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This is a spoiler-intensive review! If you haven’t seen the film, you should go check it out before reading.
Amidst the controversy of Man of Steel, the naysayers of director, Zack Snyder, and the assault of negativity before the film was even released, the unexpected happened to me after the credits ended and the lights came up in the theatre.
I thoroughly enjoyed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
It’s not as good as The Avengers and The Dark Knight. But it’s much better than Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Dark Knight Rises.
This really is a Batman movie. He’s the heart and soul of the whole thing. The film is told through his eyes. He represents our humanity, our weaknesses, our struggles, but also our enduring spirit.
As far as Batman movies go, this may very well be the most challenging struggle across all the incarnations of the hero on screen. Ben Affleck‘s portrayal of a strong, war-weary, morally-blurred Bruce Wayne is more layered than Michael Keaton‘s and has more depth than Christian Bale‘s.
The character is simply more interesting here.
He is put to the test on multiple levels. He still has to deal with low-level criminals and thugs, with whom he refers to as “weeds” that always grow back as soon as you pluck them. He, as a mortal man, has to square off against the supposed god in Superman. And he finds himself having to save the entire planet from an all-powerful threat in the creature, Doomsday. Meanwhile, he still struggles with his internal demons, the scars from his own career as Batman, and the moralistic tug-of-war he faces on behalf of the human race.
This is a challenge for Bruce Wayne.
This is a real test.
It’s the stuff hero’s are born out of.
We don’t get an entire movie’s worth of screen time to experience just how ruthless Affleck’s Batman is, but from what we see, make no mistake, he is terrifying.
With Christopher Nolan‘s take on the character, Batman faced a huge dilemma in how to teach criminals a lesson when he had a set of rules that prevented him from committing the unthinkable. There’s a great scene in The Dark Knight when Batman is beating up the Joker, who simply endures the pain and laughs, knowing Batman can only go so far.
Zach Snyder’s Batman takes it further. Is he a hero? Is he a bad guy? He really doesn’t care. He’s not going to kill an unarmed man in cold blood, but he will kill in self defense. If he has a gun, and you have a gun aimed at him, he’s going to pull the trigger. And if by some miracle, you make it out alive, try explaining to your mob boss why your limbs have been broken and you have a bat symbol literally branded into your forehead.
Just awesome.
Let’s take a step back here.
As I mentioned, this is a Batman movie.
This isn’t a Superman movie. This isn’t Man of Steel 2.
Superman plays a key supporting role in a dark and gritty Batman movie.
The biggest disappointment from Man of Steel, to me, was Superman’s naive inability to save lives at all costs. There’s a moment when Superman saves a soldier falling from a helicopter. But then a minute later, Zod’s gang downs the helicopter itself, and the pilots within. So what was the point? Does Superman do enough in that movie? Did he go out of his way? He may have saved the world at the end, but at what price?
Bruce Wayne is painfully aware of this. This is the entire motivation behind his hatred for Superman, which compels him to the point of obsession to figure out a way to bring him to his knees.
But while the story is told through the eyes of Bruce Wayne, in many ways, Batman v Superman is about the redemption of Superman, and earning his place among the greatest of all superheroes. For those who hated Man of Steel for the reckless destruction, there’s a sense of vindication you will feel when watching this film.
It comes as a result of Batman’s doing. When the battle occurs, he absorbs Superman’s blows, then dishes a relentless assault of his own. He pounds, and pounds, and pounds Superman into submission. He unleashes all the rage he feels on behalf of the good citizens of the world and throws everything he has at him. And then he pounds him some more. He strips him of his god-like powers, makes him mortal, and has the means to strike the final blow to kill the Man of Steel once and for all.
In this moment, in Henry Cavill‘s eyes, we see his awakening, his understanding, of what it feels like to be human.
Perhaps the best line in the movie is when Batman is hovering over Superman, a Kryptonite spear aimed right at his heart, and Batman says, “You’re not a God. You’re not even a man.”
To me, this is powerful stuff as far as superhero movies go.
I mean, there’s some fantastically entertaining and interesting things going on.
When the time comes to team up and battle against Doomsday, what’s the first thing Superman does? He punches Doomsday into space, then punches him further and further into space, away from populated cities, away from Earth. This is a Superman who has learned, who has been humbled, who now understands.
He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that pesky President of the United States, who so easily orders the launch of nuclear missiles into space despite Superman’s efforts via speakerphone with the patented movie President line, “God help us all.”
Snyder mercifully avoids the cliché war room sequences with inept and badly acted military personnel, and just gets right to the chase via speakerphone.
Hilarious moment.
So Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman have to team up to destroy Doomsday.
I love how Superman and Wonder Woman can absorb Doomsday’s electric lightning attacks as any immortal could, but Batman has to get the hell out of the way otherwise he’s dead. There’s a vulnerability to him, and this is what makes Batman so great, so heroic in this. He’s the only human in this playing field of Gods.
It’s another reason why we feel that vindication when he basically defeats Superman earlier in the film. It’s a testament to the power and the spirit of our humanity, with our ability to endure and succeed even when the odds seem insurmountable.
Wait a second – is that a positive message coming out of a Zach Snyder superhero movie? Could it be? Where Man of Steel left us with a rather pessimistic take on the state of things, Batman v Superman has its own brand of positivity that emerges. It isn’t the wholesome golly-gee tone of the original Superman (1978), but for a dark and brooding modern Batman movie, it is clearly there, and after the last film, it is very welcomed.
And then Superman commits the ultimate self-sacrifice to save humanity. This is Henry Cavill’s character becoming Christopher Reeve‘s.
Okay, let’s take another step back and look at this film as a whole.
Part of my initial skepticism stemmed from my concern that they were going to crowd the screen with too many superheroes and villains just for the sake of it as a reaction to what Marvel is doing.
Marvel has, indeed, changed the game. Captain America is no longer important enough to be the stand-alone hero in his own movie. It’s now expected that these films will feature multiple superheroes on screen at once.
But in a crazy, and surprising way, Batman v Superman finds a way to have a multi-superhero movie, and still make these characters interesting. The reason is because their approach is completely different from Marvel’s.
The post-credit scene in The Avengers, with the heroes sitting around in their costumes eating shawarma, is one of the funniest moments, but also represents one of the biggest problems with the direction Marvel is taking its heroes in.
Why did I find myself bored during Avengers: Age of Ultron?
It’s too much screen time for the superheroes when they are just standing around in costume for the sake of it.
It’s a reversal from the traditional formula we had become accustomed to, best represented by Superman (1978) and Batman (1989). It’s easily an hour into Superman before we even see him in costume, so when he appears on screen, it’s impactful, it’s special, it resonates. With Batman, we get a tease of him in the beginning, then similarly, the hero is used sparingly, and effectively. Christopher Nolan’s take was similar, and equally successful.
Marvel has established the new trend of multiple superheroes on screen at once, but DC has figured out how to do so, while still keeping to the formula that it established all those years ago.
The film left me wanting to see more Ben Affleck Batman. The small doses we get reveal an awesome and terrifying Batman and a dark and layered Bruce Wayne. Just when we think we’re settling into his plot, we’re now off following Superman on his storyline. Arrrrrrgh! Frustrating and awesome at the same time.
Similarly, we get an opening scene of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, um, awkwardly in the bathtub together, and she is very aware of his true identity. Whoa. So when did that happen? What some critics may call a gap or a plothole, I actually call interesting. Would a Man of Steel 2 with a whole subplot involving Lois finally realizing who Clark Kent is really be all that fascinating when we’ve sort of been there, done that already?
And who is Wonder Woman? The film does just enough to tease her past and establish her credibility without a bloated origin story thrown in. We see just enough to be able to put the pieces together ourselves, and now that we want to see more of her story, we’re going to get just that with her stand-alone film. Anyone else notice Chris Pine standing next to her in those old flashback photos from 1918?
Snyder gets us through the film at a breakneck speed, and raises interesting questions that compel us to have to fill in the gaps, similar to what Star Wars The Force Awakens does.
I wanted to see more of Jesse Eisenberg‘s Lex Luthor. His take on Superman’s nemesis borders between genius and insanity, the performance is similarly brilliant and cringeworthy. I appreciated that they didn’t give us too many bad guys for the heroes to contend with. I love that Luthor is ultimately the puppet master. Luthor shows us that the real threat to humanity isn’t necessarily the Gods that come from the sky, but rather the evil that can lurk within us.
I’ll admit, his creation of Doomsday is not unlike Gene Hackman‘s Luthor stealing a lock of Superman’s hair then using that to create Nuclear Man in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, albeit with a bigger budget, less cheese, and more spectacle.
But Doomsday works, and is a needed adversary to give the film a massive 3rd act climax that unites the heroes against a common threat.
This is the point at which the audience has already fully bought into the world or has checked out, because the film takes us in a direction for the DC superheroes that we really haven’t yet seen on screen. Batman battling a massive CGI creature that creates shockwaves of electricity? This is the polar opposite of what Nolan did with his bad guys, by grounding them in reality and keeping them human.
Perhaps this is the biggest offense to the critics, who still want to see Batman cowering in the dark battling human thugs on a more grounded level.
Personally, after seeing so much of that from Nolan’s trilogy, I found this transition refreshing, and this challenge for the character, interesting.
We do get a nice dose of Batman kicking the crap out of low level criminals, for those nostalgic for the Batman of old.
But the entire point of the film is his recognition of a greater threat that imposes a demand on him as a hero to have to be more. This is bigger than battling criminals in Gotham. Batman is called to a higher purpose.
This isn’t a perfect movie by any stretch. Some scenes are puzzling, some awkward, some unnecessary, some clumsy. Those patented Snyder weird dream sequences. Yikes!
And yet, the film weaves a multi-layered, relatively coherent story with an interesting plot, engaging characters, which is chock full of action, and rife with conflict.
There are so many layers to unravel, so many details to analyze, but the bottom line…
Batman v Superman is actually an awesome movie.