Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

It’s generally a bad, bad sign when a screening is prefaced by a video of the director pleading with critics to not spoil any key detail of the film.  As Roger Ebert famously wrote, “What makes a movie great is not what it is about, but how it is about it.”  It’s a given that critics understand the unwritten rule of not spoiling the plot, and no studio executive or director needs to educate us on the basics of critical analysis.  That is, a good critic doesn’t beat you in the head with paragraph after paragraph of expository synopsis.  That’s Zack Snyder’s job.

DC and Warner Bros. have put their hat in the superhero ring with this tepid follow up to MAN OF STEEL (2006), again penned by David Goyer who seems to hate moviegoers more than he hates critics.  In schizophrenic fashion, Goyer’s crammed three movies into one with his signature incompetence—exposition, redundant flashbacks (who doesn’t know that Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered?), recycled platitudes (“People are afraid of what they don’t understand.”), and a franchise-reinforced false sense of security coupled with a complete departure from character (Kent’s as dour as Supes, and selfish to boot?).

Without tempting fate and angry phone calls from a desperately insecure director, the central plot of BATMAN V SUPERMAN introduces us to Jesse Eisenberg’s version of Mark Zuckerberg’s version of Lex Luthor.  Instead of a hackneyed plot to corner the real estate market, Luthor masterminds a criminal plot to pit crimefighters against one another with a series of easily disproven falsehoods.  What could possibly go wrong?  I’m not saying Lex is terrible at covering his tracks but he’d have been better off ordering those armor piercing rounds through the Adam & Eve Catalog.  But then the story would be missing a paper trail for Lois Lane (Amy Adams) to follow.  “Gumshoe” comes from Latin, meaning, “Plot convenience.”

Peculiar even still that Henry Cavill’s Superman, Ben Affleck’s Batman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman never crossed paths without Luthor’s machinations.  From Metropolis, Superman can hear a girl trapped in a burning building somewhere in Mexico—correction, in the Snyderverse, Supes gets his crime alerts from network news!—yet never does he sense that these and other “metahumans” could use some help fighting injustice now and then?  To be fair, Luthor put so much effort into creating custom electronic dossiers with neat little logos, practically naming the future Justice League.  He stores them in a secured filesystem that nobody knows exists.  As with all Hollywood hackers, all it takes is a hunch about a codename the meaning of which you haven’t the slightest clue and you’ll magically stumble upon the precise, completely unrelated, information the villain needs you to find to cartwheel into the third act.

Fans of the Superman comics already know how this film will end.  The answer is right in the theatrical trailer.  Perhaps DC and Snyder felt rushed to cram four character introductions into one story to catch up with Marvel’s Avengers franchise—nearing its plateau with CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, the lead-in to Phase Three and the climactic Infinity Wars.

After MAN OF STEEL spent the entire third act disintegrating into a blurry, CG mess of incomprehensible action, you’d think Snyder would resist the temptation.  Yet here he plunges even further into the abyss with violence escalating beyond all comprehension.  Yes, we get that they’re practically gods (Wonder Woman actually is one, which begs the question: Why armor?), but Snyder creates a series of bigger explosions and greater “inescapable” scenarios which works itself to absurdity until the audience, not the villain, is beaten into submission.  What about their ability to relate to one another’s unique search for identity and purpose?  Wouldn’t that make for an interesting genesis?

Adding insult to injury, the first two acts snowballing into this clusterfuck are dedicated to doubling-down on Snyder’s misinterpretation of Superman in the previous installment: Having just killed Zod, one of his only remaining Kryptonian cousins in MAN OF STEEL, Superman doesn’t vow to be a pacifist—the Superman we know, love, and admire.  Snyder desecrates everything that made Superman the exception among even superheroes: This Superman will be a petty, sneering, vengeful Superman with greater disregard for human life than ever before.  How crass does a director have to be?  Now he’s following in Bob Orci’s, Damon Lindelof’s and J.J. Abrams’ footsteps trying to rationalize missteps to the media.  He compares the toxically-mascuine violence of BvS with the planet-annihilating First Order of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.  Never mind that the destruction in the latter is committed entirely by the villains.

But at least Bruce Wayne gets a ridiculous Rocky-esque training montage (sans John Cafferty motivational music) while almost every single woman in the film is either abducted or murdered.  I can’t wait to see what kind of positive feminist message awaits us in the upcoming Wonder Woman film…