You let your family die

[The Laughing Fish]

During the Capitol bombing scene, Bruce Wayne discovers that all of the funds he donated to former employee Wallace Keefe had been rejected, and according to his assistant Greg, Keefe had seemingly returned the cheques himself and scribbled all over them with taunts at Bruce. But little did Bruce know, the cheques had actually been intercepted by Lex Luthor, who manipulated Bruce emotionally in the heat of the horrific incident and controversy around Superman to fight him to a duel to the death. The last envelope returned to Bruce is a newspaper cut-out of the Metropolis incident reading "YOU LET YOUR FAMILY DIE"; setting him off in a fit of rage that he can't save the people he cares for.

My question is: could this scene have been more coherent? Without that half hour deleted footage of Lex manipulating everybody behind the scenes, it seems this scene was one out of many that went over a lot of people's heads. I had a discussion with somebody online last year who had mistakenly believed that Superman had intercepted all of the cheques and wrote those taunts at Bruce. If I had my criticism of this scene though, why would anybody believe that Keefe had rejected Bruce's help when Bruce was the one who saved him, and tried to take care of him once he became disabled?

[thecolorsblend]

There's really no accounting for stupidity. Lex openly confesses to everything in his scene with Lois, even quoting the "You let your family die" bit.

Apart from cutting to a black and white flashback of Lex deviously intercepting every single check and scrawling inflammatory messages on them before dropping them into a mailbox, I'm not sure what more Snyder could've done to implicate Lex in all that.

Some people are just stupid. I wish the answer was more nuanced than that; it's not.

[The Laughing Fish]

There's really no accounting for stupidity. Lex openly confesses to everything in his scene with Lois, even quoting the "You let your family die" bit.

Apart from cutting to a black and white flashback of Lex deviously intercepting every single check and scrawling inflammatory messages on them before dropping them into a mailbox, I'm not sure what more Snyder could've done to implicate Lex in all that.

Some people are just stupid. I wish the answer was more nuanced than that; it's not.

You may be right. Of course, I've argued with some people in the past year on other places such as YouTube (I know, I shouldn't waste my time with that site's comments section because it's an intellectual cesspool), and some people just want to pile on with lazy criticisms and don't care what the story was about. Of course, not everybody who didn't like the movie is a sheep, but it appears there's definitely a group think sheep mentality when it comes to all things DC.

Looking back at my earlier comment questioning why would anybody, including Bruce of all people, believe Keefe would reject his help, I believe the scene was less about logic and more about emotion. Let's face it, this movie gives us a lot of clues that Bruce suffered from PTSD, whether it may be mourning for his parents, the despair of the Metropolis chaos, and the tragedies of being let down by good people who either turned on him or died. Each moment expresses Bruce having a sinking feeling of hopelessness, frustration and despair of not being able to save anybody and just witness the tragedy unfold in front of him. As I said before, Lex manipulated Bruce emotionally, knowing that his damaged and paranoid psyche would distract him into this confrontation with Superman.

[Travesty]

Needs more deep seeded Nolan-esque exposition. And even then, people would be bewildered.

[The Laughing Fish]

Needs more deep seeded Nolan-esque exposition. And even then, people would be bewildered.

Who knows, you're probably right. Meanwhile, I've read some comments elsewhere by some people who couldn't stand that Batman was manipulated by Lex. I wonder if these people were upset when Batman was manipulated by nearly every villain in the Nolan trilogy? At least you can still argue that Batman's flaw in BvS was a part of his character development and he eventually woke up and realised who the true enemy was.