Note: Spoilers.
Okay. I have to write this down quickly before I start forgetting details. Anyway.
Batman vs Superman is one of the worst films of all time.
Aside from the B-grade sounding title (which I can forgive because Hollywood seems to have run out of creative juice lately), the movie is an absolute mess.
First of all, let me clarify that I’ve never been a fan of either the DC or the Marvel universe. Sure, I’ve watched a couple of old Batman films here, and odd Spiderman/Iron Man there… but I don’t follow the series religiously, especially since they’ve been churning out sequels faster than one can poop these days.
Coming back to BvS, friends (and good ol’ movie review sites) have posted on how bad the film is. But becoz my movie buddy Simon had free tickets and this was the only one showing on a Thursday night, we thought why the hell not, right?
Synopsis:
The movie has so much stuff that makes no sense, I will try to summarise as best as I can lol.
We begin the film with Batman’s parents being murdered by some random thug. Fast forward to about 18 months before the film officially ‘starts’, and we see Superman fighting fellow alien Zod, causing massive destruction to Earth and destroying Wayne’s HQ + killing some employees. The OTT intro; buildings exploding left and right while Wayne navigates the roads – no biggie – was similar to that scene in 2012 where everything except the hero’s car gets obliterated. Figures.
From then on, Batman has a big ol grudge against our man in the spandex.
Fast forward again to the present day, and journalist Lois Lane is in Nairomi, Africa (much original, so wow, at least make the effort to come up with a fictional African place name instead of lazily changing one letter) to interview a terrorist. Long story short, shit goes down, Superman comes to save her and gets a whole village of innocent people slaughtered, but because he is an asshole, all he cares about is banging Lois in the bathtub afterwards.
People come forward to accuse Superman of not giving a shit that his actions are causing harm, which is exactly what Superman does – not give a shit. Batman reads all this stuff and goes ‘Superman is a threat to humanity and must be stopped.’
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor, a billionaire’s son (this version seems more like the Joker than Luthor from the comics), imports kryptonite, claiming to be able to manufacture weapons to use as a deterrent against potential Kryptonian attacks. He gets access to General Zod’s body, slices off his fingerprints and uses them to gain access to the Kryptonian ship. There he finds a Kryptonian Siri who teaches him the knowledge of a 100,000 worlds (which, towards the end of the film, seems to have no bearing to the story – Lex does not suddenly use this knowledge for anything). Instead, he decides to make Doomsday, a brutish creature that looks like it walked off a Lord of the Rings set.
Lex invites a bunch of people to a party, where Batman and Superman meet as their alter egos for the first time. Clark Kent thinks Bruce Wayne is up to no good (which was true, as Wayne was gonna steal some data shit from Luthor) but halfway through tailing him, sees a kid in a building on fire somewhere in South America and flies off. Wayne bumps into Wonder Woman, who is looking for a photo of herself from 1918 which Lex has in his archived research of metahumans.
After all this randomness, the story basically progresses where Batman’s grudge grows stronger and stronger against Superman, some other exploding scenes, Batman steals Kryptonite from Lex Luthor and fashions it into weapons to fight against the Man of Steel, while Luthor laughs in the back because Batman is a gullible dumbass. Lex kidnaps Superman’s adoptive mom Martha, and forces him to fight against Batman.
So instead of explaining to Batman about the whole situation, dumbass Superman starts off with ‘You have to listen to me, there is not much time’ – which allows Batman to sucker punch him first, followed by Superman deciding that he would beat up Batman instead. After a good 10-minute fight, Superman is finally weakened and goes ‘You have to save Martha!’ – which happens to be Batman’s mom’s name as well. Lois Lane pops up out of nowhere and goes ‘It’s his mother’s name!’ B and S become best friends. Batman goes to save Superman’s mum.
And then Doomsday is revived. Wonder Woman sees this on the plane where she was about to go back into hiding, and decides to fk it and go fight instead. Cue slow shots of Gal Gadot and epic music. More exploding buildings, fight, Superman dies and saves the world, is remembered as a hero. The end.
Verdict
I know this is a superhero film, but BvS stretches logic to the limit. The storytelling is the worst part of the film – choppy, and scenes have no bearing to the story (the part where Bruce Wayne emails Wonder Woman, she looks at it and then that part of the story just gets cut off for no apparent reason; or that part where Batman dreams about a world where Superman has gone rogue coz of Lois Lane and some random time travelling dude screaming ‘come find us!’) Made no sense to me.
The funniest part was the Batman vs Superman fight. Super unnecessary, and the most logic-defying part? When Superman says ‘Martha, save Martha’ and they suddenly become best friends coz their mums share the same name. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble if you spoke up sooner, Superman. And Batman, stop being a stupid btch.
The best part of the film is the Wonder Woman soundtrack. Ben Affleck’s acting wasn’t that bad, actually. Superman’s character was just a pompous, attention-seeking prick.
It made 500mil at the box office though – it might have come from people like me who know its bad and wanted to watch to see how bad it is.
Score: 2/10
Really? That’s sad to hear but you know, I’ll still probably watch it because of Wonder Woman.
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She only appears for less than 30mins in total, i think. Still, she steals the show, even with the weak characters and weaker plot. Zack Snyder seems like he has no idea how to direct a film.
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Really? I haven’t been watching movies lately. This is a good thing to consider. Might as well get some popcorns tonight since its Friday. It’s up on the cinemas still…
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The movie selection hasn’t been good lately. Waiting for summer blockbusters! 🙂
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Agreed. I just wish they picked a better director. Awful waste of great free talent.
However, I think the best part of BvS was Ben Affleck’s Batman and I really think there should be a standalone Baffleck film.
Just imagine Ben Affleck and Jeremy Irons versus Jared Leto and Margot Robbie. With that line up maybe you can do a riff on one of the Best Batman storylines ever, The Killing Joke.
Now for who to direct this potential masterpiece. I think I know the perfect one. He’s already directed an Academy Award winning film full of suspense and great pacing, requisites of a Batman film. He made going to the airport a nightmare of epic proportions. Plus he has this other critically acclaimed film that portrays criminals in a better light. He has also written an Academy award winning script about a misunderstood genius.
So why would a director as accomplished as this work for a comic book movie? Because he’s already in it.
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I dunno why the word free is in there. Autocorrect fails me a lot nowadays.
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Ben Affleck wasn’t half bad in the film, actually. And I heard he’s reprising his role in subsequent Batman films.
I’m surprised that Ben Affleck directed films, I honestly didn’t know until you pointed it out, haha!
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ROFL! Great review of the movie…hilarious! I choose not to watch it anyway. I hear it’s 3 hours long and nowadays I tend to be impatient with long movies especially those with a lot of action and blasts but no proper story line.
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It is pretty long and meaningless. I wouldn’t recommend watching it, unless you want to do so for the laughs.
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I had the same impression as you right after watching BvS but after doing research online reading all those plot holes and the rebuttals to the plot holes, this movie is actually quite decent and should be rated higher than the slogfest Man of Steel.
I could come up with a para-by-para reply to your post but I’d just like to touch on Batman and his motives. At first, I was with the consensus that Ben Affleck’s Batman is too emotional,rash and vengeful, a far cry from the canonical (and Christian Bales’s) Batman of him being a super sleuth.
In BvS, Bruce Wayne has actually hung up his cape and is now quietly running his business empire. He has been fighting crime at Gotham City for decades to no avail and presumably the straw that broke the camel’s back was The Joker murdering his sidekick, Robin (cue the “Ha Ha The Jokes On You Batman spray painted on Robin’s suit in his chamber) and Joker subsequently being sent to jail where he will be part of Suicide Squad.
Then one day, two aliens descended upon Earth and decided to use it as their playground, causing untold death and destruction, including Wayne’s only family left – his people working for him. Remember Alfred’s quote? “That’s how it starts. The fever, the rage, the feeling of powerlessness that turns good men… cruel.”
That’s what a 50-odd year old Batman is like. He’s getting old, he’s tired and now learning about the existence of Superman, he’s scared. And he has nothing to lose.
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Hey! Thanks for reading and commenting 🙂
I didn’t watch Man of Steel, so I can’t compare. I am also not a fan of DC comic characters, so I went to watch BvS on a blank slate.
Thanks for the interesting insight to Batman. I can’t tell if Ben Affleck’s Batman was any better (or worse) than previous Batmans, but in BvS I only saw one-dimensional characters ruined by a bad plot and patchy storytelling. The story could have been so much more… but it wasn’t. The characters can have all the backstories in the world but if the plot itself is bad, the actors can’t do much with them. Which is exactly why I thought BvS was terrible.
Being a superhero movie doesn’t mean that one can replace logic with nonsense. One plot hole, fine. But BvS had so many holes that made no sense they make Malaysia’s pot-hole ridden roads seem smooth by comparison. You can’t be telling me that whole ‘Martha’ stuff made sense 😛 Batman basically went from wanting to kill Superman to being his best friend within the span of 15 seconds, just coz their mums share the same name. Idk about you, but people (and good movie characters) shouldn’t work that way.
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Yes, that Martha scene was cringe-worthy and the reason the reenactment of Wayne’s parents’ death was shoehorned into the movie. Sites like Mashable did come out with 17 plot holes (http://mashable.com/2016/03/28/plot-holes-batman-v-superman/#k80I7M9RuPqO) that were easily rebutted in the comments section below.
It can be infuriating to movie-goer who enters the cinema hall with a blank slate to try and grasp the going-ons of BvS. It’s called Dawn of Justice because it is the dawn of the Justice League. Opposite to Marvel Cinematic Universe’s world-building by introducing individual superheroes then establishing the Avengers, DC Expanded Universe straight away jumps into the superhero mash-up before exploring each of them individually. It’s simply two different marketing strategies.
Like I said previously, it takes quite a lot of research on articles and comic book source materials (e.g. The Death of Superman, The Dark Knight Returns, Injustice: Gods Among Us) to grasp what is going on in every shot because this movie is setting up a whole franchise up till the year 2020. Until then, enjoy the ride!
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