Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

This movie really tested my limits as a self-proclaimed critic and fanboy, but for the love of Darkseid, please don’t read this review until you see the film for yourself. There’s far too much hate circulating around the interwebs going into this movie, and the less opinions you have in your head about what you’re about to see the better.

I’ll wait…

Back? Ben Affleck was awesome, right? Thought you’d agree. Let’s begin.

Finally kicking off the DC Extended Universe proper, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, directed by Zack Snyder of Watchmen and Man of Steel fame, raises the very real question of what happens when a super-powered alien being that can leap tall buildings in a single bound and shoot lasers from his eyes is left unchecked to fly around a world where no one can stop him, let alone understand him. In the aftermath of the near destruction of Metropolis at the end of Man of Steel, humanity doesn’t know how to deal with someone, or rather, something like this, and as usual, the only man ready for such a scenario is none other than the Dark Knight himself, Batman (Ben Affleck), now a grizzled and war torn veteran from his decades long fight against crime in his home city of Gotham. With the rise of a new enemy in the form of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), Batman and Superman (Henry Cavill) will have to put their differences aside and unite long enough to take down the evil billionaire or risk facing the unspeakable abomination Lex plans on unleashing from the bowels of a downed Kryptonian spaceship. Also, Wonder Woman!

But before I get into it, here are some disclaimers for your reading pleasure: I’m a DC Comics fanboy through and through and Batman is hands down my favorite fictional character ever created, so understand that not only am I ingrained in the nerd culture of these characters like they were my own family, but I also tried my best to balance out my filmmaker mentality while watching. What follows is a sort of middle ground review that takes into account both sides of myself while trying my hardest not to let one overtake the other, biasness be damned!!!

Anyway, this film is bound to rub people the wrong way at one point or another, so let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. My main gripe with the script and general direction of the film deals with the sheer amount of crap the filmmakers tried to fit in without regards as to how it helped or hindered the movie’s flow and overall effectiveness. There are a lot of balls being juggled here, most handled in a pretty interesting way, and others not so much. Granted this is clearly the film that needed to happen to jumpstart the DCEU, but one can’t help but think that there may have been a better way to do all of this in a more compelling and less bloated way. That being said, a lot of what I would expect to be confusing or unnecessary to many people just kinda worked for me. I don’t know if it’s because of my vast knowledge of the history of these characters that made the more confusing story elements of the greater DC universe make sense to me, but looking at it from a perspective of someone who knows nothing about this stuff, I can see how things could have gotten a bit puzzling and unnecessary.

It’s not that BvS is a hard film to wrap your head around, there’s no contemplation about the meaning of life or anything like that, but there is a lot going on at any given time and with the film trying to balance so many elements all at once, a handful of story beats, character scenes and potentially interesting ideas were lost in the shuffle, or at the very least left open ended and never fully resolved or paid attention to again. Case in point: the only real emotion that the movie attempts is the relationship between Superman and Lois Lane (Amy Adams). I know that this is one of the best fictional relationships to ever grace the collective nerd culture, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was forced to a point that they only kept it in to have something for Lois to do along with trying to give Superman something to worry about outside of punching things. It’s not that this relationship is a bad thing but when the movie slows down to try and make this usually integral connection matter, it just comes off as forced. With so many other elements following this pattern, it’s hard to care about much of what is happening onscreen at all.

Another thing I wasn’t too happy about was the fact that a lot of the events that happen in the film kind of did just that: they happened. There’s little to no explanation as to how a bunch of scenes even come about and while I would have loved to have more of them organically flow into one another, that’s clearly not what the filmmakers intended. Nothing really felt earned here, from the final fight against Doomsday (the less said about that thing the better), to the huge Superman moment at the end, to the overall driving force behind the big battle between Batman and Superman himself, but I’ll be damned if every second of it wasn’t fun to watch. And here is where the line between a competent movie and a balls-to-the-wall action movie begin to blur. You can most certainly have your cake and eat it too, but it seems that at the end of the day everyone kind of agreed that the bread and butter of this film is where the action is, everything else just kind of limping along behind it. Throw in some mixed feelings about what in the Hell the portrayal of Lex Luthor is supposed to be trying to accomplish, and you kind of feel like more time needed to be spent on the characters and story structure rather than rushing to get to the next great action scene.

Speaking of, pretty much every action set piece was on a level I haven’t seen before in a comic book film or otherwise. Everything we’re shown seems to be ripped straight out of a comic panel and deliver in spades. The sheer spectacle of it all is truly a sight to behold and the CG, while used heavily for most of the film, does it’s job selling the scope of the action and weight of the battles as they unfold. That coupled with a great opening scene and some truly awesome Batman scenes tell me that we’re at least in for some epic and visually pleasing things in the near future, I just wish these scenes held some sort of substance outside of being just effects driven eye candy.

As for the other good elements of the film, I have one thing to say: Batfleck might have just become my favorite incarnation of the Caped Crusader to date. Not only is he brutal and scary and has the mystique of what “The Bat of Gotham” should come with, he’s the closest I’ve seen to mimicking what Batman is actually like in the comics. His use of gadgets and competence on the battlefield mixed with Affleck’s torn and tortured performance capture what makes Batman so great, and the fact that they’re allowing Batman to already have been operating in Gotham for years, skipping the obligatory origin tale (outside of a quick refresher at the top of the film) is just great. In each movie before this I always felt that Batman’s portrayal was missing something, and BvS is the nearest they’ve gotten to duplicating the character properly. A lot has been said about the brutality of this version of Batman and I have one thing to say: have you picked up a comic book recently? If anything, Batman is even darker in the comics, especially the most recent run of books, and while I don’t necessarily agree with the loophole of Batman blowing up cars and pretty much inadvertently killing a bunch of bad guys, we also have to remember that in the Christopher Nolan films he did pretty much the same thing, just not as many times and as blatantly.

Another pleasant surprise was the portrayal of Wonder Woman (Gale Gadot). Not only is she a badass Amazonian that can go toe to toe with the best of them, but Gadot plays her with the perfect amount of strength and smarts that makes it obvious why she’s one of the centerpieces of the DC Universe. Top it all off with a great take on Alfred (Jeremy Irons) and you have the most closely aligned depictions of these characters I’ve seen outside of DC’s animated lineup.

In the end, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t nearly as big of a train wreck as many people suggest. It’s definitely a flawed film, but for me, none of the problems were bad enough that they broke the movie entirely. The sheer excitement of seeing these characters onscreen together for the first time mixed with some truly spectacular action and spot on portrayals of Batman and Wonder Woman, make this more of a bitter sweet pill to swallow than anything else. It’s not going to win over the people adamant that this film is going to suck before they even step foot in theaters, but it does a fairly decent job setting up what I believe will be a much more competent, thoughtful and thrilling DC film universe going forward. It’s worth a watch for more reasons than one, if only to finally prove that Batman is better than Superman. And yes, I will fight to the death to defend that statement, just try me.