How dull can you get?
27 September 2019
Braun is pleased with his work according to the BTS short subject on the useless Disk Two of this DVD set, even praising himself for award-worthy content. He talks about how many takes he shoots and the long days required to reach the level of quality he demands from his cast. But the 2-1/2 hour feature ripoff of DC comics and Warner Bros. film presented here is embarrassingly poor.

The NonSex cut on Disk Two runs nearly an hour, encapsuling Braun's overwritten, deadly dull dialog scenes. His frequent unsubtle references to the Trump presidency ring hollow in this porn context - perhaps a Larry Flynt Hustler production with some real bite would have been the proper venue.

Cheap sets, dim lighting (the Bat Cave doesn't even look like a cave and seems to have been designed for a radio play rather than a motion picture) and declamatory acting compete with some lame jabs at comic book plotting and porn mentality. But as usual, Braun's sex scenes are mechanical and tedious, leading to Romi Rain as Wonder Woman having a gang-bang to climax the picture.

Talent gets to hide behind their masks, such as Charlotte Stokley as Batwoman, whose face we only get to see in the BTS. The late August Ames, who died the year this feature was released, is listed prominently in the credits but I didn't spot her, probably due to the masks.

As far as technique, Braun apparently never learned the rudimentary elements of filmmaking, as evidenced in a simple reverse-shot conversation between Tyler Nixon as The Flash and a wooden Giovanni Francesco as Batman, in which the edits consistently cross the center line, causing the actors' heads to jump back and forth right and left across the screen, a flub one's taught to avoid in Film School 101.
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