Batman vs. Superman vs. Fun: A Dawn of Justice Review

I was trapped at home all last week with the flu, which sort of sucked. But on the bright side, at the end of the week once I felt better, I got to hang out with my friend AJ and go see the Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice movie. Which was… okay.

***Spoilers*** Minor ones, but spoilers nevertheless.

The critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes when I went to see it was hovering around 30%, and I think it’s lower now. The audience rating is around 70%. I wasn’t sure which side to trust on this one.

Now, I can tell you after having seen the movie that you shouldn’t take the critic’s rating very seriously. It’s not the greatest movie, but in no way is it 30% on Rotten Tomatoes bad.

It was actually pretty entertaining if you like that sort of thing. Which I do. But honestly, it had a lot of flaws, and most of them were in the area of character development.

Let’s go ahead and talk about the characters. Everyone knows that the biggest wild card coming into the movie was going to be Ben Affleck’s Batman. Affleck has already done one very bad superhero movie, so expectations were not high. However, I think he did a very good job playing Batman.

Actually, I think the Batfleck was the strongest part of the movie. He did a very good job portraying a somewhat tortured and cynical Batman (not that the character was ever a ray of sunshine in the first place, but I digress). He seemed very sincere and really caring about the people he protected. More or less, a good Batman.

On the other side, Henry Cavill’s Superman was… hot. Like, really hot, with cheekbones and everything.

Wait. I’m sorry. I swear I can do this objectively. *slaps self*

He worked the Superman suit very well, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to the character. I found myself very bored with him. I was just as bored in Man of Steel, and I’m not sure if it’s Zack Snyder’s influence or if Henry Cavill is just not cut out for the part (I mean emotionally, because he’s definitely cut out well in the physical department). I’m willing to assume that it’s more than likely Snyder, because Cavill was fantastic in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

I’m not really sure what I thought about the whole Superman-as-a-god thing either. That was a little much, I think. Although the ending sort of made up for it. Just a little.

Wonder Woman was the other hero character that everyone was wondering (if you’ll pardon the pun) about. Honestly, I liked the character well enough, but there just wasn’t enough of her for me to form much of an opinion. That’s fine of course. The movie was called Batman vs. Superman, so really, Wonder Woman didn’t really need to be there anyway. Actually, thinking back on it, it kinda felt like sticking Legolas into The Hobbit. Neither characters really needed to be in the movie and both felt pretty shoe-horned in.

My main issue with the movie is with the Batman and Wonder Woman character. I felt almost nothing for both of them. It’s hard to identify with characters I know next to nothing about. Honestly, if they were going to use these characters, they should have given them their own film first.

I suppose an argument could be made that this Batman is the same one from the Dark Night series. After arguing with my dad about it for a good fifteen minutes, I’m still not sure. At the very least, Ben Affleck should have had his own movie first. It feels like the creators were relying on audience familiarity with the characters to do the work of developing them, but it just wasn’t enough for me.

Now that I’ve got the heroes out of the way, let’s talk about the villains.

Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor (Jr.?)… Eh. I have to say, I think the character was a pretty good villain (if a little fuzzy on motivation). However, he really wasn’t a very good Lex Luthor. This is one case where audience familiarity with the character hurt them a bit. Lex Luthor is supposed to be dignified, but this guy was just crazy and scatter-brained. Eisenberg played the character more like the Joker than Lex Luthor. I get that he’s supposed to be Lex Jr. But that isn’t enough to explain the weirdness.

And then there’s the VERY shoe-horned in Doomsday character. He was fine, I guess, in a monstrous sort of way. A nice plot twist at the end. Not really anything else to say about the character. It was a bit surprising what he did to Superman, I suppose. I’d care more if I thought it would stick.

Finally, I want to talk about the plot. Other than the fact that almost no effort was put into developing the characters, the plot was pretty good. The plot revolved around Batman trying to take out Superman because he’s a public menace or something. It was really interesting to see how public opinion influenced Superman and Batman both.

The only thing I can really say negatively about the plot (that I remember anyway; a lot of the film was rather forgettable, unfortunately) is that the reason Batman and Superman stop fighting is a little lame. (Major SPOILERS here) I get that Batman saw Superman as somehow inhuman and dangerous, and when he says his mother’s name, the Bat realized Superman was just as human as he was. I get that, but the fact that their mothers had the same names just seems incredibly far fetched. I know that it’s canon, but it still felt forced.

Finally, I want to talk about how DC in general and Zack Snyder in particular seem to be a little allergic to fun. I may be wrong about this, but I think most comic book movie fans are going to go to a super hero movie to have fun. We don’t go to movies to get our soul sucked out. I’m not saying that the movie should have been a barrel of laughs the whole way through, but for the love of superpowers, a little humor wouldn’t have killed them. I don’t want to leave a superhero movie depressed.

So overall, yeah the movie is not great, but not absolutely terrible either. I think I have to rate it at around what most people have. I think 6, maybe 6.5 stars out of ten covers its good and bad parts fairly.

Have you seen the movie yet? What did you think? Was I too harsh? Let me know in the comments.