I don’t actually think it’s possible to be a little boy between the ages of 4 and 8 who is aware of Superman and not a fan of Superman. It’s like Star Wars or Transformers. You see this:

And something in your little boy soul just chimes.

So I don’t think there was ever a time where I wasn’t a fan of Superman but as I’ve gotten older I’ve certainly become more of a fan. And I have to say, on behalf of my tribe, it’s a pretty good time to be an enjoyer of Clark Kent. James Gunn is going to be bringing us a new Superman movie next year, both Superman and Action Comics have been enjoying high-quality, well-received runs and My Adventures with Superman is, in my humble opinion, the single best animated depiction of the character since the Fleischer Shorts of the forties. Yes. Better than Superman the Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited. No, I will not take that back.

My point is things are good now. We’ve come along way from…y’know.

Fuck. There really was a time there when the guy most responsible for shaping Superman’s presentation to the wider world was Zack Snyder.

Future generations won’t believe it. But I was there. It happened.

Alright, let me pull back a little bit. I know you’ve probably clicked on this hoping for some classic, old-school mid-2010s internet rage with all manner of inventive profanity and performative outrage and I won’t lie, I’m not too proud to dance. BUT I want to draw a line in the sand here and make one thing clear.

I don’t hate Zack Snyder either personally or artistically. He is, by all accounts, a lovely guy and the loyalty that he inspires in the actors who have worked with him is genuinely touching. I can’t say I understand the devotion that fans of his movies have to his work but I don’t for a minute doubt its sincerity. People do genuinely, passionately adore his films and respond to them and that can’t be ignored. This is not some studio hack. This is a man who produces works that people respond to strongly, both positively and negatively. This is an artist.

He should not be allowed near Superman. Ever.

He does not understand the character and he does not understand why he matters.

I realise that this is going to come across as just…foam-flecked fanboy ranting but please hear me out. This character is important in a way that very, very few fictional characters are or ever will be. Remember what I said about how every little boy just, instinctively loves Superman?

Okay. Now you may have heard Superman described as a power fantasy for little boys. And to that I say “yes, absolutely he is” and also “why the fuck are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?”

If Superman is a fantasy, what exactly is the fantasy?: “I want to be an all-powerful demi-god so that I can…devote every free moment of my time to protecting and helping those who have less power than me”?

So…you have generations of young boys who will grow up in a world where they will have disproportionate power (of many kinds) over others being influenced by this character and his worldview, modelling behaviours of selflessness, compassion, kindness and justice. You see why that might be, I dunno, a very, very good thing?

Now here is a quote from Zack Snyder (he’s actually responding to criticism about Batman killing people in his movies but it’s also relevant when discussing his approach to Superman):

“Once you’ve like lost your virginity to this f**king movie and then you come and say to me something about ‘oh, my superhero wouldn’t do that’, I’m like ‘are you serious?’ because I’m down the f**king road on that.

“It’s a cool point of view to be like: ‘My heroes are still innocent. My heroes didn’t f**king lie to America. My heroes didn’t embezzle money. My heroes didn’t commit any atrocities.’

“That’s cool, but you’re living in a f**king dream world, okay?”

And yes, I know juxtaposing that quote with that dialogue from What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way has been done so many times it’s cliché at this point but…I wanted to do it and it made me feel good and it’s my blog so there.

Zack Snyder claims that his approach to comics is rooted in Alan Moore’s Watchmen and sure, Moore did deconstruct the tropes of comic books and created superheroes who were deeply, deeply flawed people. But you know what he didn’t do? He didn’t try that shit with Superman.

Moore didn’t write a lot of Superman stories but the ones he did featured some of the very noblest, most selfless versions of the character.

Moore gets what makes Superman important, and that it is not something to fuck with.

Hell, even Mark Millar and Garth Ennis, the two patron saints of the Shitty Edgelord school of superhero comics. You give them Superman, this is how they write him:

Superman is so fucking good the guy who wrote The Boys can’t hate him.

Anyway.

Hello, welcome to my regular series of movie reviews where I talk about Batman.

Alright, so we have have come to a bit of a problem. Thus far, live-action feature depictions of Batman occurred in a nice, linear little procession one after the other. But starting with Man of Steel in 2013, Warners decided that they, too, would like a multi-billion dollar generating shared cinematic universe and created the DCEU.

Actually, can I just go on a tangeant here and say that I find it absolutely hilarious how the history of DC and Marvel movie continuity is basically a repeat of what happened in the comics?

For decades, DCs comics basically operated in their own little continuity bubbles until the sixties when Stan Lee over at Marvel realised that having a tightly integrated continuity meant you could use FOMO to get readers to buy comics they wouldn’t normally buy by having stories start in one magazine and conclude in another. DC then tried to play catchup which ultimately culminated with them rebooting all their properties into a single shared universe with Crises on Infinite Earths and now, with James Gunn being brought in to oversee a new movie universe the exact same thing is happening on the big screen.

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes. The point is, we’re coming to a period of movie history in these reviews where there were many depictions of Batman onscreen in movies that weren’t necessarily Batman movies. The decision to cover these movies on this blog will be decided based on the following complex algorithmic calculation.

1. Is Batman not merely a major character but an absolutely central one?; and
2. Would reviewing this movie require me to spend time looking at Ezra Miller’s stupid fucking fish face?

After running the program, yeah, I’m not reviewing Justice League, Suicide Squad or The Flash. If you are unhappy with this, please write to your local congressperson.

Oh, and before we get into the review proper I should clarify that, in the interest of giving the movie as fair a shake as possible I watched the 3 hour “Ultimate Edition” which was Snyder’s preferred cut and not the 150 minute theatrical release. I would also like to thank Spouse of Mouse for agreeing to watch all three hours with me which she did with her customary grace.

One of my favourite movies of all time is (I’m sure I’ve mentioned) the 2011 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring Gary Oldman. I have it on DVD and one night, my wife and I decided to watch the scenes that were cut from the film.

One of these scenes is a wordless, five minute sequence where Gary Oldman’s George Smiley cooks some fried eggs and then proceeds to eat them while listening to rock music on the radio. I watched this scene from beginning to end, assuming that there would be some payoff. There is not. Smiley finishes his eggs, washes the dishes in the sink and then leaves.

For a long time, that was the single most pointless movie scene I had ever watched until I saw Dawn of Justice’s re-telling of the murder of Batman’s parents.

It’s all here. Movie theatre. Pearls. Gunman. Moustache. The only thing that’s missing is a reason.

This movie came out on 2016. We saw the Waynes get murdered in Batman Begins eleven years prior. We saw it in Batman before that with a re-up in Batman Forever. We KNOW this. Everyone knows this.

And what’s so frustrating is that this problem was an opportunity to fix another problem with this movie, if not the worst then certainly the most mocked. The whole “Martha” thing…

And yeah, obviously the execution was fucking terrible. But the basic idea is actually sound. You have a Batman who’s lost touch with his humanity and is brought back from the brink by his love for his mother. There’s the raw materials of a genuinely effective character journey there. You just have to put in the legwork. Batman Begins retold the night in Crime Alley with a heavy emphasis on Bruce’s relationship with his father. Okay, great. But what about his mother? This movie could have set itself apart by fleshing out Bruce’s relationship with Martha Wayne and also made the climax much more impactful. I’m sure you could have found something to cut to make room in this bloated whale carcass of a script. Anyway.

We flashforward to Bruce Wayne arriving in Metropolis to visit one of his companies during the events of Man of Steel and Superman’s final battle with Zod. Now, if I’m honest, this scene is probably my favourite in the whole movie for a few reasons. For one, it shows a level of self-awareness on the behalf of the film-makers that honestly I would not have been willing to assume.

Let’s take a moment to recall the ending of Man of Steel. Now, after that opening paragraph above, this is probably going to surprise you but: I don’t actually hate that Superman kills Zod at the end of Man of Steel.

It was a clear choice between killing Zod and letting innocent people die. He was shown to be deeply troubled by having to take a life. I can live with it. And, believe it or not, it’s actually accurate to the comics.

And, while we’re sitting around, reminiscing about killings of Zod past, Christopher Reeves straight up murdered a powerless Zod and it was treated like a fucking gag:

Weirdly, I’m more strict on Batman not killing than Superman. Batman needs the no-kill rule because he’s the hero that actively goes out looking for criminals to fight. If murder is ever allowed to be part of how he does business then that’s…really fucking problematic. If Superman decides to kill someone, though?

I trust Superman. If Superman killed a person, that was a bad person and they’re definitely in hell. So it’s okay.

One thing I can’t overlook is just how cavalier Superman is about the fucking devastation his battle with the other Kryptonians causes. Dawn of Justice, actually to its credit, shows that battle from a human level perspective and shows that, yes, that was fucking terrifying. Bruce Wayne races to his skyscraper but is too late. The building is destroyed and most of his employees are dead or horribly injured.

This whole sequence is probably the strongest in the film. The action is genuinely thrilling, the special effects are stronger here and (the tastefulness of using very, very blatant 9/11 imagery notwithstanding) it does what it sets out to do. Why does Bruce Wayne in this continuity hate and fear Superman? Because this happened. In a movie where character motivation almost always seems like an arbitrary afterthought, this works.

We cut to the nation of Nairomi in Africa where Lois Lane meets her photographer Jimmy Olsen as they prepare to interview a warlord named Amajagh.

I remember when Amy Adams was cast as Lois Lane and my reaction was: Perfect. That is perfect casting. Adams has exactly the mix of glamour, comedic chops and sheer force of personality to be one of the all time great Lois Lanes. And, lest we forget, there have been some fantastic Lois Lanes over the years. Yes, Amy Adams as Lois Lane. I approve.

I do not know what the fuck happened here. Obviously the writing and direction fundamentally misunderstand the appeal of the character because it does that to pretty much every other character in this thing with very few exceptions. But, other actors in this thing manage to rise above that and I have to lay some of the blame on Amy Adams here. She’s been given a chance to play one of the most iconic female characters in American fiction. Even if it’s a bad movie, that still warrants some effort, right? Just because you’re in a crummy community theatre production of Hamlet doesn’t mean that you haven’t still been given a chance to play Shakespeare. A little enthusiasm wouldn’t kill ya.

But yeah, this Lois Lane, who was already one of the worst elements of Man of Steel, torpedoes any hope of redeeming this take on the character. Look at this dialogue:

OLSEN: Miss Lane? Jimmy Olsen, photographer. Obviously.

LANE: Where’s Heron?

OLSEN: Trouble at the border. So how’d you land this, this is pioneer stuff, Amajagh never gives interviews.

LANE: You know what Heron always says when we’re on assignment together? Not a goddamn thing. I like Heron.

So to recap, she’s greeted by a new co-worker that she hasn’t met before. He politely makes conversation relevant to the job they’re about to do and she basically tells him to shut the fuck up.

That’s not how you introduce a tough, no-nonsense reporter who doesn’t suffer fools. That’s how you introduce a rom-com villain. That’s how you tell the audience that we shouldn’t feel bad when this character gets her wedding ruined and her man stolen by Julia Roberts.

The two are brought before Amajagh and we meet one of his entourage, a mercenary named Knyazev who I just realised writing this review is supposed to be the fucking KGBeast but here is just a completely generic Russian heavy.

While searching them, Knyazev discovers a tracking device in Jimmy Olsen’s camera because it turns out that loveable news-hound and Superman’s best pal Jimmy Olsen is working for the CIA.

Olsen is killed and Superman flies in to rescue Lois who is taken hostage by Amajagh. And then Superman just straight up kills him.

Now Zack Snyder has actually said that, no he doesn’t, to which I say:

Bull and shit.

He would not survive that. And if he did…where the hell is he? We never see him again. Despite there being a fucking congressional hearing on Superman’s actions in Africa. I kinda feel if Amajagh somehow hadn’t been converted into a fine strawberry jam he would have been asked to testify.

Anyway while this is going on Knyazev starts massacring Amajagh’s men and the local civilian population. This movie also has like seven overlapping conspiracies. Like, we see the CIA riding in after Jimmy is killed and it’s implied that Knyazev was working with them because he’s working for Luthor who’s in bed with the feds and…I dunno, it’s a mess. It’s apparently even more incomprehensible in the theatrical cut which I can’t even parse how that would be possible.

Meanwhile in Gotham we get a scene of two cops investigating a sex trafficking ring. We learn that Batman has adopted the tactic of branding criminals. Oh wait, that sounds familiar. Yeah, yeah, Batman did do that in the comics.

Anyway, we also learn that criminals branded this way are basically On Sight in Gotham’s prisons which…how does that make sense? Shouldn’t having visual proof that you survived a run in with the Bat entitle you to an extra carton of cigarettes and all the blow jobs you want? This movie is witless.

Back in Metropolis, Lois Lane has literally just arrived home. So here’s a good time to talk about how this movie’s internal chronology is poopoo garbage. Now, we don’t know exactly how much time has passed between Superman rescuing Lois but we can assume it’s been real recent because she still has bloodstains on her clothes from Jimmy’s killing. Unless she was keeping that for sentimental reasons I think we can assume it’s been a few days max.

So here’s the problem. Knyazev carried out a massacre. Framed Superman for it. Bribed and threatened a local woman named Kahina to say that Superman carried out the massacre. Word reaches the United States and a senate hearing is convened to investigate the matter, with Kahina being flown to America to testify in person.

And ALL THIS happens before Lois Lane’s plane has even touched down. In THIS era of partisan gridlock? I think not.

Lois finds a bullet lodged in her notebook and decides that it’s a special bullet that requires further investigation. She has a bath and Clark arrives home and she tells him that the Senate has convened the fastest hearing in legislative history and he says he doesn’t care about that and then they have sex in the bath and I’m left wondering how this can simultaneously be the most sexual Lois and Clark while still being the least sexy. Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher having coffee in the Daily Planet cafeteria crackled with a thousand times more sexual energy than these two fucking in a bath. And yeah, sexual chemistry between actors is lightning in a bottle and you either got it or ya don’t. But even if Adams and Cavill were burning with mad lust for each other there’s another big problem.

So one of the things I hear trotted out in defence of Snyder’s movies is that you have to remember that he’s working in a visual medium and he is an absolute master of images. Sure, the acting and the dialogue may be ropey but give him his props, every frame is a goddamned painting. And you know what? That is fair..

…for just about every film in his filmography except this one because Dawn of Justice is so ugly it makes me feel sorry for it. This is just the most miserably drab, cheap, cold, washed out looking three hours of film I can remember seeing. I felt depressed after I watched this. It’s a movie about superpowered circus acrobats having a fight before they team up to beat a mad scientist and it has the colour palette of a Holocaust drama.

Oh, speaking of mad scientists. We now meet…probably my least favourite element of this whole thing. Jesse Eisenberg is…

I can do this.

Jesse Eisenberg is Le…

No. Goddamnit I refuse to even type the words because he is NOT Lex Luthor. There have been great Lex Luthors. There have been so-so Lex Luthors. There have been outright bad Lex Luthors. But there has never been a Lex Luthor who I simply refused to accept that they were Lex Luthor. I kept waiting for them to reveal that this was actually an updated version of Lenny Luthor, Lex’s idiot nephew from Superman IV and then Bryan Cranston or someone would walk in with a bald head and a cigar. But no. This is actually what they’re serving us, the swine.

God, so much to hate. The basic concept is just so, well, basic.

Let’s make him a silicon valley tech bro and get the guy who played Zuckerberg to play him. Genius.

The comic business they give him is fucking obnoxious. His motivation for killing Superman is garbled nonsense. He hates Superman because he hated his father and he thought of his father as a god and so he hates God and he thinks Superman is God…like, what?! And worst of all, worst of all, that little simper he does. It hurts me. It actually causes me physical pain. I have never so dreaded a character’s scenes in a movie. At one point, I had to stop the movie and watch the scene from JLU of Lex Luthor beating up the Question just to numb the pain.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sI0vtqxoG1k%3Fsi%3D_c3WjmRXnZBHWf-7

THAT’s fucking Lex Luthor right there. “Do you understand how much power I’d have to give up to be president?” is like the entire character summed up in a single line of dialogue.

So, Lex has been hired by the US government to create a contingency plan against Superman in case he goes rogue. In return he gets access to the crashed Kryptonian spaceship and Zod’s body so Michael Shannon can cash a pay check for lying on his ass pretending to be dead (nice work if you can get it).

Meanwhile, Superman is watching Kahina giving a press interview where she tearfully denounces Superman for the massacre he supposedly committed in Nairomi. So, this scene raises a couple of questions for me. Clark is watching the TV and sombrely listening to her words with a look on his face as if to say “her words are wise, and even I, the Superman, most listen.”

But eh…he didn’t actually do anything. We know that and he knows that. I mean, okay fine, he probably pulped Amajagh but massacring all those civilians is something that he absolutely knows he didn’t do and that this woman is lying about him doing. So…why the look of contrition? If I was him I’d be all:

Also…as we’ll later find out, Kahina is a plant. Knyazev threatened her family so that she’d testify against Superman. And here she is doing a press tour and giving tearful, heart-tugging speeches with the conviction of a professional actor. My issue is…she seems to be really going above and beyond for someone who’s supposedly not in this situation of her own free will.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent visits Gotham and becomes concerned that a large man in a bat costume is carving his logo into the local underclass. But his editor, Perry White (played by Laurence Fishburne in a performance so charismatic it almost overrides the fact that the character is written as a bitter, cynical, hateful fuck of a man) tells him to forget it because “the American conscience died with Robert, Martin and John”. Instead, Clark gets assigned to a benefit at Lex Luthor’s mansion while Lois flies to Washington DC to track down the source of that special bullet.

Also, this might be my most nit-picky criticism but in this movie Clark calls Lois “Lo” and that is incorrect. That is wrong.

“Lois” or “Miss Lane.” Those are your options.

My, I haven’t really been talking about Batman much at all, have I? Well don’t you worry, he’s doing stuff. Bruce has been investigating Knyazev who he suspects has connections to Luthor and so he’s also going to the benefit. And so, we get our first meeting between Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent. They snipe at each other because Bruce doesn’t like the Daily Planet’s positive coverage of Superman and Clark doesn’t like Gotham’s way of doing things and this is…okay, it’s fine. I guess. I think the Superman/Batman relationship should be initially a little antagonistic at the start. But that should be the first step towards a friendship that ends up closer than brotherhood and they never got there in the DCEU. And I don’t know if they were even interested in the journey. We also meet Diana, a mysterious woman who notices Bruce trying to steal Luthor’s data and steals it from him before he gets a chance. Actually, there is a little bit here that I find intentionally funny. Luthor is giving a speech and recounts the story of Zeus and Prometheus and it cuts to Diana just looking irritated as if he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. It’s a nice, subtle little hint as to who she actually is and it’s well performed and…I like it. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. It’s a thing in this movie that I liked and that’s notable.

Anyway, Clark goes into the kitchen where a load of kitchen workers are just standing around watching the news of a fire in Mexico on a TV. This movie does this like five times, I swear to God. Someone enters a room and everyone is watching the news on TV like a bunch of cavemen. No one has smartphones in this world, apparently.

Anyway we cut to a scene of Superman rescuing a child from the fire while a mob of Latinos stare at him reverential awe and touch his cloak like it’s frickin’ Mark 5:21.

Actually, let’s talk about the “Superman as Jesus” thing, which, while being a lot less prevalent in this movie than it was in Man of Steel is still definitely there, as evinced by the above scene where lo, the multitude layeth their hands upon his vestments. Now, plenty of people take issue with Superman=Christ allegories because Siegel and Schuster were both Jewish. But, honestly that argument is weak to me.

One, it assumes that Jewish creators cannot and do not make use of Christian themes and imagery in artistic works which is obviously false. Stephen Spielberg made E.T., Leonard Cohen wrote Suzanne. Secondly, yes, Siegel and Schuster created Superman, but that wasn’t the Superman we know today. The Siegel and Schuster Superman was very, very different from what most people think of.

Superman is a collaborative creation over almost a century with input from hundreds of different creators of many diverse backgrounds. And lastly…guys, come on.

An all loving hero who’s sent down to Earth from his father in heaven to inspire us to be better through miraculous actions and who died and then came back to life?

If I have a problem with the Jesus allegory it’s not that it’s inappropriate it’s that it’s too fucking obvious!

And what really rubs me the wrong way is that the Snyder movies simultaneously make, by far, the most obvious Christological parallels while simultaneously giving us the least Christ-like Superman outside of the Injustice series. I never get the sense that this Clark views helping people as anything other than an onerous burden. He seems miserable and cold and cut off from the world he’s supposed to love and want to save. This guy isn’t Jesus. Jesus had charisma.

Speaking of Jesus Christ, that’s exactly what I said when I realised that this review is over 5,000 words long and I’m at around a third of the way through the movie. Let’s double time this. There’s a character named Wallace Keefe. He was a Wayne Industries employee whose legs were crushed during Zod’s attack and was left in a wheelchair. He gets arrested for vandalising Superman’s memorial, which gets called a “hate crime” by the news and gets run as the front page story of the Daily Planet and print media is dying? Jeez, I wonder why with such razor sharp instincts for a good story.

Anyway, Keefe gets bailed out and given a brand new wheelchair by Luthor in exchange for approaching June Finch, the senator who’s running the hearings on Superman, and offering to testify. She comes into her office and he’s there and, choking back the tears he says: “He made me half a man. My wife walked out on me. I can’t even piss standing up.”

Is anyone else maybe detecting a slight mismatch between tone and subject matter here?

Is a Superman movie that doesn’t make me want to jump off a bridge too much to ask?

Meanwhile, Bruce tracks down Diana and recovers the data that she stole from him that he stole from Lex. As he’s decrypting it, he goes to sleep and has a dream of himself wandering the wastes of a post-apocalyptic Earth ruled by an evil Superman.

And look, I can be fair. The image of a trench-coated Batman stalking through the desert like Mad Max is genuinely fucking badass.

I could even forgive the fact that he’s carrying a gun if that was a visual signifier of how bad this future has gotten rather than just SOP for this Batman. This whole sequence honestly is just visually stronger than the rest of the movie, some dodgy CGI notwithstanding. Oh, and I do appreciate that because this Batsuit is actually fabric and not rubber or plastic, we finally have a Batman who can move like Batman.

Anyway, Batman meets some mercenaries who’ve promised to give him some Krytponite but instead they betray him and massacre his troops and Affleck gives a “Nooooooo!” that sounds so like Pete Holmes’ Batman I almost died.

He then gets captured by some Parademons and brought before Superman who says “she was my world, and you took her from me” and then kills him.

Bruce then wakes up and a figure suddenly emerges from a glowing white portal and tells Bruce that Lois lane is the key, he’s right about Superman, he should fear him and then peaces out.

And then Bruce wakes up for real.

So what the fuck?

Firstly, I know that’s supposed to be the Flash because I’ve read the comics this is referencing but damn, you couldn’t even make him look slightly like the Flash? Why is he wearing armour?

Secondly, the whole Knightmare sequence is kinda fatal to this movie. On the one hand, I was actually genuinely interested in the world that was shown here. This is kinda the best version of “Zack Snyder Batman movie” you could hope for. Grim and majestic and visually moody. But it’s also almost entirely designed to set up a future movie that in the end either entirely ignored the elements introduced here or only used them in a heavily, heavily compromised way. So it’s simultaneously better than almost anything else in the movie, while being a massive chunk of screen-time that’s entirely superflous to it. We don’t need this scene to establish why Bruce doesn’t like or trust Superman, that has already been satisfactorily explained. This movie actually does do a good job of explaining why people hate each other. Hell, I hate most of them too. It’s a World of Assholes of a kind seldom seen outside of the oeuvre of Michael Bay.

Also…okay follow me here. I haven’t seen a lot of the DCEU honestly so feel free to correct me in the comments, but I’m pretty sure the implication is that Bruce had a vision of a real future and not just a random dream because, well, otherwise what would be the point of showing that? And in a deleted scene in Justice League we see the Flash going back in time to warn Batman.

So, we can assume that Bruce did actually see Barry Allen appear in the Batcave. I mean, unless Barry’s power is to travel back in time into people’s dreams which *checks the last 84 years of Flash comics* it isn’t, he was actually, physically there and Bruce was awake when he saw him.

So why does it then cut to Bruce waking up after Barry vanishes? The only logical explanation is that Bruce Wayne received a terrifying warning of doom from the future and then proceeded to have a little nap.

Anyway, Bruce reveals to Alfred that the information that he’s looking for from Luthor is the location of a big chunk of Kryptonite that he intends to steal. And Alfred’s all “to save Superman, right?” and Bruce is all “no, I’m going to straight up murder that fool” and Alfred’s all “what happened to you man, you used to be cool?”

Okay, what happens next is just fucking disgusting, frankly. Batman goes to the docks where Luthor’s men are unloading the kryptonite from his ship. Now, let’s just step back and take stock of what’s happening here. These guys are not bringing in drugs or guns. This is a space rock. It’s probably not covered by any laws. They’re not doing anything illegal here. Batman wants the rock that Luthor has legally acquired and which his employees are unloading. And to get this rock, he fucking commits mass murder. He massacres these guys. And, not that it would make it okay otherwise, but THEY DIDN’T DO ANYTHING FUCKING WRONG.

THEY WERE JUST DOING THEIR GODDAMNED JOBS.

And he did this. So he could murder. Superman.

I know I’ve spent a lot of words (a LOT, I think this may actually be my longest review in the twelve years I’ve done this blog) on how this movie gets Superman wrong but rest assured, it is NOTHING compared to how dirty this film does Batman.

Superman, who’s been following the story of a prisoner who was branded by Batman and ended up getting shivved in prison, arrives and plants himself in the middle of the Batmobile’s path and tells Batman to pack in all this foolishness. Batman replies “do you bleed?” and Superman doesn’t really know what to say to that and flies off because…yeah.

Superman visits his mother in Kansas to ask for her advice. And this is what she tells him:

Be their hero, Clark. Be their angel, be their monument, be anything they need you to be… or be none of it. You don’t owe this world a thing. You never did.

This is it, right here. This is the gaping void at the heart of Snyder’s conception of Superman. This is what is missing. It’s not how he sees Clark. It’s how he sees the Kents. And I can’t really explain it any better than Daniel Warren Johnson did.

Superman is not Superman because he’s faster than a speeding bullet or more powerful than a locomotive.

His superpower is that he was raised by two people who loved him with all their hearts and brought their boy up right.

And I’m not saying that the Kents depicted in Man of Steel or Dawn of Justice don’t love Clark.

But they don’t love the world. They’re bitter, suspicious people. When a young Clark asks his father if he should have let a schoolbus full of children die the answer is not “maybe”. The answer is “of course not, and I am so proud of you for doing what you did”.

This is what I was talking about at the beginning about why this character matters.

And the people making this movie just did not understand that.

And that doesn’t make me angry.

It makes me sad.

Anyway.

Luthor has used Zod’s fingerprints to gain access to his ship. The ship’s computer then asks him if he wants to assume command and he says “yes please”.

This is absolutely hilarious to me, not just because the super advanced Kryptonians are still using fingerprints for security but also because the Krytonians in this universe were insanely xenophobic but apparently didn’t mind random aliens just wandering into their ships and taking over as long as the crew were dead. I just keep imaging the ship crashing in a forest and a chipmunk being given total control of the most powerful tech in the universe. This is another of those “two problems that are the solution to each other” situations right here. You show Lex Luthor actually having to use a genius level intellect to outsmart and and override a hostile alien AI rather than just having the welcome mat rolled out for him. I know he used the fingerprint business but as already stated that’s dumb as fuck and also the alien computer clearly knows he’s just some random human because it talks to him in English and refers to him by name. By making Luthor actually have to outthink the AI you make him look like less of a goober and also make the scene less absurd.

Superman shows up to the Senate hearing where Wallace Keefe is going to be testifying. Senator Finch has actually come around on Superman after Kahina confessed to her that she was lying before and shut down Luthor’s offer to make an anti-Superman weapon. So Luthor detonates Keefe’s chair, killing everyone in the room except Superman who looks quite sad about it.

In the Batcave, Bruce is training by lifting weights and pulling tires in preparation for a fist fight with a man who can move tectonic plates with his pinky finger. Sure dude, couple more bicep curls will close the gap. Also, Alfred is helping him forge a spear out of Kryptonite despite being totally against his master’s plan to murder Superman.

In his down time, Bruce takes a moment to look through Luthor’s files and finds what Diana was looking for…a photograph of herself in Beligum in 1918. And I’m not gonna lie, I fucking love this.

It looks so authentically 1910’s right down to the overly serious faces because smiling for photos didn’t become customary until around the 1920s. The Wonder Woman costume is FANTASTIC. And it’s this scene where we first hear Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL’s Wonder Woman theme, for my money the greatest and most iconic piece of music to come out of the DCEU. Love this scene, no notes.

Back at the ship, Luther is doing some forbidden jiggery-pokery with Zod’s body and his own DNA (I just checked to make sure that sentence doesn’t sound dirty and it doesn’t so we’re all good).

The computer tells him that what he’s doing (whatever it is and why ever he’s doing it and however he knows how to do it the way he’s doing it) is FORBIDDEN. And Luther says “do it anyway” and the computer says “okay” because the chipmunk is in command and it wants nuts. I kinda wonder if this computer was passed over for a promotion because it wasn’t following orders and now this is all malicious compliance.

Another baffling scene happens where Lois is watching the news (see?! see?! this movie uses TV news for exposition so much it’s starting to feel like product placement for CNN) and she learns that investigators have found a shit ton of bomb-making equipment in Keefe’s apartment. But, as we’ll later learn, Keefe had no idea he was carrying a bomb because his fridge was full of newly bought groceries. So all this bomb-making equipment had to be planted by Luthor to make it look like Keefe was a bomber but WHY do that if this was all supposed to make Superman look bad? The investigators also apparently are investigating whether Superman was complicit in the bombing which…WHAT? WHAT?!

WHY WOULD KEEFE WORK WITH SUPERMAN TO BOMB THE SENATE IF HE HATES SUPERMAN SO MUCH?

WHY WOULD SUPERMAN NEED A BOMB? HE’S SUPERMAN! HE IS A FUCKING BOMB!!!

GOD DAMN THIS MOVIE IS SO FUCKING DUMB.

Okay, let’s just skip ahead. Luthor has Martha kidnapped so Clark has no choice but to fight Batman. He tries to reason with him and tell him what’s really going on (which, honestly, if Bruce wasn’t blinded with hate would probably end the whole schmear in five seconds and Lex probably should have thought of that) but Bruce is having none of it and they fight.

And so here it is. After 400 million dollars spent. And two hours into the runtime. They finally fight.

And it’s dogshit.

It fails as a fight scene. It fails as a climax. It fails as storytelling.

I already expressed my thought on this in (of all things) my Logan review so here it is again:

What gives [Frank Miller’s the Dark Knight Returns] its power is the incredible weight of the history of these characters and an overwhelming, almost crushing sense of despair. This, Miller, seems to be saying, is how your heroes will always end; either bitter fanatics who were unable to change, or corrupted, toothless stooges who sold out to a corrupt status quo. This is how the World’s Finest Team ends, two old men beating each other to death in an alley way. And it’s depressing, and it’s cruel but it also feels true. And the inescapable knowledge that all those decades upon decades of stories and triumphs and battles of these, THE two greatest superheroes, that it was all leading to this awful, final confrontation? That’s when the story stops being merely tragic and becomes proper, classical, Tragedy. It’s Twilight of the Gods. It’s Ragnarok. It’s epic as fuck.

And that’s why Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice is fucking terrible.  I will never, for the life of me, understand why no one twigged that a fight between Batman and Superman means nothing if they don’t even know each other. That’s what gave the final confrontation in DKR its power. The weight of history. The tragedy of watching two men who once loved each other as brothers reduced to this brutal slugfest. All that goes out the window if they’ve just fucking met.

It fails, honestly, on a basic visual level as well. Batman keeps dousing Superman with this neon green kryptonite gas and it looks cheap as fuck.

Batman kicks Superman’s ass like he always does because that’s what we all want to see, apparently, and just as he’s about to kill him he learns that he and Clark’s mothers have the same very common name.

Batman goes to rescue Martha and Superman goes to confront Luthor who’s using the ship to siphon power out of Metropolis because he’s turning Zod’s body into Doomsday because sure, why not? Why not?

Batman rescues Martha after murdering more people than the fucking hantavirus and then he races to help Superman fight Doomsday. They’re joined by Diana who saw the fight on TV (how else) and changed into her Wonder Woman duds to help. This fight scene is…better than the Batman versus Superman brawl. The action is more grandiose and kinetic and there are some moments that actually had me feeling something like excitement in my jaded husk of a soul. Doomsday looks like ass, however.

Anyway, some characters have one purpose. When Bane showed up in Dark Knight Rises, he was always going to break Batman’s back. And there’s no point having Doomsday in a movie if he’s not going to kill Superman.

Superman dies defeating Doomsday.

Batman, touched by the sacrifice of that guy he hated until like the last thirty minutes of his life, decides to form some kind of league of justice with Wonder Woman and the movie ends with the soil on Superman’s coffin rising up, indicating that he might simply be pining for the fjords.

FUCK.

ME.

***

The Dark Knight Detective

Ben Affleck, simply as an actor to fill the Batsuit is fine. Not great. Not outstanding. Not anywhere near one of my favourite Batmen but I can see a universe where he could be. But fuck what these writers did.

He may not go around saying that he’s the “goddamned Batman” but this is still pretty much Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman in live action. If you don’t know, that is NOT a compliment.

The Boy Wonder

Dark Knight Rises, I apologise. You may have only had a weird pseudo Robin that you only copped to in the very final moments of the film, but at least you didn’t kill the poor bastard off screen.

Oh, you know what’s even worse? Snyder confirmed this wasn’t Jason Todd. It was DICK GRAYSON. Just in case you were holding out hope that there was still a Robin out there alive in this crapsack continuity.

His Faithful Manservant

Jeremy Irons’ Alfred is one of the best elements in the film. A lot of his dialogue is taken verbatim from The Dark Knight Returns and, whatever else you can say about Frank Miller, he never wrote a bad Alfred. I definitely think that more could have been done with Irons’ Alfred but it’s not close to the trainwreck that most of the characters are in this.

The Last Son of Krypton

I’ve seen Henry Cavill give wonderful, charismatic performances in other projects and I think he has a great Superman in him. But you would not know it from this. This is, without question, the worst live action Kal-El.

The Spirit of Truth

How the fuck did this happen? Gal Gadot is…I’m sorry, she’s not a great actor. And here she is being directed by Zack Snyder in one of the worst scripts of any major Hollywood film released in the last fifteen years. And somehow, some fucking how, Gadot’s Wonder Woman is not only the best thing in the movie but actively good in her own right.

Our Nefarious Villains

Fucking heinous. One of the most aggressively obnoxious performances by an actor I can remember seeing. In a just world SAG-AFTRA would confiscate his card.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen. True icons of American culture. They will survive this. But they shouldn’t have to.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

Ha ha ha ha! Oh my God, where do I even begin? This dude makes Keaton’s Batman look like Bat-Gandhi.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

One of the most gadget heavy screen Batmen, Batfleck uses armour, smoke bombs, automated turrets and a really cool Bat Plane.

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

You know what, let’s end on a positive note. Lose the guns and you might just have my favourite screen Batmobile. The perfect middle ground between the Tumbler’s bulk and the Burtonverse car’s sleekness and manoeuvrability. Love it.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 04 July 2024.

NEXT TIME: Time for a palette cleanser, I think: