Batman v Superman: Review Part One
Oh man, this review, from March 25, 2016. This one hurt to write for so many reasons. I had to break it out into two parts cause I just…couldn’t. Anyway, as always my commentary is in (italics).
Here, watch the trailer, it’s basically all the parts of the movie in 2 1/2 minutes. (so true, this is the reason I stopped watching movie trailers beyond the first one, for the most part)
So last night some friends went and saw the movie with Kaylie and me. As you may know I’m a BIG DC fan and I LOVE Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman…actually a lot of the DC Heroes I really enjoy. I grew up on DC. The only Marvel I read as a kid was Wolverine, and that was just because I saw issue #50 at the grocery store with the die-cut claw marks on the yellow cover and thought it was awesome. (still is an awesome cover and the first comic I ever bought with my own money)
Most of my collectibles to this day are Batman and Superman. I have a ton of shirts, comics, toys, posters, art prints and more of both these characters. Several of Wonder Woman and the Flash as well. I absolutely LOVE DC Comics. (Still true, though I have branched out and scaled back cause oh my god there’s so much)
Key word there, COMICS.
They make amazing (if not confusing at times) comics. For some reason, they also make AMAZING TV Shows.
Arrow is awesome.
Flash is amazing.
Legends of Tomorrow is fun and awesome.
Supergirl is fan-freakin-tastic in all aspects.
Then they make movies.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR BATMAN v SUPERMAN.
Read at your own risk. I will be talking about plot points and shit from the movie.
Oh the movies. I enjoyed Batman Begins. The Dark Knight was amazing. The Dark Knight Rising was…ok. Man of Steel was good, though way to dark. (and the more I think about it the more the plot of Man of Steel upsets me. Pa Kent dying how he does in that movie pisses me off beyond ANYTHING. I know I defended the CRAP out of this movie when I was on the Dynamic Duel podcast, but it still irritates me.) Superman is not a gritty dark character. Which brings us to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Honestly, they should have just called this “Justice League: The Two hour Trailer”
Let’s start with some things I LOVED or at least LIKED about this movie.
Batfleck was bad ass. He did a really good job as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. I saw more raw emotion in this version than I have ever seen. He was a Batman I actually cared about. I could tell this Batman was in it 100% no matter what. He was caught between the cowl and the playboy. He didn’t want to be Bruce Wayne, he wanted to ONLY be Batman because Batman got results.
Gal Gadot‘s Wonder Woman. The only bad thing I can say about Wonder Woman is she should have been in the movie more. Gadot was amazing. As Diana she was sexy and powerful and a true force not to be messed with. As Wonder Woman she was…well in one word AWESOME! She was strong and fearless. A true warrior, everything you would expect Wonder Woman to be. She is, by far, the BEST part of this movie.
The Smirk. There’s this scene in the battle with Doomsday (ugh) where Wonder Woman get’s knocked dawn on her back and she looks up and has this smirk. Holy shit it was fantastic. Then she grabs her sword, get’s back up and back into the fight. Literally the best scene in the movie.
Cavil’s Superman. I love Henry Cavil as Superman. He seems to really care about the character. That being said I really dislike the darker tone they have with him. I didn’t like it in MOS and I don’t like it here. Why can’t we just have a film translation of Tim Daily’s Superman from the Justice League cartoon?
Things I did NOT like
The plot.
I feel like they tried to mash to many stories together into one movie. Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman are two wildly different stories. Dark Knight Returns (while I know I will get shit for this) is not one of my favorites. I am NOT a fan of the super gritty Batman that distrusts and hates Superman. A darker tone for Batman is fine, gritty is fine, but I dislike Frank Millers (writer of The Dark Knight Returns) idea that Superman and Batman are just to different to ever be friends with each other. It’s BECAUSE they are so different, yet the same, that they are the BEST friends. They need each other. They keep each other in check. They trust each other. Superman trust Batman to keep him in check if anything goes wrong. They MAY be setting this up, but I think they went a little over board with it.
I honestly think they rushed this movie. They should have done a solo Batman, a second Superman and THEN this movie as a lead in to Justice League. Or, you know, just don’t make this movie. The action scenes were AWESOME (all 8 minutes of their fight). But ultimately, again, this was just a trailer for Justice League.
The cameos.
I love the idea of Jason Mamoa as Aquaman. But his cameo in this movie was stupid as hell. So was Cyborg and The Flash’s. It literally felt like “oh, we need to throw these three characters in the movie for no other reason than to show they will be in the next one.” Their cameo scene could have been completely cut out. Also, I’ll go on record saying that The Flash’s cameo in Batman’s nightmare was incredibly stupid. He looked stupid and it didn’t make any sense. “Oh John, but it’s going to tie into the Justice League movie!” (It didn’t) Whatever, it was still dumb and useless for this movie. And the costume was freaking dumb. I am NOT a fan of the tech-mech Flash suit. I’m also NOT a fan of how Ezra Miller looks as The Flash. Maybe his performance will blow me away. Visually though, it’s dumb.
This is making me irritated. I’ll have to write more on this later, I need to just post this and think about something else cause I’m getting angry focusing on all the things that didn’t work in this movie.
Man, reading this again makes me irritated all over again! On the plus side I can just watch the trailer if I ever want to see it again.