It’s not long into the first post-credits scene of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that you realize you’re actually reliving the climactic events of director Zack Snyder’s previous filmic foray into the world of DC Comics, Man of Steel. This time around we’re not seeing things from the perspective of the heroic Superman (Henry Cavill) and the villainous General Zod—who are busy pounding on each other while the city of Metropolis gets destroyed around them—though, we’re seeing things from the perspective of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who has choppered himself into the city and is running around trying to help people on the ground. Immediately the scenario provides you with the sort of grounded drama and human stakes that it was criticized for lacking in Man of Steel, and it feels like Dawn of Justice might be a big time improvement over its predecessor.
Then you realize it makes no sense that Bruce Wayne would chopper himself into a city under attack by aliens as a civilian instead of flying there as Batman in his bat-shaped fighter jet that’s equipped with all manner of missiles and chain guns, and the wind pretty instantly goes out of the movie’s sails. The moment doesn’t make any sense from the standpoint of character motivation, or even from the standpoint of basic logic, and neither do any of the many moments that follow in this long, confusing slog of a film. Dawn of Justice isn’t the sort of movie that doesn’t make any sense if you stop to think about it, it’s the sort of movie that constantly rubs your nose in the stink of what little sense it makes, to the point where you’re more confused about what you did to deserve such treatment than you are mad about it.
There’s so much going on in this movie that coming up with a concise plot synopsis is a challenge, but in broad strokes you can say that a chunk of Kryptonite has been found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and because of what a powerful threat to humanity Superman proved to be during his battle with Zod, billionaires Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and Bruce Wayne both want to get their hands on it so they can make Kryptonite weapons and kill him. A big chunk of the film is scenes of mercenaries hired by Luthor smuggling the rock around the world while Batman battles them with machine guns. While all this is happening, Superman kind of just stands around sulking, silently letting things happen to him. Really, this doesn’t feel like a Batman movie or a Superman movie so much as it feels like a bad Jack Ryan movie or something. Also, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) appears a few times, though we never really know how or why, brief glimpses are given of three other DC heroes, a Doomsday creature is created by someone who previously wanted to rid the world of super-powered beings, and at one point Ma Kent gets tied to a chair and tortured by terrorists. Yeah, this movie doesn’t mess around when it comes to cramming itself full of things that nobody asked for.
There are a ton of reasons why Dawn of Justice doesn’t work, but the most glaring is that the people who made it seem to have zero affection for or understanding of its characters. Superman, the protector of the world and the moral compass of humanity, is painfully without agency here and frustratingly naval-gazing in his concerns. The guy does almost nothing. And if the big controversy of Snyder’s first Superman film was that the hero didn’t save any civilians in it (which is the essence of his particular heroism), the big controversy in this one is likely going to be that Batman doesn’t spare the lives of criminals (which is the essence of his particular brand of heroism).
It’s worse than it sounds though. Not only does Batman mow down countless henchmen with machine guns in this movie, he spends the second half of it trying to kill Superman, just in case he ever decides to turn evil. Does it make sense that Batman would want to get his hands on some Kryptonite in order to stop the alien in case he should ever go rogue? Of course it does, that’s what makes him Batman. But his intentions to get the Kryptonite and then immediately use it to murder, preventively, is just insane (though not as insane, corny, and completely embarrassing as the laughable moment where he finally decides to team up with his target instead), and it means that one of the most beloved heroes in the history of fiction, Batman, has essentially the same agenda in this film as its villain. A villain, by the way, who resembles the Joker in characterization here far more than he resembles any version of Lex Luthor that fans have previously embraced. Why? All of Lex’s egoism has been traded for generic insanity, and in a year where they could have used his character to satirize current media darling and Lex look-alike Donald Trump, which might have lent the film some kind of relevance or meaning. A waste. Dawn of Justice even goes to the trouble of arbitrarily changing Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) from a hard-nosed newspaper editor into a penny-pinching suit who orders his reporters to go for easy stories instead of doing real reporting, and for what reason? Why does this movie hate its own characters so much?
Snyder apparently has so little interest in making a movie about Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman that he can’t even be bothered to make them look cool. They’re three of the most iconic figures of the last 100 years of visual storytelling, and the first movie they appear together in looks bland. No thought seems to have been given to how things could have been framed here to create memorable images. No thought seems to have gone into creating specific beats in the action scenarios where the individual characters could have some kind of hero moment where the audience would get a chance to marvel and cheer at the fact that the heroes they’ve been reading on the page for so many years are being brought to life right before their very eyes. It’s all just quick-cut, slam-bang chaos. I haven’t read comic books in quite a few years, but even I kept picking out moments that echoed famous moments from print stories, moments tied to famous comic frames that could have been echoed here to create some kind of memorable imagery, but aside from a brief shot that mirrored the cover to Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ there was none of that. Dawn of Justice’s photography is utilitarian at best, mundane at worst, and previously Snyder was known by even his detractors as someone who brought a good amount of visual flair to his projects. What went wrong?
The one thing that keeps Dawn of Justice from being a complete disaster is that it’s well-cast and none of its actors phone things in. There are hints here that Cavill could star in a great Superman movie, if he just had better material to work with, that Affleck could star in a great Batman movie, if he just had better material to work with (he probably gives the best performance, which is worth noting, seeing as his casting was so controversial), that Gadot could star in a great Wonder Woman movie, if, well… you get the point.
Unfortunately, nothing we’ve seen from Warner Bros. so far and nothing we’ve heard about their plans going forward points to the possibility that any of these performers are likely going to get to work with anyone who has the slightest bit of understanding of or affection for these characters—or even the slightest understanding of what makes superhero stories resonate—any time soon. The time to dump the people stewarding this DC live action initiative and bring in some of the minds that made Warners’ universally loved DC animated division such a success is long overdue. If these characters don’t start getting handled by creators who know and love them within the next DC release or two, then the thrill of seeing them brought to life on the big screen is going to wear off for even the most hardcore fans, real quick. When it comes to longterm success in the superhero genre, character and story has always mattered much more than how much money gets thrown into special effects.
