Entertainment Geekly: The best part was when the buildings fell down.
Difficult to talk about superhero movies just now.
The bigger issue, I think: No one is willing to define the terms of our debate.
Should a superhero movie function independent of source material, or honor it?
Does it matter if Supermanbarely speaksin a Superman movie?
Does it matter if a decent movie calledCaptain Americabarely has time for Captain America?
Do we value excessive continuity, or deplore how quickly it devolves into aimless referentiality?
(Look, its Howard Stark!)
Is Ant-Man a sociopath?
Would that make his movies better?
Batman v Superman, Civil War,andApocalypsealI ride hard on political imagery.
A suicide bomber in Washington blows up the Capitol.
Explosive unrest in Cairo.
Jesus, theres a movie called Civil War.
Do we blame comic books, filmmakers, corporations, ourselves?
Do we talk about what a movie does, or do we specifically address what a movie doesnt do?
If Captain America is gay, will that finally make Bucky interesting?
Superheroes have always been slipstream archetypes, fill-in-your-personal-blank symbols.
Rural and Urban, Agricultural Class and Creative Class.
But he is also the ubermenschen, freelance law enforcement with implicit state supportandpossessing top-secret ties to the media.
(He writes his own puff pieces!)
And I still think its the best movie Marvel Studios has ever produced.
(InAll the Presidents Men, he took down Nixon.
InWinter Soldier, he plots world domination in a splendid office across the river from the Watergate Hotel.)
But I misreadWinter Soldier,or maybe the movie lied.
The secondCaptain Americamovie acts suspicious about SHIELD it was HYDRA all along!
but looking back now, I realize the movies strange sub-subtext.
The problem isnt that theres a top-secret organization policing us without our knowledge.
The problem is thatthe wrong people are in chargeof that top-secret organization.
SoWinter Soldieris a movie about making sure the right Illuminati trigger the world.
History argues that absolute power corrupts absolutely;Winter Soldiercounter-argues that absolute power only corrupts meanies.
We say superheroes are symbols, but its more like theyre hieroglyphs, and nobody has a Rosetta Stone.
Maybe it makes more sense to talk about the buildings.
Batman v Supermanrolls from the idea that Gotham City is bay-adjacent to Metropolis.
Metropolis looks like it was built at least a century later, full of buildings tall and clean.
Robert Moses would love Metropolis and despise Gotham.
Frank Miller said that; its one of the few Frank Miller ideas Snyder hasnt ruined yet.
Not that either city particularly feels like much of anything.
Metropolis has tall buildings and Gotham has empty warehouses.
Just guessing here: Rand wouldnt have likedBatman v Superman.
Bruce Wayne builds himself a nifty postmodern glassware batcave, but his spirit haunts his familys garish mansion countryside.
Rand wouldve demanded Wayne Mansion be firebombed.
The biggest bummer ofBatman v Supermanis that we dont really get any understanding of the Metropolis rebuilding process.
Im having fun with the Rand stuff, but only because I wish there was more of it.
Imagine if Snyder let his Superman go Full Howard Roark, rebuilding the city he helped destroy.
The original Superman films made Krypton stale, emotionally bleached, beyond architecture; they lovedspheresandcrystals.
Richard Donner had zero nostalgia for Krypton: It was a no-fun deathscape, diet-vanilla Kubrick.
InMan of Steel, the Kryptonians have a more florid sensibility.
This is what Westeros will look like when the White Walkers take over.
So Zod is a problem because he wants to pull Earth backwards.
You imagine Luthor bragging that he locally sourced his demonic killing machine by recycling Zods dead body.
(Like anyone who self-identifies as artisanal, Luthor is desperately annoying.)
Would Superman have an alternative idea?
If Luthors vision is nostalgic, would Supermans be futuristic?
Would he rebuild Metropolis inhisimage?
We never find out, becauseBatman v Supermandoesnt care much about either of its mythic cities.
Actually,Batman v Supermanis the first Batman movieeverto not even remotely care what Gotham looks like.
Tim Burton being Tim Burton, he loved the Gothic architecture.
Joel Schumacher thrilled to the idea of a city-sized nightclub.
Christopher NolansDark Knighttrilogy thrilled to infrastructure: Monorails, bridges, tunnels, parking garages, freeways.
It felt like a few different cities; sometimes, it felt like Pittsburgh.
Theres no sense of place inBatman v Superman.
The Kent Family Farm in Kansas is shot with the same bleached-dusk grit as Wayne Manor.
It wasnt always thus.
Superheroes used to come from places.
Im not talking grand-scheme, like midcentury New Yorkers making Spider-Man a Queens kid.
Marvel destroyed both buildings in Phase 2: Take that, modernism!
Oddly, Marvel Studios cares more about preserving extraterrestrial cities.
After two films, Asgard remains essentially unharmed a bridge got broken, boohoo.
Im being cruel to be kind.
Architecturally, theGuardians of the Galaxyis half-cool and half-lame.
(Among other things, Knowhere is a monument to recycling.)
The problem is that Marvel Studios isnt funky enough to make you care about Knowhere.
The problem is that Xandar is also totally dull: It looks like a lot of money poorly spent.
The helicarrier is also pretty boring a landing strip with four circles on all sides.
For Steranko, SHIELD represented Jet Age swagger.
The Marvel Studios films dont really do lounge.
People work on the Helicarrier, and work is all they do.
The places are boring, even a bit cheap-looking.
The almost-exception is the Manhattan of Marvels Netflix underverse.
Daredevils New York actually feels like a city where people live, not just a place people work.
You appreciate howpopulatedthe Netflix Marvel world feels.
I love when Jessica Jones drinks in a bar that looks like a bar.
Geographically, the closest thing to the Marvel-Netflix Manhattan is FoxsX-Menfranchise.
(Apparently, he went Full Madonna at Boarding School.)
One of the biggest laughs inX-Men: Apocalypse besides Evan Peters yelling WE DONT KNOW, BRO!
IRL, the place isstillBritish.
In the originalXtrilogy, Charles Xaviers mansion was played by a couple different big houses in Canada.
Nowits an Elizabethan estate in Englefield, two centuries older than America itself.
Christopher Nolans version of Wayne Manor was also British, two different English estates.
(Harsh crit, but accurate: Call his architectural thesisLogan Shrugged.)
You could tease out someDownton-ish nostalgia, from the way the X series keeps on returning to the X-mansion.
Cause for alarm, since Hollywood has never really known what to do with Ancient Egypt.
(The Rosetta Stone isan 80-minute drivefrom Charles Xaviers mansion.)
Yet Hollywood is occasionally drawn to Egypt.
Great folly inevitably results.
This yearsGods of Egyptwas an expensive not-at-all-success.
Given complete control of the world, what do you to?
You build a monument to yourself.
The gods all have vaguely specialized powers, which bad-guy Set absorbs for himself.
The gods alltransforminto great flying creatures, birdandplaneandSuperman.
Intriguingly, Apocalypse inApocalypsehas a big evil plan that is precisely equivalent to Sets inGods of Egypt.
Oscar Isaacs blue-man mutant absorbs other superpowers and desires nothing beyond total domination.
(At one point in Apocalypses analog Googling, the Twin Towers flash onscreen.)
Soon enough, Apocalypse has leveled most of modern Cairo and rebuilt his glorious mega-pyramid.
But theres a goofy cleverness toApocalypses parameters, which reflect the goofy cleverness of the movie itself.
I dont really know what to make of this scene.
But the scene works in a way that shouldnt be overlooked.
Supercharged by Apocalypse, Magneto uses his powers to destroy well, everything.
The movie becomes incoherent in the last half-hour, but Im pretty sure Magneto eradicates the bridges around Manhattan.
Apocalypsethe movie has a much clearer sense of Apocalypse.
The movie isnt impressed by its villain.
His decadence, his narcissism comes across in his artistic style.
Which is to say: He has none.
Like fascists throughout history, he just builds things big, real big,hugein fact.
He builds big pyramids, and he builds big statues of himself and of his Horsemen.
Apocalypse wants to enslave humanity, but not for the reasons people usually want to enslave people.
Apocalypse doesnt reallyneedanything; he even builds his own pyramids.
Conventional Western history used to hold that the actual pyramids were built by slaves.
Not coincidentally, Apocalypse thinks he is a god.
(Do any of these people hang out with people whoarentsuperpeople anymore?)
Everything the protagonist has done feels like for something like goodness.
It is strongly implied that he has inaugurated a new utopian age on Earth.
Yet the tone is not quite triumphant.
Miracleman has lost something essential.
He only hangs out with superpeople.
How does he pass the time?
He builds in the ruins.
He is a god, dammit, and he will build his goddamned pyramid.
