BATMAN V. SUPERMAN - THE REVIEW

Watchmen is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  Movies are about showing, and not telling, and that movie did an awful lot of the latter.  If you disagree with that statement, then you probably won't agree with some of what I'm going to say about Dawn of Justice, which I saw the 2:30 showing of Friday in 3-D.  (3-D has come a long way for certain and I didn't even mind that I had to wear glasses on top of my glasses -- it was that well done.)

So onto the movie  BATMAN V. SUPERMAN - DAWN OF JUSTICE.

****WARNING SPOILERS IN SYNOPSIS AHEAD*****

You can tell Zack Snyder directed Watchmen, you'll notice a touch of Christopher Nolan, and you'll crave even more screen time from Ben Affleck.  Yet BvS is one of those movies that is incredibly hollow at times even in its attempts to be a deep thoughtful statement on society.  As I wrote in an earlier blog after having seen this trailer that the problem with making our superheroes so 'human' is that it poses a lot more questions when it comes to their morality, most of which no one who goes to see a superhero film really wants to ponder.  Nolan's Dark Knight franchise was able to capitalize on this sort of formula because the character of Batman is borne of the darkest back story of all our DC heroes.  Witnessing the grim murders of your parents is going to mess you up in many ways, even if you have an even-handed and wise butler to manage your finances and steer you clear of problems.  But Superman is not a dark hero.  Neither is Wonder Woman.  At least, they weren't.  They were supremely good, and there were no moral equivalents.  And while there are elements of that in these characters, once you bring them into Batman's universe, all matters will start to lean gray.  And gray and somewhat depressing is how I would describe this movie, along with didactic at times, powerful at others, and complex.  The amount of chatter on democracy, responsibility and ultimately, freedom, will be lost on children, and by the time the climactic sequences commence, children will either be lost in the all the blurred areas of morality, unsure of who the villain really is, or worse, scared to death about what is going to happen.

The movie begins yet again with Batman's back-story,  reliving in another dream-like slow motion sequence where Dr. Thomas and Martha Wayne are shot brutally in front of their son while leaving a theater.  I suppose every filmmaker has to assume the viewer knows nothing to start, but seeing this sequence again, drawn out in slo-motion for added effects was just overkill.  The film then launches us into the final sequences of Superman: Man of Steel from Bruce Wayne's (Ben Affleck's) point of view.  The already cynical and aging vigilante gets a box seat to the horror in Metropolis (located conveniently across the bay from Gotham City), including the destruction of his own headquarters in that city.  He rescues one of his employees but is unable to do much more than that.

Present day, Wayne is following a criminal element of his own, some possible terrorist in Russia who might want to plant a dirty bomb in Wayne's beloved pit of Gotham.  With all the calls for Superman's head, Lois Lane (played by Amy Adams, who is aging like a fine wine and playing Lane as a mature intrepid) seeks out an interview with a Warlord/Terrorist group in Africa.  Turns out the photographer that has tagged along unbeknownst to her is CIA, leading to his death and Lane's immediate peril.  Before Superman can rescue Lois Lane from the warlord's hands, with his approach anticipated, some men within the warlord's organization betray him, slaughtering most of his crew and taking many innocents with them.  Turns out these were the terrorists Bruce Wayne is tracking. 

Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean the wreckage of the Kryptonian ship is being excavated when a huge artifact is brought up to the beach, inside of which there is a Kryptonite meteor.  Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) makes his case to the Senators Finch and Barrows(Holly Hunter and Dennis North) from the committee that's been tasked with protecting America that he can help them out with these issues.  He takes a private one-off with Barrows who tells him that the meteor causes damage to Kryptonian cells, information obtained by a hunch when they brought the radioactive material in contact with Zod's body, which is being kept in some scientific morgue.  Lex makes the case that he could weaponize it, as protection, but he wants access to the ship and the meteor.

Bruce Wayne has tracked those terrorists back to Luthorcorp and confides in Alfred that he now believes that something sinister is afoot with Lex.  He intends to break in to Luthor's company as Batman when Alfred informs him he's been invited to a party at Lex's company.  While Lex addresses the crowd, Alfred guides Bruce using the Batcave computers through the company via telecom, which is overheard by Superman, in attendance as Clark Kent.  Kent has been pushing Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) to run an a series on the bat vigilante in Gotham, and can't understand why the paper is avoiding it.  Perry remains certain that it won't sell papers in Metropolis and that Kent needs to take his personal interests elsewhere.  Wayne moves downstairs and attaches a portable hacking device to Luthor's mainframe, and upon returning upstairs has his first meeting with Clark and Lex.  This is not lost on a beautiful brunette that catches Wayne's eye, and when Wayne returns to retrieve the device, he finds it missing.  He's also discovered by one of Lex's employees, an Asian character seen throughout though we're never truly introduced.  Wayne spots the same brunette heading back upstairs and realizes she may have taken the device. 

Meanwhile, word has spread of Superman's exploits saving Lois Lane in Africa, and the number of innocents that died as a result and Lois is dually concerned.  First, she found a bullet that is nothing like she's ever seen and her contacts at the Pentagon won't comment on it.  Second, she wonders if a reckoning day isn't coming for Clark, where he's going to have to answer for everything, and ponders how they'll be able to stay together.  Wayne, meanwhile, continues to be haunted by dreams, but now they're of the kind where Superman has an army loyal to him, and he is captured and left to face the Man of Steel, who unmasks him before telling him that Wayne took everything from him.  He tells Alfred something must be done about the alien.

Wayne tracks down the mysterious brunette at another soiree that happens to have the key terrorist from the African double-cross in attendance.  Wayne hacks his phone and finds that he too is connected to Luthorcorp.  He confronts her about the drive.  She reveals that it had encryption that she couldn't break and that Luthor has something on her too that she wants back.  She returned the drive to his car, and she disappears again.  Wayne hacks the drive and finds that the Kryptonite Rock is being shipped on a freighter called the White Portuguese.  He also finds a slew of data in one area on all sorts of things, most important of which is a picture of this same brunette regaled in warrior gear.....from 1918.  He falls asleep at his computer and has vision of someone appearing in some kind of a time portal saying the key is Lois Lane and asking if he's too late.  Wayne awakes, shaken and determined to steal the rock from Lex and confront Superman.

Meanwhile Lex, has obtained Zod's body and awaits the Kryptonite meteor, which requires an import license that Senator Finch has denied.  Lex has several private meetings with the Senator, and encourages her to call Superman to take responsibility for the deaths he's caused.  Lex also has tracked down the man that Wayne saved during the opening sequence.  Turns out he's lost his legs, and has plenty of anger left.  Lex recruits him to go before the Senate hearings and demand Superman take account. When Superman does finally show up to the Capital, the bitter invalid detonates a bomb, destroying much of the Capitol Building, the committee and yet again puts Superman at a place where hundreds are murdered.  Meanwhile, Wayne doesn't understand why the paraplegic victim was intent on hurting anyone - Wayne enterprises had been sending him monthly payments to take care of him.  That's when of Wayne's employees hands him all of the returned checks, with writings directed at Wayne to taunt him about how many people he's let die, including his own family.  Meanwhile, Lois Lane presses her Pentagon contact (the general from Superman: Man of Steel) and finds that the bullet she found is made by Luthorcorp, but he won't answer whether this was a government weapons contract or if anyone knew about it.  He won't go on record.

Batman isn't successful in his first attempt to steal the rock, with Superman thwarting the effort and telling Batman that the next time his signal shines, he better not go to it.  In the interim, Luthor has made his way into the Kryptonian ship and finds that he can control the technology, which has a re-animation ability.  As it turns out, he anticipated this and brought Zod's body, and using the DNA in his blood, he gets the ship to work on recreating Zod the way he wants him.  When he returns to his company he finds the Kryptonite rock has been stolen from him, a batarang left in its place, and for Luthor, the final pieces of the puzzle are in place.  As Bruce Wayne disintegrates the Kryptonite with a laser to make smoke grenades of Kryptonite dust, our mysterious brunette receives an email from Wayne asking who she is.  It also contain Lex's files for a bunch of other strange beings, aka The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg.

Since Superman witnessed the bombing at the Capitol, he's been AWOL, but Lex's kidnapping of Lois Lane and subsequent tossing of her off a building brings him back.  Except he finds out Lex also has his mother Martha Kent, and unless he kills Batman, she'll die.  You can guess most of the rest, and I won't reveal the entire climax, but eventually Doomsday is released and Wonder Woman aka Zena, new warrior princess, makes her debut.

Ben Affleck infests Bruce Wayne with every ounce of his being, and when you consider the amazing legacy Christian Bale left with that role, it's no easy task for someone as well known as Affleck to step in and succeed.  His reluctance to do the role is well documented, but he rises to every challenge, keeping the subdued anger of his experienced dark vigilante just underneath the surface of everything he does, but tangible enough for the audience to know this guy has seen too much. 

Henry Cavill is fine reprising his role of Superman, though he's given little to do except appear in flashbacks and Bruce Wayne's worrisome nighttime terrors. In some ways, one can understand the writers reluctance to have Superman flying all over saving people.  After all, there is little we haven't seen from the Man of Steel, and little left that will shock us.  But David Goyer and Chris Terrio's script has Christopher Nolan's fingerprints all over it, with the gritty realities of society pervading into even the deepest levels of our heroes.  It's comparable to an old comedy club aphorism -- once you take the audience blue, it's very hard to bring them back out of it.  Once Superman is dragged into the world of Batman, he can't help but become tarnished by it, which will bring me to my biggest qualms with the film in a moment.  Jesse Eisenberg's Luthor is an attempt to bring as clever a villain as Heath Ledger's Joker to the screen but instead falls very short, his screen time muddled with philosophical rhetoric and occasional ramblings which are attempts to make him seem like mad genius. Instead what we're really left with is a lunatic who just seems crazy, bereft of the humanity Eisenberg claimed he was trying to bring to the character.

Gal Gadot is a fine cast as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, but I have to admit her accent was distracting at times, and I'm not sure she possesses the vulnerable nature you'd like to see as subtext to the warrior princess.  She'll have her own movie soon enough, and here's to hoping they update the outfit somewhat because wearing the same thing a warrior princess wore back in 1918 today is passé' don't you think?

The climax of the movie will strike you anywhere from laughable to perfect, depending on what side of the human spectrum you reside.  The first three-quarters of this film is spent pushing the viewer into believing this kind of things is a reality, going so far as to ponder and even debate the values of democracy and humankind. It's very Watchmen-esque, with a lot of talking and little going on, a Zack Snyder specialty.  In addition, this hard-nosed and gritty approach to a fantasy film altered my ability to accept certain types of fantastic events if they are removed from reality.  Suspension of disbelief is only as good as the world that you're provided, and by showing us a glimpse of our current political landscape and decaying democracy, the filmmakers appear to be making a case for the scenario where if there were such things as superheroes, this is as close to our reality as it would get.   As Senator Finch states directly at one point, "We're a Democracy, we talk to each other," pointing a giant didactic mirror at the audience in a look-and-see moment.  It's as if they thought if a character in a high position like a Senator says something so profound, maybe people will hear it.  Au contraire writers -- are you not aware of the society to which you are casting your eye?

Thus, to be provided in the climax where the ultimate villain is pasted together under the flimsiest of scientific circumstance, is to catch the audience by surprise but not in a good way.  Doomsday's arrival seemed impractical if not ridiculous. I overheard people talking behind me during the final sequences, and a few giggles, probably not what the filmmaker's intended.

Superman being drawn into Batman's gloom and doom leaves our finest hero questioning whether the society he's charged with protecting will ever have him without seeking his destruction.  It's a clear reflection on what we as humans do to good people every day now in this world; questioning their motives, taking pride and exception to their slightest gaffe, and undermining even the kindest spirit with bygone hatreds and simple petty jealousies. But there are no answers for such complicated questions, and in a film such as this, meant to be a flight of fantasy away from our daily grind, it's hard to have such a philosophic topic raised without being given the kind of deep exploration it needs.  Christopher Nolan succeeded in doing it in The Dark Knight, but he and his team fail here.

Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL (an odd credit mix if there ever was one) provide the score, which is so heavy handed and melodramatic for even the parts of the film where no major drama is occurring that you begin to feel misled.  It's as if you can't be sure they're watching the same movie you are sometimes. 

The film is rated PG-13 for violence, but I wouldn't let anyone under sixteen see this film.  There are too many nuances and depths to which the filmmakers descend to provide glimpses into our human psyches, and occasionally there are some powerful moments, like when Lois Lane tells Superman his "S" still means something.  However, the filmmakers wound up with another kind of Man of Steel movie again; somewhat hollow, occasionally confusing and in the end, depressing.  It's not as bad as some critics have said, but it certainly leaves you wondering why they chose to tackle such a dark topic as our seemingly growing cynical nature in a movie that seeks to unite the greatest comic book heroes with which we grew up.

Somewhere along the line they're going to have to up the fun quotient and quit trying to teach us something about our frail and mostly awful human nature.  Otherwise, Justice League is going to be less a fantastic movie of terrific battles between the good and evil, and more a contemplation about whether any society like ours deserves a hero at all.  By all means, based on this film, we don't.