Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice review

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Many were worried that Warner Bros’ rush to compete with Disney/Marvel’s brand of interconnected comic-book movie franchises would lead to something too ambitious and too concerned with setting up future projects to really stand on its own. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” suffers from all of that and it’s so much worse than we could have expected. 

Spawned as semi-sequel to 2013’s “Man of Steel,” director Zack Snyder was given the directive by the studio to create a movie-universe that could churn out many of its own sequels and spinoffs. Therefore, it needed to continue Snyder’s Superman narrative, introduce a new conceptual take on Batman--now played by “Daredevil” star Ben Affleck--establish a foundation for the forthcoming Justice League film and somehow wrangle all of these ideas in one succinct way. “Batman v Superman” is anything but succinct, in fact, it’s an incomprehensible Frankenstein of a movie. 

The film begins with a montage recapping Batman’s origin story, in case you somehow forgot it from the previous six Batman flicks. It ends with Bruce watching a skyscraper he owns in Metropolis destroyed during Superman’s battle with General Zod; the same orgiastic destruction sequence that concluded “Man of Steel” and put off a lot of viewers with its clumsy 9/11 evocations. Henry Cavill’s Superman/Clark Kent is now seen as hero by some and a danger by others, which has further developed his Christ complex that eventually leads him into problems by the third act. Said danger comes in the form of Lex Luther (Jesse Eisenberg) who’s discovered Superman’s only weakness, Kryptonite, as well as functioning Kryptonian technology at the bottom of the ocean. Through a convoluted and frustrating plot involving Russian gangsters, encrypted spy decoding, classified bullets, crippled Zod survivors and Lois Lane always managing to be at the wrong place at the right time, Lex manages to get Batman and Superman to fight. Oh yeah, and for some indiscernible reason, Gal Gadot makes an appearance as Wonder Woman, complete with her own corny heavy metal theme. 

This movie barely makes any sense. Plot threads are started and then later abandoned and the character’s motivations are solely dictated by which set-piece they need to get to next, but those who’ve followed Snyder’s past work (“300,” “Watchmen,” “Sucker Punch”) should know that story has never been the director’s strong suit. Generally speaking, suits seem to be his strong suit – costume and production design is where his interests have always gravitated and the more narrative or emotional heavy lifting he is asked to do the harder he fails as a storyteller. 

Certainly “Man of Steel” had its problems but at least the movie held together and Cavill really fit the part as Superman. Here both he and Affleck look visibly bored on screen, as does Amy Adams, whose Lois Lane has been relegated to a paging device to make Superman appear whenever she needs to be rescued. Eisenberg is devouring the scenery and embracing the unintended camp of it all, but even he comes off as overly manic compared to the stone-faced zombies he’s trying (usually, too hard) to play against.  

With all of the different studio notes and competing plots shoved into this two and half hour edit, the movie's been patched into a messy collage of incongruent scenes and story elements that shift back and forth like an extended recap that plays before the next season of a television show. Snyder likes to highlight his epic comic-book-y tableaus and there’s enough ‘cool’ imagery to cut together an exciting trailer but even the fanboys will be hard-pressed to defend this labored clunker, as it fails to anchor enough emotional grounding to make any fight worth investing in.   

Grade: D -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2016

Listen to more discussion about "Batman v Superman" on this week's Jabber and the Drone Podcast.