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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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.
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.
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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?
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).