If it's not a good game or catholic... who do you call?...why Pokematic "hi."
OK, spoiler warning ahead. This deals with a rather infamous ending scene in Batman VS Superman. So fair warning.
So I didn't like Batman VS Superman. I'm not going to go over all of it again. Just listen to the podcast.
Well one particular scene really got ZeldaMaster93 and I worked up, and that's the infamous "they're going to kill Martha" scene that makes Batman suddenly not wanting to kill Superman anymore, and instead deciding that they should fight along side each other. Now before I go into what I thought it meant, and what it supposedly means, please review the scene again for yourself.
Now when I first saw this, it basically came off as this.
Batman: I hate you with all my being. You are my worst enemy, and I'm going to kill you.
Superman: They're going to kill Martha (whom I calling by her first name for some reason instead of Mom).
Batman: [internal] Wait, my mom's name is Martha, you're not talking about my mom are you?
Lois: His mom's name is Martha.
Batman: Dude, my mom's name is Martha. This makes us, like, brothers or something. Lets be best friends. I can't believe I was about to kill you.
That's how I understood it, that's how my friend ZeldaMaster93 understood it, and that's now many critics understood it. It came out of nowhere and felt so off. Well, today I found an alternative interpretation of that scene, and it goes like this.
It's not that their moms share the same name, it's that Batman always saw Superman as an alien that he can't completely trust because he can't be sure that Superman won't sacrifice the Earth if it worked for him (especially after Superman killed the girl's mom in the Zod fight in the beginning of the movie). Then when Batman saw that Superman's dying words were "you're letting them kill [an earth woman]" it showed that Superman actually cares about humans, and then that he has an "Earth mom" it humanizes him to the point that "he's not just an alien, he is basically human."
OK. OK. I've sat through many English class lectures about how stupid books have loads of deeper meaning, and that it's actually brilliant if you think about it REALLY hard. I can see how that can be the actual meaning of the scene. However, it's terribly directed and does not make that message easy to digest, especially when it's the main factor in changing the character motivation at the climax of the movie. If you want to get deep and symbolic, do it when things aren't going 1000 miles per hour when we as the audience don't have time to digest what we just saw, because otherwise you have people calling your "deep writing and character development" "convoluted, stupid, and random." If you REALLY want to play the whole "he's not just an alien, he has human parents, so he's one of us" bit, here's much better dialog.
Superman: You're letting the kill Mom.
Batman: Mom? [Flashbacks]
Batman: What do you mean? You're an alien!
Lois: Martha Kent, his Earth Mom, she's held hostage and they're going to kill her.
Batman: Earth Mom?... [scene plays out as is]
OK, so it's not perfect, but I'm not a screen writer. However, it's still better than "your mom's name is Martha? My mom's name is Martha. Lets be friends." I don't care that "well if you pause the movie and actually think about it, this is what it REALLY means," save that for "I'm always carrying around one of my mother's pearls and you can see it in every scene and it's rather predominantly shown every time" to show how Bruce carries a part of his parents with him everywhere he goes, not "this is a crucial turning point in the movie and character motivations change completely in the span of 2 minutes, oh and another epic fight is starting 1 minute afterwards." No, this is poor writing and directing. It explains it, but it doesn't excuse it.
Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
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