With a shakey origin and several expensive productions riding on it, can DC find their film footing and take the ball out of Marvel's court on the front of Superhero cinema?
The short answer is no, not even close.
Perhaps the key to enjoying “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” on any level is to accept the reality that it isn’t actually a film. It’s more like a series of 50 scenes of 2 to 3 minute length strung together by credits.
Things certainly happen, the same actors inhabit each other’s space while dialogue makes reference to the same vaguely connected subject matter but at the end of the day, this isn’t really a story. A story is connected by reinforced themes that drive events, bouncing off of character motivations that lead to the creation of new events that are followed. In a story, the occurrences depicted have a connection with one another.
“Dawn of Justice” is 2½ hours of grim and joyless disjointed happenings capped off by an excessive visual light show that lines up with the entire film’s depiction of super violence as being horrific and cataclysmically terrifying in its consequences, yet it indulges in everything it would appear to desire critiquing while expecting the audience to just let it go for the sake of enjoying the carnage.
Not across a single moment of Clark Kent’s bumbling for acceptance from the people that he never takes any sort of actual agency in, nor Bruce Wayne’s meaningless pissing contest with a being he has no reason to confront, nor Wonder Woman’s pointless fetching of the plot device to set up the coming “Justice League” duology, nor during whatever the hell Lex Luthor’s plotting was supposed accomplish, did the corners of my mouth raise in a genuine sincere smile.
It’s infuriatingly rare that a film actively criticizes its own nature while acknowledging what it should be doing, yet make the active decision to revel in acting out the complete opposite. “Dawn of Justice” is the cinematic equivalent of being a sociopath.
After beating the audience over the head regarding the dangers of uncontrolled power and how all of its flair shouldn’t be mistaken for how lethal it can be if allowed to remain unchecked for almost 90 minutes, the film’s only solution to its nonexistent conflict is to assault the senses with everything it railed against while attempting to cover up the veneer of superiority it seems to believe that it has over a genre that is inherently outlandish.
With no sense of irony, insight, or humor present, the only thing “Dawn of Justice” accomplishes is redundantly reminding the audience of the fact that power in the wrong hands can hurt people, without ever instilling any sort of faith as to whether or not its leads, whom we are asked to root for, should have that power.
Then it asks us to cheer on these dull and potentially irresponsible leads to fight for an ungrateful and cartoonishly cynical world, one that never seems to actually take lessons to heart, for an unspecified number of future 2 to 2 ½ hour spectacles that may or may not be as lifeless as this loud, obnoxious, nonsensical, sensory endurance test of overly produced footage that technically qualifies to be referred to as a “movie.”
Taken on its own, this film’s ultimate debilitating flaw is that it’s just boring; the Superman character isn’t given enough focus to give off the sense of being a character, Batman is given too much focus while he has far too little to actually do, and every other plot thread is so disconnected by the events occurring within the film’s timeframe that everything just seems to feel like it’s going nowhere, regardless of what redeeming factors they may or may not have.
Watching something with so much money sunken into it go out of its way to not be interesting only to pull out random effects for a climax that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie for 2½ hours is bad enough on its own but the personal statement it seems to want to make against other fantasies of its kind begins to come off as self loathing and for individuals that share a fondness of that genre, such as myself, it feels outright insulting.
Superheroes aren’t about costumes, powers, and beating people up.
They’re about self identity in the face of an organically changing and ever shifting society. They’re about exploring the beauty and the ugliness of the human condition and showing us that no matter what elements of the fantastical are brought to reality as we understand it, at the end of the day, our humanity will prevail no matter what form it may take on, for better or worse. They can uplift, they can empower, they can teach us what we’ve done wrong and point society in the direction that it should be moving in as it grows. However, failing to be any of the above, they can at least entertain.
“Dawn of Justice” is a film that is 2½ hours long, featuring an alien adopted lovingly by parents of a different species, a victimized orphan that uses his money to prevent others from suffering the same loss that he had to endure, a powerful and compassionate woman motivated to action by a desire to do the right thing to protect the innocent, and an evil, destructive, mutated, transdimenional alien zombie.
Yet it fails to inspire, maturely criticize society, be fun in any capacity, and even goes out of its way to punish any remote displays of altruism, labeling optimistic views and desires to act out of kindness as naïveté to be rewarded with pain.
And that is fucking disgraceful.
It’s an insult to a genre that is currently in the midst of a cinematic renaissance, an insult to an audience it expects to lap up its downward disgust of humanity as long as it can be packaged within pretty explosions, and an insult to the very properties it claims to represent by turning their own morals inside out with a Superman that’s arrogant, angry, and constantly brooding, a Wonder Woman that wanders aimlessly with no goals, and a Batman that kills more viciously than the recent iteration of The Punisher.
And all for what? What positives can I really list off in this film’s favor that makes any of this worthwhile?
Ben Affleck and Jeremy Irons are easily the best Batman/Alfred duo cinematically depicted yet, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is so stupendously acted and executed that I’m almost legitimately excited for her upcoming solo film, every once in a while Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor offers an almost haunting look at what the character could have been under passable writing and competent direction, and despite clearly accelerating an assembly that should have been built up to more naturally, the hints at other Justice League members that we do get are fairly cool and bolstered by an ending that plays at notions that are far stronger than what this film deserves.
It’s all true and yet regardless of however those Justice League films play out (most likely poorly at this point given Zack Snyder’s track record), I have no intention or desire to ever sit through this experience again.
“Dawn of Justice” is a bloated, laborious, misguided, overly indulgent, pretentious, hypocritical cinematic abortion that seems to believe that draining the happiness and energy out of the viewers to leave them tired, nauseous, and shaking with headaches constitutes it as a powerful experience.
It’s not and they don’t deserve your money, even if you’re going to see it out of sheer curiosity. Do yourself a favor and go watch “Deadpool” or “Zootopia” a few more times.
Don’t want to leave home? Sign up for Netflix and watch season 2 of “Daredevil” for a hero vs. hero conflict done right.
Any alternative is better than giving this dreck more cash and exposure than it deserves and is already guaranteed by virtue of riding off of the exposure of 3 of America's biggest fictional icons.
3 Kryptonian Fuck You's out of 10
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