
pretty bland and that spoils a lot of the fun that we thought we would have.
Cut to the bus and the hostage situation
that ensues, we have very little surprises. It’s the same story told once
again, the kind that we have seen in many movies before. But, there is one
surprise, and that is the best surprise that the movie has up its sleeve, and
that is the only reason Bus 657 has any identity among the sea of hostage
dramas in Hollywood. But that apart, there is the usual band of cops going
after the bus, trying to save the hostages, complying with the hijacker’s
demands, negotiating, etc. The same drill.
The emotional content in the
movie comes in the form of one of the hijacker’s family, which is why he is in
this. So, naturally, he has to win the sympathies of the audiences. Jeffrey
Dean Morgan does a neat job of that with his earnest expressions. There is one
more thread of emotional content that is pushed in which involves Rober De Niro
and his estranged daughter, which is supposed to explain some weird changes in
him towards the end. But anyone who has watched films like this before knows
what is coming. Dave Bautista, we are getting to see him quite regularly on
screen nowadays, gets to play a control freak criminal who can’t think straight
when the going gets tough. His loud ways only lead us to think that he going to
land everybody in trouble. The only other person who makes a mark on screen is
Gina Carano, as the cop who sees a silver lining of good in one of the
hijackers.
But, we are all in it to watch
Rober De Niro right? So, what’s he got to do? Precious little, and very
little
where he can stamp his class. There is really nothing interesting in it for an
actor of his accomplishments, but he chose to do it.
Bus 657, released as Heist in
America, is as generic a con movie as it can get. Watch it if you have
absolutely nothing else to do. If you like De Niro, go back and watch any of
his classics, if you like good heists, go watch any of the Ocean films.
This has been so long overdue that many of us even forgot
that the great J C Owens' (Jesse Owens) life was worth a biopic. Set in the
troubled pre-WW II world Race traces the rather swift journey of Jesse Owens
from the lanes of Cleveland to the monster stadium at Berlin.
What should Jesse Owens' biopic be about? Should it be
about his genius, his prowess, his work, his struggles or should it be about
the political backdrop against which he made history? Does the context of his
achievements mean more than the actual achievements themselves? These are the
questions Race leaves in your mind.
Germany is hosting the Olympics and the United States is
not sure whether it wants to be seen
participating. Germany is at the heights
of its discrimination policies and the USA does not want to be perceived as a
pacifist of such policies, in spite of its own chequered discrimination
policies. Germany makes all efforts to make sure it holds a grand games, even
camouflaging their discriminating tendencies for a while and USA nod to
participate.
Back home, the ' black people' of America look at this as
an opportunity to tell the world that their hearts are with the downtrodden
people of Germany. They do not want one of their people going to the games.
There is politics, there is power, there are egos, there is a bit of business,
and in the midst of all this is a bit of athletics. Race somehow contrives to lose its focus from its
protagonist and spread it all over the socio-political state of USA and Germany
without giving a complete picture of any of these.
While it has a sincere performance by its lead man Stephen
James, and is ably supported by an energetic Jason Sudeikis, the movie never
really rests its weight on its two central characters; it is too busy flirting
with greater things. The most important factor behind the making of the world's
greatest athlete(arguably) - the miles and hours he had to put into the track
go missing. The movie makes it seem as if he just had to turn up and run to get
the gold, as if the competition was insignificant! The only time he is ever
pushed is in the long jump final where his adversary (a matured David Kross, if
you remember him from The Reader) shows some rare sportsmanship. Otherwise, the
competition is invisible. The only time Jesse loses anything is when his mind
is not in the right place; otherwise he is invincible. It is this seeming
inevitability of his victories that make Race a not too exciting experience.
The only thing that can make it exciting is the context of what was achieved,
something greater than the sport itself. The political statement that was made
in the face of Adolf Hitler.
But Race does the same thing with Hitler that many movies
have done before - treat him like
Voldemort. His name must not be said, his
face must not be shown. He is just a passing mirage shown at obtuse angles and
referred to as Fuhrer. We really don't understand what was achieved in terms of
a political statement. We only get a stone faced general trying to run the
games with an iron fist and speaking in German monotone.
It is this strewn focus of the film that hurts Race the
most. Of course, you can enjoy the quite well made Olympic portions, even
though the huge crowds look obviously as products of CGI.
One wonders whether a generation who never heard about Owens
before will watch this film and think that he was this incredibly gifted guy
who just happened to be at the right place at the right time and was lucky
enough to be part of history. Ask any athlete and his greatest pride will be
the amount of hours he put in to get to where he was, and never about how
naturally good he was. Race doesn't show the sweat and hours behind the 4 gold
medals, and for that reason remains an underwhelming biopic of one of the
greatest ever athletes.
A story of the circumstances more than the man himself!
The Golden rule in Hollywood is
that if you have a hit action movie with a bankable star, then you do not let
go the opportunity to make a sequel. When Olympus Had Fallen entertained us
quite well, very few of us would have imagined that there would be a sequel to
it. But, it turns out that the makers smelt the opportunity and went in for the
kill.
So, we have Gerard Butler
returning as Mike Banning, the man who will not let the President of the USA
come to any harm. From Washington DC the setting of the action is moved to
London and all the world’s leaders are assembled there for ‘the most protected
even on earth’. The makers have gone ahead and created characters who are very
similar to the Heads of states of different European and Asian nations. The
ones with most obvious similarities are the German and Italian premieres. But,
the President of the USA has no similarities to the real man because they
wanted to have the same cast as in Olympus Has Fallen. And so, Aaron Eckhart returns
as the President. And then we have usual suspect Morgan Freeman as the Vice
President who gets to do the same role as before, sit in a chair and watch all
the action on the big monitor while also talking/negotiating with the
terrorists.
The terror outfit this time is
from somewhere in Asia and out to wreak vengeance because Americans
used
unmanned bombers to take out an entire family. And, this time the attack is far
bigger, far better planned (though we are never told how it was all planned),
and the visual effects are far far more extreme. If the budget for the first
movie allowed for wholesale destruction of the White House, this time the
budget has been stretched to cover the blow up of almost an entire city. The
Westminister Abbey is blown up, London bridge is in pieces, at least 5 heads of
state are dead within minutes and the only the President of the USA survives
with his trusted bodyguard.
Saying all these plot elements
don’t serve as spoilers because almost everybody knows what is coming. The only
fun is in knowing how and when it comes. The ‘how’ of the entire operation, the
sneaky plan of having the President as a prisoner in his own high-security
bunker was the thrill factor in Olympus Has Fallen. In London though, the plan
from the terrorists seems to be bomb, shoot, bomb, shoot and bomb until no one
is alive. It gets a bit deafening after a point. The real excitement comes in
the form of a close fought gun battle inside an MI6 safe house in London. The
darkness and the deserted look of the streets of London (something similar to
the lockdown of Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises) could have been used more
effectively for a game of cat and mouse, but the director seems to be in a
hurry to resume all the shooting and
bombing again. That said, the gun fights
are quite well shot, with the protagonist being shown as an experienced
strategist who knows how and when to take cover. And the final stretch inside a
building with Banning going in solo unnoticed (quite like what happened in
Olympus Has Fallen) is quite interesting even though short lived; you get a
good finish. And then Morgan Freeman reenters to polish it off in a matter of
fact style that only he can manage, as if he is ordering a sandwich for lunch.
The reliable Gerard Butler, on
screen for the second time in two weeks after Gods of Egypt, makes it worth a
watch. Of course, Morgan Freeman is always a good actor to have on the big screen.
And, there is a relentless barrage of action. No way you will be bored. Just go
in and have a nice time without expecting anything too special.
Leonardo Di Caprio delivered a
potent message for climate change on the Oscar stage! Great, it has got
everybody talking about how timely and well delivered the message was. Yes,
climate change needs to be addressed real quick and there are no two ways about
it.
I was recently watching some South Indian movie awards night, SIIMA or Star
or Asianet (they are so homogeneous that it is difficult to distinguish one
from the other), where many stars were giving small one liners about how there
is ‘solution for pollution’ etc. etc. and some such stuff straight out of the
TR style book. Then we have had this habit in the IPL of one match or one team
looking to ‘Go Green’. What they basically do is wear green or greenish jerseys
for a match of a few and exchange saplings between captains at the start of the
match – go green.
Now all these are initiatives to
raise awareness about how much we need to start taking care of our planet. But,
I do keep wondering, is the message really delivered or whether the only thing
that is being achieved is a propagation of a style of hollow posturing and
lecturing without actually getting anything done?
Why do I say this? Look at the
stages on which these statements were made. Cinema and cricket! Now, name
anything to do with cinema or cricket that has anything associated with
reducing consumption of energy or bringing down the carbon footprint. Now,
Leonoardo in his speech said that last year was the hottest year in recorded
history and they had to travel to the southernmost tip of the planet to find
snow. That is great observation. But, tell me where is the environmental
consciousness in flying around the planet, with a huge crew no doubt, to the
only place that seems to have escaped the heat just to shoot a movie? Would the
shooting of The Revenant in that fortunate and part of the planet have done any
good to the environment over there? No, actually it would have been the
reverse. Shooting in those parts with a huge crew, lights, lots of vehicles and
meters and meters of green mat would only have adversely affected the
environment, destroyed microhabitats and created more chaos than ought to have
been there. If the environment should not be taken for granted, why not wait
another year for the snow to fall in your part of the world and shoot the movie
over there? The Oscar could have waited one more year! No disrespect to Leo or
the cast and crew of The Revenant, but the words seem far removed from the
actions. In a year when the earth sweltered under the heat, you chose to tread
on the little amount of snow that had fallen in one corner of the globe so you
could make your movie. I understand the ambition, the commitment to the craft
and the deadlines that you might have had to meet, but aren’t they the same things
that drive a big multinational corporation or an industrial conglomerate? Why
are ambition and commitment termed as greed and monopoly when they are
exhibited by businessmen?
Now, am I writing in favor of
businessmen or corporates? No. I am as much concerned about climate change as
the average man. But that is not the first thing on my mind at any given point
of time. My life, my career, my future top the priority list, much like almost
everyone on this planet. And to ensure
we have a good life we might be willing to work for any of these
corporates, fly all around the globe without worrying about our carbon
footprint, use sheets and sheets of paper to print our resumes, criss-cross the
city in our vehicles, use many lifestyle products made by these giant corporations
and what not. It is personal ambition, personal choices. It is the same
personal ambition and choices that made the team of Revenant fly across the globe
and tread on the wee bit of snow that was available. Yet at the end of all that
when we heard two lines of talk about ‘not taking the planet for granted’ we
clap and we feel good as if we supported a worthy cause! Damn!
I felt the same way during the
IPL when players wore greenish jerseys and exchanged saplings and tried to give
the world a ‘message’! Seriously? Eight teams flying all across India, almost
twenty times each in the space of 45 days, flood lit stadiums for more than
half of the 60 matches, huge support staffs and their travel, and the after
night parties – the energy expenditure goes through the roof and yet they
deliver a message about going green and it is beamed all over on television and
we watch in glee and decide to wear a bit of green ourselves! Damn!
And the south Indian film
industry uses all the arc lights, shoots in whatever little forests we have
left, flies around the country and organizes the min numbingly bright and loud
awards function (can’t imagine the amount of electricity consumed on that one
night alone) and then delivers one liners on ‘solution for pollution’! Damn!
With every such instance we are
becoming a world of increasing symbolism. A world that is easily gratified or
easily deceived into thinking that we have actually done something only by
uttering a few hollow words. Look around
us and we can see that the practice is already rampant. More and more ‘awareness’
drives being organized where everyone attending is already aware of everything
that is being said. Cars driving in, cars driving out, papers cups being
disposed and everyone feels that they have done enough for the environment for
a year. And the internet celebrates! Damn!
If at all we want to celebrate,
why no celebrate this man
who doesn’t just talk but gets
down and does things that actually make a change. Or why do not we
celebrate this
man enough, a man who made a forest all by himself, even though the statements in the picture look a bit exaggerated! Fact is, there are many
other examples of action over symbolism that we can find around ourselves, but
the symbolism gets highlighted more, talked about more, and worse even, it gets
mimicked more, not helping us move ahead an inch.
The Oscars, the Filmfares, the
IPLs are not stages where green talk will ever be appropriate because these are
stages where personal ambition and success are celebrated, and it is the excess
of these elements that makes the world hotter every passing year. I admire Leo
for saying what he did, but cannot agree with the context or the stage. A stage
like and Oscar can be good to make a political point, like Marlon Brando did in
1976.
or
it can be used to make a point pertaining to cinema like Sean Connery did in
1988.
But Oscars are not a worthy stage
to discuss the environment because the very purpose and ambition of the
industry go against what is required of the earth right now, which is for everyone
to live quiet and disciplined lives without too much energy consumption, and
not take flights to New York and Los Angeles just to say that we have to reduce
energy consumption.
Speaking about climate change on
the Oscar stage, or the cricket stadium is like the leather industry talking about animal welfare. In
pretty simple terms, it is conflict of interest! And let’s not take that for
granted.
