Move mistakes come in many forms. Sometimes it's plot holes or continuity errors, other times it's just poor judgement by the filmmakers. When it comes to superhero movies, there's a long history of questionable decisions that have made us roll our eyes and throw popcorn at the screen. So many in fact that we decided to limit our list of facepalm inducing moments to films based on DC properties.
Green Lantern - CGI suit
In 2011, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe was ramping up towards the Avengers and Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy was winding down, DC was in need of another franchise, their attempt came in the form of The Green Lantern. Unfortunately it failed to meet expectations and the sequel was scrapped. Some blamed this on the overuse of CGI, particularly in regards to the Green Lantern’s suit. One of the fun parts of live action superhero movies is seeing their costumes brought to life, but the Green Lantern’s was just animated onto Ryan Reynolds, a fact he makes a dig at in Deadpool when Wade Wilson stipulates that his super suit can’t be green… or animated.
Dark Knight Rises - Where’s The Dark Knight?
When audiences go into a Batman movie there are certain things they expect to see: cool villains, a grimy Gotham city, the batmobile, but above all, Batman! Bruce Wayne hung up his cape in the previous film, so we knew we’d have to wait for events to force him to suit up again, and Nolan stretches that anticipation for as long as possible, only to have Batman defeated and start another road to recovery. If you breakdown Batman’s screen time, he’s only in about 30 minutes of the movie, which is actually pretty close to Batman’s screen time in the other films, but when you consider that The Dark Knight Rises is the longest Batman movie, running 2 hrs and 45 minutes, that’s a lot of time spent without the story’s hero. Seriously, I’ve seen bread rise faster than this Dark Knight.
Man of Steel - Jonathan Kent’s Death Scene
Remember that scene in Austin Powers when the security guard doesn’t get out of the way of the slow moving steamroller? This is what it felt like when watching Kevin Costner’s death scene in Man of Steel. Sure the tornado was moving faster than a steamroller, and it was a powerful scene where Clark had to choose not to use his powers to save his father, but the way the scene was constructed it looks like he doesn’t even try to save himself. Perhaps Jonathan Kent had his own demons he just wanted to escape. In Zack Snyder’s dreary universe, this isn’t that far fetched.
Batman v Superman - Have we met?
When Batman and Superman meet in the comics or animated films, they’re usually able to deduce one another’s secret identities rather quickly. For some reason they decided not to take this route in Dawn of Justice while also adding elements that made it even less plausible. Batman is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, and in this story he’s already been focussing on Superman for two years when he meets Clark Kent, yet even he’s unable to connect the dots. And even though Kent is a journalist for a major news corporation, he doesn’t have any clue who billionaire Bruce Wayne is when he meets him. Superman also apparently respects Batman’s privacy by choosing not to use his X-ray vision to look through Batman’s mask. If they knew who each other were, they could have bonded over having moms with same last name long before almost killing each other.
DCEU - Too Little, Too Late?
One of the biggest issues with first two official DCEU movies is that they feel very rushed. With the failure of Superman Returns and the Green Lantern, and the conclusion of the Dark Knight trilogy, DC needed desperately to create something that competed with with the MCU. Superman was supposed to have a second standalone film before introducing Batman, but after the lukewarm reception Man of Steel got, they needed to bring out the big guns. Even though these first two films were mediocre at best, there are already 11 more films in various stages of development that will expand on this universe. DC is really putting the cart in front of the horse here in an obvious attempt to catch up with what Marvel has achieved, here’s hoping that rushed productions don’t result in more DC disappointment.