Billionaires Fight Illegal Aliens Jesus and Amazon

Contrary to popular critical opinion, perhaps, I think "Man of Steel" (2013) did well to establish Superman as the antithesis of Batman. The Metropolis Marvel a refugee and migrant "Dreamer" embarking on a career in journalism--y'know, when not doing his caped messiah thing. And the Gotham Bat a plutocratic billionaire who beats poors and brands them in the cover of night with the zeal he might otherwise market the WayneCorp brand during the day. In the aftermath of DC's intergalactic 9/11 brought on by Kal-El's inadvertent chain migration, Bruce Wayne and another billionaire, Lex Luthor, take turns placing the blame for the atrocity on this hardworking immigrant Sun-god raised in Kansas and christened Clark Kent. (Note that Batty doesn't dare brand one of his own.) Reactionary, entitled titans of industry that they are, when not competing for finite resources (oil, vibranium, kryptonite, whatever), they try to extrajudicially murder the one guy who can get in the way of their making a buck. They even adopt the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, and Wayne tries to use "fuzzy math" to prove his Iraq War theorem on Superman: "...if we believe there's even a 1% chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty, and we have to destroy him." All the while, they're unaware that another illegal migrant, an Amazon, has been in their midst for the past century. Classic battle of nativism versus diversity, corporations and the working class, money against gods.

Intriguing class-warfare scenario though it is from corporate overlords Time Warner (now under the domain of former-trust-but-totally-not-one-now multinational conglomerate holding company AT&T), with the inevitable olive branch of billionaire working with poors to conquer other billionaire (i.e. buy tickets and streaming subscriptions for DCEU movies, not Disney MCU ones)--down with the duopoly; long live the monopoly--"Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" does its utmost to muck all of that up. As LexCorp CEO, Jesse Eisenberg seems to think he's doing a sequel to "The Social Network" (2010). A Democratic senator from Kentucky is so 1990s. While the meta-human thesis kind of works as analogous to home-grown terrorists, all of it and that dream of Wayne's is needless franchise-building filler. (Will have to see the Zack Snyder cut of "Justice League" (2017) to see if any of it ever even makes sense.)

Meanwhile, as evidenced by the "Ultimate Edition" cut of this burger, executives saw fit to have Snyder cut for theatrical release some of the junk about the poors instead. Scenes of Lois Lane and Kent working as actual reporters: cut. Naming poor photographer Jimmy Olson: cut. More screen time for the Nairobi woman: cut. Another female character: cut. Making sense of how Superman could be framed for shooting people--including by torching them afterwards, which, yeah, because why would Superman use guns instead of laser eyes: cut. To be fair, though, the Snyder cut has the same major problems as the theatrical version, but with a more-bloated runtime. There's more lousy franchise building; too much of troll from "The Hobbit" trilogy meets Ninja Turtle meets Abomination from "The Incredible Hulk" (2008), the Frankenstein kaiju "Doomsday;" there's still those awful sky beams and energy blasts we must endure in every other superhero flick; too much Eisenberg; too many stupid things for Ben Affleck to quip--"Why did you say that name!"

But, I don't care how many times they do it, Superman still works in my book as an alien Christ figure, and this one actually does rather well exploring that beyond merely posing him in a crucifixion position and resurrecting him. And, sure, the super-battles are a lot of punching and pushing, plus noisy kabooms and Snyder's penchant for slow-mo and snap zooms, but that's what we came for, if not for the action being too long and not especially original in construction.... Wonder Woman is fun, though. "Is She with You?," or the Woman Woman theme music, from Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL 's soundtrack is great. Gal Gadot steals the show, and Wonder Woman saved this cinematic universe, such as it is now, from the overly-maligned, but still flawed, "Man of Steel" and "Batman v Superman," through the justifiably-rubbished "Suicide Squad" (2016) and "Justice League." Time now to honor our corporate overlords by reviewing "Wonder Woman" (2017) in anticipation of the upcoming sequel.