"Superman" Jesus, "Batman" Paul and the pinnacle of Zack Snyder's audio-visual mythmaking

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2016)

Snyder in the "Batman v Superman", perhaps, reached the pinnacle of his mythmaking work. In the "300" he has mostly stylized the "West-East" mythical dichotomy. In the "Watchmen" he has deconstructed modern mythological pantheon of comics' pseudo-pagan "deities". However in the "Man of Steel", and in the "300"sequel Zack has not simply played with a myths, but has tried to turn a myths into effective tool to represent to mass audience real political problems and the genuine myth.
Mythology, long driven underground by rationalism and forced to act using guerrilla methods, appearing in popular culture in the forms of a "scientific" evolutionism, a "scientific" communism and racism, pacifism, humanism and democracy, nihilism and relativism, religious rites, is now boldly enters the scene through the comic book heroes, reviving the pagan pantheon.
Zack has used this modern manifestation of mythology as means to achieve something bigger. Although Christian symbolism was quite timid in the "Man of Steel", pulled into the myth by smuggling, the question of price of democracy in the sequel of "300" sounds quite vocally. But the new "Superman" audio-visually claims to be a complete mythological picture of the world - stunning spectacle with "grim realism" connected with excellent music and an explicitly referenced to the passion of Christ. Here we can see theodicy - "if God is all powerful, why does he allow evil?" - and allusions to rejection of Christ, His sacrifice, perversion of good and evil in today's world, demons putted in the place of angels, the fall of the world, which declared that "God is dead" and summoned demons under the guise of humanitarianism, to an unprecedented evil, hope for good and resurrection, and even the new Saul - Paul - embodied in Batman. Politics is not circumvented in the movie too: here is your "useful idiot" depicted by Holly Hunter, who believes in stuff like that good and evil are determined through dialogue, and here is degeneration of democracy into the rule of mob, regulated like a stream of water at the tap by mass media.
So, we have a full-grown modern myth, and it is pointless to try to criticize a myth from the standpoint of logic - a myth is not based on logical constructs, but on facts and imagination. A myth is a holistic view of reality, not its analytical description. Thus negative critical reviews looks ridiculous - whether those critics are furious because of Christian symbolism, or because of satirizing depicture of the left-liberal useful idiots - they are trying to deconstruct an audiovisual concept on words and letters which are not there, claiming a violation of rules of construction of non-existent sentences. Myths are immune to such kind of criticism, and the critics only expose themselves to be fools, set out to chop up the wind.
Snyder was able to deliver what he wanted to with his myth - he took advantage of modern mythology to undermine its own pagan foundations, dragging in it and actualizing Christianity with its complex ontological questions and insisting on the absolute good and evil, contrary to the beliefs in "dialogue" by left-liberal useful idiots. All these are contained in a beautiful, fascinating mythological form, realistic, gloomy, dynamic and visually stunning. With great score and a wonderful selection of actors - cynical Affleck, ironic Irons, detached Cavill, natural Adams, convinced Eisenberg and antic cold Gadot - all are in their due places.