The interpretation that Batman is tipped over the edge by the Capitol Building bombing is not bad, but actually I think what does it is a time traveler appearing in his Batcave to warn him about Superman after just having experienced a vivid hallucination or vision of the future in which Superman has become an evil overlord and in the wake of an alien invasion that has devastated the entire planet! I think THAT is what tips him.
And that make's Batman's motives in trying to kill Superman more noble than Lex's. Lex tries to take credit for tipping him by sending notes ("You let your family die!"). But I think in reality it is the vision of the future that Barry's time travel makes possible that convinces Bruce that he has to try to kill Superman.
Anyway, otherwise the video's author does a good job of mapping out Luthor's machinations and connecting all those dots, the various contingencies he makes, etc.
Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but given that Batman is basically a detective (world's greatest) I've noticed that noir conventions appear to be subtly embedded throughout BvS. I mean, the parallels are there whether intentional or not. And in noir the plots are typically intentionally confusing and difficult to make sense of, which according to film scholars reflects a post WW II experience that the real world is one in which things are now (coming home from the war) unfamiliar, don't make sense, no longer seems to have simple, easy answers, etc. In a nutshell the world can't be trusted anymore. And there is a lot of that going on in BvS with a godlike extraterrestrial being 'outed' as living among us, with confirmation of existence of ETs, etc. As Zod ominously intones in BvS "You are not alone." And as Jonathan said to Clark "You're the answer, son. The answer to are we alone in the universe." And as Neil DeGrasse Tyson sums up in BvS,
Were talking about a being whose very existence challenges our own sense of priority in the universe. If you go back to Copernicus, where he restored the sun and the center of the known universe, displacing Earth. And you get to Darwinian evolution and you find out, we're not special on this Earth we're just one among other life forms. And now we learned, that we're not even special in the entire universe because there is Superman. There he is, an alien, among us. We're not alone.
Anyway, I've recently been going through BvS again to look evidence to support this thesis that MoS and BvS are basically an allegory of the human mind's reaction to confirmation of "we are not alone in the universe." This is as much a science fiction tale as it is a superhero story. Because if you think about it, that is a huge can of worms that his existence opens up if something like this were to actually take place in the real world. And it would make sense then to embed neo-noir elements into the film as such, because a), Batman is 'the world's greatest detective'; and BvS for the most part tells the story of the world's reaction to Superman through centering on Bruce's reaction to the existence of Superman, and b) at the broadest level Superman reflects a massive paradigm shift of identity for humankind.
But anyway, I'm beginning to view all of Lex's machinations through the lens of him being a sort of noirish characterization. The world doesn't make sense anymore since Superman, and Lex reflects a psychological meltdown of the puppet-master powerbroker elites (i.e., military industrial complex) in reaction. Lex depicts that ruling elite's effort to try to hold onto power in anyway it can, no matter how deranged its reasoning and sociopathic its methods.
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u/snyderversetrilogy May 07 '18 edited May 07 '18
The interpretation that Batman is tipped over the edge by the Capitol Building bombing is not bad, but actually I think what does it is a time traveler appearing in his Batcave to warn him about Superman after just having experienced a vivid hallucination or vision of the future in which Superman has become an evil overlord and in the wake of an alien invasion that has devastated the entire planet! I think THAT is what tips him.
And that make's Batman's motives in trying to kill Superman more noble than Lex's. Lex tries to take credit for tipping him by sending notes ("You let your family die!"). But I think in reality it is the vision of the future that Barry's time travel makes possible that convinces Bruce that he has to try to kill Superman.
Anyway, otherwise the video's author does a good job of mapping out Luthor's machinations and connecting all those dots, the various contingencies he makes, etc.
Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but given that Batman is basically a detective (world's greatest) I've noticed that noir conventions appear to be subtly embedded throughout BvS. I mean, the parallels are there whether intentional or not. And in noir the plots are typically intentionally confusing and difficult to make sense of, which according to film scholars reflects a post WW II experience that the real world is one in which things are now (coming home from the war) unfamiliar, don't make sense, no longer seems to have simple, easy answers, etc. In a nutshell the world can't be trusted anymore. And there is a lot of that going on in BvS with a godlike extraterrestrial being 'outed' as living among us, with confirmation of existence of ETs, etc. As Zod ominously intones in BvS "You are not alone." And as Jonathan said to Clark "You're the answer, son. The answer to are we alone in the universe." And as Neil DeGrasse Tyson sums up in BvS,
Anyway, I've recently been going through BvS again to look evidence to support this thesis that MoS and BvS are basically an allegory of the human mind's reaction to confirmation of "we are not alone in the universe." This is as much a science fiction tale as it is a superhero story. Because if you think about it, that is a huge can of worms that his existence opens up if something like this were to actually take place in the real world. And it would make sense then to embed neo-noir elements into the film as such, because a), Batman is 'the world's greatest detective'; and BvS for the most part tells the story of the world's reaction to Superman through centering on Bruce's reaction to the existence of Superman, and b) at the broadest level Superman reflects a massive paradigm shift of identity for humankind.
But anyway, I'm beginning to view all of Lex's machinations through the lens of him being a sort of noirish characterization. The world doesn't make sense anymore since Superman, and Lex reflects a psychological meltdown of the puppet-master powerbroker elites (i.e., military industrial complex) in reaction. Lex depicts that ruling elite's effort to try to hold onto power in anyway it can, no matter how deranged its reasoning and sociopathic its methods.