Review by Shikhar Verma
The biggest gladiator match in the history of comic-book films feels like a stinking turd that jumps from one scene to another without even transitioning properly. At the end of the day, when you look at the film, it frustrates you and makes you angry. It just feels like that random drunk guy who doesn’t know where he is coming from and where he needs to move next. And finally, when he gets his senses he keeps throwing up on his way home.
I have no issues with Zack Snyder. I was not pissed like the rest of the world when Man of Steel came out. In spite of the overblown, good-for-nothing showdown at the end, the film made sense to an extent. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, however, is a product of grand scale, atrociously placed randomness. There are more instances in the film that bring out unintentional laughs than one.
While you sit in your seats trying to look for moments that will make you go ‘awe’, they never happen. Moreover, there are times in the film when you feel that no effort has been put behind it. The editing is messed up, the narrative is all over the place, and the dream sequences don’t help either. Much like its two main characters, the film is at war with itself. It aims at doing far too much and ends up doing nothing at all.
Coming to the story, the film takes you back to Man of Steel and the humongous destruction we just talked about above. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is not pleased with what Superman (Henry Cavill) has done to his city, and the angst is quite evident and called for. The first half of the film works as a political thriller that brings out Superman up front.
Is he a hero? Does he have a place on earth? All the way taking us into the life of Bruce Wayne / Batman and his own agenda with the world and Superman. But then, out of nowhere, the Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Superman subplot in the desert comes up, making a linear and completely bonkers thread between Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and the two main protagonists. You are hit on the head by more than a dozen references to the desert brawl, and then things start falling apart.
The film is so lazy in presenting things that you just feel bad for whoever was involved with this atrocity. Take a certain action scene, for instance: Where Batman shoots a tracker onto a truck that’s carrying the leftover part of Kryptonite. What follows is a completely senseless fight where everything, including much of the truck, is blasted into bits. But wait, the part where Batman had shot the tracker is still intact. And to top it all, there’s a lame excuse for a showdown when Batman takes a right turn on his Batmobile, only to find Superman waiting for him in the middle of the road. Was he drunk? Or did Batman send him a signal, too, like Lois Lane does?
To top this off, there’s an even lamer, shoe-horned cameo where Wonder Woman receives mail from Batman presenting the various meta-humans in the universe. To save some time, and trust me, time is the most essential thing here, Synder could have had Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) click on any one of the icons. But no, she clicks on all the Justice League character arcs just to showcase that even a dumber and bigger film awaits you.
The saddest thing is that people complain that the critics hate the film for its dark tone. What dark tone? The film doesn’t have a single coherent tone to begin with. The script seems to be saying one thing, the director wishes to do a second thing and the overly loud Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL score wishes to do a third thing. To top that off, the action is bland and completely joyless. Half of the time, you see shadows of people fighting. The screen goes black, and the absence of shaky-camera just ensures that the action is camouflaged under a redundant CGI-fest.
I wish I had good things to say about the film, but there aren’t any. Yes, Ben Affleck is pretty good, and everyone else doesn’t hurt you either. But they are jarred in by a series of self-muddled, incoherent, cringeworthy, and laughable plot points and characterizations. The character motivations are absent, and half of the time, the real reason for the World’s Finest to stand against each other feels completely out of context. I remember a character saying that “The World doesn’t make sense until you force it to.” I wanted to say the same about the film, but I don’t think the forced elements in the film provide any sense to this film either.
Review by Rohitavra Majumdar
Okay, let’s talk about the good things first. Ben Affleck, both as Batman and Bruce Wayne is really great. The most talked about fight scene between Batman and Superman is pretty cool and well shot. Gal Gadot’s entry as Wonder Woman is fantastic. Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL’s background score is excellent, although sometimes a bit loud. And that is about it. Everything apart from these few things does not work for the movie.
Let me say this straight away, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is an extremely bad movie. In fact, calling it just bad would be an understatement. Rather; pathetic, terrible are the words which should be used to describe it. Snyder’s directional approach, as much as it takes inspiration from the brilliant graphic novel “The Dark Knight Returns”, does not work at all cinematically. David S. Goyer and Chris Terrio’s screenplay is horrible. I am not sure if this was a fruit of lazy clueless writing or an attempt of trying too much altogether going horribly wrong. For most of the first half, the scenes seem disjointed, unnecessary and confusing. During that phase, the film tries too hard to be some kind of intelligent, political drama/thriller and fails miserably. It breaks into the mould of a full blown Superhero movie in the second half, which is slightly better than the first, and certainly not enough to save the movie from being a disaster.
And the problem does not really lie in the studio’s intention of keeping this cinematic universe dark, gritty and grounded, unlike their most obvious rival movie universe. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, although not exactly faithful to the source comic material, was similar in tone with Snyder’s Man of Steel and BvS, but those were actually great, entertaining films (baring The Dark Knight Rises maybe, but still). And while Man of Steel was still decent (with Nolan being a contributor), BvS went south.
Now, I do not hate Zack Snyder. Even though I made a post on facebook which goes like “Fuck you, Zack Snyder, Fuck you…” right after watching the movie, I do not have anything against him. I really liked his “Dawn of the Dead” and “300”, especially the later for its hyper-stylized action, dipped in uber-cool sepia tone.
And although “Watchmen” was not half good as the graphic novel, I thought it was a pretty decent movie. I also defended “Man of Steel”, although the final fight between Kal-EL and General Zod bored the hell out of me. I have always seen Snyder as a visionary. But BvS has made me realize that Snyder is simply not a good director. He is a visionary and a comic book fan alright, but not a great filmmaker. And Warner Brothers shouldn’t have given him the responsibility of a live-action movie that features Batman and Superman as its two central characters. Unfortunately though, Snyder is helming the Justice League movies for this cinematic universe which really does not seem to be the ideal piece of news at this moment.
Coming back to BvS, as I have already mentioned before, Ben Affleck did a real good job as Batman. Even in this disastrously scripted movie, he did shine a lot. This is a glimmer of hope for future solo Batman movies if that really happens. Gal Gadot, although had a real small part to play, was simply the best thing about the movie. Amy Adams, being the great actress she is, was earnest. And Jeremy Irons’s Alfred was nice. Henry Cavil was never a great actor, and with a script like this, he couldn’t do anything good here.
But the biggest disappointment would be Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, which was most definitely the worst thing about the whole movie. A fine actor otherwise, Eisenberg’s was cringe-worthy, while delivering the worst performance of his life. People around me in the theater were actually comparing him with the overly melodramatic, hammy Shah Rukh Khan at the early days of his career, that bad it was.
In the end, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice stands as a gigantic monstrous mess. And for a fan of Superhero movies like me, it is a very painful, frustrated experience; for which Snyder and his writers should be held accountable.
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