Jay here.
For the first part of this review I will try to remain spoiler free. But towards the end I do plan to discuss important plot points of Batman vs. Superman. Don't worry though, I will warn you when we get there, if you want to see this movie without knowing what happens.
Critics are already slamming Zack Snyder's latest entry into the DC Universe pretty hard, most of it deservedly so. Is it the worst comic book movie ever made? No. It isn't as bad as Spider-Man 3 or certainly as bad as X-Men: The Last Stand. There are some moments to point at BvS and say, "They got that right." But unfortunately these moments are few and far between.
To understand where this film fails you have to know a bit about its director, Zack Snyder, Warner Bros goals for the DC franchise and also you need to have seen 2011's, Man of Steel, the predecessor to BvS. That movie, also directed by Snyder, detailed Superman's origins and his climactic battle with General Zod (Michael Shannon) that left the city of Metropolis decimated and thousands of people dead. Man of Steel is not a bad movie, it's actually pretty good when compared to its successor, but many fans of the character, including myself, thought it was too much of a departure for Superman to engage in a battle that would cause so much devestation and lives lost.
Batman vs Superman, in many ways, seems to be a response to that backlash, and I don't think that is necessarily a bad idea. From the beginning of this movie you can see what Snyder was going for. The idea of an alien who grows up on Earth and has unbelievable powers would be a frightening thing in the real world. Much of how people like Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Senator Finch (Holly Hunter) react to Superman's existence feels realistic. The problem is how this plot becomes overburdened and contrived through a mess of a script that doesn't flow at all. This movie doesn't know if it wants to be a thoughtful exercise on the nature of power or an all-out superhero extraveganza. It falls flat when it tries to be both and Snyder is not skilled enough to tie it all together.
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| Batman (Ben Affleck) moves to take down Superman (Henry Cavill). After the events at the end of Man of Steel, Bats thinks Supes is more threat than savior. |
But before I beat up on it too much, let's talk about what I liked. Ironically, one of the things that I was most scared of before seeing this was Ben Affleck in the role as the Caped Crusader. And I must admit I was pleasantly surprised that he pulls it off for the most part. Affleck is at his best when he is Bruce Wayne and feels comfortable in that role. In many ways this is more his movie than Superman's and he anchors it well. Jeremy Irons is also really good as Alfred the Butler. It makes you really wish they had done a stand alone Batman movie with these two before rushing into this quagmire. It would have been the smarter move.
Gal Gadot is also really good as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. She's magnetic whenever she is on screen. The problem is that I have no idea why her character is in this film at all and I am clueless as to her motivation. It's clear the only reason she's in the script is to set up the forthcoming Justice League movie. It's a disservice to such an iconic character to give her such a short shrift.
That's about it for what I liked.
Now let's get to the really bad stuff. First and foremost, Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Lex Luthor is quite possibly the worst comic book villain ever translated to the screen. I can't sugarcoat it. Just thinking about him now makes me want to punch him. I guess they were going for the geeky, nerdy boy who daddy abused, but it just comes off as annoying. At times I thought he was trying to channel Heath Ledger's Joker and just missing the mark by about a thousand miles. It's so bad and also unfaithful to what really is one of the most iconic villains in pop culture history. Hey, I'm all for reimagining things, but this is not Luthor at all. There is nothing that is menacing about him in the least and his big scene with Superman where he reveals his plan is jaw-droppingly awful. Also, again we have a character whose motives are unclear. Why does Lex want to kill Superman? I have no fucking idea. He babbled something about God and Power but I am lost.
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Yes, this is Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and he is Superman's greatest enemy. Hmmmmm....
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It's hard to swallow because I like Eisenberg and I think he's a good actor. Go watch The Social Network, Adventureland or last year's, The End of the Tour if you want to see how good he is. Just forget this role and pray they don't bring him back.
Next, there is the final "fight" of the film. Now here is where we are going to get into SPOILER territory, so leave if you don't want to know what happens at the end of BvS ......
So, Luthor manages to worm his way into getting access to the Kryptonian ship from Man of Steel, which the government has sealed off for research. Side note: can we get an explanation as to why the ship is kept in a park in the center of Metropolis??? This seems ridiculously dumb. It couldn't be airlifted out? Who's writing this???
Anyway, Luthor learns a lot of stuff about the universe from Kryptonian memory banks and decides to use Zod's lifeless body to create a new super being. Oh, he can do this simply by cutting his hand and submerging the body in a water-like substance in the ship. And thus, Doomsday is born.
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| Doomsday faces off against Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). |
For those who don't know him, Doomsday is pretty famous for being the villain that managed to kill Superman in the comics back in the 90's. Here he is a completely redundant and uninspiring monster. My best comparison was to remember how they portrayed the villain Bane in the universally despised 1997 film, Batman & Robin. He was a joke, reduced to a mindless bodyguard for Uma Thurman's, Poison Ivy. In the comics Bane was smart and cunning. Think about how Tom Hardy portrayed him in 2011's, The Dark Knight Rises. That is more like the Bane from the comics. So, Doomsday got the Joel Schumacher treatment here, unfortunately.
I think a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly captured it best when he called Doomsday a walking "turd". I laughed out loud because that is exactly what he looks like. He's basically a bigger, better CGI version of the Golgothan Shit Demon from Kevin Smith's, Dogma. Look it up, I'm serious!
The final fight is pretty to look at, but it has no soul. And I think this speaks to the heart at what is an overarching problem with a lot of Zack Snyder's filmography. All flash, no substance. His best films for me, in order, would be 2004's, Dawn of the Dead, 2009's Watchmen and Man of Steel. A lot of people probably disagree with me on Watchmen but I think he did as good a job as anyone could adapting what was pretty much unadaptable.
But, this guy also made 2011's, Sucker Punch, a movie that looked as good as its script sucked. And that was supposed to be his original story, not based on previous works. And before you bring up 2006's, 300, which was a HUGE hit for Snyder, I will also repeat that was a movie that relied on looks more than words.
Maybe I'm being too hard on Snyder. For all we know this is what Warner Bros wanted. But I really feel, in their haste to compete with Disney's Marvel cinematic franchise, they rushed things, in a hurry to get to Justice League. They should have made a second standalone Superman film, with Luthor as the big bad (casting anyone else but Eisenberg, obviously). Then make a Wonder Woman movie.
If you want to see a great comic book movie go see Deadpool or watch the excellent Season 2 of Daredevil on Netflix.
This movie suffers from being too crowded and disjointed. At this point I am not optimistic that Justice League will be any better ....
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