Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Director: Zack Snyder
Stars: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg
Stars: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg
This
semester, I’m teaching Introduction to Film, and as soon as I walked into the
movie theater to watch Batman v.
Superman: Dawn of Justice, I saw one of my students. I stood behind him in
line to get my popcorn, and he turned around to tell me, “I’m not here to
analyze this movie. Don’t even ask me to analyze this movie.” I laughed and
replied, “Hell, I’m just here to watch Batman.” Really, that’s the only reason
why I was interested in this movie; I’m more of a Marvel fan than DC, except
when it comes to Batman. In any case, there was a new superhero movie, and I
was on top of it like flies on a gut-wagon. What I will say about Batman v. Superman is that it was
okay—not exceptional, not something that I’m going to rush out to buy when it
comes out on blu-ray—but it was okay.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of
Justice
begins with a flashback to Superman’s fight with General Zod from 2013’s Man of Steel. Bruce Wayne (Affleck)
watches from street level at the alien carnage befalling Metropolis, and he
begins viewing Superman (Cavill) as a threat. Superman’s character is tarnished
further when Lois Lane (Adams) is taken hostage as she chases a hot lead in the
desert, and Superman rushes to save her—though the whole event is orchestrated
by Lex Luthor (Eisenberg). Wayne’s distrust of Superman grows, and he explains
that if there’s a one percent chance that Superman is dangerous, we must take
it as an absolute certainty that Superman is dangerous. Luthor also pulls
strings to antagonize Wayne into donning the Dark Knight suit to take on the
Man of Steel, and there we get to the whole crux of the movie: Batman vs.
Superman in a knock-down, drag-out fight.
Now,
I say this movie is okay—not spectacular or exceptional—because I really don’t
care for Superman that much. I remember watching Man of Steel and thinking that I didn’t care about the character at
all—sure, that movie played up the whole idea that Superman is the only one of
his kind and he’s all alone in the universe, but I just can’t relate to him on
any level. On top of that, I really don’t care what happens to Superman because
nothing can hurt him (save the one obvious thing that crops up in Batman v. Superman: kryptonite). He
seems grossly overpowered, and I just don’t
care. If I can’t care about what happens to the main character, I’m not
going to connect with the movie as strongly.
Because
Superman is invincible and grossly overpowered, his fight scenes get a little
boring. We see a lot of the same visuals in Man
of Steel: laser eyes, explosions, picking up a guy and throwing him into
the side of a building and the glass all shatters, etc. Watching Superman fight
is like washing your hair—lather, rinse,
repeat. He picks up Batman and throws him away; he walks back to Batman on
the ground, picks him up, and heaves him through a wall; then he walks back to
Batman on the ground, picks him up, and shotputs him through another wall.
Since he’s so overpowered, it gets a bit tedious to see him basically do the
same move over and over (knowing that he can’t really be hurt). I feel like
Marvel superheroes show more character in their fighting styles, and because
these are all action movies, that would make sense—you can’t have the superhero
do the same fight across two or three movies that need to have their own
separate identities. In Batman v.
Superman, Superman seems like a one trick pony.
The
one refreshing bit about the fighting in this film was Batman, since he
actually seems to have a style more his own compared to Superman’s lather, rinse, repeat. In Christopher
Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Bruce Wayne learns a number of different combat styles
focusing on martial arts, but I found Batman
v. Superman refreshing because Batman actually incorporates gadgets into
his combat styles instead of relying solely on his mastery of martial arts. Seeing
Batman shoot his grappling gun at an enemy, swing him around the room, and
eventually throw the guy through a wall was much more gratifying than seeing only martial arts combat. This
gadget-based combat style seems more in line with the Batman video games, such
as Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Origins. (I still have yet to play Arkham Knight, but I’d need to buy an Xbox One first.) In these
games, the player gets bonus points for using gadgets during combat, and this
lends credence to Batman’s intellect: he uses gadgets during fights in order to
outsmart his enemies and gain an advantage, and that’s something that Batman v. Superman did better than Nolan
(though Nolan’s visuals still trump this new iteration).
Now,
because we’re on the topic of Batman, we have to talk about Ben Affleck. I keep
seeing these screenshots from interviews with Affleck where he just looks like
someone’s told him that Batman v.
Superman was the worst movie in the world—well, I’m guessing someone’s
already said that on the internet somewhere. Really, I didn’t mind him as
Batman, but as Bruce Wayne, I didn’t find him all that convincing. Bruce Wayne
is supposed to be this dapper, intellectual billionaire genius, right? Affleck
didn’t really pull that off for me; for example, in one scene, Wayne attends a
party at Lex Luthor’s manor, and while he’s there, he hooks up a gadget that
downloads a bunch of encrypted files from Luthor’s mainframe—but he’s caught in
the act. Instead of playing things suavely, he says something like, “Oh, yeah,
uh…I was looking for the bathroom. All those martinis, huh?” Buddy, you’re clearly
standing in what looks to be a server room fiddling with the electronics—this is
obviously not something to piss on. Part of it could be the writers’ fault in
this particular instance, but part of it was Affleck’s performance of Bruce
Wayne. Like I said, as Knight of Gotham, we’re good to go, but as cool,
billionaire playboy? Not so much.
Getting
to acting, let’s talk Luthor and Jesse Eisenberg. Like I’ve said a hundred
times before, I’m a filthy casual when it
comes to comic books, but I like the movies, and that’s why I write this
blog. That being said (again), can someone tell me if Lex Luthor is supposed to
be so obnoxious? Eisenberg’s performance here felt really forced, and I didn’t
get the same DC villain vibe as I got with Heath Ledger’s Joker (but really,
that’s my gold standard for Batman villains). Again, I’d really like someone to
tell me in the comments if Luthor is supposed to be as nutty and annoying as
Eisenberg makes him out to be. I remember snips from Kevin Spacey playing this
role, and he seemed more like an evil genius than…whatever Eisenberg is doing
here. His scenes were honestly hard for me to watch.
The
big thing that people have asked me about with this movie is Wonder Woman,
especially my partner. I don’t really know much about Wonder Woman, though,
and, once more, in case you’ve forgotten, filthy
casual. My partner made sure to mention that she only saw Batman v. Superman to support the
franchise so that the studio would continue on its track to make a standalone
Wonder Woman movie. Do you think, based on the low ratings that Batman v. Superman is receiving, that we’re
still going to see a Wonder Woman movie in the near future?
Overall,
again, it’s an okay movie with its ups and downs, but two and a half hours
seems like a long runtime for this movie when things could have been cut down
quite a bit. (I shouldn’t speak too poorly of Batman v. Superman on this point, since Captain America: Civil War supposedly has an equally-lengthy
runtime.) Am I going to rush out and buy this movie when it comes out on
Blu-ray? No, probably not. I might wait a while for the price to go down and
pick it up after a couple of years.
The real question is this: “Was the movie
entertaining?” Hands down, yes. This was a nice afternoon at the movies for me.
