I liked Batman V Superman and Here’s Why

Some minor spoilers ahead… Obviously.

I recently had the privilege of attending an early screening of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. It was easily one of the most convoluted and unabashedly stupid movies I’ve ever enjoyed. I still very much enjoyed it though.

I loved Nolan’s trilogy. It really was something else. It was something else from the superhero stories we had seen before it, and it was something we probably won’t get again any time soon. That’s ok though, because Nolan made those movies already, and we don’t need to remake them.

The last Batman trilogy elevated the franchise from being Joel Schumacher’s campy Batman themed burlesque show into a territory previously only occupied by filmmakers like Michael Mann or David Fincher. It felt more realistic than anything we’d seen Batman in before. Even though The Dark Knight trilogy took some liberties with physics and plot devices — it felt close enough to our world that it carried a kind of dramatic gravitas no one knew was possible for a superhero film. It got away with being an incredibly self-serious film about a man who dresses up as a bat and beats up clowns.

But Batman v Superman is not a Christopher Nolan film and Zack Snyder knows this. He’s a director that plays to his strengths. In his case that’s his ability to create emotionally resonant tableaus with iconic characters. This is a gladiator fight. A clashing of titans. It’s not trying to psychoanalyze what makes these guys tick.

Snyder cribs his visuals liberally from Frank Miller’s comics. Gotham is a perpetually rainy hellscape populated exclusively by chiselled tough guys. If Christian Bale’s Batman tried to answer to the question “What would Batman actually be like if he existed?” the Batffleck question seems to be “How hard does Batman have to flex to be intimidating when right across the river there are living gods?”

If Nolan’s trilogy was a Radiohead concert, Snyder’s is Mastadon.

Batman V Superman is insane — At one point Batman breaks a ceramic sink over Superman’s head. There’s a montage of Bruce Wayne hitting tires with a sledgehammer to prepare for the title showdown. To say the film and it’s title characters lack restraint would be like saying Bruce Wayne might have been affected by the death of his parents.

Snyder is not a subtle director, that means he can skew a little silly in scenes that call for it, but when he’s dealing with his element I relish it. I got chills when Batman grumbled “You’re not brave. Men are brave.” right before walloping Kal-el in his stupid perfect face.

Everyone involved in this movie has the cheese factor dialed up to 11 and that’s a big part of why it’s so fun. Like the artwork in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, it paints with big aggressive strokes and lumbers around wrecking everything in it’s path. If you think too closely about some of the characters’ decisions they don’t make any sense. But that’s decidedly not the kind of superhero movie Snyder is making. “Batman V Superman” and “makes sense” are kind of mutually exclusive.

I wonder what kind of movie the detractors of BvS wanted it to be. The last 9 or so Marvel movie plots have been so wrapped up in politics, corporate mergers and CEOs that I don’t think I can stand to see another sobering take on superheroes. It was refreshing to me that at one point in Dawn of Justice the writers just seemingly just said “Fuck it, this is getting boring” and literally blew up all the politicians. On with the punch fest!

There’s plenty to be excited about here. Hans Zimmer is clearly having fun in his pounding, unrestrained collaboration with Junkie XL. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman has some scene-stealing moments worth the price of admission on their own. Jesse Eisenberg captures all the hamminess of Lex Luthor while bringing some fresh hate-ability to the character. The Batcave looks cool. Jeremy Irons is doing something. There’s a bad guy that looks like Alexander Ovechkin. Bruce Wayne goes to a fight club…

It’s corny as hell — but how could this movie not be? I’m not usually one to advocate “checking your brain at the door” but in Batman v Superman’s case everyone is obviously having so much fun that it makes you want to stop being cynical and just jump onboard for the ride.