A couple days ago I saw Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice for the second time, and like everyone else I have a lot to say about it. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet and don’t want it spoiled here are my thoughts; it’s a very gorgeous, ambitious, sometimes fun movie that I’ve wanted my whole life, and overall, it’s also just okay. It definitely doesn’t deserve such horrible reviews from the critics. I really liked a lot of stuff in it and I really disliked a lot of it. If you’re a hardcore DC fan (like I am) you’ll probably at least like it. It’s up in the air for everyone else, but I would recommend seeing it. I’m going to get into spoiler talk now, you’ve been warned.
First let’s talk negatives. Surprisingly Jessie Eisenberg won’t be on this part, I’m surprised too. What is making this list is Doomsday. I actually didn’t mind how he looked. Yeah he looked like a cave troll from Lord of the Rings, but I think cave trolls look cool. Regardless of how he looked he was shoehorned into this movie, and the fact that they had the audacity to kill him off after 15 minutes of screen time is even worse, although I did love seeing him going up against the trinity.
This movie also suffered from a pretty convoluted plot. I don’t know if this was more of Chris Terrio’s fault or David S. Goyer’s, but I’m hoping for the latter since Terrio is writing Justice League on his own. Along with the messy plot for the first hour or so of the movie you also don’t know anyone’s motivation. You understand why Batman is the way he is, but everyone else just seems to have feelings or act certain ways because the script calls for it. It’s really a shame to because this movie should write itself. Batman and Superman fighting is nothing new, the have completely different ideologies. It shouldn’t have been this hard. Speaking of their fight the reason they stopped fighting was…interesting. At first I wasn’t too crazy about it, but as I thought about it and seeing it again I kind of liked it. It helped humanize a very brutal, murderous batman. I also really didn’t care for Cyborg and Aquaman’s cameo, but I’ll get more into that later.
Louis Lane was also a big problem in this movie. I know a lot of people really didn’t like Amy Adams as Louis Lane in Man of Steel, but I thought she was fine in that. In this movie her storyline really slowed everything down in a bad way, and they kept shoving here into the story where she didn’t belong. If you ask me there was probably only one scene were she was really necessary in the movie. She shouldn’t have been their for the climax, but the script needed here there for when Superman dies, again things are only happening here because the script calls for it. In my opinion the movie was already pretty convoluted, but her character was for sure the straw that broke the camels back.
Let’s get a little but more positive now and talk about what I liked. First off this is the best onscreen Batman and Alfred that we’ve ever gotten. We all owe Ben Affleck an apology for being so mean when he got casted, and Jeremy Irons is without a doubt the most comic accurate Alfred we’ve ever gotten; no disrespect to Michael Cane. I also liked that for the first time we got an angry batman. That’s something we haven’t seen onscreen, and although I wish that they would have addressed all of his killing at some point in the film, it could’ve been worse. Out of all of the problems with his movie that one seemed insignificant.
Another character that was handled wonderfully was Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. She wasn’t in the movie much, and to be honest she didn’t have very much to do, but she absolutely stole every scene she was in. When she first appeared in her full Wonder Women outfit was definitely the most exciting part of the movie. You’ll want to get up and cheer every time.
Someone who pleasantly surprised me was Jessie Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. His first couple scenes were a little rough. I was worried and it seemed like he was just going to be this over the top joker character, but as the movie went on I felt that he really grew into the role and I thought he actually ended up being pretty menacing at times.
Besides the characters there were a few other notable strong points of the film. The action was fantastic, Zack Snyder might not be the best story teller, but he sure can direct a fight scene, especially Batman’s warehouse scene around the end. I also really enjoyed flash’s dream cameo (if it was a dream) and I thought his security cam footage was perfect and really showed what that character is like in just a few seconds unfortunately, the circumstance which we are seeing the security camera footage is pretty stupid, and it’s followed by a very awkward Aquaman cameo that doesn’t make much sense and a cringe worthy Cyborg cameo.
The last thing from the movie I want to discuss is superman dying; take the word “dying” very lightly. I liked it and I didn’t like it. As a fan of movies I liked how they took a risk and did something that would be considered very controversial for a superhero movie, unfortunately they sort of backed out of it with the last show of the movie. As a comic book fan I was rather disappointed. The death of superman is one of the most popular comic book story lines and it could’ve taken up a whole movie and it could’ve been great, unfortunately it was just shoehorned in the last 30 minutes of this movie.
I know I didn’t cover everything, there’s just way too much for me to talk about. A hardcore DC fan like myself could write a book on this movie. I could go on and on about how getting through those dreadful dream sequences were worth it because we got to see Parademons in one of them, but I think that would miss the point. We as fans should be able to separate our love for the comics from the movies and acknowledge that this is a new story. If it’s not exactly like the comics that’s fine and it’s just someone else’s vision for the characters, with that being said that still doesn’t excuse everything wrong with the movie. DC was trying way too hard to catch up with Marvel and it was obvious, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching the movie. Great movies can be flawed, and horrible movies can have their moments, and this one is somewhere in the middle. Grade: C+