Sometimes the Truth is Painful

This will mark the beginning of a whole series of posts where I will deal with different aspects of why I admire Batman v Superman. Please do not read any further if you haven't yet watched it, there are some major spoilers ahead.

Since I was alreeady thinking about Scrooged and the ghost of Christmas present and accidentally somebody on facebook commenting on a totally different issue also mentioned the ghost, my first post will deal with what most people see as one of the major flaws and why I love it - "Martha".

The whole trouble is that at this point things are happening so fast that some people do not get all of them. The initial situation is clear: Batman has struck down Superman and is about to kill him, when Superman tells him that Martha needs to be saved. Of course this name resonates in Batman/ Bruce Wayne - we even get a flashback for those who might have forgotten that this name featured at least twice in the movie already, with the nightmare scene really shocking a lot of people when I watched the movie - and it helps to sober him a little bit from the blind rage against Superman into which he had been talking himself all the time during their fight, like Superman doesn't know any fear or comparing his miserable childhood to Superman's supposedly better one. Yet since Superman is not fit to explain what Martha means to him, Batman rage returns even more violently. I imagined at that point that Batman thinks that Superman knows something about his personal trauma and might be taunting him. So who really saves the day is rather Lois Lane who finally solves the riddle and tells Batman that Martha is Superman's mother. And here comes the moment I love the most about this movie, the - like somebody called it - "what-the-fuck"- moment, and it must be painful to Batman, probably as painful as the Ghost of Christmas Present has been to Bill Murray's Frank Cross and on the inside it sort of made me laugh as hard. He has to realise what a damned fool he was because here is somebody who is crying out to his mortal enemy to save his mother. This person never ever would pose any threat to humanity, this person may not know fear, but it also knows no malice, this person believes in his, Batman's, inherent goodness.



And still yet this is not even the end of what is happening because undeservedly the blessings Batman gets out of it are even more. Finally he gets the chance to address his trauma, to make it good, this time Martha will not die. The least he should feel is enormously grateful to Superman and yes, he is his friend.