I thought Luthor was a disaster, but I seem to be in the minority on that. I thought he had no nuance, nothing particularly interesting about his character, and his ability to build pocket universes was some of the worst handwavium in a movie that used it copiously ("his parents' message was definitely real!" was somehow an even more egregious example).
I mean the OG superman film had Luthor outright calling himself "the greatest criminal mastermind." Superman Returns had the meme of Luthor screaming 'WRONG.'
And do we need to bring up Jesse Eisenberg?
If anything, this was the most nuanced Luthor yet IMO (movie wise - otherwise the TV versions reign supreme). The pocket universe thing is like pure silver and bronze age comic book style. I'm pretty sure I have an issue or two with Luthor possessing a pocket universe.
Krypto's role in the final Lex fight was the worst sort of Marvel bathos. The people I saw it with (who liked it a lot better than I did) even said it felt like a ripoff of the signature Hulk/Loki scene.
Bingo.
If anything I would say James Gunn is the midpoint between Whedon and the pale imitators.
Bathos is all about undercutting a serious moment. People forget, but Whedon knew how to let moments stand in stuff like Avengers. There were no jokes when Colson died (for an example) or when Bruce Banner is weighing his decisions. To also take your example, yeah the hulk/Loki moment is memorable, but what people seem to forget is part of why it works and is NOT bathos is that
Loki had already done his villain speeches. In fact, he had done them twice! (the famous "always men like you" scene and the interrogation scene with black widow) So when the moment happens and Loki is winding up for another one - we expect it (because writing rules of 3) but then Hulk undercuts it. It's a delightful subverted expectation because we don't need another speech by Loki - we're good at that point. Hulk is able to interrupt because that gives the audience something new from the scene.
The problem in Supes is that this is the first explanation of Luthor's motivation and his direct confrontation with Supes. It's something we have NOT had the entire movie and it's supposed to be a building payoff. The dog interrupting that is thus bathos and bullshit because he's denying the audience something we need - a character moment.
Yes, we see people turn on him, but we also see the revelation that all the online hatred was driven by the monkey farm. But some people clearly had genuine reactions to the news. I suspect a lot of this story element was cut. Getting bogged down in the intricacies of an internet cancellation has got to be a surefire way to turn your fun superhero movie into dull dogshit.
Bingo. Also the monkey farm doesn't even make sense in context of the movie. The point of the pocket universe is that it cuts people off from the main one. Mr. Terrific's trackers can't find Superman in it, right? So how are the monkeys posting to the Internet?
Speaking of much too fast reactions, I thought the whole Daily Planet story exposing Luthor's Boravian machinations was absolutely ridiculous. First of all, the world's reaction was even more rapid and on-the-nose than the "Superman is ackchually a Viltrumite" message. Second of all, this happened just as Metropolis was sliced in half by a runaway stream of antimatter. Nobody is going to care about what Luthor was up to in some third world shithole when both of those stories drop simultaneously.
Frankly, between the monkey farm and the rectitude of the Daily Planet's reporting, I thought there was a thread of "Trust traditional media, not this nasty online stuff!" that, considering it was being pushed by a guy who's got a whole lot of questionable stuff online, was about as subtle as a brick to the nuts.
Heh, I went with "Superman is ackchually a Saiyan" myself.
How you want to interpret it is up to you, but I think fundamentally it's just to give Superman's support cast something to do. The stories often have involvement with the Daily Planet crew needing something to do. I mean I found it hard to believe Hawkgirl was reading a newspaper in this day and age than a flying alien.
I think the thing with monkeys is based on the concept that an infinite number of monkeys each hitting keys at random would eventually churn out any given existing text, for example something by Shakespeare. Used in this context is weirdly stupid.
Actually it is a true thing that DC once had data that whenever a monkey was put on a cover, sales of a comic would go up. So there really is an old through line of monkeys in the DC universe where for the like 70s and 80s monkeys (and apes) were showing up on covers and issues with fair regularity.
Now I don't know how much Gunn knows of this - I do think you are probably along the same train of thought he was - but if he was researching DC comics and noticed monkeys came up a lot, well he wasn't wrong. At one point Superman even fought a giant monkey with kryptonite eye rays.
Thanks, I hate it. I wasn't going to see this anyway, but this is just dumb.
To think that this is the thrilling political commentary that Bob was cooming his pants over.
Then again, this is how the fat fuck believes the world works. That if everyone 'bad' just got murdered, the world would be perfect and he would be able to achieve all of his idiotic dreams.
It's one of the problems of introducing politics
in general into comics. (Why yes, I do have the Iraq War issue of JLA.) Start dealing with stuff like how a justice system would even work in a comic book world or treaties and borders and things start going pear shaped very fast. Everybody wants to see the bad guys get just deserts. But yeah there are very thorny issues that start arising.
If you want an example of why this stuff is radioactive (besides the old WW2 propaganda comics) - imagine Superman weighing in on abortion. Everyone loves to quote his line from this movie "people were going to die." Well you could justify him as endorsing either side of abortion with that same line. (If anything, his xray vision means he's probably even more sensitive to seeing fetuses get killed.) However you think he would come down on the issue, the important thing is to imagine he was on the opposite side of your position. And was threatening politicians physically to make policy in the direction he wants - not your wants.
Think about that honestly for a minute, and you'll see why superheroes getting involved in politics ruins the movies.
So Superman is Kristi Noem, if not Trump?
That is the ironic part that you could very easily interpret the film as Superman being Trump as him being Gunn. If anything it's far more about Trump because he's the one everyone is convinced is some great evil over out of context clips. Gunn just lost a job. Nobody shot at him.
violence ("METAPHORICALLY") against Trump voters, supporters, and staffers ("*In Minecraft", of course). See below:
