Movie Review: Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2015)

I don’t own this trailer.

Pros:

• The casting. Outside of Henry Cavill and Amy Adams who we already saw as Clark Kent and Lois Lane (not excluding the people in the Daily Planet), everyone else is new. I quite liked the casting and I thought they were well-selected.

  • I liked “Batffleck”, (Michael Keaton though) since this version of Batman is supposed to be older, more seasoned (and a great foil to this new younger Superman), it made sense to make him a bit gruff and more of a hard hitter than an agile “ninja”. Ben Affleck played Batman/Bruce Wayne well. Not only was his Batman awesome and taking no prisoners (outside of a few morality issues) Bruce Wayne wasn’t also just a billionaire stereotype who lives for publicity, women and the high life. He’s older now, life has happened and he’s hardened. Parts of the world still views Batman as a vigilante and now there’s this alien who destroyed Metropolis and people view him as a god. That must be annoying lol.

  • Henry Cavill is a fine Superman (my Superman will always be Christopher Reeves though), he’s good looking, he’s kind and compassionate but also just, loyal and charismatic. However, I think he plays Clark Kent in the same way, I’m not saying Clark needs to be a complete bumbling idiot but it’s always been pretty ridiculous how he puts on a pair of glasses and no one recognizes him. So the use of Clark is to retract into someone who is the opposite of Superman and Cavill doesn’t do that. I don’t even think the argument of ‘it’s subtle’ can be used because otherwise why not just forget the glasses if they’re not going to create another persona?

  • Jesse Eisenberg plays Lex Luthor and personally I enjoyed the heck out of him. Definitely different from the ones we’re used to seeing: A businessman, but they darkened Superman so why not make a slight change to Lex? I like Eisenberg anyway and he did remind me of a ‘to the extreme’ Mark Zuckerberg, he made Lex like a mad/insane scientist. He was smart but obviously had issues and he outwardly portrayed that. He had this tick/twitch that I just loved. There were times that I thought he may have made a better Joker… and as the movie continued, I think The Riddler may have been a better choice for Eisenberg but since he’s currently Lex, that’s fine. He might have been over the top but for such a “dark” movie, he was a light spot.

  • Amy Adams is fine as Lois, I like her (she was kind of useless in this movie though). I loved Jeremy Irons as Alfred, just Bruce/Batman, he’s been at this a long time, gets his hands dirty (dude was making Batman’s armor suit lol), he was also sassy.

• Wonder Woman deserves her own bullet point! I was curious to see how much she would be present or if she was just going to be thrown in there at the end. Well, she was AWESOME!  Diana Prince was present throughout the film. When the casting was revealed, my first thought was ‘she needs to put on a little bit of muscle’ which seeing her on screen it looked like Gal Gadot did; seeing her next to Ben Affleck she’s tall! Good casting. I also love the ambiguity of her ethnicity. Her participation in the fight was just awesome, I loved it.

• The cameos from future Justice League characters. I knew these characters were gonna be featured but I was unsure as to how. Overall, they were definitely shoehorned in but I thought they were handled okay. Diana gets a peek into some video files of these characters. So it leads into more questions of “why does LuthorCorp have this information? How? Were these three including Diana herself experimented on?” So I can imagine we’ll get answers in the Justice League movie and the following solo films.

• Batman vs Superman. Their encounters were pretty awesome, when they actually fight due to Batman’s research and intelligence he found a way to weaken Superman and prolong it enough to have an even fight. I also appreciated the fact that Superman could physically fight because sometimes it’s shown he can’t fight with finesse due to him relying too much on his powers so if he loses them then he’s out of luck. However, in this film, he actually could fight a bit  it still looked funny seeing Batman toss Superman around). The motivations weren’t fleshed out enough but the physical encounters were good.

• The nod to Jason Todd. Jason was briefly Batman’s second Robin, he was brutally killed by The Joker. He is later brought back to life and becomes The Red Hood (Under the Red Hood is a good animated film). So to see the movie acknowledge him was sad and nice (wish they could have stuffed in a Nightwing reference though). I would love to know his story in this universe.

• The music. First of all, Hans Zimmer… Hans Zimmer . He has stuff like The Lion King, Thelma and Louise, The Prince of Egypt, Pirates of the Caribbean etc so seeing his name was exciting. I love a good film score, it can make or break it and it worked really well. Pay attention to the music while watching. Wonder Woman’s theme though.

• The court scene. Superman goes to a courthouse and the whole scene was handled very well, it was political and had a tone that probably should have surrounded most of the movie. It kind of goes away after a while which ruins it. But there is a shot towards the end that is in slow motion. You’ll know what I’m talking about.

Cons:

• We did not need to see another depiction of Bruce’s parents dying. We’ve seen that in every origin story of Batman. This is not another origin story. Take out that whole scene (especially since it was slow motion) and that’s 15 minutes shaved off the length already. If they wanted us to see that Bruce and Clark’s mothers had the same first name (spoilers?) they could have started with the scene of Bruce going to visit his parent’s crypt and we see her name. When I saw her name, I was like “oh, their mother’s have the same first name.” It’s important to know that but not a whole scene for it. It was beautifully shot but unneeded.

• The coloring. I get the whole ‘it’s realistic’, ‘it’s darker’ thing, but I don’t care for how everything looks washed out. I like the designs of the costumes, I just don’t like how the reds, blues and golds are taken of their vibrancy. Superman doesn’t have to be wearing a bright red cape, or anything but he’s a symbol of hope, something touched on in this movie and Man of Steel and these are his colors. His cape could have been just a tad lighter. Same with Wonder Woman, just a tad bit vibrant.

• Doomsday. I know his importance and what his presence meant a bit from the comic storyline, but his design was pretty bad. He looked like a mixture of one of the cave trolls from Lord of the Rings and Abomination from The Incredible Hulk lol.  It looked like a last-minute decision due to his randomness and design. Google the comic/animated version of him dude. The fight scene was cool, a little excessive, but he’s a big villain, he shouldn’t have been the baddie in this one. They could have saved him for the first Justice League movie. I know without him they wouldn’t have had their ending (though that could have been solved other ways too) but still… shoehorned.

• Bruce’s dream sequences/visions. Not saying that they shouldn’t have been there or that they’re unimportant because they were. They’re setting up stuff for future films but it’s a lot for this movie. There is a LOT riding on this and I hate it when people say “you’re not smart enough to get this” or if you’re more of a Marvel fan (like I am) ‘Stuff like this is too smart for Marvel fans’ because that’s not true. These moments have merit but the movie is over-crowded and these scenes don’t help. They could have done one more movie before leading into Justice League Part I. This should have been two films: “Batman V Superman” and “Dawn of Justice” since there are two MAJOR separate plot points happening but neither of them are fully realized.

• Batman branding people. I get it, he’s been at this a while, loved ones have died and it’s been tough but that doesn’t mean he needs to leave a calling card by branding thugs with the bat brand. It’s supposed to be influenced by Zorro as it was the last movie he saw with his parents according to this film but meh. I didn’t care for it.

• Too bloated. They don’t need to rush, I know they have a plan which is cool but there was too much put into this movie to try and set up so much. They should have spent more time combing through the script and in the editing room making sure the information wasn’t going to confuse non-comic book readers. The story needed to be cohesive, with solid points and smooth transitions. No film is perfect but if they would have spent more time doing editing instead of trying to set up an entire universe it might have been a better story.

• Too long. =.= I can deal with long movies (Lord of the Rings marathon anyone?) but when it’s long just to be long, meh. Doesn’t work for me. Substance is good and while some of it’s there, it’s not enough to sustain 2 hours and 33 minutes. It actually feels longer.

The film seems like it’s trying too hard, while still a good watch, it doesn’t fully hit it’s mark

The cast is fine, the music is great, I enjoyed parts of the story, I liked the Big Three’s costumes, I liked the cameos even if they were shoehorned in, I loved how some things were shot, sometimes the action is really cool and the movie is very good looking. On the other hand, it was too long (seriously the beginning should have been cut), plot lines should have been taken out to prevent unnecessary padding, this film could have been split into two films to prevent that, while the movie was very stylized it detracted from actual substance, Doomsday was poorly designed and shoehorned and it was TOO LONG.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

What did you think of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice? Put your comments below! Remember to follow if you’d like to discuss more.