Army of The Dead Shows Why BvS Martha Moment Makes Sense

Army of The Dead Shows Why BvS’ “Martha” Moment Makes Sense

Army of the Dead is a passion project for director Zack Snyder, so much so that the movie even addresses a common criticism of Batman v Superman.

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Army of The Dead Shows Why BvS Martha Moment Makes Sense

Army of the Dead features a classic Zack Snyder callback that proves the director’s infamous “Martha” moment from 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice makes way more sense than the fixes proposed its critics. Army of the Dead marks a return to the zombie genre for Zack Snyder after his 2004 action-horror debut, Dawn of the Dead (a remake of the ‘70s George A Romero classic of the same name).

Following the antics of a group of mercenaries tasked with performing a daring heist after a zombie outbreak (since money still matters in the movie’s post-apocalyptic setting), Army of the Dead is a bloody, brutal thrill ride that combines R-rated gore with pulse-pounding Ocean’s 11-style heist schemes. The Netflix release has earned Snyder some of his best reviews since its predecessor, but the embattled director still found time to justify (and maybe even poke a little fun at) the most controversial moment in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

When Nora Arnzeder’s Coyote shoots the abusive Burt Cummings in the leg he pleads for his life with a limp “please, I have a mother,” to which the icy Frenchwoman offers the offhand rebuttal “everyone has a mom, you c*nt.” What sounds like a throwaway quip, though, can also actually be read as a case of Snyder addressing an infamous moment in his 2016 outing Batman v Superman which earned almost as much criticism as Suicide Squad’s Jared Leto Joker. Late in the movie, the titular battle comes to an abrupt end when Batman stops trying to kill Superman after a battered Clark Kent implores him to “save Martha.” Many viewers felt that the moment was a regrettable, sentimental coincidence, but Army of the Dead proves that the scene wouldn’t have worked any other way.

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A lot of the criticism leveled against the Martha moment says the scene would have made more sense for Superman to say something along the lines of “save my mother” instead of “save Martha.” However, the point of the line is the fact that Batman exists because of a desire from Bruce to metaphorically “save Martha.” He may not always verbalize it that way, but the drive to don the Batsuit in the first place is one borne out of childhood trauma. Therefore, Superman saying her name would be a trigger for Bruce in a way that, like Army of the Dead points out, simply mentioning his mother would not be (especially because “Martha” was also the last word Bruce heard his father say as he died).

Hearing his mother’s name also makes Bruce realize how far off his path he is, to the point where another “Martha” is at risk of dying because of his actions. “I’ll make you a promise, Martha won’t die tonight” is the culmination of this arc, with Batman getting back on track and returning to heroics. The notion Superman has a mother wouldn’t be a shocking revelation to Batman, but the contextualization of his actions provided by Superman saying “you’re letting him kill Martha” strikes directly to the trauma defining Batman’s entire being. The emotional resonance of Bruce’s formative loss, its connection to the creation of Batman, and his fall from grace is lost if the moment were reduced to “mother” because, as Army of the Dead’s Coyote pithily informs Burt, “everyone has a mom.”

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/army-dead-proves-bvs-martha-moment-makes-sense/

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