Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Directed by Zack Snyder
Fearing the actions of a god-like Super Hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.
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What critics say influenced Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
There are nice, smaller touches, too: A poster for John Boorman’s Excalibur in the opening scene finds a sly echo in the climax.
The story does take an epic, rangy perspective, as the long setup jumps from one far-flung locale to another to establish pockets of evil while also dramatizing Bruce Wayne's backstory, here conceived as seeing his parents gunned down in the street after emerging from a theater showing Excalibur.
Not only are these time-shifts audacious (movie marquees announce the 1940 The Mark of Zorro and the 1981 Excalibur — implying the evolution of history), but so is Snyder’s proposition about the nature of heroism and vengeance: Both stem from the way individuals react to and comprehend their experiences.
References to Copernicus, Nietzsche, Nabokov are topped by two homages: a recurring shot of a theater advertising John Boorman’s Arthurian riff, “Excalibur,” as backdrop to street crime, foreshadowing a gleaming sword fashioned from kryptonite that is haphazardly plunged into a wretched pool and later retrieved from it as if only to validate the allusion.
Besides another run-through of Bruce Wayne’s tragic backstory (including an odd nod to John Boorman’s Excalibur ), Dawn Of Justice strains to both set up a plausible conflict between the two superheroes, and shift pieces into place for future sequels and spin-offs.
We open on familiar ground with the young Bruce Wayne being orphaned yet again, this time in the shadow of a movie theatre pointedly playing Excalibur .
It reminded me of the famous Roddy Piper/Keith David confrontation in They Live—the two heroes engage in a protracted fight with one other, after which they both shrug and become friends again.
His design reminds you of the Cave Troll in Fellowship of the Ring and the CGI on display seems to also be from 2001.
Pero meter a un espantosísimo Doomsday de CGI que resulta una calca del troll de Moria de The Fellowship of the Ring para lograr la cohesión de los personajes, no nada más es forzado sino que resulta, francamente, una pésima idea.
Not only are these time-shifts audacious (movie marquees announce the 1940 The Mark of Zorro and the 1981 Excalibur — implying the evolution of history), but so is Snyder’s proposition about the nature of heroism and vengeance: Both stem from the way individuals react to and comprehend their experiences.
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“Batman v Superman,” directed by Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen,” “Sucker Punch,” “Man of Steel”), is none of those things.
A few years ago, director Zack Snyder was the hope of the action genre, whose films “Watchmen” and “300” were intuitive, striking and psychologically penetrating.
In the past, the man behind Watchmen, 300, and Sucker Punch has let style suffocate substance, but even his misfires have always had a welcome kink or spark to them.
Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman” is a prequel to “Justice League,” a spiritual reboot for his version of Ben Affleck’s love child iteration of Batman, and just one big amalgam of “Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight Rises” in one big messy unpleasant plate.
Snyder, who made a great graphic novel movie with Watchmen, has just completely lost it as a man capable of putting a cohesive, exciting movie together.
“Batman v Superman,” directed by Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen,” “Sucker Punch,” “Man of Steel”), is none of those things.
I had forgiven him for movies like “Sucker Punch” and his mediocre film “Man of Steel,” which thumbed its nose at some of the most established source material (like Superman getting his powers from Earth’s atmosphere and not our yellow sun).
In the past, the man behind Watchmen, 300, and Sucker Punch has let style suffocate substance, but even his misfires have always had a welcome kink or spark to them.
The man who gave us Sucker Punch has effectively knocked the wind out of two great comic book heroes.
Dawn of Justice peaks in its opening sequence, a slow-motion, Sucker Punch-esque dispatching of the Batman origin story in three minutes or less, which sets the stage for the introduction of an older, broken Batman (Ben Affleck), who engages in increasingly violent and futile attempts to clean up Gotham City.
…this poptastic, colour-saturated, zinger- and needle drop-filled movie seeks to distinguish itself from the sepia-toned sociopathy of Zack Snyder’s reign…
While Man of Steel benefited from a charismatic performance by Henry Cavill, some of the imagery in later sequels, such as Batman v Superman, depicted the character as a fearsome god.
After years of stoic portrayals- Man of Steel or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice– it’s refreshing to see a Superman who talks, feels, and inspires.
The last three movies ran for much longer. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel went for 143 minutes, while his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice came in at 152 minutes.
…the DCU—formed by Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman—came crashing down with Justice League.
Director Zack Snyder may have introduced Henry Cavill as the latest Superman in “Man of Steel’’ in 2013, but this bloated sequel is very heavily weighted in favor of first-time Batman Ben Affleck.
While “300’’ maestro Snyder puts together some very striking scenes — which may be enough for many fanboys — they never really cohere into a whole.
But as the director of "300," he knows his way around a ramming collision.
“Batman v Superman,” directed by Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen,” “Sucker Punch,” “Man of Steel”), is none of those things.
A few years ago, director Zack Snyder was the hope of the action genre, whose films “Watchmen” and “300” were intuitive, striking and psychologically penetrating.
In Man of Steel, the 300 auteur introduced his "gritty" yet messianic version of Superman (Henry Cavill), capping the origin story with an orgy of urban destruction.
Esta fue la herencia que recibió Snyder de la trilogía Batman de Nolan, y que lamentablemente al director de “300” le queda un poco grande.
Not me, certainly, as the film meanders along, playing less like a prequel for the JLA than a greatest-hits medley of every superhero movie ever made - a little "Dark Knight Rises" here, a bit of "Batman Begins" there, all spiced up with some "X-Men" topicality.
Had Oscar Isaac not been bogged down with X-Men: Apocalypse or Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he might have proven the better Lex.
In the hands of another director—the Christopher Nolan of the Dark Knight movies or the Bryan Singer of the X-Men films come immediately to mind—this and other moral quandaries might have been drawn out in intriguing ways.
(Snyder's recent revelation that he wants to direct a version of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead certainly makes more sense now.)
Snyder says that when he’s not working on the next DC comics universe canvas, he spends his creative time mulling over a possible future production of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”
It’s like having Spider-Man being bitten by a radioactive spider each time he’s rebooted.
Like far too many contemporary comic-book adaptations – oh, for the primary colours of Donner’s Superman or Raimi’s Spider-Man – Snyder’s film believes itself to be “dark”, but this is the superficial darkness of the Goth pop that sounds behind slammed teenage doors.
Like all the other characters without capes in BvS, Wonder Woman and Doomsday are so busily shoehorned into the movie that Spider-Man 3 is a naturalist indie drama by comparison.
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Director
Christopher Nolan
Critics compare Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to 5 of Nolan’s films.
Compare the first big sequence in “Batman v Superman” featuring the Batmobile in action, to the Bat Cycle/semi-trailer truck game of chicken in Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.”
And for all of Batman v. Superman’s chatter, not once does it give us a line half as evocative and memorable as The Dark Knight’s “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
This travesty offers no contest to the detail of Nolan’s films where Batman would navigate an environment, such as the tower block sequence in The Dark Knight, to avoid killing his enemies.
On paper, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a daring piece of studio franchising: a Wagnerian passion play with so much dour admiration for its own mythmaking that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy looks lighthearted in comparison.
In terms of the latter, Cavill and Affleck, competent as they may be, are generally able to strike only a single note of grim determination that essentially (and effectively) drains their iconic characters of their energy - while Eisenberg's disastrously quirky performance sticks out like a sore thumb from start to finish (ie the actor seems to be channeling Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight, which quickly proves to be the absolute wrong choice for Luthor).
Look, it’s not easy adapting Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns while also making a sequel to Man of Steel while also building towards the conceptualization of a Justice League while also maintaining a singular identity, but … well, that’s the whole problem now, isn’t it?
Not helping matters is the bombastic score by Hans Zimmer, an aural assault that often sounds like a bad tribute band's rendition of Zimmer's Inception theme.
Also of note: composers Hans Zimmer (2014's " Interstellar ") and Junkie XL's (2015's " Mad Max: Fury Road ") oft-unsettling score, going against the grain of convention with numerous big, chance-taking payoffs.
None of these sequences relate to one another, and the experience of watching them unfold on the big screen is like watching a fatally overlong trailer for a movie that never arrives, or a slideshow of fan art accompanied by a score so punishing it makes you long for Interstellar .
Working from a screenplay by Chris Terrio (“Argo”) and David S. Goyer (“The Dark Knight Rises”), director Zack Snyder delivers a superhero epic that’s a significant improvement on his work on its predecessor, “Man of Steel.”
Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman” is a prequel to “Justice League,” a spiritual reboot for his version of Ben Affleck’s love child iteration of Batman, and just one big amalgam of “Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight Rises” in one big messy unpleasant plate.
However, these artistic aspirations proved as thwarted as when Joel Schumacher was charged with making a crowd-pleasing toy commercial in 1997 that, like Snyder, took the perceived positives of the last Batman movie (the cheery romp of Batman Forever in lieu of the sprawling The Dark Knight Rises) and amplified their presence a thousand-fold.
It’s only been four years since the last time we saw Batman in The Dark Knight Rises – two years if you want to be pedantic and say The Lego Movie with The Lego Batman Movie spin-off on the way in 2017 – and lord knows Hollywood’s franchise factory knows not of the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Snyder’s thrillingly intelligent use of interior conflict and political antagonism vastly outclasses Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises — all noxious — which were bellwethers of our culture’s decline.
There is no “down with the rich” undercurrent like The Dark Knight Rises, so something more brazen needed to be evoked.
Not me, certainly, as the film meanders along, playing less like a prequel for the JLA than a greatest-hits medley of every superhero movie ever made – a little "Dark Knight Rises" here, a bit of "Batman Begins" there, all spiced up with some "X-Men" topicality.
I do find it interesting that Luthor frames the battle between Superman and Batman as a battle between “god” and “man”, when Batman has frequently been associated with demons in other stories (including Batman Begins ).
For the folks at DC and Warners, BvS serves a dual function: it’s a sequel to their 2013 Superman reboot Man of Steel ( a flawed film , to be sure, but it might as well be Batman Begins compared to this one), and yet another jump-start of the Batman franchise, seemingly completed by Christopher Nolan with 2012’s Dark Knight Rises .
One of them is a partial remake of “Batman Begins,” telling — again — the Bruce Wayne/Batman origins story (the guy’s poor parents have been murdered on screen about a thousand times), which segues into the tale of miffed Batman (now played by Ben Affleck, who’s just fine) vowing to avenge the collateral deaths caused by Superman’s sloppy superheroism.
Written by Chris Terrio (“Argo”) and genre stalwart David S. Goyer (“Batman Begins”), it’s overburdened with Stuff To Do — introduce Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot)!
Snyder’s thrillingly intelligent use of interior conflict and political antagonism vastly outclasses Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises — all noxious — which were bellwethers of our culture’s decline.
In Gotham, Bruce uses his vigilante Batman alter ego to plot revenge against Superman.
Snyder is the face of one of the biggest franchises in movies, and it is now time to marry the Superman name to a new version of the other big DC franchise, Batman.
Later, when Wayne encounters an inquisitive Clark Kent at a fundraising dinner, the two politely argue over the danger of each other’s secret alter egos – it’s hard for Clark to accept the legendary “Batman” as a crusader of justice when he is so violent against his criminals, and Bruce rejects the notion that the Superman is “godly,” especially when his very existence so frequently spells disaster for all those he claims to protect.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the second feature in DC Comics’ Extended Universe, as well as the second collaboration between director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer after 2013’s underwhelming Man of Steel. 1 Not content with simply rebooting their wildly successful Batman franchise for the third time, Warner Brothers have banked on Snyder’s Dawn of Justice to both solidify Ben Affleck as a viable candidate to regularly don Batman’s signature cape and cowl and, more importantly, to ensure an influx of other licensed DC intellectual properties (cinematic, comic and action figurine-based).