[rating=6.00]
It’s difficult for me to discuss Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—and, by extension, the whole of the DCEU (DC extended universe)—without first considering the merits of DC’s rivals over at the MCU. Marvel has been, for the last eight years, changing the game for cinematic superhero storytelling, gently finessing an entire universe from nothing, and taking their time to let the larger stories and themes develop themselves over time. It’s almost tantric, the way they operate. They tease their audience, letting the desire build and build for 3-4 years at a time until the next Avengers movie comes along to release our satisfaction. DC, by contrast, is a sloppy one-night stand with a partner you might call again, sometime, maybe. It might be physically satisfying, but it’s never emotionally fulfilling, and it may just leave you feeling somewhat ashamed in the morning.
I suppose that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is something to be said for the immediacy of instant gratification. But, if you’ll allow me to extend the metaphor a little further, while you might hold closely the memories of your one-night stand, it may not be something you talk about much, if at all. It’s a guilty pleasure that is perhaps better left unspoken, lest you gain a reputation.
In that way, Dawn of Justice is never the movie it needed to be if DC ever wants to be a legitimate rival to Marvel Studios. Instead, they’ve cast themselves as a poor substitute at best, or a desperate wannabe at worst. It’s a movie that’s all about payoff, but it’s a payoff to a buildup that never existed, like a play that goes directly into its third act after its first. You can sense the desire to appeal to pathos, but none of the legwork is put into it that might make it as satisfactory as is necessary.
Indeed, the pathos is there. It’s almost inherent in the minds of comic book fans and lovers of superheroes. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with comics from the last few decades understands that the relationship between Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) is often tense. This has led to both exciting face offs and thrilling team ups over the years, as both heroes circle each other with equal parts caution and respect. That might’ve worked here—in fact, it nearly does—except the narrative relies almost solely on what pathos you bring into it. It never puts in the requisite effort to make it work on its own.
Instead, what they do here is exactly what everyone feared they were doing from the outset—they’ve stuffed the movie beyond the brim with world building devices that do little but set up future outings into the DCEU at the expense of this movie. They rely on what we already understand about the titular characters instead of building it into the narrative.
The approach kind of works, almost. I admit, there was something inordinately satisfying about seeing Batman and Superman share the screen and exchange blows. One might make a compelling argument that this alone is reason enough for the movie to exist. I can’t say I was disappointed, in that regard; nor can I say I’m unexcited for what the future might hold for the universe, should they continue the direction they’re moving towards.
As a follow up to Man of Steel, Dawn of Justice does what it can to defend itself from the criticism lobbed at its predecessor. The wanton destruction that plagued the final movements of that movie begins the animosity between our two heroes-turned-combatants as Bruce Wayne helplessly watches one of his buildings collapse due to the battle between Superman and Zod. This plays well into seeding the idea of Superman’s danger to the world at large, coaxing Wayne back into his role as Batman in order to take down the alien among us.
In that regard, Dawn of Justice is more a Batman movie than it is a Superman movie. Lacking a proper set up movie of his own—a move that will probably be regretted as the series progresses—director Zack Snyder attempts to cram all the Batman he can into a movie that needed to do so much in order to be successful. We get Batman’s backstory, we get the idea that Batman has seen some shit, we get the idea that Bruce Wayne is damaged by all he’s seen and done over the years. As audience, we can imagine what this might entail. We’re already so familiar with the kind of shenanigans that Batman gets up to, thanks to his other cinematic incarnations, that maybe we don’t need to see more of that for it to work.
Except that’s sort of cheap, isn’t it? That’s not an inaccurate description of the problems of the movie as a whole. It’s full of short cuts and cheap tricks that try to replace any real agency that might’ve been present if DC had taken the time to finesse their universe instead of trying to play catch up to Marvel. That not only lessens the effect of all that is good about Dawn of Justice, it also highlights the bad.
And what’s good is really good. Against all odds and expectations, Affleck positively kills it as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. In a way, he’s just about the most Batman character ever depicted on film, becoming the closest cinematic depiction of Batman to ever reach the glorious heights of the Kevin Conroy voiced version on Batman The Animated Series. I hope and I pray that we see Affleck in a proper Batman movie of his own. He is, in a very real sense, the saving grace of the entire endeavor.
So too with Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. While there’s little time for characterization, with her first outing on the big screen she damn near steals the show, and it makes me salivate in anticipation for her currently-in-production movie of her own. The presence of both Affleck and Gadot speak wonderfully for the future of the franchise, provided it can survive all that is negative about this outing.
Which, frankly, might mean letting someone besides Snyder take the reins. It’s almost as though the director took every bit of negative criticism he’s ever gotten and then made the decision to dig his heels in and do more of everything people hate about his movies. It feels slapdash and thrown together, feeling less like a cohesive movie than it does a series of loosely connected scenes that never quite amount to anything of real significance. Exposition is minimal, and an overreliance upon melodramatic dream sequences often brings the narrative to a startling halt.
Some of the plotting decisions are baffling—without giving anything away, the final impetus for the titular battle drew from me a groan and an eye roll—and at times the movie teeters just abut the edge of pure absurdity. But anchored, as it is, by Batfleck, Dawn of Justice stays just this side of believability and works, for the most part, as whole.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie—but strictly as a fan of Batman in general. Dawn of Justice is a movie whose problems are legion, and is deserving of every bit of the critical scorn it’s currently receiving. As a crowd pleaser, however, it does its job well enough and offers satisfying moments that peek out beneath the smoldering rubble. It’s a mess of a movie, but it’s an interesting and exciting mess to behold. With some tempered expectations, you might just find yourself having a bit of fun, but DC has a long way to go before they ever catch up with Marvel.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is now playing in theaters everywhere.
5 Responses
I largely agree with the points made in this article, from the realization that this is largely an unfulfilled Batman movie to the admission that must be made that the rest of this movie is a “gotta catch up with Marvel” effort. Between these two realities lies the fundamental flaw that is Dawn of Justice: it is a story that could have been so rich had it not been rushed.
One of the basic failures in this rush to catch up is the missed opportunity to bring the Batman to Metropolis as a crusader of justice rather than as a rival in a separate sister-city across the bay. Why do Metropolis and Gotham have to be sister-cities across the bay from one another? Why can’t they be rival megacities like New York and Chicago or New York and Los Angeles? Why a cheesy bay rivalry like San Francisco and Oakland? Ugh.
Had this rival sister-cities across the bay thing been, as it should have been, cast aside in favor of these two cities being distant rivals, this theme could have been more deeply explored and thus enriched between the rival heroes Superman and Batman. Consider: following the horror of the utter demolition of Metropolis (for no good reason mind you) by Superman and Zod in Man of Steel, Metropolis should have still been in ruins, with the city falling into crime because of the economic collapse resulting from its destruction. The arrival of The Batman to bring some measure of justice and vengeance, not only on the streets against criminal elements, but also by Bruce Wayne in his efforts to not only rebuild his own wrecked enterprises there (Dawn of Justice makes important motions in this direction, but fails since the flashback to Man of Steel is largely pointless given the undeniable fact that somehow Metropolis has been entirely rebuilt in the short 18 months since the destruction wrought by Superman and Zod), but also to do the research he needs to find out who Superman is and set in motion his efforts to bring him down for allowing so many thousands and thousands of innocent civilians to be slaughtered pointlessly (Dawn of Justice makes a nod toward this too as Superman flies Doomsday out of Metropolis and into space, there to battle him – but then, mysteriously, has Batman lead Doomsday back into Metropolis in order to kill him there with the Kryptonite spear he had intended to use on Superman – this utterly undermines Batman’s outrage for what Superman had done in fighting Zod 18 months earlier).
The whole story of the Batman “branding” criminals in Gotham in order to bring Gotham under control is wasted narrative. He should have been in Metropolis, branding criminals there, setting up the basic dichotomy between the symbols of our competing heroes: the Kryptonian “hope” of Superman’s “S” and the human “vengeance” of Batman’s “bat” emblem.
Hence, the fight between Superman and Batman becomes a symbolic conflict between godlike hope and human hate, of the seemingly omnipotent power for rising above our baser instincts and achieve our angelic potential versus the omnipresence of rage, of sinking to our lowest urges where our reason and intelligence is made to serve the killer angel that resides within us all. And the clash of titans here could be, as it is in Dawn of Justice, orchestrated again by Lex Luthor, the vainglorious mediocrity whose twisted brilliance makes him neither a Bruce Wayne nor a Clark Kent, but instead a power-hungry nobody who is utterly outclassed by the true heavyweights, Superman and Batman.
But this is yet another failing of Dawn of Justice – no good reason is given for Lex Luthor to be so interested in seeing Superman and Batman duke it out. Sure, at the end of the film, we are given a reason, too little and too late and not sufficiently set up ahead of time to be anything more than a kind of deus ex machina out for the script. Lex should have been more closely modeled on Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent. As a young man who inherited his wealth and has invested heavily in Metropolis, only to have almost all of it destroyed and his plans ruined by the battle between Superman and Zod. As a young man who was told he was going to make a difference in the world, that he was a son of destiny, his being eclipsed by Superman would fuel his jealousy and thus a meaningfully personal motive can arise for his desire to outdo either Superman or Batman…that he knows who each is would be no problem, because he, like them, is a chest of secrets, and so it behooves him to keep their identities to himself for later use (Dawn of Justice embraces this with Luthor’s men kidnapping Martha Kent in order to force Superman/Kal El/Clark Kent – Lex knows them all – to kill Batman, whom Lex knew would end up killing Superman because he realized who had stolen the Kryptonite he, Lex, had tried to sneak into the country from India).
So, Metropolis should have still been in ruins, some rebuilding taking place, but a lot of crime coming with it, requiring the Batman to challenge the supposed heroism of Superman, who is still bedeviled by two crucial realities: first, that he had to kill Zod with his own hands, and second, that the deaths of everyone in Metropolis are ultimately his fault because he should never have fought Zod in their midst. So riddled with doubt, he busies himself with assisting with the ongoing rescue and recovery efforts of the emergency and construction personnel to find everyone who is still missing, as well as patrolling the planet, attempting to do good everywhere to reassure humanity that he is not a threat. Thus, crime persists in Metropolis and the Batman intrudes upon Superman’s turf to do the job that Superman seems unable to do because of the guilt for his failure in Metropolis.
Now, it might be suggested that the reason why Metropolis does not have to undergo the descent into darkness is because Superman rebuilt it to make amends.
Well, in a post-911 world, that is a profoundly dishonest and disrespectful solution to offer. I applaud Snyder’s efforts to bring some degree of accountability to the DC universe’s heroes, but we can go quite a lot farther in doing so. Superman’s lingering guilt and inability to make up the wages of death on his bloodied hands is a powerful means of developing him into a far more interesting character. By avoiding Metropolis because of his guilt, hence allowing it to slip into criminality, and thus requiring the presence of the Batman to address, Superman would be provided with the impetus to build his secluded Fortress of Solitude, the lonely home he keeps far removed from humanity as he ponders the damage he has done.
Oh, but that this film could have been so much more than it was had DC had to courage to plan out a coherent universe that would require not one film, but a trilogy to tell (Man of Steel, then Batman v. Superman, then perhaps Superman – a trilogy that would tell the story of the rise, fall, and ascension of Kal El as the actual Uber Mensch whom Nietzsche imagined a century and a half ago. From here, there would be the satellite stories of Batman and Wonder Woman and the others as the conflict in the third story, Superman, would require Kal El to restore hope by bringing together the Justice League).
In short, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice tries to do too much too quickly with too much left out. Patience is a virtue.