Batman V Superman: Continuing Snyder’s majestic rendering of the DC Universe
*You will gather from the heading of this article that I enjoyed Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. My cards have been laid firmly on the table. If you didn’t enjoy it and disagree with me, I fully respect that view. Feel free to provide constructive comment and discussion is welcome. One last piece of housekeeping as regards the article— “Holy-Spoiler alert Batman!”*
Earlier today I read an interview with director and comic book aficionado Kevin Smith where he stated in relation to Dawn of Justice that, “there seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of what those characters [Batman and Superman] are about. It’s almost like Zack Snyder didn’t read a bunch of comics, he read one comic once, and it was Dark Knight Returns, and his favorite part was the last part where Batman and Superman fight.”
Now, I know Smith’s view is well respected, and rightly so, but I also think it is important to challenge it. Although Frank Miller’s work is obviously a template, there are other influences from Batman’s long character development at play in this film too, most notably the very early depictions of the Batman in the late 1930s and early 1940s and also his manifestation in the years immediately prior to The Dark Knight Returns in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The fundamental problem with anyone depicting a singular vision of Batman is the shift in that character within the comics over nearly 77 years. If we assume that Smith is referring to the 50-odd years of character history from Detective Comics Vol. 1 No.27 from May 1939, up to Dark Knight Returns, then it would still be impossible to enshrine all those character permutations within one film.
Reflecting “the comics accurately” within one film (a repeated criticism of Snyder’s vision in recent days), would actually entail balancing (in broad brush strokes) Batman’s ‘Detective era’, the ‘Monarch of the Golden Age’ era, ‘World War Two’ Batman, ‘Pop Culture 1960s’ Batman, ‘Science Fiction’ Batman, Batman as part of the ‘dynamic duo’, Batman as the ‘lone vigilante’, the ‘playboy Batman’ of the 1970s, ‘Warrior Batman’ of the 1980s, the ‘Broken Bat’ of the mid 1990s, and more micro variations. Evidence of the sheer variety of character representations can be accessed here. This is without taking into account other intermittent custodians of the cowl such as Dick Grayson and Jean Paul Valley over the years.
My own enjoyment of Dawn of Justice was complimented by an awareness that Snyder’s specific and stated aim was to pivot moviegoers from his superb Superman movie Man of Steel (2013) to the new era of DC Comics Extended Universe in the forthcoming Justice League, Wonder Woman and Aquaman films. His vision of Batman needed to be both compatible with, and complimentary to its predecessor film, as well as its successor films.
If Snyder’s first two DC films are judged in the round he has, in my view, effectively and creatively built a cohesive foundation for three of those seismic superheroes to inhabit (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in order of cinematic appearance). He has also deployed an impressive and diverse supporting cast which both stays true to, and alters, accepted wisdom as to character appearance, in the case of Martha Kent, Perry White, Alfred Pennyworth, and Lois Lane.
As with Man of Steel, Snyder again provides us with a film which has a distinct visual style. It may be that this is simply a personal experience but the films chime almost exactly with my own sensibilities, capturing an original and majestic style to depict the DC universe. It’s a style that serves to compliment his obvious theme of these characters as a modern day pantheon of secular gods; our modern day equivalent of the Greek and Roman gods.
My take on the film is also that it is first and foremost a Batman film. Therefore the tone of a darker Batman adopted is unsurprising, and is consistent with Nolan’s treatment (albeit stylistically different). Incidentally the last person to inject colour into a Batman film was Joel Schumacher in 1997's Batman and Robin. One doesn’t hear too many calls for a return to that Bat-era.
My view that Dawn of Justice is a Bat-centric film is I think confirmed by Snyder in his stated intention for the next films. In facilitating the transition towards the next sequence of planned DC releases he states that he, “wanted Bruce Wayne [as opposed to Bruce Wayne and Superman] to build the Justice League … Bruce Wayne having to go out and find these seven samurai by himself, that’s a lot more interesting of a premise.”
If we accept that an alteration in palette was required to accommodate the presence of The Batman then one begins to better understand the dark and sombre tone of the film. For me there was a crucial and effective restatement of Batman’s origin story, the death of his parents, the discovery of the Bat cave, etc.
Snyder does this as elegantly as he did with the Kal-El and Clark Kent origin stories/story (Krypton and Kansas respectively) in Man of Steel. Even the harshest critics must acknowledge the elegant depiction of the origin story sequence of Martha and Thomas Wayne’s murder in front of young Bruce (broadly consistent with and premised upon Frank Miller’s Year One).
Early depiction of the murder of Martha and Thomas Wayne:
Frank Miller’s depiction in Year One:-
Also crucial, in terms of understanding the dark tone of the Batman in the film, is the fact that we are given the chance to experience the battle of Metropolis through the eyes of Bruce Wayne ‘CEO’, traumatised at watching the death of his staff, housed in a down town skyscraper being obliterated in the battle of Metropolis.
That street level recap, in turn, has the effect of addressing the aspect of Man of Steel most commonly criticised i.e. the sheer scale of mass-devastation levelled at Metropolis in its final scenes.
Dawn of Justice toys with our previous perception of that battle to show the devastating effect it has on Wayne, visibly watching on in horror. That horror is fed by the realisation that his old methods won’t be enough to deal with this new level of super-powered threat to society. Vengeance for the fallen fuels his transition, as he musters all his skills and resources to elevate himself as Batman to a level of equal combatant with these new players, in this new game.
Dawn of Justice’s Producer Charles Roven has referred to the fact that an older Bruce Wayne has been jaded by the effects of the cumulative process of years of crime fighting, the effects of the Metropolis Battle and the emergence of super-powered beings (see interview with CinemaBlend).
Batman reflects Wayne’s jaded outlook only magnified. In the film Affleck’s character states,
“20 years in Gotham, how many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?”
We are clearly viewing a jaded warrior, a veteran of crime fighting who has to push past natural weariness in order to claim a place at the table to deliver his vision of justice.
I acknowledge, to a limited extent, the questioning of Batman’s apparent disregard for life within the film. I do so on the basis that goes against the general code established for the character on a consistent basis. However, in looking through my collection of Batman books for this piece I found the following picture within Mark Cotta Vaz’s Batman’s First 50 years:1939–1989:-
A code not to kill is nowadays a key question on whether Batman as a character can be transferred into a modern day setting without the viewer having to completely suspend disbelief.
One should however seriously consider whether there is really a difference between Batman wielding a gun and deploying guns within the Bat mobile in Dawn of Justice, or his struggle with the character Jack Napier (who then becomes the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989’s Batman the Movie) (watch carefully — how hard did Batman really try to pull Napier up in Burton’s film?). Likewise there is a significant death tally surrounding other Batman depictions over the years.
For me, I must confess that even though I loved Dawn of Justice, the visual imagery of Batman wielding a gun still does not look right aesthetically. I do however think that structuring an anti-Dawn of Justice argument based on the Batman’s disregard for the life of a villain, as opposed to deliberately maiming is, I think, a matter of semantics at this point.
The legacy of the film will perhaps be its most intriguing aspect, for example Wonder Woman’s depiction by Gal Gadot is extremely effective but very brief. I lay out some questions raised by the film below:-
- How will the DC Extended Universe develop from the foundations laid by Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice?
- What was going on in Batman’s dream sequences?
- Were they the Parademon followers?
- Will we see Darkseid?
- Will Suicide Squad provide us with clues to Batman’s psyche in Dawn of Justice?
- Is Batman’s psyche a result of the death of Robin?
I for one am eager to find out the answers.
“Right Alfred, time to get on my mech-suit in preparation for responses to this pro-Snyder article….”
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