Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a poorly constructed pastiche of disparate scripts slapped together with the thinnest of pretense and has more guest stars than an episode of The Simpsons. And it was bad. There, we said it. What at first seemed like an ill-advised expedition into film mistakes that held the distant possibility of an improbable success has revealed itself to be what everyone thought it would end up to be. This film is like your screw-up cousin who decided to go to college and everybody was really hoping he'd pull his shit together after that (commuted) arson charge, but then drops out of college before the end of the first month and is now awaiting trial for an unrelated crime. And for some reason, despite all the "I don't like Ben Affleck" hoo-haa that was the main complaint from fans, the performances are not the issue (aside from Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, which we'll get to in a second). Zack Snyder and the writers seem to have little understanding about the characters, how they would act or how they're interrelated, and the evidence behind this is the God-awful, "throw a few major DC Comics universe events at the page and hope that something sticks" method.
The entire idea behind this film is that Lex Luthor, as a remarkably successful businessman and world power player, decides to destroy Superman because he's an alien who does more harm than good, saving the world from extraterrestrial threats and rescuing those in need. But why does he really want to destroy Superman? Well, he's evil! And he thinks that Superman is a false god or something. And the rest of the world is entirely distrustful of Superman since he killed General Zod in 2013's Man of Steel (which was an egregious storytelling decision). World leaders don't trust Supes, since he acts without government consent. Fine, we get that. But with his murder of General Zod, we lose the connection to what makes that character tick, especially since Batman v Superman is borrowing somewhat from Waid and Ross' Kingdom Come (a graphic novel, for those of you interested) for the plot that essentially goes something like, "Why does the world need a Superman since it's so bloodthirsty, and Superman won't kill to prevent a potential loss of life?" And still, the motivation for Luthor is remarkably tenuous, which is a big deal, considering it's the whole reason for the story.
Eisenberg plays Luthor as an unhinged but brilliant antagonist with little long-term calculation and almost no foreseeable benefit to his character. Basically, he's just trying to kill a hero because he's there. Oh, but there's a mild allusion to what we can only foresee as Darkseid (or maybe the Monitor from Crisis on Infinite Earths—doubtful), Ruler of Apokalypse, and that Luthor is somehow Renfeld to Darkseid's Dracula. He's like a rich Joker. This isn't at all Lex Luthor, who should be more like a DC Moriarty, a behind-the-scenes manipulator, instead of an erratic supervillain who has no relatable core or scrutable method.
Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill turn in average performances as Batman and Superman, respectively. But we're unable to connect with them at all. We had Man of Steel to connect with Supes, but nothing to reconnect with Batman, and aside from a lame Batmobile chase interdicted by the spit-curled savior, there's not much in the way of a relationship between the two of them, not counting Clark Kent's "Hey, what about this Batman story?" lameness. It's been said before, and we'll say it again: A fight between characters only matters as much as the relationship between them. And when it does happen, there's no payoff when they finally meet and exchange lackluster unpleasantries. When the beatings begin between them, there's a character design and strategy that's reminiscent of Frank Miller's graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.
Wonder Woman makes a limited appearance, but it seems more like a tacked-on character addition that you would hardly miss if she weren’t included. And that’s a shame. Her character seemed to be added because producers felt like it would be appropriate to have a female hero, considering public outcry, but no time is spent developing her character, who she is, or why we should care. And that’s a huge error. It almost felt like we were being told by the filmmakers, “See, here’s some female superheroes! Our films have diversity.” It seemed like focus group pandering rather than a storytelling decision. We’ve been beaten about the head and shoulders with the two leads’ origins and so forth, but Wonder Woman hasn’t had any screen time outside of cartoons and a TV show back in the '70s. The audience hasn’t been introduced at all. So, from a filmmaking perspective, her appearance during the Doomsday climax battle at the end seemed almost like deus ex machina. Where we come from, that could be called a cinema sin.
And while we're on the subject of Doomsday—why? It makes almost no sense to include the being that so famously "killed" Superman back in 1992 (and a collected edition graphic novel, FYI) into this film at all. Let's recap as Luthor: There's a godlike being I want to kill, and since the human I duped into fighting him failed to kill him, I'll create another godlike being to kill that guy, because that'll solve my problem of godlike beings in the world. And dear God, it took the better part of two and a half hours to get to this point.
The pacing is an absolute mess. How many times do we need to see Batman seethe or Superman lose heart? We lost count. It seemed like forever before we even got to see Batman in a fight, and when it did happen, the shots were either too close to be worth viewing, or too far away and slow to look believable.
Hans Zimmer wrote the soundtrack, but outside of the slow piano of Superman's theme, it gets lost in the explosions. Again, that's such a shame, since the man is a giant in the field of film scores, and I would love to attach some tunes to our protagonists, but there it is.
Overall, this movie is a bunch of missed opportunities wrapped in desperation, driven by a studio that by all indications has no idea what it's doing with these franchises in the context of motion pictures. It's evident that they wanted to catch Marvel and begin to have a competitive chance at deposing them from their superhero-movie throne. That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. You see, they forgot to add the elements that made the Marvel movies so successful: heart and story.
