#also i bet u can guess from this fit alone which character in criminal minds i identify the most with lmaoooo

[sugared-violets]

local femme goes to the library + antique store incident, 3 killed 14 injured

[vera-invenire]

batman vs superman, pt 2

part one is here!

And we’re back at Luthor’s party where he’s giving a not at all significant speech about Prometheus, who stole from the gods, and the criminal injustice of having knowledge without power:

Bruce goes off to snoop around. Like five people clock Bruce as he oh so stealthily makes his way to Luthor’s servers.

Good job, Bruce.

Alfred, over the comm: “Maybe some girl from Metropolis will make him honest. Ha, in your dreams, Alfred.” I kind of love that this is Alfred’s defining character beat. He wants Bruce to have babies!

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the first clash between Bruce and Clark where we find out that these two men are Not Impressed with each others’ alter egos.

Bruce tries to brush Clark off, but Clark plays the upright Boy Scout and says some not nice things about Batman’s effect on the people of Gotham. This, Bruce will not take. He’s like, ‘little boy, you don’t know shit, you ESPECIALLY don’t know shit about Gotham, and also your city’s cape is a menace with good PR, now run along, son, and stop wasting my time.’ He actually calls Clark ‘son’ dismissively and, you know what, it fits.

Clark: “He (Batman) thinks he’s above the law,” well, now, that’s not hypocritical of you at all, Supes. Honestly, I’m with Bruce here.

Bruce: “Maybe it’s the Gotham City in me; we just have a bad history with freaks dressed like clowns.” Oh, burn. This is why you don’t diss Gotham in front of Bruce. Or imply that maybe Batman has a not so great effect on the city, possibly. Bruce will not take kindly to it.

“Boys! Bruce Wayne meets Clark Kent. I love it. I love bringing people together!” And here’s Luthor to butt in and give some fourth-wall breaking prattle.

Man, those two tower over him.

So Alfred has been talking with Bruce through an earpiece, coordinating the hack into Luthor’s systems. Clark, with his super hearing, has been picking up on Alfred’s voice over the comm and is like, ‘what the hell?’

Clark tails Bruce - he’s right behind Bruce, but Bruce doesn’t notice? - until a Spanish-language news report about a fire in Mexico catches his attention. Bruce continues on to where he left his hacking doohickey on Luthor’s server only to find, gasp, the doohickey is gone!

Bruce turns, and there’s the woman in red who has been walking mysteriously through the crowd all this time.

Yes, the dress is red. I know, it’s hard to tell. The colors are clearer on my TV screen than in the caps, to be fair.

“I can’t believe they’re going to let that poor girl die,” the news broadcast says, so Clark loosens his tie and leaves the premises. Alas, Diana also leaves the premises, giving Bruce the slip and leaving him all alone.

Clark saves the girl in Mexico. He’s greeted by an awed and reverent crowd of people in full Day of the Dead costume, all of them reaching out to touch him as if he were God.

No, I’m not making this up.

You know, somehow I feel like I’ve seen this before...

Ah, yes. It’s funny how the component parts of these scenes are so similar. Wonder how that happened. Like, what’s the underlying theme.

:/

Jump to a news/opinion show that straight up uses the words ‘savior’, ‘religion’, ‘messianic figure’ re: Superman.

(also apparently the Senator lady from Kentucky who’s been dragging Superman in public hearings is a Democrat. From Kentucky. The state of McConnell and Rand. Yeah, okay.)

(Why didn’t they just make her from Kansas, though. Smallville’s in Kasnas!)

Montage of news clips interspersed with Clark saving people from various disasters in slow-mo. Cameo by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

...and they copied Katrina footage. Of course they did. *eye-twitch*

I had just started my first week as a college freshman in New Orleans when Katrina hit and this bull - no, you know what. I’m not gonna talk about this. I will leave it at the *twitch*. A BIG TWITCH.

Moving on, Clark wants to do stories on Batman, but Perry’s like, ‘uh, no, you do your job and write the stories I tell you to write. What do you think this is, 1938.’ Wow, such a random year, wonder why that one came to mind, hmmmmmm.

This is Perry, unimpressed as ever with Clark’s hustle.

“Nobody cares about Clark Kent taking on the Batman.” Gee, then why’d you make a movie about it...

(They really do hang an awful lot of lampshades, re: the premise of this movie.)

Cut to the mysterious woman! She’s in a ridiculously classy-looking museum looking at Alexander the Great’s sword when, wouldn’t you know it, Bruce Wayne himself shows up to hover over her shoulder. Gasp.

I don’t think she’s impressed.

Bruce does some unprompted mansplaining about the sword - it’s a fake - only for the mysterious woman to cut him off because she knows perfectly well what she’s looking at and where the real one is. Take that, Brucie.

She tries to politely disengage, but Bruce follows and grabs her arm. You can see the moment where he nearly lost his hand, but this lady is too classy and forgiving to cause an exasperating scene.

He is o b l i v i o u s.

Bruce says she stole his doohickey and that wasn’t polite. She shoots back, ha, you were trying to doohickey your way in without permission, don’t talk to me about polite, only she says it in a much more elegant way.

We find out she’s looking for a photograph Luthor has in his possession, but she wasn’t able to crack Luthor’s encryption after all.

Bruce tries to smooth talk her.

This dialogue. Ugh.

Bruce, getting way too far in her personal space to murmur in her ear: “You know, I bet with that dress, 9 out of 10 men would let you get away with anything.”

“But you’re the 10th?” <--matter of fact, not impressed

“I’m guessing I’m the first (slight pause) to see through that babe-in-the-woods act.”

Bruce, the only reason you get laid is because you have money. And to think I was actually liking you more than Clark at this point. How is ‘Batman’ an easier person to like than ‘Bruce Wayne’, I ask you.

But really, what ‘babe-in-the-woods’ act??? This woman has been running circles around you and she’s been on screen for less than two minutes so far! She straight up told you her motive. She’s not playing innocent, she’s just not engaging your dumb ass when she doesn’t need to.

Bruce: “You don’t know me, but I’ve known a few women like you.”

Look at that smile. You don’t even need the next line of dialogue, the look says it all. “I don’t think you’ve ever known a woman like me.”

AND ALSO

“You know what, it’s true what they say about little boys. Born with no natural inclination to share.” She tugs his bowtie, no sexual tension.

She informs Bruce that she already returned the doohickey, it’s in the glove compartment of his car.

Then she walks away. He never even gets her name. (though she names him as she takes her leave and that’s an interesting power dynamic, yes.)

Bruce takes his dongle to his Bat Cave to crack the encryption, and then we suddenly cut to -

Holy post-apocalyptic!vision, Batman! (or daydream? who knows what goes on in Bruce’s head)

The city in front of him (Gotham? Metropolis?) is basically a ruined corpse of itself; huge pillars of firey death are scattered all around. Even Batman’s binoculars are cracked - it appears he’s fallen on some hard times.

A caravan of trucks that looks a mite sketchy pulls up, but surprise, looks like Batman is working with them. They’re delivering ‘the rock.’

Hm, looks a bit more like a bomb to me. Delivered in a LexCorp box to boot.

This is where I start really questioning this scene. Does Bruce know about kryptonite at this point? If he doesn’t, then where exactly is this vision coming from?

But wait!

Half of the guards kills the other half in a turn that’s actually very reminiscent of Lois’ escapades at the beginning of the movie. (Deliberate? Honestly can’t tell.)

And the turncoats? All wearing tactical gear with a big ole Superman ‘S’ patch on their shoulders.

Bruce goes ‘noooooo!’, enters the fight, takes one of their guns and starts shooting people with it while using another gun as a club.

I’m gonna be honest here, it’s not even that great of a fight scene. The random alien bugs that come out of nowhere (??? Bruce, if this is your imagination, I have questions) don’t help all that much.

...and Bruce just snapped a guy’s neck. Just to really drive the point home that this is the Bad Future of No Hope, I guess.

Bruce gets overwhelmed and knocked out. He wakes up to this.

And then this.

Look, the ‘must crush cockroach’ look is back!

The guards kneel to Clark as he does his murder-walk toward Bruce and the other prisoners. Said prisoners promptly get laser-visioned in half by Clark‘s murder-glare.

Clark unmasks Bruce. He says, “She was my world. And you took her from me.”

Then he - tears Bruce’s heart from his chest? Yes, yes, Bruce takes Clark’s heart, so Clark takes his. It’s painful and likely (haha, ‘likely’) fatal.

It also shocks Bruce back to his Bat Cave in the present day, but the fun’s not over yet!

Going by the half-assed facial hair, I’m assuming this is the Flash from the future. Which future, who knows. I don’t think he even knows, tbh. But future!Flash has a message to pass on.

“It’s Lois, Lois Lane, she’s the key.”

Bruce’s expression: who the fuck is Lois Lane. the key to fucking what. why is there a disembodied torso surrounded by lightening in my Bat Cave.

And then future!Flash is like, shit, shit, “am I too soon? fuck, I’m too soon.” But he doesn’t let this stop him from delivering the rest of his unhelpfully vague message:

“You’re right about him! You’ve always been right about him! Fear him! Fear him!”

So my question is, are we supposed to believe future!Flash gave Bruce this vision? Or that Bruce got a glimpse of the future as a side-effect of future!Flash showing up in his Bat Cave? The presence of Kryptonite in a LexCorp box makes it likely the vision wasn’t one of Bruce’s freaky nightmares if he doesn’t know Luthor has that yet. (though this movie has already shown him having troubling visions. unless, gasp, is the bat!mommy real, too?)

Future!Flash says, “Find us, you have to find us!” and then vanishes just in time for the Bat Computer to finish decrypting Luthor’s files. Bruce - assumes it’s all a dream? Who knows.

Next bit amps up the brewing conflict between Supes and the Bat. Clark gets a Mysterious Package with pictures of Bruce’s branded victims, calling him out for being judge, jury and executioner -

- while Bruce argues with Alfred about stealing kryptonite from a LexCorp ship to use against Superman. It’s a little unclear if he really thought the ship was carrying a dirty bomb at first and only just found out it was carrying kryptonite through Luthor’s files, or if he knew all along.

What is clear is that he really, really wants to take down Superman for the good of the millions of people Superman might otherwise kill. “If we believe there’s even a one percent chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty. And we have to destroy him.”

Alfred argues that Supes is not the enemy, Bruce says, yeah, not today. “Twenty years in Gotham - how many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?” Hi Harvey, Hi Jason.

One good thing about the early part of this convo is we find out that Bruce is shit at lying to Alfred. Because of course he is.

Alfred knows your tricks, Bruce, he taught you most of them.

Back at the Planet -

Perry: “KENT!! Where does he go. Where does he go?”

Reporter, walking away fast: “I don’t...I don’t know.”

Perry: “Clicks his heels three times, goes back to Kansas, I suppose.”

Brief scene of Lois clandestinely giving the Mysterious Government Bullet to a Senator, possibly to try and exonerate Superman. Scenes are getting shorter again.

And now we have Bats, being very dramatic at the docks.

Can you see him? He’s there. His cape is very flow-y, trust me on this.

Cue car chase to get Luthor’s rock. On the one hand, we get the Batmobile, Batman’s favorite accessory. On the other, he literally crushes, flips, and drags upside down cars while people are still in them. This isn’t even the Hell Future, it’s present day. The people behind this film aren’t even trying, are they.

...he just threw a car at another car while the mooks cried, ‘nooo!’ at their on-coming death.

Oh, and Batman has machine guns in the bumper of his car. But that’s okay because the mooks had a rocket launcher in their truck.

Bruce chases the nearly demolished truck, they’re getting away, he takes a sharp turn -

Uh-oh.

Clark’s here.

And he kicks Bruce’s car into a wall.

tbc...