Late Batman v Superman Review (Ultimate Edition)

Yes, I know what you're thinking: "It's been about 3 months since Batman v Superman came out, why are you posting this now?" The same reason the makers of the movie just released the ultimate edition, I actually watched it this time.  Besides, give me a break, with all the bad criticism this movie got, I wasn't in a hurry to watch it and write a review about it, so I didn't. Thing is, I've watched the ultimate edition, which came out recently, and I felt the need to post a review on Strokes of Journalism because there are just so many things about this movie that need to be said, and while most have probably already been said, my most faithful readers might still want to hear what I thought about the movie and how the ultimate edition made me feel, having not watched the theatrical version beforehand. 

First of all, I want to point out I was very excited about this movie coming out. Whenit came out I had just had surgery so I couldn't go out and watch it when it was in theaters (I'm thankful for that now), but I was psyched about it coming out. I've been a fan of both Batman and Superman for a long time, and I have relatively recently become a fan of the comics, and the idea of having a movie of Batman meeting Superman (especiall knowing they're best friends and the leaders of the JLA and all) was a huge prospect for me and any other DC comics lover. All of this wait finally came to an end when the movie came out (or for me, more recently, when I actually watched the movie).

All of this waiting and expecting made it all the more painful when the critiques came out and they were so bad. I refused to read many of the reviews (good or bad), except for one or two from a site I frequent (and possibly will be writing for soon) called MoviePilot. By now I don't really remember what the article was about, but it talked about things like Doomsday not being spiky enough or us knowing Superman was going to die since the minute we heard the line "this is your Doomsday", among other things. Although I did notice these things and as a comic book nerd they bothered me a bit, I know the normal folks didn't even pay attention to those tiny details. However, there are many other reasons why Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was a disappointment, reasons we can all understand and say "yeah, it was bad", or "yeah, but I liked the movie despite those things" after hearing them. I must state that the lines that follow do contain spoilers for this movie, but I doubt that matters much anymore now that most people have watched it, even so, read at your own risk.

Plotlines, and another one, and another one... and another one.

Batman v Superman started with an interesting plotline, one I really enjoyed imagining how it would develop throughout the rest of the movie. It was basically a philosophical argument: Should superheroes be independent and not obey anybody, or should they be assigned to missions by the U.S  government? We see this everywhere, Clark is feeling guilty about people seeing him as a threat and starts doing good things to right his wrongs, Bruce doesn't really care what people say but he is attacked by the media (and especially the Daily Planet in the form of Clark Kent) and feared by people everywhere (does anyone else feel this could be solved with the Sokovia Accor—? oh, yeah, never mind, we know how that turned out). If the movie had just stuck to this plotline for at least 3/4 of the movie the way Civil War did, both the critics AND the general public would have liked it a lot more, but that is too much to ask from Zack Snyder, who is a comic book fan and obviously couldn't decide which story arcs from his favorite Batman and Superman comics he would follow so he chose the ten of them he liked the most.

Besides this plotline, the movie introduces you to a roller coaster of plotlines, some of which you might miss, but it's okay because before you can complain about it, you're already watching another plotline. It goes from The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, to philosophical argument, to Batman on being the best detective in the world (props to the movie for that, by the way, it is the one that has best depicted him as that), to Lex Luthor story, to Man of Steel pt. 2, to Bruce Wayne's personal struggles, back to The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, to Superman: Injustice Version, to Flashpoint/ DC Universe Rebirth (Not really sure what that huge plothole was), to Superman #201, to Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams, to Superman v Lex Luthor, to Batman v Superman, to "did we just become best friends?", to Man of Steel pt. 2 again, to Justice League movie, to the death of Superman, to Lord of The Rings style ending (yes, that style where it's 5 minutes away from ending for like an hour). There may be even more plotlines, but those are the basic ones I identified while watching the movie. This fact leads us to another one that the director apparently couldn't notice and everyone else at the studio was an idiot who couldn't point out to the director that so many plotlines were going to make the movie too long. That, or they did tell him and he just said "To hell with movies shorter than two hours".

Are we there yet?

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure 3 hours is way too long. I mean, sure it has worked for other movies, but those movies actually had to make it that long to tell the whole story, whilst Batman v Superman made it that long to tell the story we were getting familiar with, plus 15 more. Seriously, the makers of this movie don't know it is common to make second or third parts, so they put everything they could think of that would look good in a movie and left us with a long, somewhat boring comic book collection adaptated for the big screen. Many scenes in this movie could and should have been reduced to a line or two said by one of the main characters to save time. For example, the scene where Batman goes full black market and Superman goes full Injustice, having people bow down to him and prisoners underground could have been expressed by Bruce by saying "The image of him being a danger to the world haunts me at night" or something like that. The scene where Clark sees his dead dad in his pilgrimage to the mountain could have been represented by Superman showing up and saying he returned because in the mountain he saw his dad or something, anyways, totally unnecesary. Oh, and don't even get me started on  that scene where Diana opens the "metahuman" file Bruce sent her, and they casually show you the teasers for every one of the upcoming Justice League's members movies because why the heck not, right? Wrong. 

 I mean, seriously, whoever made the storyboard and script for this movie never considered shorter and to the point is better than long and unnecesary.

Always look on the bright side of life

Despite all the criticism this movie has gotten and all the flaws I and many others have pointed out about the film, it wasn't all bad. In fact, I enjoyed watching this movie, all the wait for it to come out and then not going to the theater to watch it had to pay off somehow, so I decided to adopt a good attitude while watching it. In my opinion it was far from being the best superhero movie of the year, but it wasn't the worst movie of the year either. It was just a movie that, handled properly, (and by someone other than Zack Snyder) could have been epic. That said, there are some salvageable parts, for example, as I mentioned before, Ben Affleck's depiction of Batman as the best detective in the world was overdue to be shown on the big screen, and I think it was done magestically. Lex Luthor, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is a true mastermind, and especially in the ultimate edition in which you understand his plan even better, you learn to respect him as a villain (one of the 4 or 5 in this movie, but pretty obviously the most important and influential one), although my all-time favorite Lex Luthor is still Michael Rosenbaum, I honestly liked Jesse Eisenberg's young Luthor more than Kevin Spacey's late 40s Luthor. 

Batman v Superman was an interesting movie, and I rate it at a 6/10 as a fan, and a 5/10 as a critic. I encourage everyone, if they can survive through the 3 hours the ultimate edition lasts, to watch it and make their own ideas about it. For now, you can just comment on what you thought of my review and have a laugh with a comment I'll leave down here from a user regarding the ultimate edition of Batman v Superman . Always keep learning.

Ball Kicking: 5 Reasons Why Soccer is The Best Sport in The World

 Sports are a worldwide language, you don’t need almost anything to like a sport, follow it, and pick a team you will be sympathizing with. Although we all like different sports, soccer just has a certain special feel to it, and throughout history, it has been proven over and over to be close to what we could call “The Best Sport in The World”. Once you get started in liking soccer, you will never let go of it, you will get old and tell stories to your grandkids about how the best player in the world was— well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Reason # 1: It is one of the oldest ones around

As history tells it, people have been playing games similar to soccer for a pretty long while, but the first mention of the word “Football” (yes, that’s its actual name) was in a Scottish statue, where it was being communicated to the population that the playing of this sport was being banned in all the land. It was the year 1424 when this happened, and King James I was ruling the parliament when they decided to ban soccer, and remind everybody that archery remained being the most playable sport at the time. This was not just because King James I was mad at soccer players for not letting him play, it was because of reasonable motives, like football being violent, unorganized, and attracted unwanted people to public places. What’re you going to do? Soccer is just so popular everybody wants to play it!

Reason # 2: Its massive popularity

Soccer has a huge amount of players all around the world (professional players, that is). They play almost in every country in the globe, and players all around the world just drive the masses crazy. According to the 2006 FIFA Big Count, the total amount of players in the world was reaching the impressive number of 265 million, reaching 270 million when including referees and match officials. Every single one of those players in the world has fans (them or their team), even if it is just their family, and with as many registered players as there are, it is only obvious to assume the number of fans is an even bigger number. If you’re looking to become a worldwide known athlete, your best bet is soccer, having more fans than any other sport in the face of the Earth. Everybody likes a good soccer game, they just love one with abundant goals, passes, and very good plays, and what we also love, is getting to be together one more time with our fellow fans and talk about, or support our team.

Reason # 3: It brings people together

That’s right folks, soccer is not just about the players, the coaches and the referees, it is about the fans, the people who travel miles and miles, who spend the money they had for their date to go watch, with their fellow fans, their favorite team playing a great game. There’s an interesting phenomenon with soccer, your two teams might be rivals, and you might have sworn not to get close to, or relate in some way to any fan of the other team, but as soon as the national team of your country plays, at least part of that hatred goes away, because now, you both want the same, and are pushing for the same feet to push the ball into the same goal. Soccer warms your heart and makes you forget your differences, kind of like Christmas, for normal people. Soccer could even make a war stop. Oh, you think I’m exaggerating it a bit? Well, not really, because this is exactly what happened in WWI, back in December 25^th 1914, when soldiers from both the German, and the British armies, warmed by the Christmas, and the soccer spirits, made a deal to turn the try-to-make-the-other-soldier-die-for-his-country mode (paraphrasing general Patton there) off for a couple of days. The story says the Germans started singing “Silent Night”, and when the British heard this, they joined them in singing. After this, they all proceeded to play a game of soccer there in the same place where, just hours ago, shots had been fired from side to side. Nobody complained about fouls or penalties, they just set their rifles, their helmets, and their willingness to fight aside, and played as if there was no war. That, friends, is the power of soccer, and if that does not make your eyes watery, you are just a Soccer Grinch or a hater.

Reason # 4: It used the name Soccer long before it was used for any other sport

Speaking of Soccer Grinches and haters, they will not like this but it is only the truth. Soccer was not always called soccer, but it was forced to adopt that name when less than a century ago, American Football started just being called Football. Football, on top of being a word used to describe soccer since long before American Football began to become popular, is more accurate to describe soccer than to describe American Football, because feet are used in at least 90% of the game, as opposed to American Football, where they are used in roughly 5/10% of the game. They could have named it something like American Handball, not so many people like handball anyways (they do, just not so much as soccer), or something like American Strategy Ball Game, or YardBall, which would have been more a descriptive name for such a sport (which by the way is a great sport, and I like too. No insult to American Football, its creators, or its fans intended). The truth is, people all around the world still call it Football, and it is because in many countries it is the most loved, or the official sport of the place. It is a great sport that can be played by people in all places, and good for all ages, especially for kids looking for a sport to practice professionally or on the side in the future.

Reason # 5: It is great for the new generations

There are a number of reasons why soccer can be great for kids and youths, however, many of these reasons are the same as in other sports, and it would not make a big difference mentioning them, but I will do my best to list the reasons that make soccer special.

Yes, soccer does make you fit, and it is a good exercise, but so are other sports, and in this area, swimming beats every other sport by much because you exercise every muscle in your body (or so my pediatrician used to say). However, what makes soccer such a great sport in the exercising area is that it teaches you techniques with your body that you won’t learn in any other sports, especially in your feet and legs. Since soccer is just a ball, and you controlling it, you have to move in ways you wouldn’t have to in other sports to outrun your rival. Also, soccer has no match in the creativity area, again since it is just you and the ball, you need to find creative ways to get the ball inside the goal and to prevent the other players from taking the ball from you while you are conducting it or passing it to a teammate. Soccer can also be great for when you need to learn a fun sport fast. Most other sports have a long set of rules you have to explain before the game begins, but with soccer, you pretty much just explain you have to score a goal, touching the ball with your feet only, and the rest you explain as the game develops. This ease to play the sport makes it much more fun for kids and young people who want to have a good time. You don’t need much to play it, it is basically just a ball, and two places which you will use as the goal lines, and you can just use rocks as the two sides of it. Kids and young people will enjoy this game very much.

So now you know it, soccer is the best sport in the world, and next time you want to try a new sport, or want to play something, pick soccer, you won’t regret it.