Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is the epitome of everything that could go wrong with a big budget superhero flick. The two words that first come to mind when thinking about the film are "bloated" and "incoherent."

Despite this movie being trashed in nearly every review -- including this one -- there are actually a lot of good ideas here, and also a lot of scenes that, on their own, could be considered quite well-done. I mean on every level -- direction, cinematography, acting, writing, casting. But strung together, they don't make much of a coherent narrative. A lot of these scenes could be shuffled around almost randomly with little effect on how the story is proceeding.

The story: The last Superman film, The Man of Steel, ended with a climactic battle between Superman (Henry Cavill) and an invading Kryptonian army led by the villainous General Zod. That battle laid waste to much of Metropolis, and while the line between which of the combatants were good guys and which were bad guys was very clear to viewers of the film, Batman v. Superman reveals that the distinction was much more difficult to make from the perspective of the innocent people on the ground. Now, as the story goes, Superman is a controversial figure in both politics and the general public: many see him as a savior, many others see him as a threat no better than Zod. Batman v. Superman is primarily about three particular people who see Supes as a threat:

First, there's multi-millionaire Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who happened to be visiting the Metropolis branch of his corporation, and personally witnessed his building getting destroyed by the Kryptonians. Now he's suffering from obvious survivor's guilt over the many people who were killed or crippled in the building's collapse, and he transforms that guilt into a vengeful fury directed toward Superman. In a conversation with his butler and only friend, Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons), Mr. Wayne tries to justify his thirst for revenge by pointing out that Superman has the capability of wiping out humanity, and the morally questionable conclusion that "if there's an even one percent chance that we think that's a possibility, then we have to treat it like an absolute certainty," and kill Superman before he gets a chance to kill us. More on that later . . . 

Second, there's Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), also a multi-millionaire, albeit a mentally unstable one. Unlike Mr. Wayne, who has mostly inherited his fortune, Mr. Luthor has taken his father's successful but relatively small business and turned it into an empire, largely resting on Lex's own scientific innovations. Lex justifies his fear and hatred of Superman with the old "power corrupts" argument, although it gradually becomes clear that his biggest concern is that Lex is used to being the most powerful person around (through his wealth) and that power has now been eclipsed by that of Superman (through Superman's physical capabilities). Eisenberg provides a love-it-or-hate-it, over-the-top performance as the brilliant but paranoid and scatter-brained Lex Luthor. I personally thought Eisenberg was the best thing about this movie, but I'm sure many viewers will just find him annoying.

Thirdly, there's Senator June Finch (Holly Hunter) who is unremarkable as an individual character, but whose function in the narrative serves as an effective representation of how the political world might react to both the events of Man of Steel and the existence of an all-powerful Superman who has the potential to be untouchable by the law.

Now. This all actually combines to form a great blueprint for a story, one that could very well examine the fantastic concept of Superman from a creative, intelligent, even thought-provoking angle. And there are many scenes in the film that do indeed attempt to pursue that agenda, and succeed to varying degrees. But . . . .

The movie's biggest narrative problem is its treatment of Batman/ Bruce Wayne. Traditionally, Batman is, of course, a hero, and the writers did provide Wayne with that back story to explain why he holds a grudge against Superman. But Batman is an iconic character, whose lore and personality are both thoroughly familiar to anyone who might watch this movie. And viewers would be both correct and sure to point out the many ways this movie gets the Batman character very, very wrong. The three most striking are:

Since when does Batman allow himself to be motivated by pure vengeance?

Since when does Batman kill?

Since when does Batman use guns?

I want to be clear that this is not nit-picking. Batman's no-gun, no-kill policies are such defining aspects of his character that they've even been parodied by the CollegeHumor YouTube channel. But here, the entire plot hinges on Batman's plans to kill Superman, plans based entirely on conclusions reached by very questionable logic and equally questionable moral justification.

And does Batman use guns in this movie? Heck yeah. The first major instance is a dream sequence, which made me feel uncomfortable ("hey, he shouldn't be using guns!") but was forgivable, because it was, after all, a dream sequence. But then Bats decides to steal some kryptonite from LexCorp, and Batman's apparent strategy is to shoot up the place. What?!? Later, through contrived circumstances, Batman has to rescue Martha Kent (Diane Lane) from a bunch of bad guys, and even though Bats doesn't bring firearms to the rescue, the movie makes it clear that he's got no problem with picking up guns dropped by the baddies and shooting the place up all over again, killing people left and right. From the perspective of anyone familiar with the Batman character -- and again, that would be nearly the entire target audience -- that's just an insane writing decision. If your entire movie is based on a character who is extremely familiar to the target audience, the writers should at least familiarize themselves with the character's basic personality.

And that leads back to the writing. It's a mess, all over the place. The Batman/ Superman showdown idea, and the idea of political and "real life" consequences to having a Superman in the world, both of these are enough for a full length feature. But the writers try to throw in everything but the kitchen sink here. There's Batman's superhero origins, and Clark's romantic life, and Clark's career at the Daily Planet, and Doomsday, and Wonder Woman, and a cameo by some random, unknown superbeing whose identity is never explained, and obvious set-ups for sequels involving other superheroes, and so on, and so on. The writers focus so much attention on trying to juggle all of this that they forget to really explain how Lex managed to figure out Batman and Superman's secret identities, a not-so-small plot point.

Oh yeah, and I take it back when I said "everything but the kitchen sink." There actually is a kitchen sink, now that I think about it. There's a scene where Batman tries to use the sink to crush Superman's skull in.

That sentence actually sums up a lot of what's wrong with this movie.