Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review
This is part 2 in my DCEU review series, and today it’s time to talk about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Ultimate Edition). I already did my review for Man of Steel. Let’s get started.
The Good:
Ben Affleck as Batman was the best part of the movie for me. He’s a very good Bruce Wayne that is believable but he’s also a very solid Batman. As Batman he is the most physically opposing Batman that we have seen (he weighed 231 lbs for the movie), so when he’s beating up criminals you buy that this guy could take them down. Bruce Wayne and Alfred have some nice dialogue between the two of them that add some little funny moments here and there.
I also forgot how good the final battle with Doomsday really is. Getting to see the DC Trinity Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman team-up to stop Doomsday, it’s a lot of fun to see. And when Wonder Woman first shows up that epic theme plays and makes it even better. And the scene looks pretty cool with the visual effects. But it’s also a big epic battle and you can see everything that is going on.
Unpopular opinion, I like Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. People on the internet complain that he feels too young and too chaotic for the Lex Luthor character. I get those problems, but I like that they tried something different with the character, and I liked it. And he gives the ultimatum to Superman that if he doesn’t kill Batman then his mother dies. He does things like that to make the world turn against Superman and I like how he handled that part.
Lastly, like Man of Steel the soundtrack here is fantastic. Hans Zimmer is one of the best film composers of all time. The different themes for Wonder Woman, Batman, and Lex Luthor are great and different and feel like they belong to those characters, and whenever they play it makes the scene better because of it.
The Bad:
Superman is supposed to be a very hopeful character and here they do the exact opposite of that. I can appreciate the fact that they wanted to have a plot line where people are debating “Is Superman a hero?” The execution of that makes Superman such a downer character he’s not hopeful he’s moody and distant and you don’t want that from Superman. If they did that with Batman, more understandable. But here what they do is one of the weakest aspects of the movie and the entire DCEU for that matter.
I watched the ultimate edition for the movie that is over 3 hours long. And it did not need to be that length, they could have trimmed it under 2 ½ hours. And then trim the regular version to and make that shorter. To me it felt like, Zack Snyder and the producers went like it’s make a version of the movie longer...but they added all of the deleted scenes to make it longer. None of the extra scenes progress the plot forward. So that’s frustrating. None of the scenes are bad in any way, but why did they add them in... I would never know.
This is a Batman movie so they decided to have the first scene of the movie telling Batman’s origin story. Batman’s origin story is one of the most iconic superhero origin stories of all time. If they cut those scenes out of the movie, I think I would have liked it more because they felt unnecessary. Like I said that’s the opening scene of the movie and if they did something where it was a different twist and spin on the origin story, then maybe it could work. But they didn't, it's just his parents' death and he becomes Batman, the generic version of the origin story is in this movie.
It also felt like the movie was more focused on making a Batman movie than a Superman movie. Ben Affleck has 78 lines of dialogue in the movie. Henry Cavill has 43 lines of dialogue. He has the 4th most lines in the movie. That shows you that Batman was more a focus that Superman. What they should have done is marketed it as a Batman movie with Superman in it or a Superman movie with Batman in it. Nope, the marketed is Batman and Superman. Superman should have gotten a lot more to do, that just 43 lines of dialogue.
Lastly, this movie felt like three different movies all in one movie. Man of Steel sequel, Batman v Superman movie, and a Justice League set up movie. Now the plot with the world questioning Superman and having Lex Luthor as the villain, great idea for a Man of Steel sequel but they also had an idea for Batman being in it and a movie to set up the Justice League. Those three plot lines seem like they should work together but they don’t, those are three plot lines good enough for their own movie, and instead of that they put those three into one movie.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the most disappointing movie of my lifetime. It should have been a great DC movie, one of the best superhero movies ever made. And it’s not it’s a totally mediocre and bland version of that. There are some good things about it, but it also has a ton of big issues with it. My review for Suicide Squad will be dropping next week, so stay tuned for that.
The Score: 5.2/10 (C)
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