To paraphrase a scene from Silicon Valley:
"How bad is this? Be honest. Is it Dark Knight Rises bad?"
(Uncomfortable silence)
"It's not Batman Forever bad, is it?"
(Uncomfortable silence)
"Fuck. Don't tell me this is Adam West bad."
"I'm sorry, Zack. It's Batman and Robin bad."
Okay, fine, that's not really fair. Batman and Robin is one of the worst films ever made. A century from now, it will still be one of the worst films ever made. If I can say nothing else nice about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it's that it's not nearly as bad as Batman and Robin.
Here's the thing, though: Batman and Robin wasn't so much a film as it was a two-hour commercial for action figures and fast food tie-ins. It was a joke, from beginning to end. And while I doubt Warner Brothers and Joel Schumacher intentionally set out to make a bad movie, it's pretty obvious that they weren't even remotely concerned with making a good one, either.
Batman v Superman, on the other hand, clearly strives to be something great. Both on its own merits, as well as a launch pad for WB's entire slate of superhero films over the next decade. It has mixed results in regards to the latter, but the former felt like a complete failure.
Spoilers below...
The Good
-- The soundtrack. Is it a good thing that I'm leading off my list of the best elements of the film with the soundtrack? Probably not. But it's very good. Particularly the piece ("Is She With You?") that plays when Batman finds the picture of Wonder Woman from a hundred years ago, and when Diana looks at the files of the future-Justice Leaguers. In a film that didn't have much organic tension, Hans Zimmer did a great job of manufacturing some.
-- The alternate future. In an already busy story, I'm not entirely sure that the film needed to add on a possible future where Superman's a power-mad despot, to whatever Lex Luthor's plan was AND Doomsday AND the character tease at the end. But I'm glad it did. Seeing the future version of the Flash appear out of nowhere to issue his dire warning to Batman was the probably the purest "comic bookish" part of the entire film. Hence my enjoyment of it.
Crisis on Infinite Earths, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Dark Knight Returns...if you're going to steal, steal from the best, I suppose.
-- Superman's death. I mean, we all know it's temporary. But I appreciated the gesture. Remember how in Batman and Robin, Bane was basically just some random henchman who did nothing of note, let alone, his signature bit of breaking Batman's back? I don't know if using Doomsday here was necessarily a good move. And his changed origin was undeniably stupid. But if you are going to use Doomsday in your movie, he really needs to kill Superman. And he did.
The Bad
-- The Waynes. Oh, were the Waynes killed by a mugger? I HADN'T HEARD. Seriously, we don't need a flashback to their deaths every single time Batman gets rebooted. Not even the condensed version we got here. You can only see the same two people gunned down so many times over the years before you start to wonder whether they might have had it coming. Just show Bruce Wayne brooding. We would've figured out what he was thinking about.
Also, it's a shame that an actor as talented as Jeffrey Dean Morgan was wasted in such a thankless role. Offhand, I can't think of another DC character he might have played down the road, but I'm sure they could have found something for him better than playing perennial corpse Thomas Wayne.
-- Batman. I just wasn't feeling Ben Affleck. Especially a 40-something Affleck. If you're restarting Batman, why begin his story when he's nearly ready for superhero retirement? I mean, Alfred spends the whole film making jokes about his age. Now, just like I don't want to see the Waynes murdered for the upteenth time, nor do I particularly want to see Batman once again just starting out. But a 30 year-old Batman a few years into his career would have been fine.
I didn't hate Affleck in the role. And he was probably better than most of the other actors being mentioned a couple years ago. But he wasn't as good as Bale, Keaton or frankly, even Kilmer.
-- Cameos. Was this a movie or summer camp for bored pundits? I suppose I didn't mind Neil deGrasse Tyson. But Anderson Cooper? Soledad O'Brien? Nancy Grace? Andrew Sullivan? I get the desire for realism, but throttle it back a bit.
-- Minor nitpicks:
1) Lex keeps the servers that contain all of his top secret Justice League files (which he conveniently provided movie poster-friendly logos for), in his house? Well, okay. I guess that makes sense for a paranoid individual. But keeping them in an unsecured room right next to where the catering staff is working during a party? That makes less sense. And when Mercy, Lex's assistant, finds Bruce Wayne hanging out in the server room, she just...leaves him in there? Maybe that sort of gross incompetence is why Lex had no problem sacrificing her.
2) In a departure from the comics, Gotham and Metropolis are virtually right next to each other. That's dumb. If so, then why is crime in Gotham so bad? If Superman can fly halfway around the world in seconds to rescue Lois from terrorists, why can't he patrol Gotham a couple of days a week? And why, after two years of being neighbors, is he only just now interested in tracking down Batman? (Who, after all this time, the local media is still referring to as "the Bat vigilante" for some reason.)
3) I guess Snyder got tired of hearing people complain about the high civilian body count in Man of Steel, because whenever there was a huge explosion in the third act, a newscaster could be heard saying "Thank God there was no one in the area!" We get it, Zack. You can drop the passive aggressiveness.
4) So, uh...Superman? That family that's stuck on the roof of their house because of the flooding? The one begging you to rescue them? Are you...I dunno. Going to help? Or just float above them, staring down creepily?
5) Who mails an engagement ring?
The Ugly
-- Branding criminals. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? If nothing else, this seems like the sort of idiotic thought that Affleck, a talented screenwriter and someone who's actually familiar with the character, should have talked Snyder out of. Aside from the sheer impracticality of branding criminals, Batman is apparently cool with them getting murdered inside prison as a direct result of his actions. Sorry. That's not Batman.
-- "He has the power to wipe out the entire human race and if we believe there is even a one percent chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty." Yeah, also not Batman. Look, the toys and ass kicking are certainly elements of the character. But he's also one of the smartest men on the planet. I get he was bummed that old dude died at the beginning of the film. But you don't expect Batman to sound like Donald Rumsfeld.
-- Jimmy Olsen. Remember before Man of Steel came out, fans speculated that the character of Jenny might be a female Jimmy Olsen? Jimmy wishes that had turned out to be true! Because then he'd still be alive. Here's what Snyder said about it:
We just did it as this little aside because we had been tracking where we thought the movies were gonna go, and we don’t have room for Jimmy Olsen in our big pantheon of characters, but we can have fun with him, right?
If that's Snyder's idea of fun, that explains a lot about this movie.
-- Lex Luthor. From the moment Jesse Eisenberg was announced as Luthor, the end result was going to be one of two things: Genius outside-the-box casting or a complete and total misfire. It was not genius outside-the-box casting.
Look, I love Jesse Eisenberg. He's one of my favorite actors. And I suppose if you wanted someone to play an evil Mark Zuckerberg, it makes sense to hire the guy most famous for playing Mark Zuckerberg. The problem is, Lex Luthor isn't Mark Zuckerberg.
I'm generally not a huge fan of John Byrne, but the best thing he ever did as a writer was transform Luthor from a generic mad scientist villain into a billionaire industrialist. He was cool. He was calculated. He was ruthless. What he wasn't, was a Millennial with ADD, spouting lines that, not at all coincidentally, sounded like stuff Heath Ledger's Joker might have said. Just think about how much better Bryan Cranston would have been in this role.
-- Lex's plan. It made no sense. Like, even by comic book movie standards. Remember in Superman, how Lex was going to destroy the entire west coast, killing millions, just to turn a profit on real estate? That made more sense than what he was trying to do here. I mean, what was the point? Okay, fine. He wanted to make money. But he already had money. He wanted to protect the Earth from alien invaders. Again: fine. But then maybe don't engineer the death of the one guy who might be able to repel them should they show up. And if nothing else, Lex would want to be the one who killed Superman himself, not outsource the job to Batman. I won't even get into the logic of unleashing Doomsday on the world. Or blowing up Congress. Or really anything he does.
-- The general mood. There's this really great scene in the JLA/Avengers crossover from a while back: The Avengers have been transported from the Marvel Universe to the DC Universe. They appear on a busy street and immediately, people rush towards them. The Avengers prepare for the worst, since on their Earth, superheroes and mutants are viewed with fear and suspicion.
Instead, the Avengers are shocked when the crowd treats them like rock stars. Because everyone on DC's Earth loves superheroes. And that's one of the things I always loved about DC Comics. Marvel had all the heavy allegories about racism, and "With great power comes great responsibility," and so on. In Marvel Comics, being a hero was mostly a burden. But DC made it seem like putting on a garish costume and fighting crime was the most fun thing in the world. And if you could do it with your buddy, even better.
So...I don't know. Maybe that's not the movie that audiences wanted to see. But I would have.
