10 @ a Time - Batman v Superman, Part 17

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Part Seventeen: Men Are Still Good

Welcome to the seventeenth installment of “10 @ a Time: Batman v Superman.” Last week we bore witness to the death of Superman. Today, we fall so that we learn to pick ourselves up.

[For those playing the home game, we’re looking at the “Ultimate Edition” home video release; for today’s 10@T installment, we’re looking from 2:43:20 to 2:54:40.]

At the end of the road, we can probably agree – whether you liked the film or not – that Zack Snyder is a pretty bold filmmaker. Batman v Superman is unconventional in a number of ways, difficult and obscure in places, but it’s his film. Hatchet-job theatrical version aside, there’s little question that this was the film he wanted to make; like its first protagonist (and the accidental hero of Watchmen, Rorschach), Snyder has not compromised, has not made easy and safe choices. There were many roads to Justice League, and I can’t say that very many filmmakers would have taken this one.

Does anyone else get a Godfather, Part II vibe from this shot?

To wit, Batman v Superman – in a sense the last film before Justice League (since Wonder Woman is set 100 years earlier, while Suicide Squad is its own disconnected thing) – ends with a ten-minute funeral for Superman. It’s especially jarring when considering that the Marvel movies have always played it a little bit safe, largely leaving its toys in the box for a future installment. (And I would say they do this indirectly as well, by creating a recurring narrative atmosphere where death is eminently impermanent and reversible. How many permanent, significant deaths are there in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? I can only think of two...) This is not to say that DC is somehow better than Marvel, or that Marvel is not as serious as DC, but it illustrates a major and significant difference between the two universes’ overall tones, between the tastes they leave in a moviegoer’s mouth. But as we’ll see, the death of Superman is not a fatalistic moment. There’s a promise for the future, a legacy to live up to. There’s hope.

Come to think of it, though, Batman v Superman actually ends with two funerals, one for Superman and one for Clark Kent, both set to the haunting protracted notes of Hans Zimmer’s score. “They don’t know how to honor him, except as a soldier,” Diana remarks of the former – and now that we’ve seen Wonder Woman, we can read this scene retrospectively, since she’s had her fair share of mourning fallen soldiers who meant something more than their military might. The Metropolis funeral, by the way, is straight out of World Without a Superman, the comic book sequel to The Death of Superman, from the mournful parade to the black coffin with the silver S insignia (which recalls also the Kryptonian Regeneration Matrix from The Return of Superman, which placed our hero in a black version of his suit with a silver S). Superman gets a full military funeral, with bagpipes and a cannon salute, and it’s also an echo of the way the film began – remember? Batman v Superman begins with the funeral of the Waynes, and the fall of the cannon shells recalls an identical shot of the bullets fired from Joe Chill’s gun. The film began with a funeral, the fall of Bruce Wayne into the dirt, and the rise of Batman; the film ends with a funeral, the lowering of Superman into the dirt, and the rise of…? I’ll get to that in a moment.

"Welcome to the planet."

Superman gets a military funeral – a national hero, finally accepted by a country that never understood him, that realized only too late what they had lost – but Clark Kent’s funeral is more intimate, more emotional than the staid state funeral. To those who say that Batman v Superman has no heart, no soul, here are ten minutes that prove those claims false. No one does painful sobs like Diane Lane, and Lois’s discovery of the wedding ring is as touching a beat as any. (Sidebar: how great is it that Clark hid the ring with Ma Kent because he knew Lois was too good a journalist not to find it? She’s been ten steps ahead of the dudes in this movie, anyway, and it’s a nice callback to her hiding the bullet from Clark.) There’s a tender shot, too, of Lois gazing at the planets hanging from the ceiling of Clark’s childhood bedroom. I’m not quite sure what to make of this shot, but to me it’s a moment when Lois contemplates the loneliness Clark must have felt – he came from the stars and made his way to earth, but he must have always felt that he never truly belonged. At the same time, though, it’s a moment when Lois is among the stars, joining Superman “in the sun” as his father anticipated.

It’s unbelievably frustrating to me – and I’m sure Zack Snyder intended this – that mankind only appreciates Superman after he’s gone. “If you seek his monument, look around you,” reads the inscription at the site where Superman fell, but that’s twice now that Superman has saved Metropolis without so much as a thank-you. By the same token, though, the film has been making this argument for the better part of three hours now that human nature needs these heroic examples to lift us out of the fallen pits of our souls and to take us to the light. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the person of Bruce Wayne, whose literal fall into the cave of bats prefigures his spiritual fall into dark knighthood. Put another way, this film (and Bruce’s character arc) is the journey from “How many good guys are left?” to “Men are still good.”

"The bell cannot be unrung!"

In fact, I believe we can locate the precise moment when Bruce learns Superman’s lesson and begins to claw his way toward the light. When Diana asks him why she thinks there’s a fight coming, Bruce gives a little shrug and replies, “Just a feeling.” This funeral, then, takes place after Batman visits Lex Luthor in prison. Batman is downright scary in the prison scene, which plays so much better in the Ultimate Edition. In this sequence we start to see Batman move away from the cruel punitive vigilante of the rest of the film and toward a more classical Batman – dare I say, a kinder, gentler Batman. He’s met with Lex Luthor’s same old schemes and taunts; the Ultimate Edition restores a great Lex line with “This is how it all caves in. Civilization on the WAYNE. MANORS out the window.” Strikingly, though, Batman almost brands Lex but thinks twice; he stares into the abyss and flinches, recoils at the notion of continuing this cycle of mad violence. Instead, Batman becomes the planner; he reveals that he’s arranged to send Lex to Arkham Asylum. “I still have friends there,” he observes to Lex, who’s floored that his plan to plead insanity has just landed him in Batman’s checkmate. When Batman leaves Lex alive and unharmed, here’s the true dawn of justice, an end to the “new rules” Alfred had decried. Batman has, finally, learned his lesson.

If Justice League has the lighter tone its trailers seem to promise, I don’t think it’ll be a radical course-correction based on the wider public reception of Batman v Superman. If anything, this sequence demonstrates those seeds already being sown. Batman v Superman is the second act in Jor-El’s prophecy: “They will stumble; they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun.” Until then, though, mankind has time to raise itself – or rather, to allow itself to be lifted by Superman’s example. “Men are still good,” Bruce opines; “We fight. We kill. We betray one another. But we can rebuild. We can do better. We will. We have to.” It’s worth noting that Jack Kirby once said something similar: “We can do better. We want to do better. [. . .] We can be the people we lionize.” With Kirby’s creations taking center stage as the Apokoliptian antagonists of Justice League, we would do well to remember The King’s words. After all, they are the backbone for why these characters have endured for as long as they have.

As for those aforementioned antagonists, we know it’ll be Steppenwolf, the uncle of Darkseid – and I can’t imagine we won’t get some sort of acknowledgement of Darkseid himself in the film. “He’s hungry, he’s found us, and he’s coming” does, after all, sound like the description of a despot, not his avuncular advance guard. Notice, too, that Lex Luthor has finally inverted that painting in his father’s study, but it doesn’t illustrate the example of Superman like he intended; it foreshadows the arrival of Darkseid’s forces, demons from “out in the dark, among the stars.” As Lex repeats “ding ding ding” ad infinitum, it’s not the ramblings of a madman; I’d venture a guess that Lex is repeating what he learned from the pinprick hologram of Steppenwolf, the ping sounds of the Mother Boxes.

Fortunately, mankind will be ready. Bruce and Diana agree to assemble the Justice League, and the shot of Bruce leaving the Smallville cemetery is more than a little like the shots of him entering the Knightmare and leaving Wayne Manor on Fight Night. But this time, he’s framed dead center in the screen; he’s properly aligned now, walking not toward apocalypse or death but on his way to redemption. And then, finally, there’s the matter of the coffin. It’s nearly infinitesimal, but the dirt on the coffin – the dirt Lois had just dropped moments ago, into the grave that is never filled in – begins to levitate ever so slightly just before the screen cuts to black. From Man of Steel, we know that this is a side effect of flying Kryptonians; we see it happen during the “Flight” scene and when Zod is mastering his flight by shedding his armor. And in case the last frames aren’t clear enough, the Ultimate Edition restores a few lines of dialogue at the funeral, where the priest reads Isaiah 26:19, which includes the words “The dead shall live.” Like Christ and Arthur, this hero will rise again when his people need him most. The haunting protracted notes of Hans Zimmer’s score give way to a reprise of the codex theme, a Kryptonian mystery motif that begins with two telltale notes – the heartbeat of the Superman?

"Tear up the planks!--here, here!"

Next time – wait, there’s a next time? But the movie’s over! No post-credits sequence, but an enterprise of seventeen weeks deserves a postmortem. And so we return and begin again.

Observations and Annotations

• The Ultimate Edition also restores Pete Ross, an apparently grown-up Lana Lang, and the pastor from Man of Steel’s Gethsemane moment. The Ultimate Edition also makes clear that the Daily Planet staff attended the funeral.
• Of course, Batman v Superman ends with the same funeral with which Suicide Squad begins – a surprising spoiler a mere five months later.
• I have a hard time hearing bagpipes play “Amazing Grace” without thinking of The Departed, but that’s probably just me.
• In the Ultimate Edition, Pete Ross says the funeral was paid for by an anonymous donor. It’s Bruce Wayne, of course, lurking just beyond the treeline. Does this mean Lois Lane knows Bruce is Batman, then? There’s no way she doesn’t recognize Diana as Wonder Woman, unless we’re meant to believe she didn’t notice either hero at the funeral.
• Lex Luthor’s prison number is AC231940, a reference to Action Comics #23 (1940), in which Lex Luthor made his comic book debut.