Batman vs. Superman (vs. Expectations)
Warner/D.C.’s first big push to take on Marvel isn’t the failure many are classifying it as. But that doesn’t mean Warner/D.C. is out of the woods either…
‘Batman V Superman’s Knock-Down, Drag-Out Fight With The B.O.: Even Lower With $51.8M, -69%
“Box Office: ‘Batman V Superman’ Drops 60% For Smaller Third Friday Than Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’”
“BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN BOX OFFICE LESS THAN ESTIMATED”
“Batman v Superman Box Office Performance Forces Warner Bros Into Panic Over Company Strategy”
To read the headlines lately for Warner Bros. first big push to take on Marvel Studios’ previously near-exclusive hunting grounds you could be excused for thinking Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice was a box office bomb…
…when the reality is anything but that.
Yes, after a record March opening weekend, box office receipts went in freefall.
Yes, it may not make it to $1 billion worldwide at the box office (though I think it will crawl over that line in the end).
Yes, the film isn’t the film it could (and probably should) have been.
But all that misses the point. Sure, for the “you’re up/you’re down” Hollywood scorecard keeping media, for the Marvel/D.C. warring fanboys, and probably for Warner Bros. and D.C. Comics (though more for Warner than D.C.) having a runaway box office smash with no asterisks attached to it is more than just a talking point (and in Warner’s case a matter of pride as well as a marker laid down).
But that was the aspiration. It wasn’t the end game.
The end game, the real end game, was to have a movie that made money and didn’t suck.
From the moment this film was announced, expectations were low. Warner Bros. has had a bad track record for a while now with super hero films not involving Christian Bale. Man of Steel was a divisive reboot of a franchise that had just been rebooted with Brandon Routh in Superman Returns. Nobody thought Bale could be topped as Batman and to go on without him, literally a few years after the last Bale film, would be foolhardy. And Green Lantern…do I really need to go there?
Then there was the very un-Marvel way D.C. and Warner are going about throwing the Justice League together. Marvel went about laying a foundation for The Avengers by doing solo films for four of the main characters before bringing everyone on board for Marvel’s The Avengers. By the time that movie came out viewers were well versed in what to expect, save for Mark Ruffalo’s unexpectedly wonderful take on Bruce Banner, so it was not that much of a stretch for the viewer to see everyone come together.
But Warner/D.C. opted to force the issue vis a vis Justice League by using Batman vs. Superman as the main springboard to launch Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman with Henry Cavill already established as Superman from Man of Steel. The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman will not see standalone films before the first Justice League film arrives. They have only the briefest of cameos in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Some felt and still feel that trying to fast track the process this way reeks of a desperation throw on Warner/D.C.’s part. For them that feeling did negatively impact expectations for Batman vs. Superman.
The moment the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman was announced, producing groans from many fan quarters, expectations were lowered further still. Let’s face it…love him or hate him, he’s been in some absolute movie howlers, though Argo and some other recent films of his have gone a long way to repair that damage.
And then there’s the Michael Bay of comics films…the JJ Abrams of spandex: director Zack Snyder. While there is a core of true believer Snyder-heads out there who think the man can do no wrong there is also another group who believe that Snyder has been dining on his success with 300 for way too long and finally needs to show that he can do more than stitch overproduced, heavily stylized, green screen, CGI heavy, slow-motion, de-saturated color action sequences together and expect them to prop up a weak script. Yes, his attention to and reverence for the original comic source material is second to none. But at times it has seemed Snyder got so focused on authenticity and canon that something else would get lost in the process which hurt the end product. Watchmen was a missed opportunity (I have yet to see the three hour Blu-Ray version). Man of Steel was not much of an improvement.
Here’s the bottom line on Snyder: He loves comics. That much is certain. It’s not just a directing job for him. And his fans like him for adhering as close as possible to the source material, something you just cannot in any way say about Marvel which has turned the movie retcon into an art form. But as long as he’s been doing this he has yet to have an indisputable commercial and critical hit — a Captain America: The Winter Soldier. So, hearing Snyder’s name get attached to Batman vs. Superman lowered expectations even more. Snyder was handed Warner/D.C.’s crown jewels based on a mediocre at best track record that, while pleasing purists and hard core D.C. fanboys, seemed to ignore the fact that blockbuster movies are made to make lots of money and blockbuster movies don’t make lots of money when they only resonate with the most vociferous of fans, many of whom are going to see the thing regardless of how good it is.
This is why everyone’s wrong about Batman vs. Superman and what it needed to do to succeed. It wasn’t a film that had everything going for it. It was a film that had a bunch of things potentially going against it:
- Studio with an unarguably ineffective superhero track record as of late rapid-fire shoe-horning in characters with little acclimation period? Check.
- Director with a string of so-so (at best) films? Check.
- Reboots of characters memorably made famous by other actors? Check.
- Casting a big star with a repeated track history of big bombs in Warner’s most bankable role of the past decade? Check.
Under the circumstances why should anyone not believe Batman vs. Superman might have needlessly dug itself a big hole it would have to to claw its way out of?
Expectations were unrealistically out of whack from the outset. Everyone applied the Marvel standard to Batman vs. Superman through the prism of The Avengers and other super smash films in the MCU. But the Marvel standard only applies to Marvel films because Marvel Studios, with its singular focus, up to now has been unique in Hollywood. D.C. Extended Universe (DCEU) films are being done in a more traditional Hollywood fashion.
A different standard is called for here, one that compares Marvel’s foundational Avengers films to Batman vs. Superman, Warner/D.C.’s first foundational Justice League film. When you apply this standard, things take a more favorable look for Warner/D.C.
Of the first five MCU films before The Avengers, Marvel’s track record is more in line with Batman vs. Superman. Yes, Iron Man 1 was an unqualified smash that set the tone — a tone Warner has yet to set in the DCEU. But once you get past that film…
Iron Man 2 was a big letdown critically (albeit not financially). The Incredible Hulk was an unqualified disaster that would still be all but forgotten in the MCU if it wasn’t for the fact that William Hurt as General Thunderbolt Ross will show up in Marvel’s upcoming Captain America: Civil War. Thor was a much needed rebound for Marvel but had its own issues. Captain America: The First Avenger was uneven and will likely go down as the weakest of the Cap trilogy.
Three of those four franchises launched by Marvel held serve and Marvel was able to build The Avengers on top of them. They didn’t hit it out of the park (save for maybe Iron Man 1). They just didn’t suck. The one that did suck got tossed on to the scrap heap and we got Mark Ruffalo…a quantum improvement in every way.
Similarly, Batman vs. Superman has held serve for Warner/D.C. and done well enough financially. It doesn’t suck. Here’s why:
- Ben Affleck — Affleck carries this film practically on his back. The naysayers had it wrong and had it wrong badly. Don’t be throwing out the “Christian Bale” standard as a counterargument. That was not the Batman of this DCEU. Bale’s Batman existed in an alternate D.C. universe…one which didn’t have a Robin to get killed in. There’s been talk of Warner adding an Affleck solo Batman film to the schedule. Based on this film and what Affleck did in it, I would like to see it happen.
- Gal Gadot — Though I wish we had seen more of her and had her interact more with Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, Gadot’s fight scenes at the end really established the Wonder Woman character in ways I hope we see carried forward in her standalone film.
- Jesse Eisenberg — The trailers for Batman vs. Superman did not do Eisenberg justice at all. Eisenberg’s Luthor is much, much more than what we got out of those trailers.
- The heavy fighting is saved for the latter quarter of the film. This gives time for the characters to better establish themselves. The first two thirds of the film had me glued to my seat thinking “Wow…this film is not at all what I was fearing would happen.” Too bad it couldn’t sustain that feeling all the way through to the end.
- The first minutes of the film showing the Superman/General Zod Man of Steel fight from Bruce Wayne’s perspective was brilliant. It’s a shame that standard wasn’t carried forward to the end fights.
None of this to say that Batman vs Superman is a great comic film. It’s not. Here’s why:
It has more plot holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. The single worst thing that undermines Batman vs. Superman is the screenplay. It is full of brain dead plot contrivances. To just name a few:
- How does Diana Prince know Lex Luthor has that picture?
- How does Batman know that Lex Luthor is after Kryptonite and found a huge chunk of it? A major plot point for the first half of the film has Batman trying to follow a trail of clues but later on he admits it’s really about Kryptonite. Yet he never says how he got that information.
- How does Lex Luthor have a detailed dossier on all the powered people in the Justice League? The one person who would absolutely maintain a database on people is Batman and even he didn’t have that kind of information.
- How does Superman deduce Bruce Wayne is Batman? He just drops his name…not at the first confrontation when it made sense to drop it but in the second when it didn’t. Certainly there are hints that Kent knows something is going on with Bruce Wayne because of Kent overhearing his conversation with Alfred at Lex’s shindig. But it’s a pretty large leap to go from wireless communication of a suspicious nature to Bruce Wayne = Batman. And we never see Superman head in that direction…only that he wound up there. That’s sloppy writing.
- Kidnapping Martha Kent — I have particular antipathy for this one because it totally neutered the big showdown. Why? Because, by forcing Superman to fight Batman the only possible outcome of that fight is to have Superman tell Batman “They took my mommy!” So instead of a real showdown with real undercurrents of mistrust on both sides we have an artificial showdown where one side’s heart isn’t in it and the outcome is all but predetermined: Batman spares Superman after he tells him why he’s fighting him. None of this happens if Martha isn’t kidnapped.
- Luther unleashes Doomsday to kill Superman…and then….what? Doomsday goes back into its kennel? Luthor can’t control it. Luthor, given enough time, might be able to kill it the same way Superman and Batman teamed up to. But short of that Doomsday runs wild and lays waste to the Earth. How does that benefit Luthor exactly? The writers used Doomsday as a plot contrivance to combat the heroes but didn’t think it all the way through and consider whether Luthor, being the very intelligent not at all insane evil mastermind he is (at least not as insane as his jail cell scene might indicate), isn’t the type to not think things through further than the writers have here. My money says Luthor never would have created Doomsday in the first place because it’s too risky a move for a mere human like him to take. On the other hand, this strongly suggests Luthor wasn’t Luthor by that point. This is illustrative of the problem with trying to preserve a larger narrative in a shroud of secrecy with only scattered hints to suggest its presence: sometimes the hints will be misinterpreted by the non-hardcore viewer.
- As smart as Luthor is the idea that he could figure out Kryptonian tech on a ship that damaged in order to create Doomsday in that short a timespan defies belief…regardless of whether he’s under Darkseid’s control or not.
- Diana Prince is basically found out by Bruce Wayne and her response is to get on a plane and ignore his email and the other powered people Luthor was keeping tabs on?
- Clueless Superman — More than once in this film Superman gets caught flatfooted. The one example he acknowledged was the explosion at the Capitol. But the far more egregious example was listening in on what Bruce Wayne was up to at Luthor’s and not investigating. Here’s a multi-billionaire conducting some kind of clandestine operation at LexCorp and Clark Kent responds by…doing nothing? Not even wondering why? Seriously?
I could go on but I made my point. Batman vs. Superman doesn’t suck but the script doesn’t do the film any favors.
And then there’s Snyder. While Snyder surprised me a few times by showing a few directorial weapons I otherwise would have never guessed he had in his arsenal — particularly the “live action” street chase through Gotham and the prolonged single take camera shots of the battle between Batman and Martha’s kidnappers where Snyder eschewed the rapid fire cut shots many comic book action films use these days, going “old school” Hollywood action essentially — he really lost me with the last two battles, particularly the Doomsday fight. The CGI was blurry on purpose — the shots were all simulated shaky cam. Lots of particle effects covered over the shots to muddy the image as a tool to cover for the CGI’s obvious shortcomings. Too often you could spot where the characters changed from CGI models to real human beings. Basically everything I loathe about green screen CGI Hollywood these days was present in these fights.
But as disappointing as those sequences were for me, Snyder had built up enough of a positive flow through the first three quarters of the film that I was able to leave the theater with a positive vibe…albeit also with a lament about what could have been. I am curious to see the 3-hour R version when it comes out on Blu-Ray.
So considering what the headlines are saying, despite some of more visceral negative reactions to the film from some quarters, despite it not being a box office super smash, I think this film is getting kind of a bum rap. This opinion is coming from one who thought a lot worse of the film going in to see it. It exceeded my expectations. It did enough to establish a foundation to build upon, though not necessarily the foundation it could have had and certainly not the foundation it probably deserved. But then after all the potential gloom and doom that surrounded this project heading in to its release, I consider it a win for Warner/D.C. The potential for gloom and doom lowered the expectations bar.
The real DCEU litmus test for Warner/D.C. was always going to be Suicide Squad. The bar for that film was set very high because of that first trailer that leaked out. That trailer scored a 10 out of 10. Nobody was expecting that out of this film. What we got was a peek at what appeared to be a surprisingly dark and menacing film with potential bravura performances from Margot Robbie and Jared Leto in a Joker performance which could wind up comparing very favorably to the late Heath Ledger’s. I got sick to my stomach when rumors started swirling that Warner had ordered re-shoots to lighten the tone and inject more humor. That, in my view, could prove to be a catastrophic mistake if true. I want the dark version.
This isn’t to say that Batman vs. Superman exonerates Warner/D.C. and guarantees success for Justice League and the other DCEU films to come. The fact that Snyder is attached to direct both Justice League films is a cause for concern — he still hasn’t hit any comic book film out of the park despite four attempts at bat, as is the fact that half the cast will have little to no acclimation period with the audience before the first film debuts.
However, in the meantime, I think it would be fair to say Batman vs. Superman was good enough to keep things rolling for Warner/D.C. Where things roll to…nobody can say yet.
