Batman V Superman (2016)
Spoiler heavy review!!!
It's finally here. The film that's been inundating your TV with TV spots and your movie theater with trailers for months. A movie that many feel is in the wrong hands, a pure cash grab to reap what Marvel/Disney sowed. However, I've not bought into that line of thought. In fact, Warner Bros. seems to be doing things quite differently than Disney/Marvel. Marvel Studios films are all some-what lighthearted (even Captain America: Winter Soldier had quite a bit of levity.) and colorful. I will admit, I don't read Marvel comics. I gave them a try in the mid-1990s and always disliked them apart from the various X-Men iterations. I've always been more a DC guy. Marvel's heroes aren't presented like gods for the most part. They're more human. DC has more aliens and uberminch (literally in Superman's case). They're more iconic. Especially since the early 1990s and late 80s, DC comics have for the most part been pretty dark. Superman since Crisis on Infinite Earths, the great reshaping of the DC universe in the mid 80s, has been a more dark character than he once was. Batman is darker. Green Lantern with the Parallax storyline in the mid-1990s where they made Hal Jordan a mass murderer and supervillain. The New 52 has continued that dark trend, albeit with a lot of horrible storylines. If you want lighter fare in the DC universe, even The Flash and Teen Titans can't give it to you much. Everything is broody. I just thought I had to explain this to people that say this movie is unlike the comics. It's not. It's very much like the present day DC comics. So with that out of the way, to the actual film.
So the movie starts with the whole Bruce Wayne parent death/funeral/finding the Batcave thing we feel like we've seen a hundred times... Because we basically have. Thankfully it's done over the credits and takes about 4 minutes. Fast forward to the attack on Metropolis from Man of Steel, this time through the eyes of Bruce Wayne, now in his 40s, as he tries to help people at his work and around Metropolis while Superman and Zod battle it out knocking down buildings, including the Wayne Enterprises tower, complete with his people inside. And with that we have why Batman hates Superman. Fast forward again 18 months and Superman saves Lois from a interview gone bad in military junta controlled Africa, resulting in some deaths. Now the US Senate is holding hearings on the Superman problem. Also, Lex Luthor, a young tech businessman who clearly is insane to anyone that meets him is weaponizing Kryptonite, his endgame, as we find out, to bring Superman down. (It's a spoiler, but not really, as Lex Luthor ALWAYS tries to bring Superman down. It's why he's there.) Oh, he's also got info on four other "meta-humans", namely Wonder Woman, The Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman. He wants to rid the world of these meta-humans.
I thought the movie was good. It wasn't amazing or perfect, but it was surprisingly good. The characterizations were great for the most part. Ben Affleck is a great Bruce Wayne, probably the best we've gotten. He's less of a great Batman, but if you think that's a negative on his part remember that Michael Keaton did almost 0% of his Batsuit work in his two films. And we all love Keaton's Batman. The heavy armor Batsuit in the last 1/3 of the film looks stupid to me, but then again it did to me in Dark Knight Returns, which is where 1/2 this film's ideas spring from. Just a personal dislike. The regular Batsuit is more bulky for a more bulky Bruce. You don't really see it that well. In fact, there's more Bruce Wayne in this movie than there is Batman, which I really liked. It's one area where the more recent comics in the Batman line have strayed in my opinion. They've tried to make Batman the real person, and Wayne just a shell, a alter-ego. It started a while ago, but it's not something I've liked. In my opinion, that's more a Superman/Clark Kent thing. Speaking of Superman, I found him more interesting here than I did in Man of Steel. Henry Cavill is just not a great actor in my point of view, but he's got more to work with here than he did in Man of Steel which was hampered by Goyer's script. (This movie's script was written by Goyer and completely redone by Chris Terrio, writer of Argo.) Superman is fighting between his idealism and reality all throughout the film. It's heavy-handed. I'd have enjoyed more of America's backlash to Superman than we got. We saw it more through TV reports and Batman's rage than through the American people. I think America would hate and fear Superman. Heck, the whole world would. It's a loss of control over your own destiny that is ripe for a Superman film. I guess Zach Snyder decided he did that with Watchmen, but even that was through the superheroes' lives, not the regular people. I guess that's another movie for another day. I understand that. Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is great! People clapped in my theater at her entrance as Wonder Woman. (Granted, you meet her much earlier in the film, just not in alter-ego and out of costume.) I am really looking forward to her stand-alone film. There's not much more to say as she's a secondary character in this movie. She has maybe 7 lines in the whole film. The other major character is Lex Luthor. Jessie Eisenberg plays him as... insane. He's not like Luthor in the comics or as we've seen him in other films. He's a jittery loony with lots of power. Anyone who spends a minute with the guy would know he's crazy. Not ecentric. Crazy! He's definitely the comic relief here, which is needed. Without him, the movie would be so drab and oppressive it'd be a chore to watch. Just don't go in expecting Luthor as we know him from previous media.
I've ready many negative reviews of this film. As I write this, it's at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, I suggest you actually read the reviews. Most of the rotten reviews are not saying it's horrible beyond belief. They're saying it's an assault on the senses and too dark. I possibly agree on the first point. Not the second. Yes, there's a lot of fast cutting during action sequences. You get that in positive rated films too, though. Lots of explosions. What do you expect from a superhero film set in two cities? It's supposed to be this epic throwdown and all of a sudden you want a thinking man's film instead? Well, it tries to do that too. It's in that that it's a bit of a letdown. Subtle and Zach Snyder are opposing ends of a spectrum. The religious iconography in the film is so over the top. But is that a negative? Eh, to some, probably. There's a Bosch-like painting of demons in Lex Luthor's house that's talked about and shown twice in the film of demons coming up (or down) to earth. There's shots that linger for 5 or more seconds of heroic stances with light shining from behind or above as there would be in an epic comic panel. Lex Luthor seems in this film to be a militant diest bent on deicide. (He considers Superman to be an untrustworthy god.)
I must also mention that Metropolis and Gotham are now seemingly like Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota being just across the river from each other. That kinda pissed me off too. I know, it probably did no one else, but Metropolis isn't Bludhaven. I always considered Gotham to be like 50-100 miles from Metropolis. More like New York/Metropolis and Philadelphia/Gotham. Not like New York and Hoboken. I also thought Doomsday as the big baddie at the end was a misuse of the character. Basically they took the Doomsday comic storyline and shoved it into 30 minutes at the end and added Batman and Wonder Woman. I mean, it was cool to watch, but he went down pretty darn easily once they figured out how to do it. If you want something along the same lines, but more like the comic (though still quite different) the animated Superman: Doomsday is good. Honestly, the whole end battle here is pretty anti-climactic once you think about it. Yet, the movie is itself just a setup for Justice League, which comes out next year. Think of it as a prequel done before the main event.
A few other disjointed thoughts. I really liked Wonder Woman's theme. Sort of a heavily distorted electric guitar phrase. It's pretty badass. Then you have Lex Luthor's theme, which is a motif built on Mozart slowed down. Otherwise, it's the normal Hans Zimmer score. Lots of discordant chants and heavy bass to showcase what they want you to think is cool and epic. Zach Snyder's direction actually works quite well for this film. I mean, it is partially a Batman film, so the overcast skies, rain, and dark filters work. However, he does bring out the sunshine in some scenes. The action can be hard to follow at times. I timed one action scene in my head as I watched that had a cut rate of just over a second. That means that you had a different shot on an average of every second. This is a typical problem in modern action movies, however. Marvel does it too. Democractic senator Patrick Leahy, a huge Batman and comic book fan, is in this film as a United States senator. He has been in every Batman film since 1995's Batman Forever. However, in this film, he's in a Superman scene, oddly enough. (I guess because he's a comic book fan too. He wrote the intro to Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest, after all.)
Overall an enjoyable film, but with its fair share of problems. Not everyone will like Eisenberg's Luthor. This reviewer did. Some just really dislike Zach Snyder. He's hit or miss with me. For what it's worth, I disliked Man of Steel but liked this one. If you took Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and mixed it with Superman: Doomsday and added Wonder Woman, you have this movie.
5 out of 7 stars.
