The Zack Snyder-helmed DC cinematic universe has proven extraordinarily divisive. Many despise the director’s blue-tinted ultra-macho take on the series, full of serious men growling about dying gods; others, well, like all that blue dying-god shit. But we’re not here to re-litigate the problems or virtues of Man Of Steel or Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice or even Suicide Squad, which Snyder didn’t helm but still somehow infected, in his way; we are here to dream of the ’90s, when fandoms were monocultures and John Cusack was a viable starring candidate for an action film.
ChiefBrodyRules’ imagining of a mid-’90s Batman V Superman is charmingly convincing, all the way down to its VHS fidelity, with scan-lines, inelegant “Prop. Of Warner Bros” stamp, and its fuzzy response to today’s bass-heavy soundtrack pulses. But the casting is where the video really shines, with Cusack as Superman, Bruce Willis as Batman, Jennifer Connelly as Lois Lane, a ’90s Gene Hackman still holding down Lex Luthor, and, in the most inspired casting, Denzel Washington as Commissioner Gordon. Its soundtrack would likely feature a Spin Doctors B-side as well as a soaring Sting ballad that would top the charts for months straight, because that’s how things worked back in the glorious, halcyon, monocultural ’90s.