A 'Batman v. Superman' Fan Edit is Making 'Man of Steel' Good in Retrospect
All that pointless destruction wasn't pointless.
Man of Steel wasn’t good. There are things to like about it, but overall it was dull and tonally ill-fitting to the idea of who Superman is and should be.
The colossal destruction of Metropolis remains a divisive point; it was calculated by BuzzFeed and Watson Technical Consulting and they estimated Superman and Zod’s slapfest cost nearly $2 trillion in damage, killed 129,000 people, displaced nearly 250,000, and left almost a million injured. Some Superman he was.
It was off-putting at the time and was roundly criticized for aping 9/11 to achieve easy blockbuster scale, but now it’s clear that was the point. How do you get Batman and Superman to fight before becoming bros to form the Justice League in 2017? Zack Snyder has chosen xenophobia: Batman believes Superman’s existence to be a threat to mankind, and only he has the power to kick him out the door.
A clever YouTube user has tapped into that angle and created this awesome edit that shows the different points of view that scene provides in Man of Steel and next year’s Batman v. Superman.
In less than two minutesm I’ve changed my opinion of Man of Steel. It still deserves its criticisms, but now there’s a little more texture. This destruction isn’t going unnoticed, and it’s in fact birthing tension between two of pop culture’s finest characters.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is set for release on March 25, 2016.
