Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Director: Zack Snyder
Screenplay: Chris Terrio and Davis S. Goyer
Stars: Ben Affleck (Bruce Wayne / Batman), Henry Cavill (Clark Kent / Superman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Holly Hunter (Senator Finch), Gal Gadot (Diana Prince / Wonder Woman), Scoot McNairy (Wallace Keefe), Callan Mulvey (Anatoli Knyazev), Tao Okamoto (Mercy Graves), Brandon Spink (Young Bruce Wayne), Lauren Cohan (Martha Wayne), Alan D. Purwin (Wayne Industries Pilot #1), Mark Edward Taylor (Jack O’Dwyer)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Year of Release: 2016
Country: U.S.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Batman v Superman: Dawn of JusticeWriting about Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie back in 1978, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael carped, “That’s where the peak emotion in the film is: in the package.” One could say the very same thing about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a mega-event movie whose packaging is its greatest asset. The excitement is in the high-concept idea, and Warner Bros. has been hyping it relentlessly for what feels like decades now, to the point that even those who were genuinely excited about seeing the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel go head to head on the big screen are probably ready to just get it over with. Given Kael’s overall dismissal of Donner’s Superman, which was much beloved at the time for its endearing evocation of pop art majesty and has since become a cornerstone of the comic book-to-movie canon, one can only imagine what she would think of Zack Snyder’s dismal, heavily promoted slugfest. I imagine she would have been appalled by it in general, although she might have begrudgingly admired Snyder’s grimacing Gothic style, because at least it’s consistent.

And make no mistake, Batman v Superman has plenty of style—dark, moody, blurry, pixel-heavy, bruise-colored style—which is why Snyder was hired to helm it. With the exception of the computer-animated Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010) and his grotesquely leering action fantasy Sucker Punch (2011), Snyder’s entire career has been based on translating pre-existing imagery, which is also true of Batman v Superman (although it’s not credited, Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns was deeply influential on the film’s story and look). Snyder’s directorial debut in 2004 was a remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which was much better than most expected it to be, especially in its edgy opening moments. He then established himself with slavishly faithful adaptations of two violent graphic novels, 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009), the best parts of which were essentially him animating static images from the page. Neither was a particularly good movie, but it somehow gained him Christopher Nolan’s confidence, who brought him on as the director of the Superman reboot Man of Steel (2013), which was one-half a good movie (especially the poetic scenes depicting Clark Kent’s difficult childhood coming to grips with his superhuman powers) and one-half a very bad movie (the endless disaster porn as Superman duked it out with General Zod, destroying most of Metropolis in the process).

Batman v. Superman picks up 18 months after that destructive fight, although not before we re-witness part of it from the ground level through the angry eyes of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), billionaire by day, bat-cloaked vigilante by night, who is incensed by the destruction wrought by the Superman/Zod battle, especially since it takes out one of his buildings, killing dozens of his employees. One of the primary criticisms of Man of Steel was the callousness with which the filmmakers treated that battle, with Superman ostensibly fighting to protect humanity while killing hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people in the process, a tragedy that was pretty much ignored in the film. But not here! As it turns out, all of those seemingly needless deaths provide the motivation for Batman’s fear of Superman and desire to take him out. Whether this was intentional (David S. Goyer was the sole credited screenwriter for Man of Steel, and he shares screenwriting credit with Chris Terrio on Batman v Superman) or an after-the-fact attempt to make it look like it was, there is much hand-wringing about avoiding collateral damage this time around, to the point that lines of dialogue assuring us that areas that are sure to be destroyed in the mêlée are deserted become tiresome, if not irritating. Overcompensation can be its own problem.

And that’s just one of many problems with which Batman v Superman must contend. On a narrative level, there is the issue of juggling multiple plotlines, many of which exist solely as set-up for the already planned profusion of movies based on DC Comics superheroes, including Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Aqua Man, as well as at least two Justice League movies that will bring them all together. This was the same approach that Sony took with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), which turned that movie into an overburdened mess that no one really liked, but apparently the brass at DC and Warner Bros. think they can do it better (they don’t really, but since so much is already in the works, I doubt they won’t continue marching forward in their rush to catch up to what Marvel has been doing for almost a decade now).

The core of the narrative revolves around Batman’s fear that Superman (Henry Cavill) might one day turn the alien powers he uses to protect humanity against us, a fear that is aided and abetted by Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), a psychotic young tech guru with major daddy issues who is pursuing his own self-indulgently nefarious agenda. Amy Adams returns as Lois Lane, who is now living with Clark Kent, Superman’s bespectacled alter ego, although little emphasis is placed on their relationship outside of how her being in mortal danger is always sure to draw Superman’s presence. Alas, there is no love interest for Bruce Wayne, although his banter with his droll butler/accomplice Alfred (Jeremy Irons) provides the film its best dialogue (“Even you’ve got too old to die young,” Alfred says to Bruce at one point). For some mystery, Gal Gadot shows up from time to time as a mysterious, alluring woman who appears to be pursuing an agenda similar to Bruce Wayne’s, although the movie’s incessant marketing has already assured us that she’s really just marking time until she can emerge as Wonder Woman.

Whatever works reasonably well in the film is typically undermined by all the things that don’t. Despite the worldwide outcry that followed the announcement of Ben Affleck’s casting as Bruce Wayne/Batman, he acquits himself well (how could he not with that jawline, which under Batman’s cowl looks like a slightly less comical exaggeration of masculine potency than Mr. Incredible’s?). That fact that Bruce Wayne is older, more cynical, and grayer-around-the-temples allows Affleck to play the character with a slightly different shade than we’re used to seeing, which helps him stand apart from Christian Bale’s embodiment of the character in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (Nolan is again on-board here, albeit only as an executive producer). However, poor Henry Cavill, who was quite good in parts of Man of Steel, is largely forced to the sidelines. He is also forced into a perpetual state of glumness that does not befit the character. Superman is introduced scowling as he saves Lois from the clutches of an African terrorist, and he doesn’t lighten up for the next two and a half hours. Granted, there is a lot weighing on Superman these days, especially as humanity oscillates between seeing him as a god or a devil, but because there is so little time to deal with his emotions, he is just left to glower. Jesse Eisenberg’s manic take on Lex Luthor will surely be divisive, with its assortment of jittery tics and ADD-addled chatter. If Mark Zuckerberg became a supervillain, he’d be Eisenberg’s Luthor, which makes sense in today’s world of tech adulation and social media stupor. That is actually one of the film’s smartest links between in-film fantasy and the external world, while its attempts to draw on terrorism, Congressional hearings, and mainstream media via a slow procession of familiar faces from CNN (Anderson Cooper, Nancy Grace, etc.) feel more like political window-dressing.

As we have come to expect from Zack Snyder, he provides the film with a number of striking visuals that are powerful in and of themselves, but rarely coalesce into something thematically or emotionally coherent. The narrative is so scattered that we feel like we’re watching multiple movies, all of which are fighting for dominance. The film’s best images—Superman surrounded by men and women in Day of the Dead regalia after he has saved people from a burning building in Mexico City, Bruce Wayne making his way through a golden field with the grandiose ruins of Wayne Manor in the background, Superman descending from the sky in slow motion in such a way that he is both magisterial and terrifying—stick with you, but they don’t necessarily contribute to the film’s overall effect. Snyder is a gifted stylist, but he has proved time and time again to be a lousy storyteller who constantly sacrifices meaning and substance to whatever might look cool in the moment (he is also prone to repetition of good ideas until they feel like bad ideas).

Some of the film’s ambiguity is surely purposeful (what, after all, is up with all the weird dream sequences?), as it is one part of a much larger whole, most of which is still to come, but the clunkiness of the plot mechanics can’t be blamed on extrafilmic ambition, but rather simple lack of care. The film’s philosophical moments often sound profound, but are mostly just muddy. Hearing Superman, that “overgrown Boy Scout” as he was once called, intone “No one stays good in this world” seems like a great step toward supernihilism, but nothing he does suggests that his morality is in any real danger. He gets red-eye angry when his beloved adoptive mother (Diane Lane) is put in harm’s way, but who wouldn’t? If we were genuinely concerned at any point that Superman might actually become a villain, or at least a morally conflicted crusader like Batman, the movie might have had some real sting. To be fair, Batman v Superman is not nearly as bad as some critics have made it out to be, but it nevertheless fails to achieve the kind of pop-mythic grandeur for which it was destined. I imagine, though, that the studio brass at Warner Bros. will be satisfied as long as it properly performs its corporate duty of establishing the narrative strands needed to support their own movie universe. Priorities, you know.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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All images copyright © Warner Bros.

Overall Rating: (2)




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