Why am I always the last to hear about these things? I knew that Warners was still trying to figure out a Superman movie, and I’d heard that Batman: Year One was also on the drawing board (so to speak), but I hadn’t heard a ‘Batman vs. Superman’ flick was in the offing.
This is not going to be easy. Comics, especially in the last decade or two, have struggled with how to get these two icons to duke it out without the whole thing ending up as a smear of Bat-paste on the asphalt. Comics have the advantage of lots of static panels. Even cartoons (the “Worlds Finest” Batman/Superman crossover, for example) can get away with a lot of stuff that a live action film cannot.
The other problem is that — fanboy “look at the pretty CGI and other fx” rapture aside — I’ve found superhero films at their best when they are about character. Yeah, Spidey swinging around Manhattan was kind of fun, but what made Spider-Man a great movie was Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. What made Burton’s Batman great was Keaton’s psychodrama performance.
But Batman points out the danger here. It can be difficult in an action flick to give enough “character” time to a single lead role. Make it two lead roles, and you end up short-changing one or the other. Keaton’s Batman was overwhelmed by Nicholson’s screen time and scenery-chewing as the Joker. Dafoe was a supporting role as the Green Goblin, and did well at it, but, really, did we get to know about Norman Osborne all that well?
You might argue that everyone knows who Batman is, and everyone knows who Superman is, so you don’t need half the movie to develop their characters first. Well, yes, you do. Unless you’re going to concede that it’s just a big slug-fest between costumes, you have to provide the background to make the motivation behind the conflict click. “(Superman) is clear, bright, all that is noble and good, and Batman represents the dark, obsessive and vengeful side. They are two sides of the same coin and that is material for great drama,” says the new director for the project. That’s great — but you’re going to have to show it, explain it, make us believe it, before you start trying to make us believe the conflict (let alone believe that either Supes can out-think Bats, or Bats can out-fight Supes).
Tricky, especially if this thing has to be kept at 2 hours.