ZodsSnappedNeck has (almost) everyone giggling.

YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann accidentally inspired a meme—and a bit of an uproar—after posting alternative versions of Batman v. Superman’s most infamous scenes.

Stuckmann’s four-page script, which he posted on Twitter over the weekend, contains new takes on the first confrontation and the final resolution between the two at-odds heroes.

https://twitter.com/Chris_Stuckmann/status/721417846610198528

Some of the suggested changes were pretty smart, like making Batman and Superman’s unification more about Batman’s character journey than the “Martha” business. But there was one line that’s taken on a life of its own.

“Tell that to Zod’s snapped neck.”

Fans went crazy over that single piece of Batman dialogue, inspired by the fan-dividing scene at the end of Man of Steel where Superman broke General Zod’s neck. #ZodsSnappedNeck inspired tons of memes. Someone started a designated Twitter account. The Suicide Squadcast did a dramatic reading on its most recent podcast. There’s even a change.org petition to have someone’s neck snapped in Suicide Squad—although it only has three signatures right now.

https://twitter.com/ZodzSnappedNeck/status/721551908381401088

Stuckmann admitted several times in an interview with Daily Dot that his script was a “stupid rewrite,” more glorified fan fiction than anything else, and that he’s been enjoying the humorous response on Twitter. He said the “Zod’s snapped neck” line was designed to give Batman some silly wit. After all, humor was one of the biggest elements missing from Batman v Superman. It’s one of the reasons Suicide Squad reshoots are rumored to be making it funnier, although director David Ayer denied it.

“I understand that Batman is a dark character and I have no problem with seriousness in a film like that, but I thought there were tongue-in-cheek opportunities that they missed,” Stuckmann said. “Do I want a Joel Schumacher film, with nonstop jokes? Of course not, but even darker films like The Dark Knight were very funny at times.”

Stuckmann insisted the script only took 20 minutes and isn’t supposed to be taken seriously, but that hasn’t stop some hardcore DC fans from lashing out, criticizing his screenwriting skills and his general opinions about the film, which Stuckmann called “kind of average” with some highs and lows. It’s no surprise, since the film has more people picking sides than Captain America: Civil War. It’s been so divisive that CinemaBlend published an entire article about how the staff couldn’t agree on whether the film was any good.

It seems easy to agree, however, that #ZodsSnappedNeck is the newest treasure in the DC Comics universe.

When the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) debuted with Man of Steel in 2013, it was already playing catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The Avengers had recently whetted our appetites for big superhero crossovers. As such, we got Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice before we’d even been introduced to a new iteration of Batman. Nearly ten years later, we’re preparing to say goodbye to the DCEU in favour of James Gunn’s latest project as the head of newly-created DC Studios, but they’re still doing the same thing. Spider-Man: No Way Home created its own legacy as a film that held the power to bring audiences back into cinemas at a time when a lot of us were still worried about the consequences of going to see a film during a pandemic, and what The Flash seems to have taken from that is a message that we need more multiverses and more cameos than ever before.

From the very beginning, The Flash feels like a cynical cash-in. On the strength of the premise alone, it becomes little more than just another film in a long line of DCEU projects trying to have a stab at something that the MCU has recently done to some applause. Weirdly enough, though, it’s actually alright.

The Flash’s story starts by framing Barry Allen’s The Flash (Ezra Miller) as a kind of low-level member of the Justice League who Alfred (Jeremy Irons) turns to when everyone else is busy. There’s a disaster going on a few blocks away that only he’s available to help with, so he does with some comedy segments of varying success interspersed. He’s essentially the nerdy kid who’s just happy to be there, and a lot of relatability comes with that as we see him performing extraordinary actions in order to save a bunch of babies falling from a higher-level floor in a multi-storey hospital. Admittedly, this sequence in particular is an example of one that perhaps tries a bit too hard for laughs, but restraint is shown where it matters.

We get into the multiverse stuff because The Flash himself has a multitude of reasons to need to. His mother (Maribel Verdú) was murdered when he was a child, and his father (Ron Livingston) was wrongly sent to prison for it. When Barry discovers that he has the ability to run so fast that he can time travel, of course he wants to go back to change it all. The method is farfetched, but the character’s motivation is absolutely reasonable and believable. That can’t always be said of the actions that precede a multiversal adventure.

The big cameo coming into this one was the return of Michael Keaton as Batman, and his appearance does indeed go as far as it possibly can. We get all of the sets and the visuals from Tim Burton’s 1989 classic, along with snippets of the score and a gallery of batsuits. The biggest relief of The Flash though, is just how aware it seems to be of the purpose its cameos are serving.

The idea of worlds colliding so that we can see our favourite heroes on screen with one another can easily and quite quickly begin to feel tacky. There are only so many times a film can deliberately elicit the kind of emotion that makes a packed cinema say “Oh!” in unison before it begins to feel manipulative. The way that The Flash avoids that is by keeping those moments in the realms of tribute above anything else. It feels as if we’re seeing these different worlds as a way to pay respect to them, and it never veers far away from that.

Most importantly, The Flash is a superhero movie that does more than just the required lot of providing us with a fun, good time. By exploring Barry’s backstory – the tragic events that he went through as a child and the trauma that’s still developing to this day – it tells the kind of story that rarely makes its way into a blockbuster with so much thought. Not only is it a decent action movie, but it carries the spine of a devastating tearjerker too.

Some of the aesthetic choices are a little strange – all of the visuals that we see during the moments where Barry is time travelling are CGI reconstructions of real footage but stylised in a way where everything looks like plasticine. There’s an argument for why this might have been necessary – to make sure everyone and everything could share the same visual style in a certain context – but it’s so reminiscent of videogame cut scenes of the past that it just becomes distracting rather than immersive.

At the heart of The Flash there is a touching story about loss, grief, and our collective regret at not being able to do much about either. It’s just as heartbreaking as it is fun, and it constantly matches its adrenaline-fueled highs with emotional peaks which are every bit as effective. The Flash can be forgiven for some of its humour sometimes failing to land, and its CGI looking a bit weird when it does so much right in other areas.

Davie Village (also known as Davie District or simply Davie Street) is a neighbourhood in the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the home of the city’s gay subculture, and, as such, is often considered a gay village, or gaybourhood. Davie Village is centred on Davie Street and roughly includes the area between Burrard and Jervis streets. Davie Street—and, by extension, the Village—is named in honour of A.E.B. Davie, eighth Premier of British Columbia from 1887 to 1889; A.E.B’s brother Theodore was also Premier, from 1892 to 1895.

Along Davie Street are a variety of shops, restaurants, services, and hotels catering to a variety of customers, in addition to private residences. The business with the most notoriety is Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium (“Little Sister’s”), a gay and lesbian bookstore, because of its ongoing legal battles with Canada Customs that have received extensive national media coverage. Many businesses and residents along Davie Street and in the West End generally also fly rainbow flags as a symbol of gay pride, and many of the covered bus stop benches and garbage cans along Davie Street are painted bright pink.

The Village hosts a variety of events during the year, including the Davie Street Pride Festival which runs in conjunction with Vancouver’s annual Gay Pride Parade, during which sections of the street are closed to motor traffic.

Davie Day is also held each year in early September, to celebrate local businesses and the community itself. This Day is designed to build awareness and promote the surrounding businesses, and is focused around Jervis to Burrard Street.

The Davie Street Business Association coined the name “Davie Village” in 1999 and also commissioned banners from local artist Joe Average, which fly from lampposts in the district. The two-sided banners depict a rainbow flag on one side and a sun design by Average on the other.

Davie Village is also home to the offices of Xtra! West, a biweekly LGBT newspaper, Qmunity (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Centre) which provides a variety of services for the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender residents, and the Vancouver Pride Society, which puts on the annual Pride Parade and Festival.

The Garden Ring, also known as the “B” Ring (Russian: Садо́вое кольцо́, кольцо́ “Б”; transliteration: Sadovoye Koltso), is a circular ring road avenue around central Moscow, its course corresponding to what used to be the city ramparts surrounding Zemlyanoy Gorod in the 17th century. The Ring consists of seventeen individually named streets and fifteen squares. It has a circumference of 16 kilometers (9.9 mi). At its narrowest point, Krymsky Bridge, the Ring has six lanes. After finishing reconstruction, all sections of the Ring will not have more than 10 lanes. In 2018, more than 50 % of sections of the Garden Ring are reconstructed, including Zubovskaya square, which was the widest section, there were about 18 lanes before. The Ring emerged in the 1820s, replacing fortifications, in the form of ramparts, that were no longer of military value.

Episode 102 – Let’s take a look at the first Playstation console and a bunch of its games! What are some of your favorite games on the Playstation 1?

Tokyo, 2045: the city is abuzz about Moldiver, a mysterious unstoppable superhero fighting crime and posing up a storm. Pretty teenager Mirai Ozora (voiced by Yukana Nogami) discovers Moldiver is none other than older brother Hiroshi (Toshiyuki Morikawa), nerdy inventor of a high-tech super-suit. Equally ingenious and resourceful, Mirai hacks Hiroshi’s system to create her own sexy cheerleader-style super-suit able to fly, wield superhuman strength and render her pretty much invulnerable. As the self-styled Moldiver II, Mirai inadvertently lands in the right place time and again to foil the madcap schemes of Professor Machinegal and his army of android babes. Neither Mirai nor Hiroshi has any clue their arch-nemesis is really Hiroshi’s mentor and the city’s benevolent scientist-cum-architect-at-large, Professor Amagi (Jouji Yanami). Then there is their happy-go-lucky kid brother Nozomu (Rica Matsumoto) who seems smarter than both of them and harbours his own secret agenda.

Long before My Hero Academia became a worldwide phenomenon the fan favourite Moldiver delivered a distinctly anime take on superheroes: bright, colourful and fun. Among a slew of anime well-funded studio Pioneer produced throughout the early-to-mid-Nineties, the six-part serial showcases intricate world-building (the painstaking attention to technical detail goes beyond what is expected of such a frothy affair and proves part of its appeal), engaging characters and well-animated, breakneck superhero action. What it lacks in substance Moldiver makes up for with ingenuity and charm. Kei Wakakusa’s appealing sci-fi lounge score is also an asset with its hilarious take on John Williams’ Superman theme whenever Mirai springs into action. Plus a J-pop theme song that is infernally catchy (“We have perfect physiques, we’re cunning and sleek! Go, Moldiver, go go!”).

The script, credited to director and character designer Hiroyuki Kitamura with input from co-writers Ryoei Tsukimura and Manabu Nakamura, is a perfect example of fast-paced, rock-solid storytelling that puts many of today’s long-winded superhero sagas to shame. It also boasts a pleasingly quirky sense of humour. The first episode has a technical mishap gender-swap the superhero siblings’ alter-egos while an ongoing gag has ostensible lead Hiroshi always just that little bit too late before kid sister Mirai springs into action. One of the funniest jokes has semi-sympathetic villain Prof. Machinegal forever fretting about property damage since his daytime alter-ego Amagi has to foot the reconstruction bill after every super battle.

Typically for the period, Moldiver has a Carry On-like saucy streak: milking a lot of gags out of shapely Mirai’s unfortunate tendency to wind up buck naked whenever the time limit runs out on her super-suit. Yet Kitazume counterbalances all the lingering cheesecake shots by crafting a smart, intuitive and resourceful heroine whose bickering relationship with Hiroshi is fundamentally loving and supportive. A romantic subplot with Mirai constantly vying with gal pal/love rival Mao Shirase (Akiko Hiramatsu) for the affections of hunky astronaut Karu turns out to have a deeper connection to the main story than viewers initially suspect. It leads to an unashamedly girly, but disarmingly lyrical and affecting climax juxtaposed with a standout outer space action sequence where Mirai fights two enemies atop a runaway space shuttle. Then takes on a satellite weapon. Despite strangely glossing over a key character’s willingness to murder innocent people, including his own family, the plot’s central mystery is intriguingly ambiguous as neither Mirai nor Hiroshi cotton on to the budding sociopath in their midst. Not your average superhero spoof.