Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

With the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it will be surprising if DC Comics did not attempt the same with their great many iconic characters. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is a product of such. 

The movie has been hyped for quite a while and of course stirred up quite a bit of discussion with Ben Affleck cast as the next Batman. Man of Steel was a successful movie despite the mixed review it received from critics. Nonetheless, Henry Cavill’s Superman did bring the Man of Steel back to life. So as the second entry to the DC Universe and the rebooting of another iconic character, how did Batman V Superman stack up?

The end product is a very long movie of 2.5 hours packing in a lot of characters and a lot of storylines. As I weaved myself through this maze of storyline I found myself lost in time and space, and wondering when would this all stop. Yes, it is a pity as the stories can be so rich and powerful, but with everything happening, there seems to be lots of loss of opportunities littering around the place. 

The first issue I had with the movie is the lack of motive for most of the characters. Even when they have motives you couldn’t help but wonder: “Is that it?” In the Marvel Cinematic Universe every character was given sufficient time to develop their character and their role in that world, so when Avengers came along, even when Black Widow first appeared in Iron Man 2, things made sense and puzzles pieced together neatly. However in Batman V Superman, it seems they tried to force marrying the worlds and thus leaving all characters quite hollow in their motives for doing what they wanted to do. I personally felt the whole back story of Batman could be taken out because we had already watched Chris Nolan’s trilogy, we know very well its back story. It is only being played by a different actor that’s all. For Batman / Bruce Wayne, there were jarring questions in his storylines: if he cares so much about people who suffered in the last Superman battle, why wouldn’t he follow up with the guy whom worked for him and Bruce rescued personally? Why would he let that guy go rogue by over-indulging in grand scale of things that had a foundation as thin as a piece of A4 paper? If Batman is so smart, how would he not know this is Lex Luthor’s doing when going through the whole server archive of information? These were just some huge plot holes that screaming to be filled but never filled.

As for Superman, I understand we want to talk about his human side and his care of this world. But his relationship with all those he cared about were just lightly brought up with a few scenes here and there. And honestly, if he is so super how could he not hear the trouble his mother was going through? Shouldn’t he have a specific channel tuned in for his mom? I mean he came just in time to save Lois and let his mother went through that? That is again beyond comprehension. 

As for Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman, how would she not be able to decrypt the server archive if she was supposed to be smart and resourceful? She managed to do stuff under Batman’s nose and went almost unnoticed. Even the whole Lex Luthor thing did not make much sense with the whole father complex and personal over thinking about the world leading him to decide to kill off some superheroes and destroy the world? He might be a lunatic but lunatics still need better motives to do what they are doing.

The issue here is everyone is reacting to things that are trivial to their cause. When there are so little for you to react to and you kept on reacting to them, the characters got driven into hyper-hibernation and became extremely boring. This is a pity because each of the characters had so much potential and if done properly could rival people mounting interests and indulgence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The only saving grace was Lois Lane, the person who figured out the whole plot bit by bit using her journalist instinct. Batman for me in the movie was just an angry piece of junk that annoyed the hell out of me. Seriously why would you want to destroy a character rebuilt by the Chris Nolan trilogy?

That said the film did have great visuals, especially when they re-created the Man of Steel battle scene from the ground perspective, which linked the two worlds neatly together. However, there were situations that CGI or special effects were used for the sake of it and I genuinely did not know why those scenes existed in the movie when they were not even significantly moving the plotlines.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice carried a lot of weight on its shoulder and in this case did weigh it down. I mean the scene when Wonder Woman showed up was great but it was already spoiled by the trailer, so there was nothing left to be excited about. Ben Affleck did a good middle aged Batman but I wished the screenwriters gave him more materials to work on, which applied the same to Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill. For me Batman V Superman is a missed opportunity and I think DC Comics really need to think about this holistically to avoid themselves being dragged into this cinematic mess again, for once their characters were destroyed it will take a long time to rebuild.