Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice

Starring: Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams and Jesse Eisenberg

Director: Zach Snyder

Warner Bros.

In what is going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is sure to draw the lines once again with geeks everywhere. Do the DC fans finally have a worthy of pushing a shared universe in their never-ending battle to one-up Marvel fans?

Be Warned: Once you go past this point, there will be some spoilery stuff.

Seriously…

Once more…

BvS is a movie that opens strong and ends strong but along the way, has some questionable approaches to how things get there.

First, let’s talk the story. We have an aged Batman still running around in Gotham, fighting low-level bad guys. He’s onto something and it’s causing him to cross paths with one Lex Luthor. And he’s very much driven by the thought of an alien who can destroy humanity at a moment’s notice.

A lot of the movie seems focused on setting up Superman as a questionable character who can’t atone for his actions. There’s public distrust. His demeanor in the movie is almost sad and grumpy a lot of the time. Public perception has gotten to him. He’s kind of sad Superman for parts of this. And while his superhero persona deals with that, Clark Kent is wanting to know why the Batman of Gotham gets a pass violating criminal civil liberties and why no one goes after him.

Add some Wonder Woman and a couple of odd explosions and voila! You now have the makings of an epic grudge match. There’s quite a bit more to it and I’ll let you get there on your own.

BvS is a sequel of sorts to Man Of Steel. The story is quite driven by the worldwide effects of the Kryptonian attacks from that movie. And in going in that direction, I found this to be a better film overall than MoS. The story is good. Things work. The action scenes are incredible, which is something Zach Snyder really is able to deliver on. There were times when it seemed a bit too fast, but none the less, this is a big-budget film and it shows. I had the pleasure of seeing it in IMAX and I would highly recommend.

As far as the acting goes, most of the cast is great. Ben Affleck, who’s casting choice set comic book fandom on fire, is excellent as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Gal Gadot looks great as Wonder Woman, a character that here, totally looks to enjoy the violence of the finale. They toned down Amy Adams portrayal of Lois Lane, who I felt was too involved in MoS. She’s still all over the place, but it is better. Jeremy Irons is an awesome Alfred Pennyworth and one that seems totally believable helping out Bruce Wayne.

Also, they play to the character strengths. Superman is a being doing super things all over the place. He’s still the guy slipping out when no one is looking to rescue a child in another country.

Batman is that human element who’s as ruthless as they come. The movie does a great job splitting the time between what both characters are after.

And look, we know that the studio is playing a bit of catch-up with Marvel. They want a Justice League movie and they have a scene that is small, but does a fantastic job introducing three other characters into the films.

There’s a bit of stuff I had issues with.

The story is a bit clunky at times. It just jumps all over the place and with a film clocking in at over 2 hours, there are questions that you’ll have from watching that will totally go unanswered. Now, is this to blame due to editing? Sources are saying that the Blu-Ray/DVD release could be near 3 hours. Could it be the writing? Hard to say. Still, I just found that even within the realm of a comic book film, there were things that didn’t make sense. Being introduced to Lex Luthor, you know basically nothing but he basically knows everything and it just does not work. Why is he so smart? Why do people even care about him, other than him being rich? There’s zero back story for someone who does not read comics, which is a lot of the viewing public.

Did you have a problem with a Superman who kills? Well, get used to it. He’s here to save the day and if you question his moral stance on killing, that is going to continue. While we are on that subject, for a character that for so much of current comic history hates guns, Batman sure enjoys the hell out of them here and he’s not at all afraid of taking lives.

And back to Lex, who is horribly portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg. He is Jar-Jar Binks annoying throughout this film. Where Heath Ledger’s Joker performance from The Dark Knight made you want so much more of him, I had the opposite feeling whenever Lex came up on-screen.

For the big push to put Wonder Woman on the screen, she has about 5 minutes of movie and not much as WW. Her involvement in the finale is little more than her popping up and throwing a few blows. Up until then, she’s so mysterious that you don’t really know anything about her.

If Man Of Steel was your cup of tea, prepare to have that thirst quenched and then some. DC fans totally have their own Avengers-type movie to bask in and compare with others in the never-ending penis-measuring nerd fight that they can’t let go of. But, if you don’t like the road DC/Warner Bros. is going down and feel the tone is too dark, you’ll feel the same way you did when you left Man Of Steel.

One last thing, I stayed the entire time and the advanced screening had nothing after the credits. I have no idea if the regular theatrical will.

Review: 7/10