About ‘Batman v Superman’…

Earlier today, Warner Bros finally announced the title of the upcoming Man of Steel sequel, which we all know would co-star Ben Affleck as Batman and do the  legwork for setting up the Justice League movie that will come out a year later. As a lifelong comic book nerd and especially a Superman fan, I of course had an immediate reaction upon hearing the title Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. So rather than go over it time and again, I thought I would say it here, once, for posterity:

The internet is absolutely full of assholes.

I happened to be at work when the title was announced, so I didn’t see it until later in the day, more than enough time for every nugget-brained, mouth-breathing, soulless, spiteful, hateful jackass on the plant to crawl out of the woodwork and start hurling invectives at Warner Bros, at DC Comics, and especially, at each other. Because, you see, knowing the title of a movie is pretty much the same thing as seeing the finished product, as we all learned from Naked Lunch.

A short collection of the kind of comments I found, except with better spelling, because it’s almost the end of the school year and I can’t bear to torture my brain by attempting to accurately emulate the comments of these people:

• “This sucks.”
• “This just proves it’s gonna be The Dark Knight Returns. This sucks.”
• “Gal Gadot is too skinny to be Wonder Woman. This sucks.”
• “STUPIIIIIIIIIID.”
• “This just proves it’s not gonna be a Man of Steel sequel. This sucks.”
• “Something something pretentious, I’m going to go back and watch Tree of Life.”

And so forth.

Now I want to be clear here, I’m not writing anything in defense of the movie. That would be impossible. Because the damn movie has not been made yet. There is literally nothing to defend. Principal photography began, literally, this week. Yet this hasn’t stopped pretty much the entire internet from vomiting out the contents of its gall bladder into the ether.

To be fair, the defenders of the film were, in many cases, just as inarticulate. Phrases such as “not a true fan” were thrown around, which is frankly just as noxious a term as “fake geek girl” to me. If there’s anything less possible to predict than the quality of a movie that has not yet been filmed, it’s the inner devotion of a person to an idea, concept, or fandom. Or to simplify that, just because someone doesn’t feel the same way about a franchise as you do doesn’t make them any less of a fan.

For some time now, I’ve found myself getting more and more irritated with fandom in general, at least its online iteration, because it seems quite clear that the only thing anyone is interested in spewing is negativity. String theory posits that every possible title for this movie was actually selected in some alternate universe or another, because all possibilities are reality somewhere in quantum space. However, I promise you, in every parallel reality it’s mostly the same people bitching and moaning about the title for a movie that — again, I remind you — they have not seen yet. A small sampling of whining jackasses from other planes of existence:

• “World’s Finest? Sounds pretentious.”
• “Superman V Batman? What, Affleck doesn’t get top billing?”
• “Man of Steel 2? What, they couldn’t be more original than that?”
• “Gal Gadot is too skinny to be Wonder Woman. This sucks.”

So allow me to make this simple. You haven’t seen the movie. So you don’t know. That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed an opinion. It just means that if you have no intention but to hiss clouds of venomous mist in the direction of anybody who has the audacity to be excited for the movie, I really don’t want to hear a single syllable out of you. It means that if you honestly believe you know all there is to know about this movie just from the title and the tidbits of information released so far, you’re an idiot. It means that if you think somebody else is less of a fan than you are because they don’t like the title, you’re an elitist snob. It means that if you’re actually so stupidly arrogant as to presuppose that there is nothing else to be discussed and your opinion is inviolate and unerring and that nothing will lodge you from your perch, do us all two favors. First, shut up, because you’re not going to contribute anything to the discussion. Second, when the movie comes out, don’t bother to see it, because you’ve already made up your damn mind two years ahead of time and nothing that anybody puts on that screen could possibly change it at this point, so why waste your time?

There. Rant over. Except to say that if I’m talking about you even a little, you need to grow the hell up.

Hmm? What did I actually think of the title? I actually quite like “Dawn of Justice,” but I’m not crazy about the “v” part, as it implies “versus.” A certain degree of conflict is inevitable, I suppose, I just hope it’s not the entire blueprint of the story.

See how easy that was? Try doing it like that some time.