Movie Review: Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar.” -Julius Caesar, Act 3. Scene II
I must preface this review with a lament, for which I beg your indulgence. How has it come to this? Why did this happen? There was a time when the pillars of Western Civilization were respected and held as sacrosanct. We have disregarded and delegitimized God and religion. We replaced the family as the building block of society with wage earners. We have thrown out morals and ethics in favor of materialistic relativism. We hold history with disdain and our ancestors with contempt. Despite this destruction, the last tethers we had to the cultural traditions and spirit of the West were our art and our literature. Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Poe, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Dumas, and the list goes on, find themselves further marginalized and devalued. The appreciation for the world and legacy of our art has diminished to mere fancies for small cadres of devotees and lovers. I lament this loss. Our icons have been tarnished, and so to have the icons of American comics, Batman and especially Superman. If you find my lament a tad dramatic, I hope you will appreciate that it is at least sincere and respectful. Batman vs Superman feels hollow as the echoes of Western culture and civilization are still present on screen, but barely register as they are drowned out by the cacophony of noise and destruction throughout. This is an opera, and can be viewed as such, but not a good one.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
BvS begins by having the audience relive the disaster porn at the end of Man of Steel (2013) from Bruce Wayne’s (Ben Affleck) perspective. Correction: the movie begins by showing the audience the murders of Bruce Wayne’s parents, because audiences cannot be reminded enough of Batman’s origins. The film then flashes forward almost two years since Superman’s (Henry Cavill) coming out party, and Metropolis has, miraculously, rebuilt and recovered. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is somewhere in North Africa attempting to get an interview with a warlord or terrorist leader of some sort, when the white paramilitary guards start shooting everyone in sight. Superman swoops in and rescues Lane, but the American media and survivors blame Superman for the deaths of those shot by the guards. Not even 10 minutes into it and the film has already gone off rails. Is the audience really supposed to believe that Superman, who spends several beautifully shot montages saving people, is hated by the American public? Superman’s activities are somehow so controversial that a Senate subcommittee is established to investigate and determine what should be done about him. Remember this because it will become a key, if silly, plot point.
Back in Gotham City, Batman is doing Batman things i.e. hunting down criminals and terrorizing the criminal element, going so far as to brand sex offenders and rapists with a bat logo. Batman is also worried about Superman and the possibility that he might go rogue as seen in dystopian dream sequences that Bruce has. Wayne begins investigating the guards responsible for the attack in North Africa and discovers that they are involved in smuggling large quantities of Kryptonite from the wreckage of the alien craft used by Zod. They are attempting to smuggle it into the hands of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) whose stated goal is to build a weapon capable of killing Superman. Lex comes into conflict with the chair of the Superman Senate subcommittee (Holly Hunter), because she does not buy Luthor’s argument of needing a deterrent or weapon for the very being for which her committee is trying to find a solution. The film’s logic here is astounding. Clark Kent has also taken an interest in Batman and believes the Daily Planet and the media is not giving Batman’s activities in Gotham enough attention. So, Batman is looking into finding a way to kill Superman, Luthor is also trying to kill Superman, the Senate is trying to come up with a solution for Superman, and Superman wants Batman to stop terrorizing Gotham’s criminal element for some reason. Am I the only one that finds this frustrating and illogical?
Superman eventually concedes to making an appearance at the Senate hearings due to the testimony of a Wayne employee that lost his legs in Superman’s fight with Zod. As the world watches, the wheelchair Luthor provided the paraplegic explodes in the committee chamber killing everyone inside except for Superman. Instead of blaming this glaringly obvious attempt to kill Superman on an angry man, the American media and public blames Superman and wonder whether he was somehow involved…other than being in the room when the bomb goes off? Superman gets mopey and discouraged and flies away. Batman steals the Kryptonite from Luthor, and begins building weapons to fight and kill Superman. Luthor in the meantime is creating an additional weapon to use against Superman by utilizing the technology of Zod’s crashed ship and Zod’s corpse. Luthor somehow deduces Superman’s identity, and kidnaps his mother and Lois Lane. Superman returns, having been gone for no more than 15 minutes of screen time, to save Lois and learns that Luthor has been manipulating events since the beginning. He tells Superman that the only way to save his mother is to bring him Batman’s head, secretly hoping that Batman will kill Superman for him. This leads us into the final act of the film and the climatic showdown for which everyone (apparently) has been waiting.
Batman and Superman fight for roughly 10 minutes with Batman being on the verge of killing the last son of Krypton. Lois arrives and Batman learns that Superman’s mother happens to be named Martha, just like his deceased mother, and decides not to kill him. Seriously. All the grand jokes and discussions before this movie came out that Superman and Batman could resolve their issues in a 5 minute conversation were true. The only difference in the actual product is that Batman and Superman do not have any real differences of opinion or philosophy with each other, save for Batman feeling inadequate as a man in the presence of a god. Batman goes and saves Martha Kent from Luthor’s thugs while Superman goes to confront Luthor. Lex seems genuinely surprised that neither of the two heroes has killed the other and that they seem to be working together fairly easily and quickly, considering that he personally is responsible for the almost 2 hour buildup of making them hate each other. Luthor unleashes his trump card, Doomsday. The resulting fight scene sees all options of defeating Doomsday fail, despite the pleasing arrival of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), and Superman makes the sacrifice play to save the world. Superman stabs Doomsday with a Kryptonite spear, but is in turn stabbed by Doomsday’s bone claws and dies. The world mourns, and Batman tells Wonder Woman that the two of them need to find the other Metahumans glimpsed in the film to prepare for something much worse.
Have we gotten all that? Superman changed everything because Man of Steel happened. Luthor decides to rid the world of Superman and attempts to use Batman before ultimately creating a terror beast that manages to succeed. Why? Why did they do any of this? None of the build up, and especially the fight between Batman and Superman, actually mattered because Luthor had Doomsday. Doomsday was not some project kept in a vault and subsequently activated in case plan Batman failed. Doomsday was born at precisely the end of the timetable Luthor gave Superman to kill Batman. This means that either Luthor knew Superman would kill Batman, in which case Superman’s reputation would be destroyed (a stated goal) and then Doomsday would kill Superman, or worse, Luthor did not know how the fight between Superman and Batman would go and unleashed an unstoppable killing machine in a world whose only hope was now dead. I will give you that evil geniuses and psychotics have convoluted and bizarre plans for defeating the heroes, but this was just stupid. Zod was going to wipe out humanity in order to rebuild Krypton. Luthor was ready to wipe out humanity in order to kill Superman as a means of…saving…humanity? Even for Luthor that makes no sense, especially given the foreshadowing made to the future of this DC franchise that Luthor himself mentions.
Batman vs Superman is really a Batman movie, albeit fairly boring and a bit uninteresting. It does not explore any new ground with Batman and, frankly, retreads the old in some unimaginative and dull ways. As previously mentioned, the film shows the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne but it is not content to show it once. Instead, they show it over and over again to remind the audience of Bruce’s motivations. I almost felt insulted by the filmmakers in this regard. Sure, go ahead and retread Batman’s origin again, but trust that the audience can follow it the first time without the need for constant reminders. Having Batman haunted by visions of his dead parents is not new, and using his dreams as foreshadowing to Darkseid and a war with Apokolips, whilst fun for comic book fans, is unnecessary. Ben Affleck is good as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Jeremy Irons is good as Alfred. The Batcave looks cool, and the car and the plane were neat to look at, but Batman can be more than just his dead parents and toys. Also, not that it really matters other than for angry internet nerd bingo, but Batman does not seem to have a hard rule against killing in this movie verse. He does it regularly and was certainly prepared to kill Superman. If only they had actually respected the character enough to really explore instead of creating some arbitrary scenario for him to punch Superman.
There are some things to be admired in BvS such as Wonder Woman, who teases just enough to make you crave her standalone film, some great camera shots at times, and the Christ metaphor with Superman. In MoS, the Jesus metaphor came off very heavy handed. It is subtler in BvS, and Superman is not a passive character as he was previously. In MoS, Superman never did anything unless another character told him to do something. They have corrected this in BvS, and Superman actually exercises some agency by choosing not to kill Batman though Luthor told him to, and by taking the spear to kill Doomsday whilst knowing he would probably die in the effort. The shot of Lois Lane cradling Superman’s head in her lap directly recalls Mary holding the body of Christ after the crucifixion, and there are two cross shaped objects to the left of the screen in the same shot. The best use of the metaphor is in Superman’s burial as the audience hears a very gentle heartbeat in the final moments of the film. It is very faint and spaced out over several moments, but the sound is distinctly heard three times, directly referencing the resurrection. Personally, I found the metaphor more pleasing here than in MoS, which only seemed to be content in saying “I am Jesus,” rather than actually do anything with it.
END OF SPOILERS
In the end, this film feels like a colossal waste. It was a waste of nearly 3 whole hours of my life; a waste of good acting talent; a waste of vast amounts of comic book lore; most likely a waste of nearly a billion dollars by Warner Bros. There is little life or joy in this movie or this movie-verse. I still contend that Superman should be able to have fun and crack a smile. There is a certain comfort in using the characters consistently with the popular imagination. Batman can be brooding. Superman, arguably, should not. I liked Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and hope that Warner Bros gives her a worthy and worthwhile film. This film really is not that worthwhile unless you really need a superhero fix. It is unfortunate that Warner Bros seemed to either not care or learned entirely the wrong lessons from Man of Steel and doubled down in an effort to catch Marvel. There are parts here where a good film could have existed. It just gets lost in the noise and feels pointless both within its own internal logic and as a standalone film. This is how not to do a franchise film. It is a shame that Superman and Batman have been buried and all we have is the memories of what was and the hope that the future is not a desolate as the present.
1.5 star out of 5.
