Batman v Superman Review
By Jonathan Celiz
This year has and will be a pinnacle year for superhero movies; with the upcoming release of Captain America: Civil War, Warner Bros. has been pulling all the stops to catch up to Marvel with their own plans for a massive cinematic universe starring it’s DC Comic heroes. But their biggest disadvantage is the complete lack of planning that would lead naturally to a huge crossover film comparable to The Avengers. With just one official movie in it’s canon, Man of Steel, Warner Bros. decided to put all their eggs in one basket for their next film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Directed by Zack Snyder, Henry Carvill reprises his role as Superman as his continued heroics in the world have gradually given him a deity status but not without controversy. Due to indirect effects from the previous film, Bruce Wayne (played by Ben Affleck) holds a grundge against the Man of Steel and sees him as a looming threat to humanity, and a series of events has them pitted against each other, hence the title, all planned by Lex Luthor (played by Jesse Eisenberg) as a means to get rid of Superman.
If there’s was one thing to describe this movie it’s . . . clumsy. Despite Snyder’s distinct visual style and engaging action, he doesn’t seem to know how to tell a cohesive story or one with any sense of fun or levity. For the most part, the tone is always dire, serious, and heavy-handed with its allusions to real life disasters and Christ metaphors which at this point for Superman have become tiresome and played out, meanwhile, shoe-horning visual cues and cameos for future movies they desperately want to get off the ground. While Affleck gives a decent performance as Batman, Eisenberg’s Luthor is scene-chewing at best and cringe-worthy at worse, and you’re just left confused as to what they were trying to go for with this version of Lex Luthor. The one positive in the cast was Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman; despite her short screen time and her otherwise unnecessary inclusion, she steals the scene during the ending battle in the film and isn’t as grim and dour as the 2 male leads.
But the story itself is still a confusing mess, forcing so many characters and plot points from famous comic book stories that it doesn’t have the realistic weight, profound depth, or meaning that they clearly wanted their DC movie universe to have in order to contrast to the more fun energetic Marvel. When aiming for a more “realistic” take on beloved characters like Superman, somewhere they forgot that movies are about escapism and forcing said realism on an alien god that sometimes dresses up as an awkward glasses-wearing reporter starts to feel a bit contrived and not really in the spirit of a character that is supposed to embody hope and optimism. And also unlike Marvel, Warner Bros. does not want to take their time trying to build their universe one movie at a time and gradually build up to a big pay-off. Instead Warner Bros. plays an egregious game of catch-up.
It’s difficult to recommend this film, if you’re already sold on the style and tone of this universe, then you’ll likely enjoy it, but for others, it’s a film that clearly overstays it’s welcome with it’s own melancholy self-seriousness.