10 Years Later, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" Still Polarizes

Note: This review was originally published 10 years ago. It remains untouched and unchanged. My more recent thoughts follow after it.

I'm sort of at a loss for words as I sit down to write my review for “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Batman is one of my all-time favorite characters. I consider “The Dark Knight” to be the best movie the superhero genre has to offer, and it is still the golden standard for which other movies in the genre are measured. Likewise, Superman has always been a personal hero growing up, because I can relate to the whole outcast trying to do good to others mentality. All of these facts are true, but what is also true is that “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is one of the worst pieces of garbage to hit the cinemas. Less fun than “Fantastic Four” (2014 version of course), more pointless than “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1,” movie goers who want to have a good time will be better off seeing “Zootopia” for a third time.

The fact that this is a relentlessly dark and violent movie is not the issue as far as I see it. The problem isn't that the storyline is so preposterous it crumbles under itself (it's really not THAT bad). It's not even Ben Affleck as Batman, whose casting irked the internet so much about news of his casting that fans signed a Change.org petition and sent it to President Obama to get him to personally fire the man. No, the issue at hand is that director Zach Snyder had a perfect film – one that was potentially better than “The Dark Knight” – right in his hands, and he dropped the ball when it mattered the most. The story goes that Superman (Henry Cavill) has sort of become a bit of a polarizing figure in the world. Some people think he's a savior of humanity, while others believe he is a false God.

Congress wants to take him to task for the damage he inflicts on the cities when he saves people. We even see the end of “Man of Steel” from another point of view, where Superman fighting Zod is not him saving humanity, but rather killing many innocent people during a prolonged fist fight (I had my own concerns about this very thing during that movie). One of these observers is Bruce Wayne (Affleck), who has friends who die during this fight. Bruce is on the side of the fence that Superman is too powerful to let live, as this is a man who could easily wipe out the face of the Earth (as he almost did to this city), and no one would be able to stop him. Now, I want to pause here and have everyone look at this story description. I want to point out that this is actually about something.

There is a genuine conflict to be addressed here. Superman may be a good guy, but there is some concern that in his quest to save lives, he may inadvertently be killing more innocent people in the process than he is saving. For that matter, as reporter Clark Kent, Superman is obsessed with the vigilantism of Batman, as he fears that this man operating outside the law is dangerous and puts too many people at risk. It's sort of interesting that he sees the situation this way when he can't see that same thing in his own life. What we ultimately have is a movie about two men with goals of doing as much good in the world as they can, but ultimately disagreeing with each other's methods about how to achieve these goals. This is the sort of storyline real movies are made from, not mindless entertainment. It's a great setup, and the execution for the first hour or so is about as perfect as it can be.

The film drops the ball in a very serious way, halfway through, though. Because we live in a world where movies have to be extensions to expanded universes that include multiple films, we can't have standalone movies anymore. Now our movies need to include dream sequences that won't make much sense until future movies are released. Now they must have cameos from characters who will have their own films at one point (hopefully), but have no reason to be in the movie you're currently watching. And, of course, there must be the inevitable cliffhanger ending that bullies you into buying a ticket for the following film you may not even have been interested in seeing (but if you want to find out what happens next…).

Finally, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” becomes unbearable to watch when it's time for the two characters to face off in their much-publicized duel. The setup for the match is not the result of differing ideologies or a situation that went so wrong someone decided to bring the other person to task for it, but rather it is set up by evil Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). Why does Luthor set up the fight? Because he wants Superman dead. He's one of the people who sees him as a false God, but unlike other people, he has the wits and resources to potentially take him down. Eisenberg's performance as Luthor is actually one of the standout things in this movie, as he plays him with a sense of humor and energy that is ultimately just a mask for how unstable the man really is.

The performance may work, but the motives do not. I don't need to feel sorry for Lex to understand why he hates Superman, but I want… well, SOME reason for him to want the man dead! At least throw in that Superman is bad for business because it makes the selling of weapons (an industry Lex is sure to profit greatly from) potentially useless. Instead, we get this forced setup where Lex Luthor goes from scheming political mastermind to spoiled bully who just wants to watch a good fight. At this point, my review is officially longer than the average review I write. You should never exceed your reviews by more than 800 words, but now I am passing the 1,000-word count because the film is that much of an objectionable failure. I don't even have time to get into the third act of the film, which is utterly pointless, has no reason for being here, and is nothing but violence piled on top of noise.

I can say with certainty that if you have been reading comic books for a long time, many of the Easter eggs, prolonged fights, and unexplained motivations will make sense. In truth, the dream sequences and the cameos didn't confuse me because I didn't understand them (I did), I just didn't understand why they were in this. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is not a movie: It's part one in what Warner Bros. hopes will be a massive multi-universe series to sell millions of toys. The problem with this thinking is that these characters are so well-loved by people that you don't need to set up future films to get them to see them. They will gladly pay their money to see them anyway. The last fifteen minutes of this film would be a perfect opening to the next film. Too bad the art seems to be actively on the chopping block for the marketing. The biggest sin of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is that it was on the verge of being one of the best films of the year. Instead, it's the worst Kellogg's commercial of the decade.

Grade: * Star

P.S. There are rumors that there is an R-rated director’s cut of the film coming out on Blu-ray later this year. I am genuinely interested in seeing it, if only because if this is the amount of violence the MPAA considers to be okay for teenagers, I REALLY want to see what their opinion on adults-only violence looks like!

10 years later…

While critics tend to do the best they can upon initially reviewing a film, sometimes we get things wrong. Sometimes, we get things right, but maybe we don’t word it the way we hope. Or sometimes we are simply in a bad mood, and couldn’t appreciate what was in front of us at the time. For “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” I would personally say I was in a mixture of two and three: I believe I was right in my negative review, but I had no idea that I was watching a movie that would result in online discourse for a filmmaker that probably hasn’t been seen since the internet was first debating Quentin Tarantino’s (then new) movie “Pulp Fiction” (for better or for worse).

Many things have happened since the release of this film. The “underperformance” at the box office (the movie made around $800 million when Warner Bros. was hoping for over $1 billion), a longer director’s cut that was released later on, studio politics that resulted in the following Justice League movie being taken away from director Zach Snyder and given to Joss Whedon to be heavily reshot/rewritten, and the ending of what has now been dubbed ‘the SynderVerse’ has resulted in a film that is as polarizing as “The Passion of the Christ.” Rather than re-review the film, on the 10th anniversary, let's look at what worked about the movie, what didn’t, and how it fits into modern film culture (or is that a review…never mind).

For starters, it should be noted that I am referencing the R-rated Ultimate Edition of the film, as this is the version that many fans of the film swear would have resulted in a better reception had this been released instead of the PG-13-rated theatrical cut (which the above initial review was about). I won’t deny that either: the extended version is much better. Longer, but more deliberate—giving characters room to breathe, as opposed to the theatrical cut, which seems to go from one story twist to the next before the audience is able to process what happened.

Reasons why Superman is suspicious of Batman are better defined, and even Jesse Eisenberg's controversial take on Lex Luthor is given more understanding for who he is and why he feels the way he does. The opening scene - already the best in the film - is given more weight and gravitas. I acknowledge all of this. However, I still wouldn’t recommend it per se. If my review for the theatrical film was a single-star review, then the Ultimate Edition comes in at two and a half stars. As the old saying goes: “close, but no cigar.” Because even ignoring the studio tampering that would come later, even in this extended cut we see signs of interference early on.

The introduction of the other members of the Justice League feels just as tacky now as it did then. The third act is still a mess of a movie, where destruction and violence pile on top of each other to the point where everything becomes visual noise. The death of a major character comes way too soon to have any importance. The fact that everything ends up feeling like a commercial for the next outing is still there. In the end, viewers are going to watch a theatrical experience that is as messy as you can imagine or a home edition that is interesting up to a point before things fall apart. Both versions have no joy or happiness in them, so neither is an experience I would recommend.

Still, some really took to Snyder’s dark interpretation of the characters (particularly Superman), and they are not wrong to have affection for the attempt. Snyder is a visionary if nothing else. He knows how to shoot a scene, how to frame a shot, and he can create an epic shot on par with Christopher Nolan. The difference is that Nolan is a better storyteller. His shots have purpose, whereas Snyder’s shots seem to exist more to look cool, but have the cinematic nutrition of mayonnaise. Even Snyder’s most acclaimed film - “300” - was praised more for its visual audacity than anything the characters themselves accomplished in the film.

When online discourse surrounds this film, I believe it’s not because “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is an amazing film in any capacity, but because there were moments of greatness that could be seen, and one can’t help but wonder what an untethered, uncensored Zach Snyder could have done with not only this movie, but future movies in the DC Studios lineup. We would get a better glimpse of that with “Zach Snyder’s Justice League,” and that showed an even better idea of what these movies could have been if he were left alone as an artist. Either way, ten years later, we still have a deeply flawed film that never lived up to its potential, and whose legacy may be less about the film itself and more about the intensely divided fandom it created.