Jason M. Jones

Managing expectations can play an important part in the extent to which I enjoy a movie, especially a mediocre one, and make no mistake, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice falls into that category. Everything that has been said about its unnecessarily long run-time and overly convoluted plot is on point. I didn’t seek out reviews beforehand to discover this. It seems that those who saw early screenings were crawling out of their skin to let others know. Scanning any social media feed, this became glaringly obvious, so I braced myself. I was still going to see it. I’ve been a fan of the cinematic versions of both characters since boyhood, but I prepared for the worst.

Even without these reviews denouncing it, I wasn’t expecting much. For me, Man of Steel—Batman v Superman‘s predecessor—was like Spider-man 3 in that it worked better as a trailer than a feature film. And while Man of Steel was better than Spider-man 3—the plot twists weren’t as ludicrously cliche (Harry Osborn’s amnesia?), the dialogue wasn’t as embarrassingly inane—Man of Steel still came off as stilted and uninspired. After a fresh take on Krypton, which was really the high point of MoS, it was all downhill. Clark Kent’s existential wandering mirrored too closely Bruce Wayne’s in Batman Begins without the poignancy created in Batman Begins by three elements: 1. Wayne’s parents’ murder; 2. his inability to satisfy his craving for vengeance when Falcone takes out Joe Chill before he can; and 3. Rachel Dawes’ shaming him for his cowardly consideration of vigilante justice. In any case, it has been noted by many that MoS’s climax descends into a chaotic mess that’s difficult to follow and results in thousands of innocent casualties, and this is where Batman v Superman picks up.

Or not quite…

During the credits there’s a brief encapsulation of Batman’s origin story: parents killed in an alley, grows up to seek justice by hauling in the criminals of Gotham. It’s done quickly, and yet I couldn’t help wondering why this was necessary. In a film whose run-time is two-and-a-half hours, do we really need this a decade after Batman Begins? Even those who might have been hiding under a rock should be able to catch on without it, but the coincidence of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent’s mothers’ being named “Martha” plays a role in the titular battle later in the film, so the writers might have believed this was necessary. The film then cuts to the climax of Man of Steel told through Bruce Wayne’s point of view. He lands in Metropolis via helicopter and speeds through the streets toward the building where the Metropolis branch of Wayne Enterprises is housed. He picks up his cell phone and calls Jack, presumably the head of this branch. “Get everyone out of the building!” Wayne orders. And the first question that popped into my mind was, “Why is anyone still in the building?” We’re set down in the middle of Man of Steel’s last act here. The battle has apparently been going on for a while, so why is anyone still on an upper floor of a skyscraper? Maybe I’m unusual in that if I were at work and saw an alien ship descending from the sky and two men flying through the air shooting lasers from their eyes, I’d be heading toward the exit asap. But this is big budget movie logic. The writers are trying to create drama out of events without asking themselves if these events make sense from a character standpoint. Obviously, as the building crumbles around Jack and Bruce Wayne is forced to make a diving grab for a little girl to save her from being crushed by a pillar, we’re meant to understand how Wayne’s anxieties about Superman originated, so I’ve got it. Let’s move on.

The film shifts to the Superman plot a certain number of months after his battle with Zod above Metropolis. Lois Lane has been brought by jeep with a photographer  to interview the leader of a militia in Africa. The photographer is exposed as CIA and executed, and though he admits Lane knew nothing of it, the leader takes her hostage and Superman shows up to save her. During the rescue, a subset of contracted soldiers who were working with the militia turn against the militia and execute them, and the film cuts to an African woman testifying before a senate subcommittee convened on Superman. The African woman relates a tale of woe about how her husband tried to run from soldiers but was cut down by bullets, and for a moment, I couldn’t make the connection that she was talking about the scene before simply because there were no women in the scene before nor were there any innocent men running away. There are times when I’m critical of popular entertainment for its inability to allude to themes rather than spell everything out, but there’s a difference between allusion and utter befuddlement. It was at this point, I turned to the friend next to me and said, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

The end result of the senate hearing is that Superman is held to blame for the militia gun battle, which raises the question, Whose agency should Superman act under? His own or the people’s? And we then shift to the film’s villain, Lex Luthor. As we know from the lore, there’s no way to control Superman other than Kryptonite. Lex Luthor, industrious as always, has had crews scouring the globe for this rock. He meets with the senate leaders to reveal what he’s discovered. He shows them footage of how exposure to the rock degenerated the cells of General Zod’s corpse, and when one of the senators asks what he wants, one of his demands for providing the government with a Superman-deterrent is access to Zod’s ship and his corpse. Wait, say that again? You discovered that Kryptonite hurts Kryptonians by testing it on General Zod, but you don’t have access to General Zod’s corpse? Maybe I missed something. Was the government testing the green rock and Lex was involved in testing, but doesn’t have full access? Given Lex’s level of power in these negotiations that doesn’t seem consistent. But Batman v Superman has a lot of information to pack into its run-time to set up a Justice League movie, and it abounds in this type of lack of clarity.

With that said, because I entered with low expectations, I noticed these things and was critical of them but decided to let them go and ended up enjoying some of it. In particular, I was pleasantly surprised how much I like Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne. As an older version of the character, he brought an elegiac tone, less idealistic or concerned with the fine line between justice and vigilantism. My brother-in-law had an problem with his use of firearms here. “Batman doesn’t use guns,” the old complaint runs. And to an extent I agree. I wouldn’t want to see him battling the Joker and just pull out a gun and blow him away. But in the cases where he has to take on a small platoon armed to the teeth with automatic weapons—as happens here—I don’t think it betrays the character. After all, he’s lost allies. There’s Jason Todd’s Robin armor in the Batcave, spray-painted by the Joker. There’s no sign of Commissioner Gordon. This is a Batman who has ended up old and alone, and it’s not surprising he brands the criminals he catches to increase the penalty on them when they go to jail.

The battle between Superman and Batman was also done well. Though the reason for the fight, provided in Lex Lutor kidnapping Martha Kent and threatening to kill her if Superman doesn’t kill Batman, is ham-handed, the resulting brawl is enjoyable, particularly for that moment where Superman, dosed with Kryptonite, throws a punch that Batman blocks and recognizes for the first time he’s vulnerable. It’s only fitting at that point that Batman hands his ass to him. If you’ve ever given it any consideration (and really what young fan hasn’t?), Superman has never actually been trained to fight while Batman has received training by the League of Shadows. This culminates in Batman holding a spear ready to kill Superman while Superman chokes out, “They’re going to kill Martha…” which is ridiculous. How about, “They’re going to kill my mother…” But to add melodrama, it’s important that the filmmakers made it clear both Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent’s mothers’ are  named Martha (if you miss it, there’s a flashback to Bruce Wayne’s mother’s grave) because Batman would have killed him flat out if Superman’s mother was named Sarah. This is where the film again descends into chaos and a tacked on rehashing of the Superman/Doomsday battle, though they’re also careful to remind us this time that they’re fighting in an uninhabited section of the city (lest fans once again complain about collateral damage).

Coming out of the theater, my friend and my brother-in-law had complaints. My friend later posted to Facebook that this replaced Green Lantern as worst superhero movie of all time. But I can’t agree. In a world of Batman & Robin, Spider-man 3, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, this had a long way to descend for that crown. As I mentioned above, it’s a mediocre film, but the way the disappointed are attacking it, one would think it was Plan 9 From Outer Space. Most of the vitriol, I assume, comes from the squandered opportunity. This could have been good. If it had focused for all two-and-a-half hours on creating enmity between Superman and Batman and resolving that, it may have been successful (since it’s never entirely clear why Superman doesn’t like Batman). Wonder Woman battling Doomsday was probably the highlight of the last reel. Gal Gadot’s heroine was another pleasant surprise, given how easy it seems to be to make Wonder Woman look ridiculous, but I think the overall film would have been better served not by leaving her out entirely but by having her remain Diana Prince. The allusions to other Justice League characters would have been better left as simply a series of symbols she and Bruce Wayne find on Lex’s cloned hard drive rather than having her surf through the videos and show clips of these characters (the hard drive thing brings up another question of why, if this information was stored there, were the servers unguarded?).

So who’s to blame for the missed opportunity? There’s a lot to go around. It’s tempting to point the finger at Zack Snyder, since the director is usually seen as the one making the ultimate decisions. Then, too, David S. Goyer and the other writers on it have a share, since most of the problems originate in story. We all know with a flagship film like this the studio holds ultimate sway, and it’s been well-covered that in a rush to catch up with the universe Marvel Studios created, execs likely demanded the inclusion and shoehorning of certain plot elements and the writers and director had to abide. But as fans, we too share the blame. I’m here defending a movie I shelled out cash for that doesn’t really need a defense. As of recent reports, we spent $170.1 million over the weekend despite the fact reviewers were warning us it wasn’t good. And if they can make $170.1 million on a shoddy product, why would the money men feel any devotion to make a superior one? Still, I am to some extent trying to provide counterbalance, and that’s primarily because of the frenzied sense of condemnation. A large part of that is the natural contrarian in me who, when he sees something praised that isn’t that great, will work to point out the flaws, and when I see something condemned that isn’t that bad will work to show the positives. Overall my recommendation at this point would be to wait for video, get it out of the library, try to spend as little money as possible if you want see it. Rent it with your friends instead of each paying for a ticket to see it in the theater. I know there’s no way to tell people who love Batman and Superman not to see it. But if you can reduce the amount it makes, maybe the studio will notice and hire a more talented writer/director combo. It’s the only way things will move from mediocre back to Dark Knight excellence.