Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Dir. Zack Snyder
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It's the superhero match-up I've been waiting for since I was a kid: The Son of Krypton vs The Dark Knight! Two of the most iconic superheroes finally together on the big screen. Zack Snyder's Man of Steel got the ball rolling on DC's movie universe-building to keep up with the monster that Marvel Studios has created in recent years. It was met with mixed reactions, especially regarding the final battle between Superman and General Zod, where Supes took Zod on in a massive, city-destroying fist fight without much regard for the actual people in the buildings he was demolishing in the process. The film was crazily heavy-handed with 9/11 imagery, and longtime Superman fans took issue with his conflicted "kill for the greater good" morals. Although I was one of the few who really enjoyed Man of Steel and defended its alterations to Superman (after all, he was still "new" at being mankind's savior), Batman v. Superman had a lot riding against it already, as not only being a sequel to Man of Steel, but also an introduction to a new version of Batman only a few years after Chris Nolan's trilogy and a set-up for the upcoming Justice League film. While I was hoping Snyder would pull through, make the haters chew their words and rectify the problems in Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman just exacerbated them and basically turns into a complete mess by the end.

The big question most people have going into this is: why the heck are Batman and Superman fighting?! Aren't they supposed to be best buds? One of the few things the film gets right is why Batman is so pissed at Superman. Right away we see the same controversial final battle from Man of Steel, only from Bruce Wayne's perspective (kind of like how in Back to the Future 2 we see the same events from the first movie presented from a new angle), and it's clear why he wants this alien to bite the dust. There's a brutal scene where Wayne saves a little girl from being crushed by falling debris, and when he asks 'where's your mom?' she points up to a building that's completely destroyed. Motivation: solved.  Batman in general is handled well. Even the annoying parent-death scene that we've seen so many damn times over the years is shot in a beautifully "comic book-y" way over the opening credits. Affleck does a serviceable job with what he's given, though I still think Keaton and Bale give much more interesting performances (especially Bale, who feels similar to Clark Kent in that his "real" persona is more aligned with Batman and Bruce Wayne is the "mask" he puts on).

Superman on the other hand is still pretty bland. His motivation for hunting after Batman is so ridiculously half-assed it's unbelievable. I liked his dynamic in Man of Steel because for a while he chose not to fight; a lot of people took issue with Pa Kent's message to Clark that sometimes it's better to keep a low profile and the world may not be ready for a God-like savior. But now he's basically a celebrity, with his own statue, and is saving people left and right, though not everybody is happy about it. It's never clearly explained why Superman has it out for Batman - I guess because he's a vigilante? It comes across so strange that someone who's basically an all-powerful god is so upset over a seemingly petty criminal - who's pretty much doing the same thing he's doing, enforcing the law using super-powered means. Also, Lex Luthor devises one of the dumbest ultimatums ever for Superman to go after Batman, which I won't spoil, but between those two factors, I still didn't buy his motivation at all, and considering the letter "v" in the title, that's kind of a big deal.

Speaking of Lex Luthor, I appreciate that the filmmakers were trying something new with casting Mark Zuckerberg, but it didn't work for me. Jesse Eisenberg's weird ticks and mannerisms weren't menacing in the slightest and were often times cringe-worthy. He also has little motivation for doing his evil deeds. Why does he hate Superman and/or Batman? He just assumes anyone with power is evil. Also - if you hated the changes Snyder and Co. made with Superman in Man of Steel, you'll really hate how he messes with Batman. I typically don't mind when an artist takes liberties with source material and well-known characters, but to have Batman literally gun people down, snap bones, and brand his victims with a soldering bat symbol into their flesh was way too brutal, even for Batman standards. I can just imagine little kids playing "Batman" on the playground, branding each other with hot irons.

On top of those three leads, Batman v Superman is jammed full of characters shoe-horned in with almost nothing to do. Jeremy Irons certainly sounds and looks cool as Alfred, but we hardly get any time with him. Lois Lane exists just to have to be saved over and over by Superman. And Wonder Woman (Gal Godot), who everyone's been nervously waiting for, also does absolutely nothing, popping up once in a while just to remind us she's in the film. There's simply not enough for her to do here to tell if she'll be able to handle a stand-alone Wonder Woman film as a lead dramatic actress. The pacing is also terrible; even at a lengthy 2.5 hours it has absolutely no room to breathe. The film has almost no transitions from scene to scene, characters wander in and out of the story with little impact, and there are even 2-3 time-wasting dream sequences that mean nothing other than possible hints of future films that we have zero context for. It's shocking to me how a movie like this can be this sloppy narratively. Not only do the folks at Warner Brothers know this will be one of the most seen, most talked about, most scrutinized movies of the year, but there are DECADES of comic book source material to mine stories from!

I truly didn't want to jump on the Batman v Superman bandwagon of hate; let it be known I get no happiness from complaining about this film because I love these characters. There are some good aspects to the film: the beautiful comic book imagery looks lifted straight out of a comic (though the final battle with Doomsday, pointlessly spoiled in the trailers, looked like a garbage dump of CGI), the score by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL was great, and the actors, despite the lines they had to say, pretty much sold it for me (except for Eisenberg). But at the end of the day, Batman v Superman is a barely coherent mess of ideas patched together into a strange, loud behemoth. It feels like both a desperate attempt to win back the fans lost by Man of Steel (it goes out of its way to say the buildings destroyed in the final fight are "vacant"...such lazy writing it hurts), and a desperate attempt to catch up with Marvel in Flash-like speed. Even the title itself is unwieldy. There's enough good ingredients in here that I think there's a version of this film that could've really worked, but unfortunately, this long-awaited battle felt like nothing special.

Rating: C-