25 Mar Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Analysis

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

[UPDATED REVIEW – 6 April 2019]

Wow…I wrote a lot. Shakespeare’s line “[You] doth protest too much, methinks…” definitely applied…

With the benefit of some more time, and an Ultimate Director’s Cut, I think I have a more balanced opinion of BvS and Zach Snyder’s now truncated time in the DC sandbox.

BvS is a terrific superhero movie with some staggeringly bad problems. But underlying all of these problems is Zach Snyder’s approach to DC’s holy trinity. His approach has been to deconstruct some of the oldest, most popular superheroes in popular culture. The problem is, he is deconstructing a version of the heroes that has not been constructed in the first place. You can’t tear apart, analyze, and critically deconstruct something that doesn’t exist, but that’s what Snyder. Man of Steel avoided the problem by presenting a solid origin story of Superman and setting up a future I wanted to see.

But BvS makes two fundamental mistakes in marginalizing Superman and then leaning its contemporary version of Batman that is from an era of comics that nobody is familiar with. The former is understandable if you want to take time to set up Batman, but since Snyder doesn’t, it is insurmountably problematic when we get an older Batman post-Jason Todd murder.

For example, despite multiple prior versions of Batman, Snyder still takes too much for granted in skipping an explanation of how Bruce Wayne got to where he is as BvS opens. There is no backstory that adequately explains why Batman, who seeks justice primarily because his parents were murdered in front of him, now feels perfectly comfortable murdering. I’ve kind of shifted back on this point. While I readily acknowledge that Batman’s actions in every iteration result in a shocking number of implied (but rarely shown) deaths, it has always been pretty clear that he is not a murderer who goes out of his way to just kill people. Until BvS.

Maybe there is a plausible explanation for why Batman would resort to murder, but we just don’t get that connective tissue from Snyder. And what we are left with is a movie where the audience has no reason outside external nostalgia, to like Batman. That is a huge problem. It is actually impressive that Affleck manages to turn in a great performance as Batman, even though viewer’s have little reason to like the character as written.

Despite its failings, I find myself enjoying BvS each time I re-watch it; and I do re-watch it, more than many of its Marvel peers. There is a solid story and some genuine pathos and complexity buried in BvS, especially the superior Ultimate Cut, which gives more shine to Superman. It’s just a shame that we have to dig through the Martha scene and Eisenberg’s shit performance to see it. I think DC could have avoided many problems and allowed Snyder to complete his plans for his 5-film Superman arc if they had done two things: make public that there was a 5-film arc for Superman from the outset and make a standalone Batman movie before BvS. But so much for what could have been. This is what we have.

[ORIGINAL REVIEW – 26 March 2016]

First, spoilers abound, so if you haven’t seen the movie, either leave or don’t complain to me when I spoil stuff.

Second, in keeping the antagonistic tone of the movie’s title, I’m all but planning to embrace a combative tone for this review, not because I didn’t like the movie, but because I’m tired of a lot of the bullshit complaints I’ve heard and read from several other sources.

So, bottom-line up-front:

Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is great superhero movie, an ok film, and very clearly a half-baked, glorious mess of an experience that brings together two of my lifelong favorite superheroes (Batman and Superman), and SLAM-DUNKS the introduction to a new favorite (Wonder Woman!) I would give the movie a really solid 7 out of 10 stars, or maybe even a shaky 8 out of 10. It’s not as good as Man of Steel in most ways, but it makes up for that with arguably the best Batman in cinematic history.

I’ll gonna start by addressing the three complaints that bother me the most:

“Batman kills people in BvS. Batman never kills anybody!”

This is complete BS. Anyone who has ever watched virtually any iteration of Batman, live action, animated, film, or TV, has seen Batman kill a LOT of people. See here for a few examples. There has been a clear trend over the last several years to emphasize Batman’s progressively more extreme attempts to not kill anyone (see Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy or the Batman: Animated Series for the apex of this interpretation), but anyone with any critical thinking capacity whatsoever watches these previous iterations and has no choice but to acknowledge that Batman leaves more than a few bodies in his considerable wake.

When Batman takes the BatPod through Gotham City to catch the Joker in The Dark Knight, he drives through a mall and a crowded street of occupied cars–all while shooting cannons and machine guns. PEOPLE WERE MAIMED AND KILLED IN THE PROCESS. At the end of TDK, Batman tackles Two-Face and pancakes him to the ground 3 floors below–human beings don’t survive that, as was abundantly clear in TDK. In the most recent Batman video game (all of which were clearly inspirations for Affleck’s take on Batman), Arkham Knight, players drive a 6-ton Batmobile throughout Gotham City, right through crowds of rioting criminals. If you really believe that the Batmobile shocked the criminals and threw them out of the way, than you are willfully ignorant of the effects of a 6-ton tank rolling over the top of a criminal that is paralyzed by a taser shot. The point is this: throwing shade at the BvS version of Batman because he kills people is hypocritical unless you swear off every version of Batman that kills people–which is all of them. Perhaps you are not old enough to be watching anything Batman related if you willfully ignore his path of destruction.

The biggest difference in BvS is that Snyder unabashedly show the consequences of Batman’s actions. Instead of glossing over the bullet-hits’ and close-proximity explosions’ effect on the various humans that get in the way, BvS allows the audience to see Batman actually killing people. Keep in mind that, unlike many of the other examples, everyone Batman kills in BvS is clearly a criminal actively trying to kill him with a broad assortment of heavy weapons. Unlike many other iterations, there is not much innocent collateral human life taken by Batman in BvS.

One reason this bothers me so much is that people lost their minds over Superman killing Zod in Man of Steel, and as the de facto sequel to MoS, I just don’t want to hear the same idiotic arguments again. One of the best explanations for Superman killing Zod comes from Screen Junkies’ Honest Trailer for Superman, which has a child explaining to the narrator that Superman has to earn his valuation of human life by being forced to take Zod’s life at the end of MoS. Of course, I rarely hear people acknowledge that the Man of Steel film’s climax occurred within about hours of being literally his first day on the job as Superman–he did a pretty remarkable job considering…

With Snyder’s interpretation of both Batman and Superman, there are consequences for their actions, particularly Superman, who has always been the lighter side of the coin. But even in BvS, Batman makes it clear that he and Alfred are complicit in their own criminal actions–Affleck’s whole performance (more on that later) is rooted in a deeply entrenched, long-gestating guilt at his self-admitted failure to make a difference through his actions as Batman. While not a wholly unique sentiment in the history of Batman portrayals, Affleck is the first to construct his entire performance around this sense of despair and regret.

Short-story-long: Batman has always killed people. If you are super-bothered by this, don’t claim to like Batman, in any of his iterations. As soon as you can explain this, I’ll listen to your diatribe about Batman’s failed “never kill anyone” take on BvS.

It’s too DARK and GRITTY; there’s too much destruction. I prefer Marvel–they’re more fun and lighthearted!”

The short answer to this is that filming a movie with a brighter color palette and throwing a lot of jokes between a multiplicity of superheroes DOES NOT balance the moral ledger of their actions or the attendant consequences. I love Marvel’s movies as much as anyone, and part of my prep for BvS ended up being watching the entire MCU over the course of a week. I LOVE those movies, but they are insidious in their denial of the consequences of actions. If anything, they are institutionally immoral in their portrayal of a world in which all consequences are politely ignored, like bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan–if something bad happens, we just throw in a line of dialogue, a couple jokes, and cut away to the heroes eating dinner, far away from the billions in damage and massive loss of life their actions incur on the general populace…

The best summary of this problem is found here, especially point #5, politely titled ‘Marvel Humans Don’t Give A Shit About Monumental Tragedy’. Hey, this is the path that Marvel has chosen, and it is also clearly evident by their frequent resurrection of any character they don’t really want to kill. It’s not good or bad, right or wrong; it’s simply Marvel’s choice in developing their franchises and cinematic universe. After 12 movies, when someone “dies”, I immediately say to myself “Oh, they’ll be back…sooner or later.” Whether it’s Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Loki, Loki again, Thor, or Thor again–there is no longer any dramatic impact to character deaths in the MCU. That’s the problem when you ignore, skirt around, or totally subvert/undermine consequences.

DC, on the other hand, has decided that their characters and stories take place in a world that is far more closely relatable to the real-world we live in right now. The underlying premise of DC’s world building seems to be “How would these fantastic events and characters play out in real life?” For example, this is truly evident in the opening minutes of BvS, when Bruce Wayne, a normal human with no super-powers (and clear outlier in the DC superhero gallery), rushes straight into the destruction wrought on Metropolis during the climax of MoS to save the people who work for him at the Wayne Financial building, which happens to be one of the first buildings destroyed directly by Zod himself. While the events in MoS were from Superman’s perspective (hence, mostly in the sky while flying above Metropolis), the same events as portrayed in BvS are on the ground as Bruce Wayne rushes through in-your-face destruction and chaos, trying to help the people he cares about. It’s breathtaking in its immediacy and shows you just how perilous the destruction really was to mere mortals. It peaks with Bruce’s rescue of an employee who was badly maimed and young girl whose mother was vaporized in the collapse of the Wayne building. Similar imagery was effectively used in The Dark Knight, when Batman stands in the smoking rubble of the building that exploded and burned on top of the only woman he loved and his last connection to normal life. DC get it: these events are deadly, chaotic, and dramatically affect the lives of both superheroes and normal people

As a short aside, an added layer of intellectual inversion to this theory is the stark difference between Marvel and DC superheroes: Marvel’s are typically normal people with remarkable talents (Iron Man) or “disabilities” (Hulk), while DC’s superheroes are nearly indestructible gods (Superman, Wonder Woman), walking among men. Although each has exceptions (Marvel’s Thor and DC’s Batman.) That each studio has chosen to build cinematic worlds that are the opposite of their respective superheroes’ fundamental characteristics is fascinating in and of itself.

Another interesting challenge DC faces that Marvel largely ignores is found in the way that the real world has changed radically in last decades: particularly given the advent of true global communications via the internet and social media, and the events of 9/11, which indelibly affected everyone in the world. The fact is that if aliens arrived in a large ship with hostile intentions and the means to almost off-handedly destroy the entire planet and kill virtually everyone, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A DARK AND GRITTY TIME stopping them, if you stop them at all. That’s just what would happen.

There are some surprisingly close parallels between the stories of The Avengers and Man of Steel; as I suspect there might also be some potentially stronger parallels between BvS and Captain America: Civil War in a couple months. Of course, most aspects of the above scenario were only addressed through lines of dialogue and news clips in The Avengers. But in Man of Steel, mass destruction was a very believable result of the scenario they carefully set-up; and BvS was arguably an entire movie dealing entirely with the consequences of the destruction wrought in MoS. If Cap 3 ends up being the same, then it will be one of the first times that the MCU directly confronts consequences after 12 films of staggering destruction.

Like the ‘Batman Doesn’t Kill’ argument, if you don’t like being exposed to the consequences of these ginormous actions, maybe it’s time you re-evaluate your film-watching paradigms, because the only difference between Marvel’s films and DC’s films is that one studio has decided that consequences are a downer that get in the way of a super-successful franchise plan, and the other has embraced the inherit dramatic complexity and emotional turmoil that these characters would cause in the real world. “Too dark” and “too grim” seem more like excuses for not wanting to be intellectually or emotionally challenged, rather than meaningful film criticism.

Again, short-story-long: there’s an inverse scale relationship between anchoring realistic consequences to actions versus being fun and funny. Marvel and DC are clearly on different ends of this spectrum. If you happen to not appreciate one or the other, that’s totally fine–just don’t try to convince me that a movie is bad because it’s on the other end of the scale than you spend your time on; there is a difference between a ‘bad movie’ and ‘a movie I just don’t enjoy’. Even I admit that ‘Deer Hunter’ is a well-made movie, even though it’s my personal #1 most hated movie experience.

“Batman could never beat Superman. The fight would be over in a second. Why would they even fight?”

This is easy and short to explain.

First, they have fought frequently in the comics–BvS is not a precedent-setting event. Google “do batman and superman ever fight”. Or check out this link. You’re welcome.

Second, Superman is strong, but of average intelligence–at least this early in his career in the DCCU. Unlike Batman, who is not only the greatest detective in the world, but has trained his whole life, physically and intellectually, to fight crime and defeat his enemy. Man of Steel‘s Zod was not out of line when he promoted his own military training, insulting Superman with “Where did you train? A farm?!?” At this early stage of his “career” as Superman, Kal-El has not trained anywhere but a farm, and it’s demonstrated that he’s succeeded as Superman primarily by virtue of inherit Kryptonian traits, not specialized, acquired skills, particularly fighting skills.

Third, Superman is inherently good, while you can easily argue that Batman is inherently bad (he overtly admits as much in BvS), so a showdown is not surprising, given their very different world views on crime-fighting and its appropriate limitations.

Lastly, remember who Superman’s main villain is: Lex Luthor. Lex has no superpowers, but he’s intellectually brilliant and super-rich, and regularly proves a more-than-adequate challenge for Superman, particularly in his machinations to defeat him. Batman, of course, is also intellectually brilliant and super-rich, but he’s spent his entire life training as a killer, detective, strategist, and all-around unstoppable force. One of the great ironies of almost every Justice League iteration is that the most powerful member, the one the other members look to as the BAMF, is Batman: the guy with no super-powers.

So yeah, Batman is more than a challenge for Superman. Getting them to fight boils down to motivation, and in BvS, they are both clearly manipulated into fighting by Lex Luthor, who knows their respective strengths and weaknesses enough to initiate the titular battle. I would easily accept that the film does a moderately poor job of conveying the manipulation, as it does with almost everything about Lex, but the underlying manipulation is clearly there on-screen.


I’m already 2000+ words in this “review”, and I haven’t even started my review yet. So, this is now officially part 1. Part 2 will contain the actual review!

Movie Review: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Part 2)

The ACTUAL Movie Review

My previous caveats still apply:

First, spoilers abound, so if you haven’t seen the movie, either leave or don’t complain to me when I spoil stuff.

Second, in keeping the antagonistic tone of the movie’s title, I’m all but planning to embrace a combative tone for this review, not because I didn’t like the movie, but because I’m tired of a lot of the complaints I keep hearing and reading from all over the interwebz.

Now, let’s get down to talking about the actual movie.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a chaotic opera of superb action and great characters mixed in with some terrible characters and an unfocused narrative devoid of any central theme. As it stands, BvS is a mash-up of two completely different Batman/Superman comic story arcs (‘Batman The Dark Knight Returns’ and ‘The Death of Superman’), each of which could easily justify their own individual films; the fact that they were mashed together made for a very busy, clumsy story in BvS.

Note: In fact, Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ was made into a brilliant animated movie by DC…and ran for almost the exact same runtime as BvS. To be honest, if they had simply faithfully remade that comic/movie in live-action, the film may have been better received by dumb-ass critics. But I digress…

To start out, I consider Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy to be the best superhero movies made–yeah, I’m totally biased towards Batman, but that’s just the way it is. Christian Bale’s performance as Bruce Wayne and Batman was excellent on both counts for very different reasons, and was the most under-appreciated foundation stone upon which Nolan’s films were built. Similarly, Nolan’s choice to structure each film as an independent narrative built around a central theme (Batman Begins = fear, The Dark Knight = chaos, The Dark Knight Rises = pain) was a stroke of cinematic genius from a filmmaker that has demonstrated his capacity for making truly great FILMS, not just popcorn movies. I also think that Nolan’s choice to make completely different films (The Prestige and Inception) in between each Batman movie was a brilliant way to prevent any long-term problems from developing into systemic failures within the franchise (cough, cough–The Hobbit–cough, cough).

Which is why I’m actually surprised that his role as producer in MoS and BvS, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Nolan passed these tips on to Snyder. Two of the biggest problems I had with BvS were problems Nolan specifically avoided from the outset in his take on the DC cinematic universe: strong central narrative themes, and self-contained narratives.

Unfortunately, both of these problems lie squarely on director Zack Snyder’s shoulders. Snyder has shown remarkable filmmaking ability when directly adopting, even remaking, previous works (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen); but when it comes to original works or loose adaptations (Sucker Punch, Man of Steel) he seems prone to becoming self-indulgent and narratively unfocused. I actually really like Man of Steel, and it gets better each time I watch it. But in fact, unlike Sucker Punch, I think it was saved by virtue of being a long-overdue re-examination of the Superman mythos, but with familiar characters and basic plot. MoS was also tremendously helped by excellent performance by Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, both actors with tremendous gravitas and skill when properly directed.

Before I dive into my criticisms, let me emphasize some of the really great aspects of BvS:

• Ben Affleck as Batman is maybe my favorite portrayal yet. While the look was clearly inspired by Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, the technology, fighting style, and overall aesthetic were definitely influenced by the Batman ‘Arkham’ video games, which are not only the most definitive Batman video games ever made, but are among the best video games I’ve ever played. Period. The Batman of BvS is brutal and uncompromising in fighting style and uses a bunch of gadgets that were clearly lifted straight from Arkham. All of this made me giddy watching Batman rescue Martha Kent from Lex Luthor’s goons, one of whom I feel is destined to become Firefly, one of many villains in Batman’s distinguished rogues gallery.
  A critical aspect of the BvS Batman is that it is the first and only live-action cinematic portrayal of Batman at this late stage in life. He has clearly been ‘Batman-ing’ for decades, and the threat of even the Joker seems to be in the distant past. There is a subtle but crucial reference to the death of the second Robin, as we catch a glimpse of the defaced costume in a glass display case right across from the vault holding the Batman suit. Keeping this reminder in such a revered place, where Bruce would see it every time he goes out as Batman, is an absolutely critical part of understanding the bitter, hardened stage of life he has reached. Affleck completely owns this part of his performance–the losses he has endured as Batman (Jason Todd’s death) compounded by Bruce Wayne’s losses (the Wayne Financial employees in the MoS climax, which we see in the opening of BvS) have left him pursuing a form of justice that has faded into revenge and punishment. In fact, his story arc revolves around the tunnel-vision Superman’s destruction has given him, leaving him unable to see the bigger picture that he is being actively manipulated by Lex Luthor, just as Superman is blinded by his devotion to Lois Lane. I like the dichotomy that each superhero is distracted by the core value that defines them.
  In almost every way, Affleck’s Batman steals the movie for me, and turns BvS into more of a first Batman film vice a true Man of Steel sequel. All of the crap people gave Affleck about being Batman has proven just as valid as the crap people gave Heath Ledger for being the Joker: totally unjustified.
  
• Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is awesome. Since everyone knows that a stand-alone Wonder Woman movie is coming next year, BvS completely did away with any semblance of an origin story or even basic explanation of who or why she is involved. I’ve been saying for a long time that I’m sick and tired of the pattern of introducing comic book heroes with an entire origin story movie. I think that was a mistake for Ant-Man, though I admit that Deadpool was, far and away, the best origin story I’ve seen in ages.
  Gadot’s performance is so strong and well-defined, that whether she is in disguise as Diana Prince (for the first 3/4 of the movie) or when she makes a jaw-dropping entrance into the film as full-on Wonder Woman, Gadot is a powerhouse. She is smart, strong, beautiful, and I cannot WAIT for the Wonder Woman movie next year. Which will be an origin story, but NOT the first time we are seeing the character. If the sole purpose of this movie was to whet our appetites for an awesome female-led superhero movie, Wonder Woman is now the standard to beat. So, so awesome. He smile partway through the Doomsday fight at the end of the movie showed me everything I needed to know to fully support the WW next year. I’m all in.
  
• Henry Cavill as Superman continues to succeed with a character that some people still seem to question a need for. In my mind, Superman is the perfect hero in almost every way, having cornered the super-power matrix with every great power. His only real weaknesses are to kryptonite (which is introduced in BvS, and clearly in short supply) and the fact that Superman is intellectually nothing special (at least not yet). He’s obviously morally strong and unyielding, but he’s confined to one place at any given time and it is impossible for him to be omnipotently aware of everything going on everywhere. This is why I raise an eyebrow at every reference to Superman as a god–he’s clearly not.
  What Superman brings to the table is the fact that his villains are so powerful, nobody else would have a shot at stopping them. Look at General Zod and the other Kryptonians in MoS: without Superman, they would have completely destroyed the entire planet, and absolutely nobody had the capacity to slow them in any meaningful way, much less stop them. It’s the reason that Captain America/Chris Evans gave this answer when asked what would happen if all of the Avengers fought Superman. He’s stunningly powerful–he just needs help knowing where to focus that power.
  Cavill does a terrific job giving us a Superman that is still struggling to find his place in the world. While MoS was about whether he wanted to be Superman for the people of Earth, BvS is very much about whether the people of Earth even want a Superman, particularly one who, they don’t realize, is still relatively unskilled in determining where and how his abilities are best used.
  
• The actual fight between Batman and Superman was solid, with Batman clearly drawing on his extensive tactical training to give Superman a beatdown he never saw coming. The fight heavily reflected the same event from Frank Miller’s ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Returns’, and that is not a bad thing…
  
• Batman’s infiltration of the warehouse and subsequent annihilation of the villains therein. So brutal. Almost all of the action scenes were great, as Snyder has a particular panache for well-choreographed action, but this one in particular eclipsed any previous live-action fight from Batman. If I had one complaint about Nolan’s films, it’s that the fight choreography was often clumsy and over-relied on quick action editing. Snyder has a gift for showing the sheer brutality of hand-to-hand combat, and Batman (in full Arkham mode) is another masterpiece. I will be watching this scene more than a few times, and hope it is a promise for future films in the DCCU.
  

For as great as all of these things were, BvS has some serious problems. I’ll try to keep this concise, but buckle in. Keep in mind that I really liked the movie, but here’s why I can’t truthfully say I loved it:

• The film is a narrative mess. This is particularly perplexing since the film was apparently completed over a year ago (aside from some special effects) and they had more than enough time to address the problems. For the first third of the movie, the story bounces around to seemingly completely unrelated storylines. This is fine for awhile, but there is a limit, at which point the audience loses track, followed by interest, and finally investment. BvS starts with (yet another) retelling the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Arguable the most overused superhero trope, even Snyder’s beautifully filmed rendition didn’t alter the fact that starting the movie with the most well-known origin story in comics was not a strong choice. Some of the voiceover dialogue (“…once something falls, it is fallen…”) was terrible and confusing, in case you simply didn’t realize that fallen things have fallen.
  While the following scene showing Bruce Wayne in Metropolis during the climactic events of MoS are tense, powerful, and essentially redeem the largest criticism leveled at the first film, they are immediately followed by a really strange African desert scene with Lois Lane and Superman, which is later revealed to be the initial event in Lex Luthor’s manipulation of Superman. But the way it plays is lame, lame, lame–poor editing, trite dialogue, and an uninspired setup for later events. Superman is blamed for a bunch of deaths, which were clearly caused by human with guns. For a movie trying so hard to be grounded in the real world, it probably speaks poorly of American culture and society to point out that the deaths of some warlords and corrupt soldiers in Africa would never break the news in the US, much less foment a legislative investigation into Superman. More likely, people would ask “Why doesn’t he spend more time in Africa helping the people there?!” The scene was just poorly executed and putting Lois into straight-up damsel-in-distress mode right away was a little off-putting, particularly for a character that was very capable of using good judgment in MoS.
  Shortly thereafter is a scene where Lois Lane confronts Superman for a fairly serious DTR after the events in Africa. The problem is, that the scene is staged with Lois in mid-bath. It was such an odd, nearly offensive choice to have a strong female character like Lois Lane confront Superman about some important issues in one of the most vulnerable situations imaginable. A naked woman trying to explain why she thinks maybe they should re-evaluate their relationship in light of the deaths of dozens of human beings seems paradoxical at the very least. Again, just a poorly staged scene, ending with Clark casually claiming that he can Superman just fine with Lois in his life, before jumping her in the bathtub.
  All of these scenes played out poorly as a whole–they didn’t flow very well, the choices for the scenes were distracting and less effective than they could have been. It all goes back to having a very unfocused central narrative or theme. This is largely the fault of either the writer or director, but whoever is to blame, I am primarily surprised that nobody pulled Snyder aside during the year between locking the film and its release to say “Hey, maybe we could reshoot some of this to make it more impactful; to feel more necessary to the story we are trying to tell.”
  
• I told a friend of mine that I felt that the movie needed to be either 20 minutes shorter, or 30 minutes longer; that it fell into the narrative equivalent of the “uncanny valley”–the term used to describe the phenomenon that, as digitally created human faces get closer and closer to photo-realism, they suddenly look more and more fake. BvS is caught in a narrative uncanny valley. There are a lot of tangents and side-plots that are introduced but go nowhere; or else so much time is invested in them, but there is no equivalent narrative payoff.
  There are two really great examples.
  The first is Bruce Wayne’s nightmare vision of a future in which Metropolis is a desert wasteland. We see that Earth has probably been invaded by Darkseid, as his Omega-symbol is carved into the surface of the planet. But the scene goes on for 10 minutes (it seemed like), showing Batman inexplicably wearing an Australian duster over his batsuit and sporting machine gun and pistol, which he ends up using liberally. He gets captured, Superman kills some guys, then punches Bruce to death. Then Bruce “wakes up” to some guys yelling at him in the bat cave (was it The Flash? I thought it looked like Iron Man…) from within a strange white light. You can’t tell what the guy says, you don’t know who he is, and there is absolutely no explanation or reason for any of this being in the movie. This entire sequence comes out of nowhere and leads nowhere; it exists seemingly only to set up Bruce’s final words to Princess Diana (Wonder Woman) at Clark Kent’s funeral, when he insists that they need to gather up other people with powers, cuz he just has a hunch they’ll need to fight.
  Second was a few-minutes-long sequence when Diana watches some decrypted videos of The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman. Sure, it’s thrilling to see them, and they all looked pretty legit badass for whenever we see them next (Justice League Part 1?). But all of these scenes served absolutely no purpose to the central story of this film and felt like half-developed story threads that could have been easily cut out. Or else fleshed out with more footage. I would have been happier either way, but being left with so much half-baked material was frustrating.
  If anyone remembers Iron Man 2, you probably know it sucked. Aside from the fact that nobody told Mickey Rourke what movie he was making, one of the reasons director Jon Favreau stepped out of directing any further Marvel movies was that Marvel Studios forced him to inject several scenes into the movie that served no purpose other than to set up future Marvel movies. Remember when Tony was eating donuts in a donut after getting black-out drunk and fighting his best friend? In the mother of all deus ex machina moments, Nick Fury shows up, completely drains the tension of Tony’s “I’m dying of poisoning” storyline by simply giving him a questionably withheld temporary cure, and then talks about Avengers stuff before spelling out the story of the rest of the movie. It had nothing to do with the central story of the film, but they had to shoehorn it in to set up later stuff in in MCU Phase 1; if anything, it was creatively bankrupt and diminished what the film could have been in every possible way.
  I felt the same way several times in BvS. These completely unnecessary scenes contributed nothing to this film and were just hyper-extended Easter eggs for later films. Significant time investment, little-to-no payoff at all.
  
• I was let-down by the music, to be honest. Hans Zimmer, one of my favorite film composers, was co-credited with one of his proteges, who has adopted the unfortunate nom de plume ‘Junkie XL’, which seems like a terrible name for a working professional musician. But whatever. I’m sure Zimmer was credited because his excellent score from MoSwas heavily referenced, if not out-and-out copied. But the new themes for Batman and Wonder Woman were underwhelming and overwhelming, respectively. Zimmer’s iconic music for the Dark Knight trilogy was awesome and set the standard for film music for several years. But the new theme for Batman was muddled and non-descript. On the other hand, Wonder Woman’s theme was ridiculously outrageous–a screaming guitar riff that made me wonder if someone’s cell phone had gone off. The score was just hit-and-miss, and unfortunately, since the professional musician and apparent working adult named ‘Junkie XL’ was coming off two home runs with Mad Max: Fury Road and Deadpool, both of which had great scores. Wish this had been the third…
  
• Lex Luthor was just awful. I don’t know what the behind-the-scenes discussion were that led Jesse Eisenberg to go the route he went with the character, but instead of coming across as any kind of mastermind at all, he seemed like a young man with a severe case of either ADHD or dementia. The second viewing I picked up on more elements of his plot, but the tone and acting of the part were just too out-there to really relate to on any level. In my opinion, his performance undermined the film’s central story arc of Lex Luthor as the mastermind of a plan to eliminate Superman by manipulating him and Batman into a fight. Eisenberg’s Lex had no traits whatsoever that would have convinced me he was a mastermind.
  Everyone knows that films like this live or die on the strength of the villain, and anyone that thought that Batman and Superman’s fight would be the real climax of the movie was naive. But as the central villain, it was very difficult to clue in on exactly what motivated Lex, and it was simply easier to interpret a lot of his behavior, especially during the first half of the film, to those of a harmless, spoiled-rich, mentally-challenged guy. Some of his actions were easily telescoped out earlier in the film, while crucial details about his plot were completely glossed over (how DID Lex learn Superman’s identity?!)
  Unfortunately, by the time Lex got a little interesting, we were 90 seconds from the end of the film, when he issued an out-of-the-blue warning that he had rung a bell and that other threats would be coming. You’d think that in 2.5 hours, we might have seen some evidence of that, but no… we didn’t.
  
• Alternatively, the other “villain” was Doomsday, a mutated creation by Lex, utilizing the genesis chamber in the colonization ship from MoS, Zod’s dead body, and some of Lex’s blood. Never mind how Lex was allowed to take command of the ship, at what stage did it seem like a good idea to create a mutant monster? And why was Doomsday a mindless beast? And why did he look exactly like the cave troll from Fellowship of the Ring?! (Actually, WETA Digital did the effects, and they apparently weren’t paid enough to make something new–they literally copy/pasted from the LOTR:FOTR folder to the BvS:DoJ folder. Doomsday was not a better villain than Lex–he was just a mindless, nearly unstoppable monster. He made for a great climactic battle, but that’s about it…
  
• The line from Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, spoken by Batman to Superman after defeating the hell out of him in the comic, and also used by Snyder to formally announce the film at Comic-Con in 2013, WASN’T EVEN IN THE MOVIE. Totally blew that chance…
  
• While the movie felt full of half-developed tangents and dead-end plot points, I’m mystified how cramming two comics worth of material into one movie could leave the audience with such a jumbled mess. One thing that could have helped focus the movie was a clearly defined central theme and a better title. For 2 years, people have wondered why Batman v Superman wasn’t titled ‘Batman vs Superman. Why the lone ‘v’?!? So weird…
  And why that route anyway? Their fight is only one aspect of the film.
  And why call it ‘Dawn of Justice’? Was it kind of the genesis of what might eventually be the Justice League? Maybe, but that really would have required more members to DO SOMETHING in the movie. I’m totally cool with Wonder Woman’s mysterious presence in the film but the easter-egg approach to Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman, with no mention of Martian Manhunter–those were all tough oversights, if you are trying to get the Justice League together. I realize that Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are the holy trinity of the JL, but I’m not sure three people a ‘league’ comprise…
  
• I’ll just throw out that even though it was nice to see Kevin Costner take up his role as Clark’s earthly father, the scene (again) made no sense. Was it a vision? A memory? A hallucination? Where was he? Mount Everest? The Misty Mountains? And why the strange story about the Lang’s farm flooding? It seemed like weak choice of story to make a powerful moral point to Clark. And still–why was he seeing his dad?!?! Another strange choice that chewed up a couple minutes but had no real payoff.
  
• Man of Steel truly succeeded at several things, including introducing some great supporting characters, all of whom faded into the background or were diminished in impact by their role in BvS, Perry White chief among them. It was just unfortunate to have such a strong character reduced to wandering around the office yelling at or for Clark Kent. Just a bummer–it reminded me of Marcus Brody in the Indiana Jones movies: strong, mentor character in Raiders turned into a caricature in Last Crusade.
  
• In hindsight, the moderately poor trailers for BvS were probably a strong indicator of the story and editing problems of the film itself. The trailers stand in stark contrast to DC’s next film: Suicide Squad, which comes in August. Suicide Squad looks absolutely amazing, and quite honestly, is being directed by David Ayers, a more talented, repertoire-diverse director than Snyder. I don’t know if Suicide Squad will make more money than BvS, but I’ll bet money right now it will be better received by critics and maybe audiences as well. While I’m annoyed at movie trailers spoiling significant plot points in movies (in the case of BvS, Doomsday as the real climactic combat villain), I do find it refreshing that they are refreshingly honest about their respective films’ content–see my review of The Force Awakens.
  As an aside, I’ll call it right now, that there will be a bazillion articles in August touting Suicide Squad as DC’s redemption after a disappointing BvS.
  

Those were my primary complaints. Any single one of them would have been easily forgivable, but together, they undermined what could have been a great movie. I still think the primary culprits are director Zack Snyder and writer Chris Terrio, who should have started their conversations with a discussion about theme and a commitment to stay on target, narratively and thematically. I actually really hope that Ben Affleck is allowed to write and maybe direct a stand-alone Batman film. His recent efforts, Argo and The Town, are excellent films, and bringing that level of filmmaking competence to a Batman movie would welcome.

As I mentioned a few times, I did really like the movie, and I think it will probably age well. Snyder has given a few details about the blu-ray release, teasing a 30-minute longer extended cut of the film. I am holding out hope that it improves on at least some of my complaints. Very rarely do extended versions prove to be worthwhile, but I’ll hold out judgment for July, when it is released.

In the end, I am definitely looking forward to more Batman, which will be only a few months away with Suicide Squad in August. For being so late to the game, I think DC has a solid chance of matching Marvel’s success if they focus on their strengths from MoS and BvS. Remember: Marvel’s Phase 1 contained The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Cap 1, none of which were great movies…And finally, count me in for Wonder Woman next spring–I suspect DC will finally give the cinematic world the first great female-led superhero movie.

Analysis by Jim Washburn