Batman v Superman is just around the corner now (omg), and what hurts my soul is seeing all this Superman bashing. This is happening because people have a problem with Superman after Man of Steel, but I think by the end of Batman v Superman he’s going to have a lot more fans (including Batman).

Man of Steel was a polarizing movie; this isn’t a secret. At the end of Man of Steel there were a lot of people who had a problem with Superman in the film, mainly because of his actions towards the end. Some of it was fair criticism, some, not so much.

However, Batman v Superman is a direct reaction to what happened in Man of Steel, and in many ways Batman is the stand-in for all those Superman disapproving viewers. Where Batman starts, where his feelings towards Superman starts, is where a lot of the audiences’ feelings towards Superman will start as well, because of their opinions about Man of Steel.

The conversation has been had thousands of times over the last 3 years since Man of Steel’s release, should Superman have done better? Did he cause more harm than good? Is he even really a hero? And the same questions the audience had at the end of Man of Steel, Batman has in this movie.

Batman’s journey from hating Superman to acknowledging that he is in fact good, and a worthy hero, will reciprocate the journey many of the audience will have. There’s a lot of skepticism regarding this Superman, so not only does he have to prove himself a worthy hero to the fictional people in the DCEU, but he has to prove it to the movie-going audience as well.

Now what I’m about to talk about next is merely speculation, but I guess it could be considered potential spoilers for the end of the movie, so potential spoiler alert!

The progression of Batman and Superman’s fight can be heard in the soundtrack. The earlier tracks are loud and pounding, sounding like it’s fuelled by a passionate hate. But this all changes in the last couple of tracks, especially the last track, Men Are Still Good (The Batman Suite).

Just from the title you can tell what has happened during the course of the movie. Batman will start off being worn down, tired of false gods pretending to be heroes. He’s been through so much he doesn’t think there can be someone so good like Superman.

But then Superman does something so good, so heroic (probably in the final act) that it makes Batman completely reconsider his stance on Superman, and consider the fact that heroes do still exist, men are still good. The Batman Suite has Superman’s theme threaded throughout, indicating a pairing of the two.

Batman’s perspective of Superman will constantly shift as he learns more about Superman, and I’m expecting that this will be the case for a lot of the audience as well.

It’s easy to complain about Superman’s actions in Man of Steel, but it’s always important to understand things from his perspective. He was just Clark Kent, a guy who grew up on a farm who one day found out he was an alien. Just as he was starting to grow comfortable with who he was and started embracing that, an army of aliens attacked his home, he had no idea what to do. They were stronger and smarter; he was just Clark Kent.

Yeah he could have handled that situation better, but he was still in the early learning stages of being Superman. Now that he has matured and has had the opportunity to learn more about what to do and what not to do as Superman, he’s grown into becoming the hero that we recognise from the comics.

And by the end of Batman v Superman, Batman would have realised this as well, and so will the Man of Steel skeptics. There’s this overwhelming idea that Superman was too dark and grim in Man of Steel (which confuses me) but once we see a more confident Superman who is comfortable in his decisions, people will see a Superman they’re more used to.

As the audience journeys towards being more favourable to the idea of Superman being a great hero, it will lead nicely into the Justice League, because we can’t have a team of heroes be lead by someone no one respects. Man of Steel obviously didn’t give WB the reaction they wanted, but if all goes well Batman v Superman will rectify most of those issues, and become a launching pad to a bigger universe with a Superman (mostly) everyone loves!