I think this illustration by Diego Patiño for The New Yorker’s review of Zack Snyder’s new “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice” is terrific:
The review itself, written by the notoriously dismissive staff reviewer Anthony Lane, is actually not as savagely critical as most (though it hardly recommends it). As of today, the movie is scoring an abysmal 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. (It did gangbusters at the box office though.) I was initially somewhat intrigued by it, but with these reviews, I really wonder if I have the stamina.
It’s shocking to me how incompetent Warner Bros. has been at handling the Superman franchise for the past several decades, and now they’ve dragged the Batman franchise into the same mess, as if misery would benefit from company. This is the golden age of comic book movies, and the company has at least three of the most iconic comic book characters in history to work with… and the best they can do is Zack Snyder. What a colossal waste not just of capital and human resources, but also of the collective dreams of millions of fans.
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