Pics From BATMAN V SUPERMAN’s “Long Dark Night Of The Soul And Whatnot”
The new issue of Entertainment Weekly has Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the cover, and within its pages new images from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice* as well as a couple of quotes from the lead actors - including a great one from Ben Affleck about how dour Gotham City looks in this movie:
“When it was supposed to look rainy and miserable, it had to be rainy and miserable,” says Affleck. “The long dark night of the soul and whatnot.”
He also compares Batman to Hamlet, in a meta way:
“Batman is basically the American version of Hamlet,” Affleck says. “We accept that he’s played by actors with different interpretations.”
Fair enough! On to the pictures:
There it is, the long dark night of the soul and whatnot!
Affleck says that this movie will be very different from Daredevil because of what Marvel has accomplished in the intervening years.
“That was before people realized you could make these movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘Put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the check.’
“They really learned how to make this stuff work. Good is the new bad.”
Breaking: movie will be good, not bad!
It's Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne, meeting in their civilian identities. I believe this is a Lex Luthor fundraiser where Clark Kent also makes an appearance. Intriguingly Affleck says that these two characters already know each others' secrets in this scene.
Henry Cavill says that while Man of Steel was about Clark's perspective on humanity, BvS is more about the world's perspective on Superman. Here their perspective is wanting to squeeze the Charmin.
Here is a shot of Lex Luthor in his days as a member of Temple of the Dog. According to EW he loses his hair in the movie, hopefully in a scene exactly like the original comics, wherein Superboy blows out a chemical fire in Luthor's lab with his superbreath, dousing the young scientist with exotic chemicals that embalden him and creating a lifelong enmity.
The face-to-face. I think it's worth noting that even in the comics it is always sort of ludicrous that Batman could hold his own against Superman for more than a second. Superman could blow him away with his breath here, or melt his glowy eyes shut with his heat vision, or just flick his finger and make the guy into paste. Half the fun of these battles is seeing how the writers manage to rationalize the fight lasting longer than a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Stephen Hawking.
And here's your cover, with the characters presented in truer color than the previous released images. I really hate the white background here; something about this makes it all seem bright and cheap in the wrong way. The lighting is too stark as well. I am not sure that I've ever liked an EW cover reveal, if we're being honest.
* Perhaps the long process of making and distributing this movie - they announced it two years ago! - is partially to allow us to become acclimatized to this ponderous and silly movie title.
