Introduction: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is made by people who still don’t understand what makes Superman great and was made by people who don’t understand what makes Batman and the DC universe so great. I can understand, to some extent, why some people like Man of Steel, but as far as I’m aware pretty much everyone had a bad time with this movie, except the fanboys.
My main goal with this review is to once again focus on the story because that’s literally the star of the show. My other goal is to show off just how much of a mess this movie is and even now as I’m writing this I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Just to note before we start I watched the Ultimate Edition, aka the 3 hour long extended cut, because I hate myself!
The Birth of The DC Extended Universe: So, after the success of Man of Steel, Zack Snyder and the gang saw the growing popularity of the MCU and thought ‘Hey Let’s do that too’. So Zack Snyder came up with the idea of introducing Batman in this movie and having the whole movie be focused around a boxing match between the two icons. But they also need to catch up to the MCU, like right away, so that’s where the Dawn of Justice comes into it and that’s my main problem. This movie also came out the same year as Captain America: Civil War which is a far superior movie mostly because they are long pass the set-up stage, the characters are well developed by this point and it’s also fun and whenever there is a serious moment it feels more impactful.
DC’s problem is that they only have one movie in their universe and only one of their heroes has had any development. All the others are introduced in this movie so we need time to get to know them before they duke it out. Also the subtitle pretty much gives away who’s going to win the fight so there is no real purpose to having this fight at all at this point in this universe. For a movie that is pretty predictable as to what’s going to happen Zack Snyder insisted we needed to have 2 hours of nothing interesting happening and make it overly complicated so it makes no sense and it needs to be an art-house movie too because that’s what we want from a Superhero movie. Okay, let’s talk story.
Previously on Gotham: The movie starts off with a young Bruce Wayne watching his parents die and in this version they die at the front of the theatre instead of in a dark alleyway, also it’s in slow motion. Bruce Wayne falls down a hole and is abducted in a Bat tractor beam or something. I wasn’t prepared for having to think during a superhero movie. Cut to the final fight in Man of Steel, which back then the movie told us this is super cool and awesome, but now it’s really bad and terrible because too many people complained about it online. (Oh wait.) Bruce Wayne drives into Metropolis as he drives past civilians who don’t seem to care that the world is ending around them, including his employees who didn’t seem to notice that the city was being destroyed around them. (What kind of medication is this city taking?) Bruce Wayne orders his employees to leave and that’s when they decide they actually fear for their lives. I find it kind of funny that after Bruce Wayne saves his employees they still think it’s a great idea to stand around and watch Superman destroy stuff. (I’m seriously worried for these people.)
I guess now it’ll be best to go through the many different subplots going on in this movie.
Superman Is a Murderer – The main plot kicks off when Lois Lane goes and visits some terrorist guy somewhere in the Middle East (she gets to go to the most interesting places, doesn’t she?) to interview him about being a terrorist. Lois Lane eventually ends up in danger and Superman saves her but fails to stop the bad guys from shooting a bunch of people and then burning their corpses to frame Superman for the murders. (Does this make sense to you because it ain’t for me?) This is where a bunch of news shows featuring real life people like Jon Stewart and Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about Superman as a remorseless god or some sort of savior.
Continuing from that plot point we have whatever Lex Luthor is up to – Lex Luthor is a college dropout who owns a multi-billion dollar company and spends his time satisfying his weird obsessions, kind of like The Joker you could say. Why I call this whatever Lex Luthor is up to is because his plan really doesn’t make much sense and relies on too many things to happen in a specific way and it’s the type of plan that only makes sense to the people writing the story.
Lois Lane doing non reporting stuff – Lois Lane recovers a book with a bullet in the desert. (I’m not joking!) Her subplot is all about her proving to people that Superman didn’t kill anyone. It’s as exciting as doing your taxes.
Annoyed Laid Off Worker Guy – There is another subplot with a wheelchair guy who worked for Bruce Wayne and he sides with Lex Luthor in saying that Superman is a false god and stuff.
Talkie Lady – In the Ultimate Edition there is a survivor who saw Lex Luthor’s guys kill her family and for some reason she got away and almost told everyone that Superman didn’t kill her family.
Branded Prisoner Guy – Also in the Ultimate Edition it expands on the guy that Batman brands at the beginning of the movie and it kind of shows how pointless this extended version really is. Oh and this leads into…
Clark Kent’s Investigation on The Batman – Lawrence Fishburne wants Clark to do what Lois Lane isn’t doing but Clark but really instead wants to expose the Bat which I’m guessing this subplot is supposed to explain why Superman hates Batman. (If you say so movie.)
Okay let’s look at the subplots that don’t connect to this main one
Whatever the Brooding Knight is up to – For a while it seems like Batman is looking into Luthor’s schemes when he goes after his kryptonite. I guess this is the best time to mention that this Batman kills people because he fires a tracker to the kryptonite truck, instead of following the truck he decides to attack the truck and kills 15 guys in the process which doesn’t explain why he fired the tracker to begin with. We soon find out Batman’s actual goal is to bring down Superman which also doesn’t make much sense on why he would do this, but I’ll get back to that.
Oh and Wonder Woman is in this movie too – This movie has Wonder Woman’s first official appearance in mainstream movie land and for her first movie she is completely pointless. She wants a picture of the glory days, I guess, and then she watches a teaser trailer for the other Justice League members, what’s this got to do with this movie? Oh and let’s not forget…
Batman’s Dumb Stupid Dreams – It’s not really a subplot but I honestly don’t care, I have to talk about this. Batman has really weird dreams of things that connect to the surprise reveal later on in the movie and another dream that connects to some movie that will come out in 2075. The post-apocalyptic dream makes no sense and is completely useless, it also Batman killing more people with a machine gun. The other dream/thing where The Flash warns Batman about something not relevant to this movie should have been removed along the other 75% of boring scenes.
Okay those are all the subplots I could pick out (I probably missed one or ten) and most of them lead to this point where Superman is in a courthouse and Lex Luthor uses the wheelchair guy as a bomb and according the media this is also Superman’s fault. (Superman doesn’t really help his case by acting all pouty like.) Superman couldn’t see the bomb because it was covered in lead which is a weakness that has never been mentioned until now. I have no clue how Lex Luthor figured that out unless he’s been reading the script this whole time. (That might explain his nonsensical plan.) That is another thing, this movie heavily relies on your previous knowledge of these characters for it to make sense because I can’t imagine how a first timer with no past history of these characters would go through this.
The Final Fights: Let’s get to the real action of the movie because this is where the movie falls apart. Lex Luthor captures Lois Lane so he can attract Superman because he figured out the only way to attract Superman is to threaten the only person he has ever reached home base with. Lex Luthor tells Superman that he has his mum but he needs to kill Batman if he wants her to live. Since Superman doesn’t have the same motive to find his mum like he does his girlfriend he goes over to fight Batman. Instead of talking it out these two idiots beat each other to a pulp while also referencing The Dark Knight Returns because that’s the only comic Zack Snyder has ever read.
The fight itself lasts for roughly three minutes and of course it ends with the legendary realisation that Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent have mothers with the same first name and it’s easily the best moment of this boring drag of a movie as it’s so baffling that they thought it was some beautiful moment but it’s literally the moment where you realise you are a human and you have emotion and you have to laugh at how stupid this movie is and how you’re stupid for watching this stupid movie.
Batman and Superman are best pals now which makes as much sense as Lex Luthor’s entire plan to make these two fight. Lex Luthor’s backup plan is to get the giant monster to fight them for… FAITHFUL READER CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS TO ME BECAUSE I GIVE UP. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman fight the glowy lightning monster thing in unpopulated areas (just to throw that out there), Lois Lane is in danger again because she goes after the kryptonite spear, Superman saves her and then uses the spear only to be killed by the monster while killing the monster. Superman is dead and Clark Kent is dead because their funeral is on the same day. (I thought of mentioning this because at Clark’s funeral they never show his body and I’m wondering is he still wearing his glasses because if not…) Lex Luthor is in prison still acting like a lunatic, Batman tells Wonder Woman they need a superhero team and The End.
Realty V Fantasy: Dawn of Nonsense: I think I made it clear that I didn’t really like this movie because it only makes sense to the writers of the movie. I hadn’t seen this movie since it came out because I found it extremely boring where nothing really happened and I still feel that but now, after re-watching it, I can add that it doesn’t make any sense, the movie has a lot going on but it doesn’t feel like anything is going on, it doesn’t know what it wants to be and it really doesn’t understand it’s audience. This movie has a lot of symbolism; it takes itself way to seriously which is the same problem with Man of Steel – they are way too dark. I think most of this blame goes to Zack Snyder who I’m guessing wanted to tell a deep thought-provoking superhero movie while Warner Bros wanted just another superhero movie so then these two movies blend into the same crap.
I guess I should look at the characters and they all suck. They’re all very muddled and they all feel more like puppets following a script than real human beings. For example Batman who is as unlikeable as Superman and the world’s greatest detective, as we all know him, is the biggest idiot of the entire movie. Besides the opening of the movie he really has no reason to kill Superman and the reason why this movie ruins Batman is because he acts as more of a dumb brute than a smart intelligent strategist. While he was so obsessed with killing Superman he couldn’t find the time to figure out Lex Luthor’s plan. (Unless Batman lost his version of the script and that’s why he’s a big dumb dumb!) Ben Affleck was a good choice for Batman but if he was in a better movie he could’ve been better and that’s the same with most of these characters except Henry Cavil who, as I said last time, is still terrible.
Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor was probably the best part of the movie because he was so laughably bad. He really acts like he’s from another universe where humor exists and that’s why I believe he was very much miscast. Bryan Cranston was considered for the role. Why not cast him? He would have given us the Lex Luthor we always wanted.
The music was pretty good, using a lot of the music from Man of Steel with the standout being Wonder Woman’s Theme which I’m guessing was catering to the people who were going to scream ‘HOLY Invisible Jets, It’s F-ing Wonder Woman!’ The movie looks nice again and don’t bother with the extended cut because you need to keep your sanity.
Conclusion: Anyways Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is bad and they just get worse from here, folks. I’m not going to ramble here any longer because I’m done talking about this movie.
See you next time, BC Out.
The Blog Complainer 