For those who like their big-budget entertainments devoid of genuine fun and filled to brimming with gray-brown grimness, this might just make your day. According to THR, Warner Bros. is considering a 70mm release of their upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which looks like a big, steaming pile of...movie. The new movie will see Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman (Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, and Gal Gadot, respectively) facing off against Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor and, apparently, the incestual spawn of the Cloverfield monster and the Sarlacc that they're calling Doomsday.
In terms of narrative scope, this is exactly the kind of movie that would call for 70mm, and director Zack Snyder shot part of the film in 65mm, which would make for at least a handful of sequences with some interesting sense of space and perspective. That being said, Snyder has a simply inexcusable history of making movies that look like a mashed-up mountain of mud, grass clippings, and metal scraps, to say nothing of the heinously earnest focus he puts on 9/11-aping high-scale destruction and a tinny sense of realism. In short, his imagery does not gain any particular power from being seen on the big-screen, as a man who saw Man of Steel on the biggest screen in New York can tell you.
Even Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's deeply flawed yet fascinating science fiction adventure, had more to offer as a big-screen experience than the...things...that Snyder has been turning out. Snyder's style borrows equally from Nolan and Michael Bay, making for some of the most portentous visions that the last two decades have afforded, from 300 and Watchmen to the aforementioned Man of Steel and the borderline tolerable Dawn of the Dead remake. None of these movies would be any better or experiential on an IMAX screen, and the visuals gleaned from the footage released from Batman v Superman do not offer any evidence that this will be the exception. In fact, I've only seen one movie on 70mm thus far that has really benefited from the hugeness of the image, and that would be P.T. Anderson's sublime The Master, a film that features zero capes or monsters, and has a color scheme far more varied than the bare interior of a log cabin.
