(Spoilers ahead)
Dawn of Justice might not be the absolute worst comic book movie I’ve ever seen, but given the level of anticipation and hopes for the sequel to 2013’s Superman epic Man of Steel, it’s unfortunately one of the more disappointing ones for me in recent memory.
300 and Watchmen director Zack Snyder returns to the main chair with another screenplay from David Goyer, and sadly it more than doubles down on the excessive self-seriousness that prevented MoS from being a great Kal-El adventure as opposed to a decent one. Except this time the Last Son of Krypton gets to share co-billing with Batman, so understandably at least half of the story is told through Bruce Wayne’s perspective.
Making matters worse, BvS’s plot feels oddly disjointed and poorly structured. It’s an even bigger shame because Snyder admittedly is a very visually striking director, and many of the film’s major scenes, if overblown, are impressive enough that one could imagine them as part of a superior movie. One notable scene features Superman randomly saving innocents from disaster and doing other assorted good deeds, while talking heads such as Nancy Grace and Neil DeGrasse Tyson debate Supes’s intents and impact on the world as he acts outside of government jurisdiction. That in and of itself isn’t a bad idea for DC to explore on the big screen, and in a better constructed, more thoughtful film it could result in a captivating story.
It proves not to mean much, as a potentially powerful scene where he goes to the US Capital to deliver a formal statement to a concerned senator (a solid Holly Hunter) is just a setup for a plot twist that’s not only laughably grimdark, but also does little to make Superman’s character any more heroic or sympathetic. Indeed, during the incident Henry Cavill- who does the best he can with poor material- has the expression of a beaten man, rather than a Superman who truly wants to get to the bottom of the situation.
Ben Affleck has a strong presence both as playboy Bruce and the Caped Crusader, but he’s also hampered by the silliness of the plot and his motivations don’t feel very consistent from scene to scene. Having witnessed the destruction Superman and Zod caused in their apocalyptic Metropolis battle (in an unsettling opening scene that blatantly calls on 9/11 imagery), Bats does have some reason to be skeptical of Superman as he doesn’t really know the guy very well. And yet the film’s narrative can’t decide on exactly how controversial a figure Superman actually is, so it unfortunately results in the normally very analytical Batman looking unusually trigger happy and judgemental when he tries to get his hands on Lex Luthor’s Kryptonite rock to hopefully keep a potential Superman threat at bay.
Another casualty of BvS’s choppy storytelling is Luthor’s motivation. Played by Jesse Eisenberg as an eccentric and hammy young CEO of Lexcorp, he sets in place a scheme to eliminate the two iconic heroes by manipulating and pitting them against each other, as he monitors the activities of other DC heroes like Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, doing no harm in the iconic character’s debut) Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman (collectively referred to as “the metahumans”) and experiments on the corpse of General Zod as a hopeful ace in the whole. It’s never made explicitly clear what Luthor wants to accomplish in the end, and the film reiterates that’ll be addressed in the Justice League films over the next couple of years.
In the meantime, Eisenberg chews up the scenery with analogies of Superman being a god and “demons falling from the sky”, which doesn’t make for a satisfying answer, nor does it make the story any more profound. One of BvS’s biggest issues is how obsessed it is with its own grandoiseness and scale, and any sense of making these iconic characters relatable is pushed by the wayside. While they’re not perfect films, one of the strongest aspects of Marvel’s approach to their cinematic universe is how much emphasis it puts on adding humor and a sense of humility to its protagonists, even as their stories become more serious. It’s a happy medium that Dawn of Justice can’t capture, as it’s more concerned with making the cast look like untouchable gods of war and destruction than getting to know them as actual people. Except when they take time out to brood about how hard and futile being a superhero is.
The failures of this movie lie more in its missed opportunities as opposed to its creative choices, some of which truly could work as good standalone comic films if given some decent writing. But by cramming together an aggro conflict between its two heroes that’s hard to buy into with a Justice League introduction and leftovers from other arcs, the result is a messy and atmospherically bleak affair I don’t think serves these normally uplifting characters very well.
I can’t help but think about how much better the DC Animated Universe handled the Superman and Batman dynamic. As opposed to the chronically depressed lump he is in BvS, Tim Daly’s Superman was a proud boy scout but still a quick thinker, while Kevin Conroy’s Batman was stern and serious but still had a sense of compassion and altruism. Check that out instead, but Dawn of Justice for me gets a big thumbs down.