2016: The Year in Film: "Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice" Review

I seriously can't even imagine how pissed off Warner Bros. and DC are over the fact that Marvel is making widely beloved and extremely profitable flicks featuring their second and third tier characters while DC has yet to establish a shared universe featuring the two most recognizable comic book characters to ever exist. Zack Snyder was brought in to try to bring a shared universe to DC and made the halfway decent Man of Steel a few years back. I mostly liked MoS, but thought that it featured some questionable choices, morality, WAY too much product placement and kind of went off the rails at the end. However, I thought there was enough good there to give the flick a favorable review and it left me cautiously optimistic for what was to come next for DC.  However, pretty much EVERYTHING that happened next only caused me to become more and more concerned for Zack Snyder's sanity and the presence (or lack thereof) of any kind of adult supervision over at DC.  First, the announcement that DC's universe would disregard Christopher Nolan's Batman films (all of which are infinitely better than Man of Steel and which featured a legitimate way forward for Batman). Second, the announcement that DC's universe would continue with a "Batman vs Superman" movie (that was announced featuring a reading from the famous showdown in "The Dark Knight Returns"), where a new Batman would be introduced, followed by Justice League. This set off warning bells in my mind. We were going to go from Man of Steel (a standalone Superman origin film) to full blown Justice League with only one intermediary step? Trouble. Marvel had 5 films before Avengers, and had introduced all of the main characters in a prolonged way. Third, the reveal that not only would this movie feature Batman and Superman, we'd ALSO get Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, Doomsday, Alfred, Lois Lane and an assortment of nonsense. Trouble. That's without even going into Zack Snyder's problems as a director. He has a great visual eye. That much is undeniable. His films are absolutely gorgeous and he can direct the hell out of an action sequence. HOWEVER, he's also incredibly juvenile and responds in the worst imaginable way to criticism. It was clear that he was extremely bothered by the backlash to the fact that his Superman in MOS completely destroyed Metropolis for largely pointless reasons. He didn't think it was bad that Superman went out of his way to destroy things, because that destruction looked REALLY cool. Who else thinks that way? Michael Bay. Yes, I'm saying that Zack Snyder is Michael Bay who likes the color black. Zack Snyder is emo Michael Bay. Having him direct and be the architect of your comic book universe is fine... BUT you'd better have adult supervision in place. Chris Nolan was supervising Man of Steel... you'd be wise to leave him around, DC. Instead they gave Snyder MORE power and put him in charge of assembling and creating your Justice League. Sigh.

So here we are. It's been 18 months since the events of Man of Steel, and Superman is at once celebrated for saving the human race and mistrusted for being an alien who caused untold destruction during his battle to save humanity. In Gotham City, Batman/Bruce Wayne distrusts Superman following his firsthand witnessing of the destruction of a Wayne Industries building in downtown metropolis and the deaths of many of his employees.

The Good: First, the film is utterly overstuffed. However, some of the elements that make it overstuffed aren't necessarily problems and are in fact the best parts of the film. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is set up here, and she is awesome. Every single scene she's in is a treat and she would have been even more amazing if her intro hadn't been spoiled in the trailer. Which seems like a dumb move in retrospect. Ben Affleck's casting as Bruce Wayne was totally derided in fan boy circles... but he's pretty great. His Batman has an intimidating physicality that makes this more violent and jaded dark knight particularly terrifying. The action scenes are well done by and large, and the hints of the Justice League are some of the best parts of the movie.



The Bad: the plot is a mess. By and large, this feels like a 6 hour movie that was cut down to 2.5 hours... and I suppose that's what you get when you try to do the work of 3 movies in one (still too long!) runtime. Character motivations don't make any sense and characters run around doing what they need to do for the plot without the film telling or showing us why that would actually make any sense. Batman is a total fascist idiot when he needs to be, and yet he's exhaustively researching other characters at other points in the same movie. If he's going to exhaustively hack into security systems and what not shouldn't he at least have a conversation with Superman before deciding to just up and murder him? No? Cool, Zack. Good call.

I want to talk about one thing, especially. This film takes the time to show us Bruce Wayne's parents getting murdered. Why do we need that? Is there ANYONE who doesn't know that Bruce's parents died in front of him and was just dying for a scene of a child screaming in anguish as his parents are gunned down in the street? Who decided that was a necessity in a movie that BARELY has an comprehensible plot? That's without even mentioning how damn stupid it is that Martha Wayne's pearl necklace somehow got caught in the murderer's gun. Was it a 30 foot necklace? Or was the gunman shooting her from 4 inches away but she couldn't just slap the gun away? It doesn't make sense, Zack.

Ok, there is SO MUCH that happens because it happens in the comics. The amount of outside knowledge that is required to watch this movie is insane. What is Doomsday, what are his powers and why does he seem to be impossible to kill? NO ONE KNOWS BECAUSE THE MOVIE NEVER TELLS YOU. Why does Clark Kent love Lois Lane? No one knows. Because he does in the comics, duh. Henry Cavill is boring. Amy Adams is miscast and underused. The Daily Planet subplot is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. (Which, btw, how is Clark Kent a reporter in this world? He doesn't have a degree)  Batman is an idiot and Alfred tells him he's an idiot and then he's no longer an idiot for the dumbest reason imaginable. Batman and Superman murder people. Several people. But for some reason not Lex Luthor. There was probably once a good movie here... but it's buried under what should have been a solo Batman movie to set up Batfleck and a separate Man of Steel sequel.


Pro-tip, DC: DON'T HIRE BEN AFFLECK TO ACT IN ZACK SNYDER MOVIES. Haven't you seen The Town? Argo? Those movies are infinitely better than anything Snyder has made or ever will make. This movie is infuriating because it feeds into the nonsense that superhero movies are stupid and pointless. THIS superhero movie is stupid and pointless because Zack Snyder treats his audiences like idiots.

I HATED THIS MOVIE. Except for Wonder Woman. She was amazing.

Watch, but only to hate watch, and to enjoy a few cool scenes.

4/10