Batman V Superman: 8 Things That Need To Change To Make It Work

8. Drop The Wobblecam Theatrics

One thing that the Avengers saga has got right consistently is the choreography and direction of its fight scenes. They manage to balance the big wallops and bangs and crashes with character-development tidbits, and infuse the whole thing with a sense of clarity. Those wallops and bangs and crashes actually feel like they mean something when they land, which is an achievement. By contrast, Man Of Steel went for a mixed approach. Half of it was standard epic photography, but intermittently through the action scenes Snyder made a big deal of jacking Cloverfield and the Bourne trilogy's tactic of making it look like it was all filmed on a handheld camcorder, with lots of smash zooms and refocusing as a way of saying, "Guys, look: this is, like, totally relevant to these modern times because of, like, YouTube and the Twitter and, uh... is MySpace still relevant?" It's a clunky contrivance now rather than the fresh new direction it was ten years ago. There are ways of making your adaptation of fantastical source material feel grounded in reality without making your audience feel like they're watching the film while trapped in a washing machine, you know.