Movie time!
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So people will ask me all the time, Father Mike, did you see the new Batman vs. Superman movie?
a) yes b) what'd you think?
Here's what I thought. The movie's pretty thin.
There are some parts that don't make any sense whatsoever.
There are some elements that just, I'm like, "This is completely incoherent."
There's a villain, Lex Luthor, who just doesn't make sense.
There's all that. I'm not interested in that.
Because you can still make a fun movie that doesn't make any sense.
There's a bunch of them out there and I kind of like them sometimes.
Here's what I'm interested in. The character of Superman and the character of Batman.
Zack Snyder's Superman and Zack Snyder's Batman have the abilities of Batman and Superman.
The problem is this: They do not have the nobility of Batman and Superman.
This is the problem— but it's a problem with our culture.
Here's what I mean.
Dr. Leonard Sax wrote a book called Boys Adrift. He's a family physician and a psychologist.
In his book Boys Adrift, he points to this thing in our culture
where he says, We have a crisis in masculinity in our culture
where we have all these young men growing up and they have this strength
but they don't know what to do with it so they either diverge into two camps.
Either they become the brute, like the bully. I have all this strength, I have to do something with it.
I'm going to assert it over others.
Or we have what he calls "the slacker dude," the guy who's going to just dissipate his strength,
not use it for any real purpose other than just what he wants.
So we have all this strength, this rising masculinity, this rising strength
that's either used as a brute or used as a slacker.
That's what we see in Batman vs. Superman.
Superman is the slacker dude. He has all of this power.
You know it, throughout the movie is that there's all these God references, like everyone talks about God,
but they're talking about the ancient pagan Greek and Roman gods,
who had all this power, all this strength but were not good
and that's Zack Snyder's Superman. He has all this power but he's not good.
In fact, he doesn't even know what to do with his strength.
Superman has no idea WHY he's Superman.
He has no Why.
First movie, Man of Steel, at one point, he saves a busload of kids from drowning in a river
and his adoptive father Jonathan Kent is upset and Clark says, "Should I just let them die?"
And Jonathan Kent says, "I don't know. Maybe." Like, what?!? No! No, not at all.
In this new movie, at one point, Martha Kent's talking to Clark.
She says, "You know what, Clark? Be their hero or be their monument or don't be any of it.
You don't owe this world a damn thing."
So, you have this Superman who flies through this earth, not knowing how to use his strength.
He doesn't know what the good is. He might help if Lois is there and she needs saving.
He might help if his mom is there and she needs saving or he might not.
And that's the image: he's not good. Superman is not good in this movie.
He doesn't have a reason why he would want to serve someone else.
He kind of just lets his strength get wasted.
On the other hand, you have Batman. They said, "Oh, it's a darker Batman, a grittier Batman,"
and you're saying that in comparison to what is the "real Batman," who is a genius, who is dedicated,
who is focused, who is driven, who is broken, but BUT, who is good.
He's still good.
Now, here's the crazy thing about Zack Snyder's Batman is he tortures people, he's willing to kill people.
This new Batman is, as Alfred says, "is a good man that's become cruel."
We think, OK, wait a second. That's not that character. He's become a bully.
He doesn't use his strength necessarily to help. He uses his strength just in force.
And this is the problem.
We don't know what to do with our strength in our culture.
When it comes to things like truth, do we stand for truth?
No, truth is just opinion, just preference, what you happen to want.
Even there's allusions to that in the movie when the senator speaks, she talks about,
"No, no, no. We do the good based off what the people say," because why?
Because the good for us is simply what's useful.
The truth is what's preference or opinion.
And the good is what's useful, what we all agree on.
As opposed to, no, there's a truth and there's justice, there's goodness and those are worth fighting for.
The things that makes them heroes and not anti-heroes is that they choose the good,
but I think that Zack Snyder doesn't believe in such a thing as the truth or the good.
The reason when we tell these stories of heroes is not because we're trying to tell a real-life story.
We're trying to tell a story of what you could be.
This is what humanity could be,
so what you could do with your strength is you could serve people.
Superman is not a servant. He just kind of does what he wants.
With your strength, you could protect people.
Batman doesn't really protect people in this movie. He's just trying to kill someone:
Superman.
And it doesn't make any sense.
Is this the story that we want to tell our children? Is this the heroes that we want to present to our kids?
Now imagine, IMAGINE how compelling this would be
if you had a truly good Superman and a truly good Batman. Now, they're different goods.
Superman's good comes out of a place of love and a place of comfort and a place of family.
Batman's good comes out of a place of loss and a place of pain
but they both end up being good.
Imagine these two men, these two heroes that are essentially good
in the midst of a world that's forgotten what goodness is,
that would be a compelling, compelling story.
You and I, we're used to the stories of the bully. We're used to the stories of the slacker dude.
We're not familiar with the stories of those heroes who act like heroes always.
We're not used to living amongst saints, people who know what the good is and they choose it.
People who know what the truth is and they live it.
People who see other people and simply choose to serve them.
People who choose to use their strength, not to just lord it over anyone else or to beat them up,
but to help them.
And I think that's the message that gets lost in this movie.
This is unfortunate because...
there is that sweet fight scene at the end
of Batman clearing that room.
Dude! So good!
From all this here at Ascension Presents, my name's Father Mike.
God bless.