Saturday, September 24, 2011

Superman/Batman Apocalypse - Simple play-by-play review

Actually, the movie is about Supergirl.

The following review contains spoilers. Most of it was created while actually watching the film. In fact, this movie was so stupid I had to start talking about how stupid it was while I was watching it. It’s only partially polished because quite frankly I don’t want to spend too much time on it.
So I watched Superman/Batman Apocalypse.

I went in without any specific expectations. I sorta had a feeling it would have some good action of Batman and Superman fighting monsters created by Darkseid, maybe an annoying misstep here or there, a plot that was okay, dumb action, etc. I didn’t really think it would be smart, but it would be a nice superhero movie where I could turn my brain off and enjoy two classic superheroes fighting something.

But oh my god. I could’ve never expected this. I’m not even a huge comic book geek, and even I knew enough about the DC universe to know this was nonsense.

First of all, the movie basically centers on someone. Is it Batman? It starts in Gotham with Batman doing stuff, but no…not him. Superman? Not really. Is it…..about the villain Darkseid? Nope. The movie is centered all around Supergirl. Or Kara or whatever. 

Yeah, Supergirl crash landed on earth from some sort of Kryptonite meteor shower and Batman found her. She wakes up, freaks out, her powers go berserk because she can’t control them, and Batman represses her with Kryptonite then takes her in. Now Batman has already figured out that Kryptonite weakens her like it does Superman. Wouldn’t he figure she is also a Kryptonian like he is? I mean he’d at least have ideas in that general category. But he decides to run some scans and examine her anyway. I guess to be thorough. So to keep her from escaping or freaking out and attacking in confusion, he just puts some metal cuffs on the examination table and no Kryptonite at all. But if he does that and she wakes up and freaks out there’s nothing he can do to stop her. Guess what? She wakes up, freaks out, and there’s nothing he can do to stop her. Truly Batman is a genius.

Superman intervenes and stops her, and they start speaking what I can only assume is Kryptonian. I’ll get to that in a second. Later, they examine the markings on her spaceship to confirm her story that she’s Superman’s cousin. Batman also explains that she might be stronger than Superman due to her ability to absorb powers from the sun better. He says this might just be the fact that she’s younger than Superman. Um….how? Supergirl’s backstory is in this movie is that like Superman she was sent in a spaceship to Earth when Krypton was exploding, which is also when Superman was sent. Now the latter was just a baby when this was happening. Really little baby. How can there be such a huge age gap between them? And how does she remember that event when she was only a baby at the time? Superman was a baby too and he doesn’t remember.  Oh wait…..in her flashback I can see she has long legs and fully developed hands. But then that would make her older than Superman. But how? Was she in suspended animation the entire time? But they still say she’s younger than him….

Oh Christ the spinoff dog is in this too? What other annoying surprises are in this movie? 

And now after only a week she knows absolute perfect English. That’s nonsense. English is one of the toughest languages to learn, and the fact that Superman has to help her go from Kryptonian to English, which must be really complex, makes this process even more difficult. I doubt there’s a Kryptonian-English dictionary. Even if Superman was some sort of epic translator and multi-linguistic teacher he couldn’t get her to speak perfect English in only one week. 

And why are they even bothering with this Kryptonian language crap? You see, I’m sorta getting interested in animated stuff based on DC heroes since started I watching the Batman and Superman cartoon series from the 90’s. Er, when they were separate animated series. Well while I was watching the Superman cartoons I noticed that on Krypton everyone spoke English. Brainiac spoke English. Those two evil prisoners Superman freed from the Phantom Zone or whatever did too. I mean, the idea that Kryptonians speaking a different language initially is realistic and all, but if they just speak English off the bat then I probably wouldn’t nitpick it.

Cut to……a volcanic evil-looking planet. Some scantily clad warrior chick with a spear is fighting in an arena and gets killed by a gang of much tougher scantily clad warrior chicks. Subtle as a neon sign, DC. 

A montage about Supergirl learning how to act like an “Earth Girl”. Oh no. Oh god. She has a rabid interest in clothes and shoes even though she was never raised from childhood on “Earth Culture”? How am I supposed to believe that females of all species, human or alien, have some sort of natural genetic interest in shopping, clothes, and shoes? Of course, not only is it unbelievable but also incredibly annoying. Now they can’t use the “originally kryptonian-speaking is realistic” angle anymore. 

Wait did they both just call Batman “Grumpy Ass”? Actually that’s pretty funny. Gold star, DC. Okay, I do admit it’s starting to get better because they’re talking about how humans view Superman as their hero and Supergirl is asking questions about it. 

But then they get randomly attacked. In the process Supergirl’s eye lasers go nuts and tear up stuff. And her captor is…….Wonder Woman? Wut. Oh wait, Wonder Woman and Batman want to take her to the Amazon place so she can train to control her powers? And they’re not giving Superman any say in this? Well, I guess she does need the training. I suppose it makes sense. And we cut to…….oh right that’s why it doesn’t make sense. There are ancient buildings everywhere that are probably sacred to Wonder Woman and the Amazons or whatever. Wouldn’t it be a horrible tragedy if these wonderful ancient marvels of architecture were to somehow meet with an unfortunate eye laser accident? Couldn’t you take her somewhere a lot more isolated? Okay so now we’re in a society comprised entirely of warrior women on an isolated island or something. Again, subtle. Wow, Wonder Woman is kinda a bitch in this movie. Oh….oh no. She and Superman are acting like they’re divorced and Supergirl is their kid. I do give Supergirl or Kara or whatever points for saying she can decide for herself, and I take those points away for running away from her problems. Hey, Supergirl! Stand up for what you want and if Superman doesn’t like it he can go back to Metropolis or get his butt kicked by you and your “superior powers”. If you’re really such a big tough independent girl he should leave, not you.

So just for plot convenience now is the time a portal of Darkseid’s minions opens and spills out something called a Doomsday. Hey isn’t Doomsday that thing that beat the crap out of Superman that one time? In another recent movie? Boy, he was really tough in that movie. Almost impossible to kill. Oh man they’re going to have a really tough rematch. Oh wait…..oh wow there’s hundreds of clones of that guy! That’s ridiculous! There’s no way in hell they’ll be able to kill all of them if an entire movie was just dedicated to killing only one of them. Oh and now Batman has an axe? That’ll help. Well…..okay at least it’s not a gun. So now a bunch of amazons charge the Doomsdays and….okay before they begin let me guess. The Doomsdays are not that tough at all and they fall down just like a bunch of standard regular tough monsters instead of big-time movie villains. Yep, yep yep. Wow, this is really degrading to Superman when one Amazon warrior can just spear one and kill it. But to the movie’s credit, the sheer number of Doomsdays is more than the amazons can handle. And……oh god. Superman just slaughters them all with one mega eye beam blast. Why didn’t you do that at first? That could’ve saved all the lives of these great warriors. Were these stupid things intentionally weaker than the real deal? If so, then they aren’t clones and you shouldn’t call them that.

Oh no, Supergirl’s dead. How tragic….oh wait it’s that one Amazon friend of hers. Supergirl’s been captured by some old transvestite to fight in the arena. So they lock her in a cage and…..and Darkseid is in the cage as well? But his ego is so massive he would surely pick a far more creative place to talk to her in person, like on a throne or something. He offers her a position of power at his side and blah blah blah. 

So immediately after that we cut to………a middle-class suburb? Okay, where are they going with this? Okay, so it’s a defected former captain of Darkseid’s guard thing. Okay, what’s her story and will she put on clothes? How could she hear the doorbell if she was in the shower? So she really wants no involvement in this at all and…….oh wait her only condition is that she comes along for the ride. *sigh* There are bigger plotholes in this movie I guess. 

So they take a portal to the Darkseid planet or whatever and it looks like some sort of industrial hell. Wait….wait…..what’s that Batman’s carrying? What is that, a purple space bazooka (1:10)? No wait, it’s some sort of ridiculous-looking over-complicated jetpack. So the chick with the stupid-looking helmet Barda or whatever and Wonder Woman are now fighting those warrior chicks from the beginning. 

Okay, so 50 minutes into the movie and we’ve had one good superman fight scene, one okay batman fighting scene, but we have a lot of fighting involving Supergirl, amazons, and warrior chicks. What’s this movie called again? Superman/Batman Apocalypse? By the way I just invented a new soda. I’m going to call it Legend of Metroid: Ocarina of Prime. There are gummi Pikachus in the bottle.

So Batman blows up stuff that crushes dogs and breaks into a room filled with “Hellspores” whatever that is. According to Batman, they have enough power to blow into the planet’s core. And then a big dog thing breaks in and eats him. Shouldn’t they be more careful not to accidentally blow into the planet’s core? Are these things volatile? 

And more Amazon fighting. “Surrender now or the bitch dies.” Rofl. Oh my god that’s hysterical. So Darkseid’s throne is in a place that looks like a chapel or a temple and is surprisingly bright and holy-looking. Do I even need to explain that? And so now Supergirl has become his sex slave or something. Why do Darkseid’s and Superman’s faces look retarded? So now she’s become evil because…..? Um….desire for power? So the 90-year old transvestite thing gets tied up and tries to tempt Barda into killing her. The camera angles and music imply that this is a bad thing, but why in the hell would it be? Don’t tell me she’s gonna spare her. That’s stupid; she’s Darkseid’s general or something. 

When will Kara shut up? She wants to kill him right? So just kill him. Okay, so Batman’s now in a ridiculous armor thing and says he activated the encrypted codes to activate the hellspores or something and reprogrammed them. So Darkseid just tosses Batman around and Batman tells him to release Kara from his spell in exchange for Batman stopping the big boom. Darkseid agrees and says Batman can take the girl. He also says Batman is kinda evil inside to make such a bet. Um….aren’t you gonna make Batman hold up his end of the deal? Oh dammit she let the granny live. Darkseid just casually orders them to disarm the hellspores and leave. So wait it was a spell Kara was under? I thought she got drunk with power. Guess not.

So there is no fight against Darkseid. He just stands there except for those few moments when he beat up Batman. What a great and terrible monstrous villain. 

So it ends with Superman taking her to his parent’s house in Smallville. So Darkseid’s randomly in the Kent house and appears out of nowhere and blasts Superman. He came here for Superman not the girl. A final fight that comes out of nowhere? No buildup? Well he fights her anyway. Yeah the cows are okay too. This stupid crap has got to be a dream sequence or something. Wait so Darkseid knocked Superman nearly into the sun? Bah. Okay, they’ve got less than 8 minutes to kill Darkseid and so far he looks totally fine. Oh so in an instant superman beats up and blasts Darkseid up and stuff while he lasers half his face off. So they knock him into a portal and Superman tells him never to come back. They’re beat up but they’re both alive and fine. Oh they sent him somewhere deep into space where he freezes. Ohooho and the Kent parents was conveniently away the whole time. Oh and the house falls down. Oh how silly. So she gets the uniform and they fly off.

So I guess in summary my feelings throughout the film were “Please God, make it stop.” I think they mixed up this movie with DC’s other project “Kryptonians vs Amazons with a cameo appearance by Batman just cuz”. Damn, I gotta watch Under the Red Hood to blot out the memory and end the weekend on a high note.

No comments:

Post a Comment