Batman v. Superman Dawn of Justice was… a shitshow.
Batman v. Superman is one of the greatest showdowns in comic book history. Man versus god in a battle for supremacy has to make for some epic cinema then, no? Well this movie is certainly an epic disaster that’s for sure.
As a show of good faith, I’ll start by talking about what the movie did right. I think the most bulletproof aspect of this film for me was the casting, Batfleck flies in the face of doubters pulling off fresh Batman and Wayne interpretations with aplomb. I only wish he had a better script to work with. Cavill is perfect as Superman, it’s just a shame Superman is such a bland character in this iteration. Gal Gadot pulls off another great performance as Wonder Woman. Her debut comes late, but she steals the show from then on maintaining a strong presence that matches the other heavy hitters. Other notable performances, Jeremy Irons as Alfred has the razor-sharp wit at work once more, probably some of the best writing of the film was given to his character, Fishburne channels JK Simmons in his Perry White role with entertaining results.
The actual production is also fantastic, the movie looks great, the more grounded fight scenes are well crafted and beautiful to watch unfold. I didn’t really have too many complains about the music either, so much of this movie has the ingredients to be good, if not great.
Spoilers Below:
So, what's the problem? If it looks great, is well cast, and has solid action what could fell this goliath? The main thing, and really the only thing, keeping me from loving this movie is the script. The script is a nightmare, it's the human centipede of movie scripts. They tried to stitch together a half assed Batman origin story, add in his motivation for having an axe to grind with Superman and then followed that up with a villain that would drive the two to work together. Story beats that have been done a million times, not a particularly compelling take, but ok fine I can work with this.
Unfortunately, it doesn't end there, this isn't your standard three-person human centipede, this went full ensemble, there are so many subplots I lost count. Most of these subplots are completely pointless and just pad the run time, some of them are clearly only in this film to set up Justice League rather than doing anything to benefit the film. We don’t get a fine-tuned script about the ideological conflict between Batman and Superman, something that could’ve been at least mildly challenging to the viewer. Instead, they use one of the greatest showdowns in comic book history to set up the next movie and the actual showdown ends with one of the dumbest plot contrivances ever created.
They took one of the best premises they're going to get and squandered it on a bait and switch to have them fight the cave troll from Lord of the Rings. I can only hope Marvel's Civil War movie doesn't treat the audience like they are such mouth breathing morons as this does. But hey it made its money so I’m not holding out hope that things will improve.
2/10 A grave injustice.
Comments