ToaArcan Reviews: Batman v Superman

ToaArcan Reviews: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Well, I figured this is as good a time as I'll get. I've been wanting to talk about this movie since I finally sat down and watched it a few months ago, but I wanted to wait a while and see what we got out of Wonder Woman first, since the reception to that movie could've saved or killed the DCEU as a whole.

Fortunately, Wonder Woman is widely regarded as fucking awesome, and even the more critical responses don't call it bad, merely average, and given how high the standard for Superhero movies is (Unless you're The Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Suicide Squad, you're probably pretty solid), average still translates to “Pretty fucking good.”

With that in mind, I feel now's the best possible opportunity to discuss the DCEU's more contested entry, as well as its rival from Marvel Studios, and see what they did right, what they did wrong, what they could've improved, and ultimately, which one was better.

2016 saw the release of quite a few superhero movies, and these two, expected to be the tentpoles of the bunch, both went with the idea of having their heroes fight each other. One was a huge success, and the other was also a huge success but got a kicking from critics due to the theatrical cut being... not so great (Though let's be real, the best superhero movie of 2016 was Deadpool. Don't kid yourselves, you know it's true). Today we're discussing the second one.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of it, and to avoid anyone reading this jumping the gun, I like both of these movies. I like them a lot. I do not think that BvS is a bad film. Because it isn't. At all. It's greatly acted, with one specific exception, the plot mostly makes sense, the cinematogrophy is great (Regardless of what you think of Snyder's storytelling, he always makes his movies look awesome), the costume designers did a good job with our heroes' appearances.

BvS is a good movie, with some very specific flaws that drag it down, and the theatrical cut that most audiences saw first had even bigger ones, primarily that Superman felt like an extra in his own movie. He's still not as important as Batman in the Ultimate Cut, but his presence is much greater.

Still, I'm getting a ahead of myself. We'll be discussing the bad stuff later. For now, let's cover what I liked about this film.

Part 1: The Good

The Opening

This film has two openings, really: One showing the death of Bruce Wayne's parents, and the other showing the now-adult Bruce Wayne in Metropolis during the battle between Superman and Zod. Both of them are pretty good scenes, the latter moreso than the former.

A new Batman reboot meant we were bound to get yet another take on the “My parents are deeeaaaad!” scene, but Snyder made the smart decision to make it a part of the opening credits, with very little dialogue, rather than devoting a large part of the movie's run time to it. It gets a bit weird at the end, when the bats start to lift Bruce out of the cave, but the revelation that this is actually Bruce remembering it in a dream makes that a little more justifiable.

The scene of Bruce in the ruined city, however, is fucking great. It's our introduction to who Bruce Wayne is as a character, and we see him as a courageous, heroic man who cares about the people that work for him, and is willing to put himself in harm's way for others. Affleck's performance in this scene is awesome, he really does sell the hatred and rage Bruce has toward the two Kryptonians, as well as the desperation to see that the employees in his building are all okay.

The Casting

Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, and Gal Gadot are all perfectly cast in their roles. We'd already seen Cavill in action as Superman before, and he continues to do a great job of playing the DCEU's darker take on the character.

Affleck was a casting choice that a lot of audiences were initially critical of for... some reason? I guess they hadn't seen any of his movies since Daredevil, because by now, his track record is a lot more positive than negative. I was one of the people who was quite happy with Affleck's casting, as long as he did a good job, and he did. He plays an older, more weary Batman than Christian Bale, taking his inspiration mostly from Frank Miller's seminal miniseries, The Dark Knight Returns, and it works pretty well on-screen.

Gadot was someone that I was unsure of, simply due to her lack of previous acting experience, but I needn't have worried. As Diana Prince, she effective owned every scene she was in, and her performance as Wonder Woman during the climactic battle with Doomsday was great.

Jeremy Irons' portrayal of Alfred was great. It might surprise you to know this, but Alfred Pennyworth is probably my favourite Batman character. Seriously. Bruce Wayne's sarcastic butler and confidant is an excellent character in the comics and animated shows, and I'm glad to see that the live action adaptations have caught up to that with Sir Michael Caine, Sean Pertwee, and now Irons' portrayals of the character. He looks a bit young next to this movie's older Bruce Wayne, only about ten years older than him, but the performance is good enough that I'm willing to overlook that.

Then we have Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, aaaannd... okay, I didn't like this version of Lex at all, but I'm going to save that for later and just discuss how Eisenberg played him. According to Eisenberg himself, he just played what the script told him, and he does a good job of portraying that. It's easy to believe his performance as the character, the flaw is moreso with the character than anything else, and the promo image released of Eisenberg as a bald Luthor, fixing the camera with a death glare, makes me think that he really could've been a good comic-style Lex too. It's just a shame that he ended up being Evil Mark Zuckerberg, but more on that later.

Amy Adams continues to be a good Lois Lane, and has her own subplot about trying to get to the bottom of the smear campaign against Superman. It's interesting, but it doesn't really go anywhere, considering that Lex just sort of tells her the truth anyway. Still, her position as the one supporting Superman during his struggles is well-handled.

I also want to praise Laurence Fishburne's reprisal as Perry White. He's almost like J. Jonah Jameson in this movie, and that's always a good thing.

The Action

Oh my god, the action sequences in this movie are so good. The actual titular fight is a little short, but I don't really mind, considering how well-done it is, and the great moments in it. Special mention has to go to the moment of realisation Clark has when he tries to punch Batman after being gassed with Kryptonite vapour, and Batman effortlessly blocks it, and the later scene where Bruce is punching Clark as the Kryptonite wears off, and his punches gradually become less and less effective, until his fist just sort of dully clangs against Clark's face.

The power gap is really emphasised here, with Clark able to effortless shove Bruce around while he's at full strength, while Batman's power armour (Which looks amazing in CGI/live action) gives him a clear edge when Clark is brought down to human levels.

The battle with Doomsday is also fucking great all the way through. Superman visibly tries to carry the monster into space, like he did with Zod in Man of Steel, but this time he's foiled by the military trying to nuke Doomsday, which not only puts Clark out of the fight for a while, but also doesn't kill Doomsday and just makes him stronger. Oops.

Batman doesn't do too much in this fight, but he does make some contributions, and Wonder Woman's entrance and role is perfect too.

I have to give special mention to probably the best scene in the movie, though: Batman's fight with Lex's thugs in the abandoned building. Honestly, that battle is straight out of one of the Arkham games, as Bruce beats the ever-loving crap out of the goon squad, with such speed and ferocity that you never stop to question if he could actually take on that many guys at once. One thing I've learned from watching Red vs. Blue is that I'm a sucker for high-speed, high-power fist fights, and this movie certainly doesn't disappoint in that area.

The Music

Hans Zimmer, you've done it again. I loved the Man of Steel soundtrack, especially Flight and Terraforming, and once again, the soundtrack for BvS is awesome, featuring some recurring elements from MoS, and even a few hints of the Dark Knight trilogy score here and there. Wonder Woman's leitmotif is completely new for this movie, and it sounds amazing. So glad they decided to keep using it for her.

So, now that I've spent the better part of two pages discussing what's good about this film... let's talk about the weaker parts.

Part 2: The Bad

The Timing

If there's one fundamental flaw that this movie couldn't possibly recover from, it's the timing of it. Batman v Superman came out too early, and there's little that can be argued against that.

This is a film that draws heavily from both The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman... and it's the second movie in the franchise. I'm sorry, but this is far too soon to be adapting those stories, especially the latter. That's not to say that either of them is unworthy of adaptation, just that they should've left it a bit before doing that. In fact, if this movie, as in, the exact same film, no changes, no nothing, had come out after The Batman, Wonder Woman, and Man of Steel 2, I believe that it would've been received a whole lot better, simply because it would be free to tell its story without having to introduce us to half the cast, and it would be an element of the universe rather than the film trying to launch the whole thing.

The two biggest issues here are the portrayal of Batman and the death of Superman. Batman, in this film, has fallen into depression and isn't exactly heroic anymore, he's trying to kill people, which isn't exactly a Batman thing to do (More on this later), due to the path he was pushed down by the death of Jason Todd, while Superman is having the worst day of his life, and then dies. Without movies in between Man of Steel and this one to establish what Clark and Bruce are normally like, having them so out of their norms here is a bit jarring.

In short, while BvS is a great movie on its own, as a part of a shared universe, it's poorly placed and needs prequels to fit better.

Batman

Repeat after me: Batman. Doesn't. Kill people. Okay, yes, there are alternate versions of Bruce Wayne in various Elseworlds that are totally fine with killing. This is true. But Batman himself, the real core of the character, does not kill. It is his one rule that he always abides by.

While Affleck's portrayal of the character is great, the character himself is lacking due to the script, which is a shame.

Now, if there was a Batman movie before this that showed Batman at his best, then I'd be more lenient, but since it's our introduction to this version of him, it's a bit of a problem.

It does have one major problem, however: We are looking at a Batman universe where the Joker has already won. The Joker's thing in the Batman comics is that he wants to force Batman over the edge, and make him kill him, because if there's one thing that the Joker is always out to prove, it's that all it takes is one bad day to drive someone completely insane. And in this timeline, he won. He and Harley killed Jason, and Batman started murdering in response. Game set, victory to the man in the purple suit.

Hopefully, when this Batman and Joker finally meet on screen, they'll do something to save this dynamic between them. If they ever do, that is, considering how poorly received the Leto Joker was, and Margot Robbie's apparent refusal to work with him again.

The Death and Obvious Return of Superman

Don't invalidate death in your stories. Just don't do it. One of the biggest criticisms directed at comics in general is that nobody takes death seriously anymore. If a character is killed off, everyone just sort of sighs and says “Well, he'll be back in a year or so.”

Ironically, the Death and Return of Superman is actually the story that started this. It was never meant to be a permanent thing: In fact, it was essentially a year-long filler story because the plot arc that the Superman writers had been building up through their books (At the time, there were four Superman titles: Superman, Action Comics, The Man of Steel, and Last Son of Krypton, one releasing each week), that being Lois discovering Clark's secret identity and them getting married, was suddenly put on hold because DC's management didn't want the two to get married in the comics before they did in the concurrent TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. With their arc suddenly scuppered, and not exactly being able to justify pausing it for that long, they left in a bit of a tight spot... until the running joke of those meetings, one guy always suggested “Let's just kill him!”, started to look like a good idea.

So they killed Superman for a year, then brought him back (With mullet, for some reason), and since then, just about every single superhero has died in one way or another at least once. As Max Landis put it: “The Death of Superman didn't kill Superman. It killed the idea of death in comics.”

With that in mind, killing Superman in the movies, especially this early into them, was a bad idea, as was including Doomsday this early. Doomsday is perhaps Superman's biggest foe that isn't Darkseid, and he even defeated Darkseid in a fistfight once. In terms of escalation, where is there to go from here, for the Man of Steel? Hopefully, Brainiac, to be honest, considering that he's probably Number 3 on the most dangerous Superman villains list.

Lex Luthor

Oh boy, this Lex. Lex Luthor is one of my favourite DC villains. Up there with Darkseid, Bane, Sinestro, etc. You'd expect Superman's nemesis to be something like “A god made of magic kryptonite”, to quote a mediocre-at-best Youtube series (Seriously, the only good Death Battle in last season was the RvB crossover, and ScrewAttack and Rooster Teeth are merged, so RT probably gave them all the stats and told them who would win the fight right from the off). Instead, it's a normal guy who happens to hold a huge amount of political power, possibly the greatest mind on Earth, and a metric fuckton of charisma.

It doesn't matter that Lex can't beat Superman in a fist-fight, because he's legally untouchable, and even if there is a chink in his armour, he's charismatic enough to worm his way out of it. It's what makes him so great as a character, and all the more satisfying when he's finally taken down.

This Lex... is kind of basically an evil version of Eisenberg's earlier performance as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. He's an awkward, dweeby guy who is very clearly socially awkward and is so transparently evil it's hard to believe nobody noticed.

As a nice detail, however, he is referred to as Lex Luthor Jr., an identity that Luthor used in the comics at the time of the Death of Superman. Lex had seemingly died of Kryptonite-induced cancer, and after his death, his son showed up, appearing as a younger Lex with long, red hair. However, it eventually turned out to be the original Lex in a clone body. Because comics.

Hey, it's- Oh, they're dead.

Why the fuck did they introduce Jimmy Olsen, making him a CIA agent, and then kill him off two minutes into this movie? Apparently, because Zack Snyder thought it would be fun to shock audiences with it.

Not sure what his excuse for blowing up Mercy Graves later on is, though. However, Mercy is an Amazon in some cases, so maybe she'd be okay. Not sure how durable Amazons aside from Diana are in the DCEU, though.

On my planet, it means Hope... less.

Goddamn, Superman is mopey in this movie. This strikes me as Warner and DC being stuck in the mentality that the Dark Knight trilogy put them into, that making things grounded and gritty and realistic and most importantly angsty was the way to success. Not an unreasonable approach, albeit not the best approach for Superman. Unfortunately for Warner, this was a tactic that was already starting to sour with audiences by the release of The Dark Knight Rises.

In the time between the release of The Dark Knight and its sequel, the MCU had done its first phase and sold audiences on the idea of lighter, more comic book-esque superhero movies, and when Superman came to the big screen, once more, that was what people were expecting.

This is probably the reason for the lukewarm reception to The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, and the grimmer tone of BvS was part of the negative reception it got.

Now, it's understandable that Superman isn't a happy, smiling guy in this film. This is, as I said earlier, the worst day of his life. The problem is that having “Superman in a dark place because everything sucks right now” right on the heels of “Superman in a dark place because he's struggling to find his place in the world and all of that stuff” is a bit too much angsty Superman and not enough “Beacon of Hope” Superman. Again, this movie was too early.

The Martha Scene

Yeah, you knew I was going to have totalk about this eventually. The most infamous scene in the film, where, due to a scriptwriting fuckup, the most powerful moment for Batman's character growth in this entire movie, where he realises that he's turning into Joe Chill, sounded like he changed his mind on killing Superman because their mothers had the same name.

This is in the negative part of the review because the script turns what should be a powerful moment into an Internet meme. The whole point of this is that Batman, through hearing Superman's pleas for his mother's safety, realises that Superman is just as “human” as he is, and he is verging on becoming the monster that created him in the first place. The fact that their mothers conveniently have the same name is pretty much irrelevent.

To add to the issues with it... why does Clark refer to Martha by name? Who refers to their mother by name? It's weird, and it doesn't feel like dialogue. If Clark referred to her as his mother first, then clarified her name, that would be a little better. As it stands, awkward dialogue drags down what should be a powerful and emotional scene.

Logos

This one's really small, but I don't like that the logos for the Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman were assigned to them by Luthor, rather than necessarily choosing them for themselves. Justice League could fix this, though.

Granny's Peach Pee

Just no.

With all that said, however, I still like this movie. I think that the good parts do outweight the bad, and a lot of them could've been solved by simply putting this movie later in the timeline. But if I had the opportunity to fix some of this stuff... what would I change?

Part 3: What could be changed?

I'm going into this fix assuming that the position of the film cannot be changed. We're looking at the second chapter of the DCEU here, and this is going to be our first introduction to Batman and Wonder Woman, as well as Lex. So... what's different in my take on BvS?

Lex Luthor

Lex's goofy persona is toned down, and it's also an act. A friendly, relatable public face he puts on to help win people over, like those corporate Twitter accounts acting friendly when really they're just monolithic companies that only care about your wallets. The comic-style, cold and calculated Luthor is underneath the surface, and comes to the fore whenever he's not in public, and especially when Lois and Superman confront him atop the Lexcorp building. This way we can get the more “fun” Lex of the film, without shafting comics' greatest villain to get there.

Less killing off major characters

Lois' CIA plant photographer isn't Jimmy Olsen. He's an important part of Superman's supporting cast, and using him as a quick shock death is a bad idea. Lois can, however, comment that her new photographer isn't Jimmy, while Jimmy covers the Lexcorp charity event with Clark.

Likewise, Mercy survives the bomb blast. She's still present in the building, and injured, but Clark is shown bringing her out of the building to safety, and the fact that Mercy was injured in the attack is something that moves any suspicion away from Lex.

Most importantly, Superman does not die. It's too early in the DCEU to do the Death of Superman.

Batman doesn't kill people

Batman is using harsher methods, and willing to cause permanent injuries to his foes. He also doesn't worry about the consequences of the beatdowns he delivers, whether it leaves his opponents with brain damage or crippled for life. However, he never directly kills people, and he's only okay with the idea of killing Superman because he isn't human. It's when he realises that, despite his alien heritage, Superman is “human”, that he becomes unwilling to kill him. I already made a small fix to that particular scene when discussing it, so I don't need to cover that.

The Final Battle

So, if Superman's not dying, Doomsday's out. Killing Superman is his thing, and taking that away kinda defangs him (Though Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited did an okay job). Of course, we still need someone to be our big bad boss battle at the end, after our two heroes have buddied up, and Diana's joined them. And who could be his replacement?

Cyborg Superman.

Remember Wallace Keefe, the man injured during the Metropolis attack who graffiti's Superman's statue and then gets given an exploding wheelchair by Lex? Let's make him Hank Henshaw instead.

Hank's got plenty of reason to hate Superman: Before the events of MoS, he was an astronaut, specifically a mission specialist engineer, and he was working at Wayne Industries R&D with Lucius Fox, developing the equipment for a manned mission to Mars, after NASA discovered the ruins of an ancient civilisation there, and they want to check it out (Because let's foreshadow J'onn as well, because J'onn is awesome).

Then the Metropolis attack happened. Henshaw is injured during the destruction, and loses his ability to walk. To make matters worse, in order to rebuild Metropolis, the government pulls funding from other "non-essential" areas, including NASA. The Mars mission is cancelled, and Hank's life's work is mothballed.

Losing his legs and his job does a number on Hank's sanity, and he blames Superman for it, like many people do. Lex still comes to him with an offer: That if he does one small job for him (The capitol bombing), he will give him his legs back.

Hank agrees, and proceeds to get blown up, after which Lex recovers his body and puts him in the Kryptonian ship's rebirthing thing, which he has keyed to Superman's DNA. The machinery has been damaged, however, so Lex jury-rigs it with tech appropriated from Doctor Stone.

The result is the Cyborg Superman, who looks a lot like Clark, but there's something... off. Like the way a realistic wax dummy or older CGI looks human, but very clearly isn't, and is thus incredibly unsettling.

Later on, Cyborg Superman lands outside the Kent farm, and Martha suspects nothing, because a man in red and blue with a cape dropping out of the sky near her home is something she somewhat expects. However, when she sees his face, she is horrified, but knocked out before she can respond.

After delivering Martha to Lex, Hank flies off, and absorbs power from the city, causing the blackout. However, during this, he sees his face reflected in the window of one of the skyscrapers, and realises that Lex made him look exactly like Superman. Enraged, he tears off the synthetic skin on half of his face, exposing the metal skull underneath, before flying off to attack his former benefactor.

After Clark and Bruce have had their fight, Clark goes to confront Lex, and ends up saving him from being killed by Henshaw. Unfortunately, Clark has been weakened by Kryptonite exposure from his fight with Batman, and it's night, so there's no sunlight to heal himself with, so he's at a major disadvantage, especially since he's fighting someone who is essentially a machine: Hank isn't going to get tired, or run out of power, he's going to keep fighting and fighting until his body is too broken to continue.

Clark tries to take Hank into space to avoid causing more damage, but gets nuked, and Hank escapes, leaving his opponent seemingly dead in orbit, and goes back to Earth, where he is attacked by Bruce in the Batwing.

Clark, meawhile, is revived by the sun. Floating in a vacuum with nothing to filter out the sun's rays, Superman becomes even more powerful than he was before, and rushes back to Earth because he can tell that Bruce is struggling.

Since Hank is a human/robot hybrid, he can resist the Kryptonite weapons that Batman has, they weaken the Superman part of him, but the rest of him can carry on, and Batman's pretty much out of luck without his armour to even the score.

Fortunately, both Superman and Wonder Woman are able to pull his fat out of the fryer, and from there the fight is basically the same, with the added edge that there's a time limit: They have to beat him before the sun rises and gives him the chance to recharge.

Ultimately, Hank is defeated, and his mechanical parts are taken offline, allowing him to be captured along with Lex. Superman survives, but goes off on his own, embarking on a quest to round up every piece of Kryptonian tech and make sure it can't be used for evil, leaving Bruce and Diana to form the Justice League.

Part 4: Conclusion

So, that's my review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. A good movie that could've been a lot better, but is ultimately hindered by a few smaller problems, particularly the jumping of the gun on how soon to do this particular story.

But that's my review. What's yours? Do you agree with the points I made here, or do you have your own views? Next time, I'll be reviewing Captain America: Civil War. I think most people already know that I like that movie a lot, but I'm going to be fair and balanced to it, and point out the flaws where they arise. 

This is ToaArcan, signing off.