Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a treat for the eyes, but it will hurt your brain and break your heart.
The Box Office:
I’ve been writing about this film for nearly three years, so you’ll pardon me if I don’t do a massive box office prelude for this review.
Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice cost around $250 million to produce and around $150m to market, which is par for the course on these kinds of tent poles and obviously not the rumored $410m in production expenses alone as was rumored last year. I was hoping it could legitimately sell itself as the biggest movie ever, but it was not to be. At least it doesn’t have to earn $1 billion worldwide just to break even.
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The film stars Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, and Jessie Eisenberg as (respectively) Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor. It is not just a straight sequel to Man of Steel. Oh, how much less pressure would that be at this juncture? No, it's basically a backdoor pilot to the two-part Justice League movie and a whole DC Extended Universe that continues this year with Suicide Squad and next year with Wonder Woman and Justice League Part I.
The film opens at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday night in America and will be open in much of the world (including Japan, China, and the United Kingdom) by this weekend. So come what may, we’ll have a pretty good idea of how big this film will be by Sunday afternoon.
The Review:
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is one of the most visually beautiful comic book movies you have ever seen. The picture is filled with moments of visual poetry and pure cinema in a way that resembles one glorious splash page after another. If you have any interest in seeing it, I beg of you to see it on the biggest IMAX screen you can find. It is every bit as big and spectacular as you might hope.
The best moments of Dawn of Justice resemble nothing less than a feature length adaptation of a series of Alex Ross paintings in all their naturalistic glory. But amid the visual treats is an utter mess of thinly sketched characters, haphazard plotting, surprisingly jumbled action, and “cut your nose to spite your face” world building. It's not a success either as a stand-alone Man of Steel sequel or a would-be kick-off to the DC Extended Universe, and attempts to insert Batman and his Super Friends do real damage to the story and thus the film. And, my word, this movie is almost a self-parody on “grimdark.”
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The picture opens with Bruce Wayne’s parents being murdered and then cuts to Man of Steel’s climax with an even greater emphasis on civilians dying and children watching their parents get blown up. And then we get a flurry of brutally violent action sequences (point-blank executions, sex trafficking victims in cages, etc.) and grim testimonials about the collateral damage that Superman allegedly causes.
While it’s not necessarily my job to concern myself with age-appropriateness, this film goes out of its way to make itself very questionable for young kids, including young girls who might be excited about Wonder Woman’s glorified cameo. If it were a better, more disciplined movie, I wouldn’t care as much, but (like Maleficent) the movie is a narrative mess, so the least it could be is a bit more kid-friendly.
It’s not until the first reel when we are introduced to our villain that things lighten up a little. In fact, Jessie Eisenberg’s daffy Lex Luthor is probably the lightest, least relentlessly depressing character in the film. Laurence Fishburne’s snarky (but wise) Perry White also falls into the “won’t make you want to chug Neuro Bliss” category.
Amy Adams’s Lois Lane gets plenty of screen time, even if it’s one of those “parallel investigations that lead to the obvious conclusion just a little too late” situations. The rest of the enormous cast is confined to mostly cameos. Holly Hunter gets a couple of strong moments with Luthor that will potentially inspire “shipper” fiction. Jeremy Irons’s weary Alfred provides the only note of interest in the Bruce Wayne-centric scenes.
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Affleck’s best moment is a blink-and-you-miss-it beat where he offers his butler a morning cup of coffee. Gal Gadot does as much as she can with her brief Wonder Woman action beats, but frankly most of her in-costume moments are more about striking a pose. Her theme music is awesome (as is Lex Luthor’s), and I’d be lying if I said her introductory beat didn’t quicken the pulse accordingly.
It’s no secret that Warner Bros. allegedly decided almost on a whim to change the would-be Man of Steel sequel to a Batman/Superman team-up movie, which then became a backdoor Justice League pilot. The push-pull is evident in every frame. Not helping is a terribly written Bruce Wayne/Batman. Ben Affleck is a fine (underrated?) actor, but his Batman/Bruce Wayne is the least appealing cinematic incarnation of the character that you’ve ever seen.
He gets copious beats that do little more than establish that this old and embittered Dark Knight is a hollow shell of a man. Affleck’s arc in the film is to play the angry (and murderous) dupe, to attempt to assassinate a man he believes to be a threat even as we, the audience, are acutely aware of the long con being played. And this inexplicable emphasis on the worst Batman story ever told (one where we see little of Batman doing his Batman thing) removes the film’s focus from where it should be, that of Clark Kent/Superman coping with the post-Man of Steel status quo.
There are hints of what Man of Steel 2 could have been, something akin to a modern-day remix of “Does the World Need a Superman?” and “the compelling story poorly told” Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. But they take a backseat to rehashing Batman’s origin story (spoiler alert: Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot and killed by a mugger) and Clark Kent complaining about that dastardly bat vigilante.
There are the barest hints of a movie centered around Superman’s place in the world and his moral responsibilities for both his actions and how those actions are perceived in the global arena. But they are confined to moments, montages, and all-too-brief monologues so we can continually revert our focus to the other caped crusader. For all the talk about The Dark Knight Returns as a baseline, there is a lot here from Superman: Peace on Earth, but it remains just outside of our grasp.
The periodic reappearance of Hans Zimmer’s rousing and hopeful Man of Steel theme will make you mourn for what could have been had the Dark Knight not butted in. As narratively flawed as they are, I enjoyed most of the Superman-centric material in the first half of the film. Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is a quirky delight. He gets some interesting speeches about how Superman plays into myths about religion and godly powers. But he gets less interesting as the story becomes more conventional.
Poor Henry Cavill is stranded without a life raft, being made to mope regularly and mourn as the world somewhat turns against him. The film may very much be about the idea of Superman, but there is little-to-nothing regarding who this specific Superman is as a human and/or a god from another world. He’s too busy whining about Batman, and Batman is too busy whining about him.
Again, I can only imagine what a full-blown Superman sequel might have been had Batman not spoiled the fun and then taken over the party. The whole “let’s make a movie where Batman and Superman fight each other” gimmick which inspired this not-quite-a-sequel just makes the third act all the more shocking when the big fight scene is (vague spoilers) arranged under a kind of duress which negates the entire concept of a committed Superman and a committed Batman beating each other up.
Regarding how it's set up, Batman comes off as a ghoulish bully, and you desperately want the fight to end as soon as possible. And without going into details, Lex Luthor’s end-game plans leave little room for any reasonable exit strategy or avoidance of accountability.
There is a moment of dastardly doings at around the midpoint that deserves copious discussion, or consequences, yet is brushed off with little afterthought. And it is at that moment that the film starts being somewhat of a generic superhero movie, in all the wrong ways. It is also around this point that the film fully commits to being a backdoor pilot for Justice League. This movie has a deluge of stand-alone sequences which serve no purpose beyond (spoiler, spoiler) and (spoiler, spoiler). You all owe Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Age of Ultron a big apology in this regard.
I will say that there is an extended dream sequence that A) looks jaw-dropping in IMAX and B) is precisely the kind of whacked-out fantasy nuttiness that I want from a Zack Snyder Justice League movie. And this is the part where I stop complaining for a minute even as I admit that the film as a whole was a deeply disappointing experience.
I wish the screenplay weren't hijacked by Batman and the once-and-future Justice League, but regarding sheer spectacle and cinematic oomph, I’m inclined to recommend this movie purely on visual beauty. Be it action beat or character moment, the film feels grand and huge, and cinematically glorious. Larry Fong knocked this one out of the park, plain and simple. Even though this is technically a negative review, I would have zero problems with Mr. Fong winning a Best Cinematography Oscar next year.
While it is tempting to blame director Zack Snyder for all that didn’t go right with the screenplay (which is officially credited to David Goyer and Chris Terrio) and the overall final product (this does feel like “full-Snyder”), this remains a gorgeous motion picture that acts as something of a rebuttal to the current Screening Room controversy. As insane as this may sound in light of the previous 1,300 words, but I remain officially curious to see a DC Extended Universe delivered to cinemas with this level of visual splendor and cinematic gravitas.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is not a good movie. It offers a truly unengaging Batman and then allows that character to dominate the proceedings while providing a painfully mopey and grim Superman-and-Friends narrative where the only ray of light comes from its homicidal arch-villain. The action scenes get better as they go along, but they aren’t as clean and as comprehensible as Man of Steel’s daylight smack downs.
But my word is it BIG in all the best ways. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I still have an interest in this crazy DCEU scheme, especially if the rest are going to be as visually dazzling as this one. Maybe Suicide Squad or Wonder Woman will be the one that nails it. Maybe Zack Snyder directing a lighter and more disciplined Justice League screenplay will be the one we’ve been waiting for. But I’m still willing to take a few more leaps of faith, especially with Bill Finger finally getting his moment in the sun.
After all, I didn’t love an MCU movie until Captain America: The First Avenger, but that film (and most of Phase 2) was so good that I am forever glad that I stuck around even before it was my job. I grew up on the DC Comics characters. I played with Super Powers action figures, I worshiped Batman, I adored Batman: The Animated Series, and I now love the current crop of DC television shows. I’m not giving up on this franchise just yet. I’m with it until the end of the line.
