Okay readers, so this one I am rushing to get to your attention because “Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice” opened only a few days ago and its being met with a whole lot of negativity if you can believe that. Since we love these super-hero films here at the PiercingMetal Command HQ, I wanted to give you the low down and would be checking this one out at the Regal Cinema in Union Square. This is the same place that Skeleton Pete and I caught “Deadpool” a few weeks ago and he’d be joining me for this one as well. Here we go.
“Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice” continues the building of what is now being called the DC Extended Universe. If that confuses you just remember what Marvel is doing with all of their films and how they are connecting and building a cohesive universe for the sake of better story-telling. We’ve had Batman and Superman films up the wazoo for many years but now this is all going in a single direction. Here is the plot of the feature in the event you were not up on it 100%.
Following the events after Man of Steel, Gotham City-based vigilante Batman travels to Metropolis to preemptively combat Superman, fearing what would happen if the latter is kept unchecked. Meanwhile, another threat in the form of the powerful destructive monster “Doomsday”, created from General Zod’s corpse by the young manipulative LexCorp CEO, Lex Luthor, quickly endangers humankind even more than before. In order to stop Luthor and his creation from destroying everything, Batman and Superman must put their differences and their showdown aside, and join forces with other beings like Wonder Woman to fight their real enemies.
As the film began I wondered just how much the trailers managed to ruin since there were quite a few of them and each got longer and seemed to show more and more of what I view as “the cool parts”. For instance, the long Batman scene where he is fighting a cadre of hoodlums. Clearly this is central to the overall plot so I was surprised to see it in full well before sitting here in the theater munching on some over-priced popcorn. Since I think every comics fan knows how Batman began and his endless quest after the murder of his parents in a dark alley one foreboding night I don’t think I am spoiling anything by saying that we get a short glimpse of that. Our Batman in the film is played by Ben Affleck who a lot of my friends were really reticent about but I wanted to give him a chance even if he did prevent a second “Daredevil” film from being made some years ago. We shift over to a long desert scene and some antics of Lois Lane (Amy Adams) who needs to be rescued by Superman as usual. The actions of the big boy scout are put under scrutiny and this gives us a morose and rather brooding unconfident Supes. That made no sense to me. Our Batman in the film is older and more seasoned and hence also a lot less trusting and more cynical.
Eventually they meet out of costume which you also saw in a trailer and we meet Luthor who in my honest opinion was more like The Joker based on his actions and attitude. This is not the Luthor I grew up reading about in the comics. The meeting event also gives us a first glimpse at Diana (played by Gal Gadot). It’s here that we get more and more and more backstory before any additional action takes place. There is a great chase scene with Batman and we saw part of that in the trailers where he is threatened by Superman. The bottom line is that Batman thinks that Superman is not too good for mankind and he wants to stop him. Eventually the heroes fight based on a misunderstanding and the machinations of Lex Luthor who has gained access to the Kryptonian stuff from the previous “Man Of Steel” film and believe it or not there were even glimpses of these scenes in the trailers so I don’t feel as though I am spoiling anything yet.
This battle brings us to the even bigger battle with a creature that proves to be Doomsday but he is not exactly the Doomsday we knew from the comics series and he is great at causing a ruckus and putting all of our heroes to the test. Do they beat him? Well, this is where I would risk spoiling the plot and outcome but I will say that I was not expecting the direction that they would take this film when it all came down to it. They are leading us to a big screen presentation of “The Justice League” and of course a solo “Wonder Woman” film and while this slam bang ending was all over I was shaking my head a little bit. The action was fast paced and furious and loaded with explosions (but you saw that in commercials) but when it came down to it a lot of this felt like I was watching a video game play out. There didn’t feel to be a natural flow in anything. I like Cavill as Superman but I didn’t like Superman much in this film. I loved Batman and didn’t think I was going to and Wonder Woman did some ass-kicking but there is so much more to her that I felt audiences were cheated out of. Standout performance by Laurence Fishburne as Perry White and while Jesse Eisenberg excelled in the performance he was doing, I absolutely hated without a second of hesitation the Luthor that he was. Perhaps director Zak Snyder needs to read a few more of the classic tales before he leaves people upset about the Justice League film.
When I spoke to friends later about the film and they asked what I thought I simply replied how I would see “Deadpool” again and that confused them a little. If you are only planning on seeing this for the sake of continuity then I say okay but I think it will still leave you a little empty and very, very tired. This film is almost three hours long and it could have been shaved by about 45 minutes. Doing so would have eliminated a few unnecessary side plot points and brought us to the action faster. Action is what people want to see in a film called “Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice” after all. I’m rating this a 3/5 to be nice but it’s closer to a 2.5 since the bad or boring points outweighed the positives for sure.
Official Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_v_Superman%3A_Dawn_of_Justice
