Review 347: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

 

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a bloated, gloomy, humorlous experience of unbearable length.

Fearing the actions of a god-like Superhero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante, Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.

The plot is just a giant mess of poorly executed ideas and a lot of ill-conceived ones at that bashing up against each other and at times it felt like the writers were throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck. Batman's characterisation in this film and the crux of his conflict with Superman is heavily inspired by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, whilst several elements are present purly to set up Justice League whilst certain elements in the climax are taken from The Death of Superman.

There were a few ideas that sound promising on paper. For instance Superman being seen as a controversial figure, thats sounds pretty daring and intriguing and makes you wonder where they're going to go with that idea. Also Lex Luthor experimenting on Krypton technology, ok, that has the potential to set up high stakes and something for Superman to go up against.
Sadly though none of these plots/ideas are brought to there full potential or at any point executed well or competently.

If you go to see this movie thinking you'll get 2 1/2 hours of Batman and Superman butting heads, then be prepared to be disappointed as they only fight ONCE throughout the entire movie and it happens towards the end of the film....        I truly wish I was joking!

The rest of the movie is mostly dedicated to Batman and Superman running around in their own separate movies (either of which would be potentially better than this ginormous mess).
Batman is investigating Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) because he has something some vital information that will play a vital part in future DCCU films and Superman has become a controversial figure in the public eye and is trying to hold his own against the U.S. government and prove he's not a threat, all the while he sees Batman as a threat and tries to expose him (those two really need to sort out their priorities).

 
The 151 min narrative jumps back and forth between their respective plot lines and various others (including one with Lexy experimenting on Krypton technology leftover from the Battle of Metropolis) without any sense of narrative flow and it comes across as jarring, without giving the audience (or the movies characters for that matter) time to breath all the while showhorning in characters like Lex Luthor, Alfred the butler (Jeremy Irons) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) none of whom get much  resulting in overstuffed, overpopulated and overplotted movie that just collapses under the weight of all these storylines and characters.

There are two scenes where Warner Bros/DC desperation to catch up with Marvel is just so blatant.

The first is a dream sequence showcasing Batman in a post-apocalyptic future leading a doomed resistance against an army of winged creatures fans will recognise as Parademons and Superman is evil for no discernible reason followed by a cameo of a time-traveling Flash (Ezra Miller) to warn him of some half-baked, not-really-explained very well, impending disaster. 

Bruce never mentions the scene to anyone again and it comes across as a lazy gimmick and it shows how little the writers care.

The second involves a bunch of glorified Easter eggs/cameos by Justice League members The Flash, Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) that serve little purpose other than to set up an upcoming Justice League film. The Flash first appears in a dream by Bruce Wayne in which he time travels  as well in video recording along with one of Aquaman and one of Cyborg. Even though the argument could be made that Lex is looking into other meta humans and has leverage over these heroes, the way that they’re just brought to the forefront is so blatant and it seems like a desperate attempt to set up their solo films as well as a Justice League film with least amount of effort and imagination possible.
These cameos are just pointless and don't add anything to the film other than to set up their own solo films.
 
And then we get to the ending and a lot of the elements that used/introduced to set up future instalments just didn't work or gell well the rest of this mess of a film at all. It was arbitrary and contrived and did nothing to resolve the characters arcs or lack-thereof and seemed to rely purely on shock value than anything else.

As a whole, this movie is nothing but 2 1/2 hours of explosions, overblown action and special effects, ear splitting noises, thinly sketched characters and some of the most lazy and jumbled plotting I have ever seen in a movie in recent years. If this is the future of the DCCU, I want no part of it.

Returning director Zack Snyder's direction is clueless, he stages the action scenes is such a disorganised fashion that things just fly onto the screen with no real build up, much like Batman and Wonder Woman for that matter. He also just can't find a way to bring the dozen storylines and characters together in a cohesive way.
The cinematography is grim, the lighting is murky and dull, the action scenes are mindless, overblown, generic action film fluff (there's almost no tension in any of them, mostly because we as an audience have no emotional attachment to any of these characters) the special effects are NOT special, the score by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL is overblown, the costumes range from passable to overdone, the production design is gloomy and uninspired (Gotham City and Metropolis are nearly indistinguishable because they’re both grim, crime ridden cities that fear their respective heroes). The editing is choppy with scenes that jump from one convoluted storyline to the other with no clear sense of pacing punctured by dreams that couldve left on the cutting room floor and the violence is numbing as opposed to exciting or provocative. 
 
The acting is just a slew of wasted talent and potential. The film provides big roles for Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill but doesn't provide them with the material to pull it off. They give it their best, but they are saddled with these thinly characterised, moody, brooding, moping characters who exist in a world so dire that it becomes depressing.

   

Clark Kent/Superman in this film is a moping, brooding, one dimensional character who seems more reactive than active. He's still trying to do the right thing and do the righ thing by everyone and ignore the slings and arrows but at the same time try and find an understanding of and get a closer connection to humanity. He has human connections through Lois and Martha but he also needs to study humans and their reaction to him so he knows how to be and how to best serve the human race.

Yet the screenplay never sees Superman tacking a stand against these views, giving Cavill very little to work with other than to mope or look and act depressed. Affleck and Cavill share no onscreen chemistry
 
Affleck overall makes a valiant effort and Bruce Wayne/Batman, but they're just smothered beneath and overabundance of overblown action and special effects and a storyline lacking any sense of logic. Bruce is representative of humans reactionary tendencies and the immediate rejection of the Superman.  

 
The Bruce Wayne/Batman that we're presented with this film is clearly inspired by The Dark Knight Returns. Someone whose well beyond his glory days, someone who has been a vigilante for 20 years and has somewhere lost his way. Bruce is starting to see Batman as a hopeless cause. He's been at it tirelessly for two decades and nothing he does seems to be working. The criminal underworld is scared of him, Gotham City is scared of him, he's scared of himself and his inner deamons, his loved ones are dead because of him and it's been a continuous downward spiral of rage, fear and grief from there pushing him closer and closer to the edge. Despite this everyone in this film acts as though he's new and it just doesn't add up.
It's implied that he may have been The Dark Knight with rules, ideals and even a code give or take. Becoming Batman helped him feel powerful again by stopping bad people from committing crimes and taking lives. Now thats Supes turns up, he feels powerless again and views him as the culprit.

But we're never given any insight into who he was before he became jaded and cynical. We're given hints and Easter Eggs but nothing concrete. We aren't given enough information. We need context.

Lex Luthor is very obviously pulling his strings and playing him like a fiddle into fighting Superman and yet he seems virtually oblivious to this, considering he's supposed to be smart and a detective, it just makes Batman come off as stupid. Writing & characterisation like this is just incredibly lazy and it's clear this wasn't thought through at all. Another disadvantage to his character was that they focused so much on his inner rage because of how jadded and bitter he's become. That made his character feel pretty one-note with little warmth and overall he just doesn't hold a candle to Christian Bale.

There's also no morality play or psychological bend to his conflict with Superman, even though he sees him as a threat to be dealt with, he also causes a whole lot of property damage and kills and brands which really doesn't help his case of being a better hero than Superman. In a nutshell, the film portrays Superman as the hero and Batman as the villain. 

Gal Gadot, on the other hand and there's no polite way of saying this, is shockingly bad as Wonder Woman. Not only did her performance and her character fail to make even the slightest impact on me, but her character added nothing to the film. She only appeared in a handful of scenes that could've easily ended have been cut from the film and generally came across as a tacked on and one-note character and only contributes something relevent during the climatic battle with Doomsday.
This movie gives her so little dialogue, I wonder if the producers and Zack Snyder realised halfway through filming, that she couldn't act. While she's great to look at in dazzingling outfits she lacks any personality or charisma.
Too often, she felt superfluous and I was left wondering why was she even there?

The so-called Trinity are anything but, they're more like a bunch of paper cut-out's with Superpowers who are more akin to a trio of dangerous weapons. None of them really know so there's no sense of emotional investment or payoff when they team-up.
Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot share no onscreen chemistry. They appear to be acting in front of background projections of each other. Come to think of it, I don't think Superman and Wonder Woman don't have a genuine or speaking interactions together unti the big fight with Doomsday.

 

Jesse Eisenberg was just annoying as Lex Luthor. This version of Lex Luthor is a self-made millionaire akin to Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Mark Zukerberg (as played by Eisenberg in The Social Network). 

He’s more concerned with elevating his public image than accumulating wealth. An ego driven sociopath with too much money and power who feels threatened by bathe very existence of Superman, someone stronger and more powerful than him. He values no one but himself and sees others as nearly paper dolls or pawns. This version fo Lex feels very inspired by the brilliant Superman: Birthright which depicted him as a young man prone to outbursts and feverish ravings about how alone he is in his intellectual superiority.     

But all of that falls apart with Eisenberg’s performance. He plays him as a shrill, irritable, nerdy shut-in who you just want to snap his neck every two mins he's onscreen. He doesn’t come across as ruthless, cunning or charismatic ruining his credibility as a character. He comes off a poor replication of that international rather than    I don’t think that this Lex Luthor is quite as smart as the film portrays him to be and I don’t believe that he’s capable of manipulating a season pro like Batman into fighting a rookie Superman. 

The film also shamelessly wastes the talents of talented actors, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons and Holly Hunter.
They were good in this movie, there just wasn't enough of them. They're screen time is mostly sporadic, Irons just pops up every many minutes as Butler Alfred to give Bruce Wayne/Batman some wise words.

 
Diane Lane remains a shining light of brilliance despite her sporadic screentime. The relationship between Martha and Clark is the one constant; The one thing that hasn't changed, she will always see him as any mother does as her baby boy and Clark will always see her as mother and I wish this film had leaned into that more.

However to Irons credit, he interpretation Alfred is very compelling with him being more hand-on than previous incarnations as well as being more Bruce's equal and Irons plays that exceptionally well I just wish it was in a better movie.

Amy Adams brings her usual warmth and hamanity to the role of Lois Lane, she provides Clark/Superman with moral support and uplift and she humanises him and keeps him grounded and Adams thankfully does what she can with that role.

Laurence Fishburne provides a strong authoritative presence as Perry White.
Even though he's not really given very much to do, Fishburne, like Adams, Irons & Lane to a smaller extent brings a much legitimacy and dignity to the role. He’s dealing with the fact that his medium is looks like it’s going to way of the dinosaurs, so he in very difficult position. Lucky for him that he’s got two “great” reporters in Clark Kent & Lois Lane who appear to be interested and hungry to do their jobs.

Holly Hunter is also wasted as Senator Finch. Her essential problem with Superman is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. When power is acting autonomously, unilaterally with no legislation, no boundaries, no law, except for the ones that he in his own mind, that can be detrimental.
But we don't much of a sense of character from her, is she a good guy or a bad guy. Those blurred lines may be intentional but that and her plot line are given very little food for thought and Hunter goes on horribly underused as a result.

The film also seamlessly wastes Tao Okamoto as Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor's assistant who's given so little to do and then goes away almost as quickly as she appears.
The same goes to Scoot McNairy & Callan Mulvey as Wayne Enterprises employee Wallace Keefe & Anatoli Knyazev whose characters are so one-note, they bearly make an impact.

I'm also now officially dreading Suicide Squad, 0.5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.