The DC trinity all together in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
I think it most apt to begin this review with an apology. It’s
not an apology to any particular person, but rather the film Avengers: Age of
Ultron. Almost a year ago I sat here and wrote about the film claiming its emptiness
made it feel like a “two-and-a-half-hour commercial for future Marvel films.”
It’s not that I don’t stand by that statement 10 months later, I’m still not
enamored about how Age of Ultron ultimately tried to cram future movies down my
throat, but at the very least it had some fun, and care surrounding it.
I say this because in comparison to Batman V Superman: Dawn
of Justice, Age of Ultron does a masterful job of balancing a fun breezy plot
and set up for future films. Dawn of Justice is literally a two-and-a-half-hour
trailer for the upcoming Justice League movies. There is no narrative progression,
no characters that have more than one-character trait, but hey look here are
some vignettes for characters you are going to get the see in a Justice League
movie! Dawn of Justice is simply baffling there is no other way to put it.
As mentioned earlier there is literally no plot progression
in this film. The plot essentially boils down to Superman (Henry Cavill)
getting a lot of attention after the events of Man of Steel, some of it’s good
some of it’s bad. Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) does not like Superman for
reasons that are still baffling to me. Lex Luther (Jessie Eisenberg) likes
neither of them and is evil. A mild amount of chaos ensues.
Storytelling according to Dawn of Justice involves stitching
together a bunch of vignettes with little if any through line holding them
together and hoping for the best. There is no forward momentum and no since
that one thing leads to another. Instead plot points just kind of happen and
the filmmakers just pretend that this constitutes actual storytelling. There is
no central idea or heartbeat that moves the film forward it’s just scene after
scene after scene of emptiness without any point or value. It feels like
instead of stitching, or even piling, plot points together the filmmakers just
threw a bunch of things they wanted to get in a hoped that some sort of narrative
would come of it. Ultimately by the time we get to the showdown between Batman
and Superman so much pointless plot has been thrown at the screen it’s
impossible to care.
Worse is that Dawn of Justice, despite its brutally long run
time, has no time to build any characters. I’m fine with Superman not being
much of a character as even in his best story he’s often relegated to being a
symbol, but in order to do that everyone else around him has to be somewhat
interesting. The problem is that the characters in Dawn of Justice are embarrassingly
two dimensional, and even that is being generous. Ben Affleck’s Batman is
officially the worst depiction of the character I have ever seen on screen,
even topping George Clooney and his bat nipples. Batman is relegated to being a
petulant child. He’s a man who can’t understand nuance, his reasons for initially
hating Superman (before the film tries to give the character a semi intelligent
motivation) are baffling, and blind range seems to be his only personality
trait. He is the most static, brutally uninteresting, and soul draining
frustrating adaptation of the character ever put onto screen, and with Batman
that is saying something.
Even worse is that there are none of the other characters
are any better. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) has gone from semi competent journalist
in Man of Steel to a plot device in Dawn of Justice. She shows up only when the
plot deems it convenient and then leaves without any further explanation. The
film has no interest in developing her into a real human being in any capacity.
Even worse is Wonder Woman who is just there for fan service. There is no pay
off to her appearance, nor does she have any sort of character. She’s just kind
of there. But worst of all in the character department is Lex Luther, who literally
can’t pin down a consistent character. The film can never decide whether it
wants him to be an eccentric weirdo or a charismatic evil genius and his
character changes in literally every scene. To say the least, it’s mind numbingly
frustrating.
Even worse is the set up for future films. The filmmakers in
Dawn of Justice don’t seem to know how to do anything subtly so rather than
dropping hints, or putting an Easter egg after the credits, the film literally stops
for about 5-10 minutes just so we can be introduced to these characters that
for some unknown reason we would like to see team up to fight for truth justice
and the American way. It’s just another example of how lazy the storytelling in
Dawn of Justice is. There is nothing clever, subtle, or creative it’s just all
sledgehammer storytelling all the time.
But worst of all is that I don’t know how much of the I can
blame on Zach Snyder himself. His direction is the best part of this mess and
many of the otherwise completely generic action sequences are saved by his eye
for shooting them. I’ve never had a problem with Snyder’s stylistic tendencies
and without him this mess is most likely worse. The problems with this film
ultimately feel more fundamental than Snyder going into full on Sucker Punch
mode. It feels like either writers David S Goyer and Chris Terrio who have
otherwise done some good work either had no idea how to make a screenplay all
of a sudden or there was a lot of studio pressure in making this film. I’m not
one to speculate but given the amount of money and future investment Warner
Bros sunk into this mess I can imagine it being the latter.
No matter whether it’s studio pressure, bad writing, or Zach
Snyder being Zach Snyder Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is an awful mess
from beginning to finish. The plot never moves, the characters never even
attempt to develop and the film is so painfully long. It’s a film that has so
little in it that it feels even more insulting that Warner Bros used this movie
entirely to try and get me to come back and see more of these catastrophes. If
this qualifies being the best possible trailer for the Justice League movies the Warner
Bros are going to need to hire a new marketing team.
Grade: D
-Frederick Cholowski
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