Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review – Batman v Superman is an American superhero movie released in 2016. The movie is based on superheroes from the DC Comics. Superman’s fight with Zod results in large scale massacre that destroys Bruce Wayne’s (Batman) office and casualties in his company. Batman decides to fight Superman to keep him in check while Lex Luthor adds fuel to their fire.
First of all, I would like mention that I am neither DC nor a Marvel fan. Rather I like all superheroes from both the universe. It helps to read this review in an unbiased fashion.
It has been a long due for the DC universe to bring their superheroes together. Thanks to Nolan’s Batman trilogy that had set up the foundation for the movies. Although Zack Snyder did not impress much with the Man of Steel he has definitely justified his efforts with the edition of Dawn of Justice. This may not be the epic start for the Justice League DC fans would have expected but nevertheless, it serves as a good appetizer for the upcoming main course.
The movie has a sluggish start and you tend to wait for those brilliant moments restlessly. Just when you feel that this might turn out to be a half-baked effort the movie picks up and keeps you engaged till the end. Ben Affleck is very convincing as Batman and definitely carries on the legacy putting the sarcastic comments on him to rest. His performance is a standout. The icing on the cake for the movie is Wonder woman. Her entry is the best part of the movie. Lex Luthor’s characterization is good and his dialog delivery reminds of Sharukh Khan. Some portions of the movie even look like the old school Bollywood movies and look like a decorated extravagant Karan Arjun 🙂
High Points: The fight night between superman and batman, Wonder woman’s entry, Lex Luthor’s characterization, Hans Zimmerman’s background score.
Low Points: Sluggish screenplay in the first half, some of the dialogues are cheesy and cliched takes away the impact of the good ones
Overall Zack Snyder doesn’t disappoint this time and in fact, has created a good start to the Justice League. Hope DC is able to be successful with the upcoming movies. If you love superhero movies don’t miss this one when it is in the theaters.
This week my facebook wall was filled with funny and sarcastic criticism about the recent Tamil movie Puli. There have been really creative meme’s posted which were definitely rib-tickling and became coffee table conversations and Whatsapp forwards. Equally there has been my friends in the movie industry who felt sad that a creation after so much of hard work is being criticised heavily without any regards to the effort the makers have put it.
In this week’s “Friday Fundas” I decided to share my opinions about the behavior and my humble thoughts on whether to fight it or use it to the strength.
Criticism is not a new phenomenon. It has been in practice for ages. It is like an opposition party in a democratic government. Where the critic’s opinions are targeted to shape the quality of the content. Recollecting one of literature discussions we were having one of them had raised a point that a creation doesn’t belong to the writer once it is published. And the readers have complete rights on expressing their views about it.
While on the other had the writers have a different take on it. Writer/Director Brad Bird has expressed his angst against the critics in the movie Ratatouille in the words of the character Anton Ego as below
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.”
And the following scene from the movie Birdman takes a hit at critics trying define what the artist needs to do
They are two sides of the same coin. One needs to exist for the existence of the other. They will shake hands and embrace each other when there is agreement and turn their backs to each other when there is disagreement.
Off late with the advent of social media the amount of criticism a works get has dramatically increased. When a movie is good it is heavily praised and when it is bad it is heavily trolled. In either case it definitely affects the performance of the movie in the theaters.
Social Media has become a necessary evil in promoting products. It has provided a great tool for the movie producers to reach their audience like never before. Compared to the era when weekly magazine articles were the only medium to promote the content now it has become much more easier to take the content to the audience to their personal mobile phones. Also they have the option to hear back from them. While this is powerful it also opens a pandora box of hearing non-favorable comments as well.
Assuming that the reviewers on the social media will become ethical and write responsibly is a wild goose chase. But they could be leveraged to the strength of the promotion. If the source content is good it will definitely get a majority of positive reviews than negative reviews. For instance movies like Kaaka muttai and Maya received very positive reviews which helped the movie while movies like Anjaan, Puli suffered from the negative reviews. More hype the movie creates before the release the more it is going to be reviewed. There is no secret formula for an optimum amount of promotion one could do.
Instead of spending too much energy on worrying about the reviews if the makers invest time in producing quality content then the chance of getting positive word is much more. Now one could argue that no one sets out to make a bad movie. But there certain patterns behind a movie that doesn’t work. One of the major pattern which I believe the Indian movies suffer is screen writing. In India most of the movies are being written and directed by the same person. This is a very diffcult job to do. Unless the director is very talented like Christopher Nolan, Tarantino, Anurag Kashyap, S.S Rajamouli or Vishal Bharadwaj who can write entertaining scripts and also direct good content the quality of the content suffers. In the Hollywood most of the movies have a well established writing department. Or the content is made from literature that is already published. It took Danny Boyle to create a movie based on the book Q&A and not for any Indian director. Spielberg has made movies based on books written by popular authors. His skill has been in directing movies and he does that well. This has enabled Spielberg to work on multiple projects simultaneously. Director Shankar and Maniratnam heavily relied on writers like Sujatha to create screenplay which worked well. Screenplay is the soul of the movie and if you have a great screenplay the movie would work. Increased production quality makes the movie more appealing to a wider level of audience. But if the screenplay is bad the movie would not work. I hope in the future we have the culture of directors more open to work on someone else’s script.
A good movie would work well with the audience and thereby attract more positive comments from people. There has been no movie which has worked for every one. There would be always lovers and haters for the movie. At the end of the day it matters whose count is larger.
Movie makers should stop worrying about the negative comments and concentrate on building a quality movie and believe in it, it will be healthy for Cinema.
Nonlinear narrative – Art of script writing from a different dimension
It is good to be back with the Friday Fundas section after a while. This week I would talk about a specific style of script writing known as Non-linear narrative.
Nonlinear narrative is the art of telling a story as a list of events that are not in chronological order. The earliest form of nonlinear narrative in India has been experimented in Mahabharata. While this type of narrative has been popular in novels and stories, it has not been so easy to master this in the films. Only in the year 1924 nonlinear film emerged from French the avant-grade in the film “Entracte”, Dadaïst film by René Claire.
Sometimes people confuse non-linear narrative with films that employ flashback sequences. While you could argue them as nonlinear narratives but they may not be equivalent to narrating events in a non-chronological order. Films like Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa used non-linear narration using flashback that was non-chronological in nature.
In a typical three-act play structure a film has a beginning, middle and the end. A nonlinear narrative also has the same but not necessarily in that order (quoted by Jean-Luc Godrad, French-Swiss filmmaker). In the 1990s Quentin Tarantino employed nonlinear narrative structure in his films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. This made a huge difference to the viewing experience.
In Indian movies director Maniratnam in his movie Alaipayuthe very well exploited this. The movie used flashbacks and flash forwards and converged at a point, which made a difference to the narration and won many accolades.
In the late 90s entered Christopher Nolan whom I consider as a perfectionist of nonlinear narration. Recently I had seen the movie Following by Nolan. This was his first movie and made in a very small budget. But the nonlinear narration has been used very well. He never uses adages like “3 months ago” or “2 days ago” but cleverly used the hairstyle of the pivotal character and facial scar to differentiate between the timeline of the narratives. The story picks up from three points of a linear narrative and travels in parallel. It is just brilliant. He then went on to make Memento and the Batman series, which also heavily utilized the nonlinear narrative style.
A story becomes very interesting in the way it is told even if it is a same old story, which is been retold. Nonlinear narrative if executed well adds that difference and generates interest levels in the audience. Watch some of the nonlinear narratives mentioned in this article and let me know what you think.
Interstellar Review – Interstellar is an American science fiction film released in 2014. In the future Earth’s resources are depleted and run short of food. In order to offset the human race switch to an agrarian society and concentrate on farming. But the environment is becoming non-conducive for living. Former NASA pilot Cooper is into farming. He and his daughter chance upon a NASA project which is targeted to save the human race by finding an alternate suitable planet. Cooper gets on board the exploration much against the wish of his daughter. Will they succeed in the mission is the plot of Interstellar.
Director Christopher Nolan is a genius film maker who can think multi-dimensional and create complicated plots. He has done the same with Interstellar. The subject is complicated for a lay man who does not have the basics of space travel and theory of relativity. Although there are scenes which explain some of the concepts as it travels but still it demands some intelligent viewing. If you go into the hall expecting a Dark Knight or Inception then you would find this bit overwhelming. But if you go into the hall expecting a Memento or Prestige then you would enjoy this. The visuals are quite stunning. The movie is deeply emotional as it progresses. The background score by Hans Zimmer fits well. Certain high points that would enthrall you in the movie are
The scene in which they first launch into the space there is a loud noise inside the space craft and as the camera pans out there is absolute silence and this alternates.
The spectacular view of the wormhole
The scene in which they land on the Miller’s planet and what happens later
The entire climax sequence
Matthew McConaughey has delivered a good performance and is ably supported by all other cast as well. As you would see in all other Nolan movies, the dialogues are very powerful.
Overall if you are a fan of complicated science fiction movies then you would fall in love with Interstellar and it would be an experience to watch it.
This review of Interstellar is a guest review by one of my friends Amar Singh.
About the Guest Author: Amar Singh is a Research Scholar from Department of English, BHU Working with Prof. Anita Singh on the topic titled, “Hyperrealism and Christopher Nolan’s Cinematic Texts.”
“A real magician tries to invent something new, that other magicians are gonna scratch their heads over.”
This line said by Alfred Borden (played by Christian Bale) in The Prestige (2006) pretty much sums up what the brand Christopher Nolan is all about. His new instalment, Interstellar, is now in the theatres and man o man, what a ride it is! If one has to capsule the story of Interstellar, it would read something like this; this is basically the story of Cooper and his bond with his daughter Murph that surpasses the limits of the universe. The plot of the movie has been based in the future where the climate of earth is deteriorating at a rapid pace. The only chance for human beings to survive is to find a new abode in some other galaxy where they can start life afresh. This daunting task is laid upon Cooper, to pilot the spaceship Endurance, which will go through a warmhole discovered near Saturn and hunt for a new earth. But the story is not as simple as it reads. There are so many elements, so many concepts that Nolan has introduced (and that is what we expect from a director who has made Memento and Inception): theory of relativity, warmhole, blackhole, time and gravity as other dimensions, and so on; that it becomes an uneasy and adventurous ride for us as it is for Cooper and his crew. But behind all these heavy concepts, there is the strong emotion of love that becomes the main thrust of this movie.
If one goes through Nolan’s movies from the beginning, there is a gradual development of an enlightening process of his protagonists that one can trace in his films, which is directly proportional to his advancement as a director. He is one of the brightest students of cinema who is trying to learn new lessons with every movie he is making. And one thing that has become his signature style is the way he is obsessed with the concept of time and how it affects us on different levels and how we fit ourselves in its not-so-linear movement. In Interstellar, he has gone way ahead of his previous movies in dealing with such high concepts which one has to brainstorm with repeated viewings to understand them. And I have not even talked about the visuals yet. Oh, what an experience it was! If there are flaws in the movie (there are a few), all of them will be subsided with the grandiose of the visuals. Just invest yourself in his world; you will come out with a never felt before riveting experience.
In the movie, when Cooper is dropped into a fifth dimension from where he gains access to time and gravity as physical entity, which he uses further to convey messages to his daughter, the very scene becomes so intense and emotional that one can go through the psyche of Nolan himself. The concept of filmmakers as someone who have an access to parallel times (which they gain through their camera) have been repeated quite a few times in different movies (Hugo and Inception are among such examples), but this movie becomes so personal for Nolan that in that very scene, we can see the struggle of a maker to look for and give directions to his greatest creation, his daughter, so that she may be safe and secure.
If you love cinema, go watch Interstellar. Whether you’ll like it or hate it, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that you will remember the experience for days and will indulge in the dialogues related with this movie. This is where cinema comes at its best, and this is what we call a true cinematic experience.
