Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice review
There’s no easy way to say this folks, Batman vs. Superman is terrible; and I mean like really terrible. Everything this movie was quietly threatening to become has been fully realized. It’s exactly as bloated, poorly thought out, and undercooked as the trailers have made it look and worse. It’s kind of annoying that me and the rest of the world didn’t realize this sooner, seeing as how not only has virtually every plot point of this movie has already been given away by said trailers, but also just the mere fact that Warner Bros. just immediately decided to charge headlong in to the super-hero shared universe game and expected THIS movie to be their springboard. Well, tough luck, you can’t reasonably expect ANY springboard to take the weight of what’s essentially the cinematic equivalent of a gaseous, oozing, beached and dying whale. And maybe I wouldn’t have set my expectations high if Warner Bros. hadn’t started marketing this movie almost a freaking year in advance! I’d say, “Hopefully Warner will learn its lesson,” but clearly they won’t.
Okay, where to start? The plot, if you can call it a plot since I’m mostly sure this movie was initially planned when Zack Snyder stapled a bunch of his favorite comic pages together and threw it into a writers room along with a bag of his feces, is messy. The script seems to be composed of 45% unused trailer lines, 10% exposition and 45% sudo-psychological half-baked BS. (Bat, not bull.) Seriously they spend the whole freaking first half of this movie continuing the stupid “Is Superman helping or hindering” debate without seeming to realize that nobody cares anymore. And if you thought that the Christ imagery in Man of Steel was annoying, wait till you see how many times they reference greco-renaissance art! It’s unbearable! The pacing is really rushed, even though this movie is almost 3 hours, because this movie is just THAT freaking crammed.
In fact, you know what, let’s just get down to the root of the problem; this movie was honestly just poorly conceived. I mean think about it; already this movie was going to feel contrived seeing as how it’s a movie where Batman and Superman MUST fight each other at some point. Then someone decided that not only were they going to have Wonder-Woman show up, but that Doomsday (spoiler but not really) was gonna show up and they have to fight him, other Justice League members will cameo, (and I use cameo loosely because instead of having nice little optional end-credit teasers they literally shoehorn them all in using one of the absolute laziest methods of “world-building” I’ve ever seen ever) and while we’re at it, they’ll set up Darkseid too! That scene in question is actually pretty cool for a comic-nerd like me, but it feels so disjointed from the actual plot it couldn’t have stuck out more if you’d shoved a freaking neon sign on it.
If all of this sounds absolutely terrible, you’re right, but I will admit it’s at least very watchable. Say what you will about Zack Snyder, heaven knows I’d stop you, he knows how to compose a shot or two. The cinematography and shot composition are pretty incredible in a lot of scenes actually. The acting all around isn’t half-bad either, but again, this movie is so crammed and rushed that any character that isn’t Superman or Batman barely has any time to develop.
Jesse Eisenberg is really trying to make his Lex Luthor (Jr?) feel intimidating but it fails spectacularly. I think they really wanted to have both Lex Luthor and The Joker be villains in this movie but I guess they just ran out of time and had to cram them together, resulting in possibly one of the worst portrayals of a comic-book villain I’ve ever seen.
Affleck probably works the best as the grizzled, a-hole version of Batman from The Dark Knight Returns, but I have a feeling a lot of fans are gonna be pretty disturbed that he kinda basically kills a lot of people in most of his action scenes. (Personally, I’m indifferent) Speaking of the action, it really kinda flip-flops. Every time the movie decides to actually use choreography and stunts (i.e. most of Batman’s scenes) it’s awesome, and every time the movie has to resort to the CGI heavy action scenes most super-hero movies have, it’s HORRENDOUS. Which means sadly the big “Batman v Superman” fight feels about as tense and real as a kid smashing his action figures together in slow-motion.
Look, I’m not gonna hate you if you like Batman vs. Superman; I’ve been blinded by comic-book movie magic in the past, (please don’t talk to me about Amazing Spider-man 2) and if you can honestly enjoy a majority of this movie that’s fine by me. As for me, I’ll be over here praying Suicide Squad can salvage ANY of this.
The Media Fire gives this movie 4.9/10
