I watched Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Ultimate Edition two weeks ago, and must now make a confession: I rather liked it.

For those keeping score at home, this runs counter to my reaction to the theatrical release. The Blu-Ray felt like a completely different movie. Instead of being a gritty eyesore smeared brownly by disappointing portrayals of beloved characters, it was a compelling vision inviting me to distrust the shining, iconic gods of the DC Comics mythos, and then to hold out hope that these paragons of power might earn my trust again in future films.

Not everyone will have the reaction I did, and the stronger people feel about their Bats and Supes, the less likely it will be for them to join me over here. I tried to explain my thoughts to Jim Zub at GenCon, but the conversation did not go well. He punished me by forcing me to riff on “Deadpool” rhymes¹ all weekend.

I believe that the biggest reason the Ultimate Edition works is that key scenes are just a few seconds longer, allowing them to play all the way to their emotional payoff. Consider: the plot of a film can be communicated, start to finish, with trailer-sized snippets. The result will have zero heart because none of the characters will be on-screen long enough to earn the right to resonate with the viewer. As the snippets are lengthened enough to become scenes, and as the scenes are further fleshed out and allowed to become complete, the skeletal plot of the film becomes a story, and the story grows in power until it crosses some threshold and actually works.

In the theatrical release there is a scene where Clark steps, fully-dressed, into the bathtub with Lois. In the Ultimate edition he undresses, and Lois responds to this, to him, with passion. It’s not a full-on “naked-time” scene, but it succeeds where the theatrical release failed: it convinces me not just that they are in love, but that their love is deep, abiding, and above all important.

The Ultimate Edition also adds lots of completely new scenes, and I think the folks laying it out may have punched the colors up just a bit from the sepia-shifted pallor I suffered through in the theater. For all their work on the principal film, my favorite part of the Blu-Ray was the featurette on the history of Wonder Woman. I watched that and for the first time felt just how important a character she is, and how critical it is to our culture that her next big-screen portrayal be done well.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Ultimate Edition accomplished what I did not think was possible: it got me excited about what’s coming from the DC Comics movies in the next couple of years.

¹ JIM: “He’s an assassin, and he loves his oatmeal”
ME: “Wait, what?”
JIM: “Deadgruel.”

If you love Star Trek, I’m reasonably confident you’ll love Star Trek Beyond.

For reasons whose explanations would require spoilers¹, I did not quite love the movie, but I certainly liked it a lot. Sandra loved it unconditionally. It’s certainly worth the price of the movie ticket and the popcorn, and if friends were intent upon dragging me out to see it with them, I wouldn’t play dead-weight and force them to work for it. I’d walk along quite happily.

Star Trek Beyond enters my list just below the Threshold of Awesome, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing it again on Blu-Ray, and it’s quite possible that I’ll consider it completely awesome at that point.

¹I’ll hide the spoilers over here.

There was no crossing of the streams, but there has been a crossing of my Threshold of Awesome.

I had a blast at Ghostbusters. There was a little bit of a pacing drag at around the midpoint, and a few of the jokes didn’t fire for me, but in most places the film was kind of perfect.

My biggest concern going into the film was that Leslie Jones’ character was going to be the stereotypically “street smart” character. My worry was based on a snippet of her dialog in the trailer, and I’m pleased to spoil a teency bit of the film by telling you that those lines read quite a bit differently in context.

Of secondary concern was the sound. Specifically, the sound of that lawsuit-worthy walking bass riff, the one that became the audio signature of Ghostbusters back in 1984. Good news! We get plenty of that riff in the film. We also get lots of new stuff, and I find it all much more pleasing to the ear now that I know there’s coexistence rather than replacement.

I had exactly no concern that Paul Feig would give us a fun movie. He and Melissa McCarthy opened a solid line of credit with me last year with Spy, and I’m delighted to announce that the balance has been paid. Whatever their next joint is, I’m in.

If I’m to quibble about anything, it would have to be the scenes with misplaced focus. Kate McKinnon’s character, Holtzmann, usually was not the focal point of shots where the four Ghostbusters are interacting, but she was by far the most interesting person to watch. It’s as if there’s an entirely different story being told from her point of view.

This isn’t much of a quibble, really. I figured out pretty early on that I didn’t want to miss what Holtzmann was doing in each scene, and I was rewarded for paying attention.

And on the subject of not missing things, the entire credits sequence is entertaining. Don’t leave. Stay in the theater until the lights come up.

I’d love to write a much longer post offering a critical analysis of differences and similarities between the 1984’s Ghostbusters and the 2016 remake/reboot, but regrettably I am made of meat, not time. All I can say at this point is that the craft of cinema has come a long way. The new film is very tightly written¹, and provides lots of wonderful SFX in strong service of the story.

¹For me the 1984 Ghostbusters film plays like a concatenation of good Saturday Night Live sketches. The seams are pretty well polished down, but the sketch-comedy aspect is visible. The 2016 Ghostbusters film feels “through-composed.” When I say that it is “tightly written,” I mean that the story feels like it was structured first to work like a story, and carefully refined in that regard, and then the comedic bits were punched up as appropriate.