Batman v. Superman review (Ultimate Edition, spoiler-free)

Kennedy, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts II-A and III, in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Parts I and IV, in which Roberts, C. J., and Alito, J., joined, an opinion with respect to Parts II-B and II-C, and an opinion with respect to Part II-D, in which Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Breyer, J., joined as to Parts I and II. Souter, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Roberts, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part, in which Alito, J., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in which Thomas, J., joined, and in which Roberts, C. J., and Alito, J., joined as to Part III.

Obviously it's not as good as Civil War. I mean, obviously.

(I should immediately point out that there are two versions of this film: the theatrical version and the "Ultimate Edition." Having heard that the Ultimate Edition was much better, I watched that one. I have never seen the theatrical version and cannot offer a comparison between them.)

Zack Snyder was an insane choice to head up the DC Cinematic Universe. The man's best films are Sucker Punch, or: Live Action Anime in an Insane Asylum with Fanservice and a Rocking Soundtrack, and Watchmen, or: A Team of Really Dysfunctional Vigilantes and a CGI Penis, with a Rocking Soundtrack. If you told me that Snyder and David Ayer were splitting up the first three DCCU films, and one was taking two Superman titles and the third was taking Suicide Squad, a movie about a team of really dysfunctional insane vigilantes with fanservice and a rocking soundtrack, I'd tell you that obviously Snyder was taking Suicide Squad, and I don't even know who David Ayer is.

Having said all that, my biggest complaint about Man of Steel was that you chose Watchmen's director to make your Stalin biopic Superman reboot, and then churn out something fairly bland and commercial. And whatever its faults, Batman v. Superman, 548 U.S. 399 Dawn of Justice is not that.



So there's a multibillionaire playboy superhero who thinks the local star-spangled boy scout needs some oversight. This sounds familiar, but Batfleck's motivations actually make more sense than Iron Man's did. See, Superman caused a lot of collateral damage in the last film, and some of the people who died happened to, you know, work for Bruce Wayne.

There is nothing wrong with Ben Affleck as Batman. In fact, he is one of the film's biggest strengths. After about three minutes of him it is already impossible to imagine Christian Bale or even Michael Keaton in the role. He's a fantastic Batman and if you disagree you probably thought Timothy Dalton was a lousy Bond, so there's no helping you. Affleck is helped by the fact that he gets to do something Batman's never been allowed to do (outside a certain Frank Miller comic that was blatantly the inspiration for this film) and actually be old world-weary. We saw a little bit of that it the last Bat-Bale, but Affleck isn't reduced to limping around and grunting to get the point across.

Zack Snyder as the director was also not an insurmountable problem. Arguably he bit off more than he could chew as far as trusting the audience to take certain things like exposition and worldbuilding for granted so he could get on with his Cinematic Universe, but he remains one of the finest action directors working today, and unlike in Man of Steel he's been reunited with DP Larry Fong, who knows perfectly how to blur the line between live action and the CGI Snyder adores.

No, the true crippling problem at the heart of this film was Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Literally anyone would have done better in the role, although given what Christoph Waltz did to Blofeld, I might not want to press that assertion too hard. No, on second thought, I will push: as utterly awful as Waltz's Blofeld was (and it was an unmitigated disaster), it was still leagues better than Eisenberg's Luthor. As with Melissa McCarthy in Fake Ghostbusters, there is not a scene he is in that justifies his casting, and unlike McCarthy and Fake Ghostbusters, Eisenberg wasn't a driving force in getting this film made, so What. The. Hell.

It's not like getting Lex Luthor's characterization right is hard or anything. Telly Savalas pulled it off back in 1969, and he wasn't even playing Luthor! But, hey, it's the 2010s, so we're simply not allowed to have good action-movie villains.* Cf. The Force Awakens, and pass the barf bag.

*James Spader would have been decent in Ultron if Whedon hadn't Whedonized him, and Robert Redford and Daniel Bruhl were fine in Winter Soldier and Civil War, but they were so far in the background that they almost don't count. Other than that, my statement stands.

As far as giving the film a grade goes, it's kind of subjective. Either it just barely holds together or it collapses under its own weight. Either you like Snyder's visual style or you don't. I honestly felt that, Eisenberg aside, the film was adequate if overburdened. Snyder probably felt he could rush the worldbuilding for the sake of his franchise because we'd seen The Avengers and knew what he was going for. (Snyder does this a lot - this assumption that his audience is up to date on semiotics and film interpretation. Sucker Punch pretty much assumes you've seen Inception, for example.) I don't think Batman's ten-minute nightmare sequence in the middle of the film was a good idea, for example.

Still, it does have Gal Gadot (can we please get the Honorverse films off the ground before she gets too old? Please?) kicking ass in a dangerously short miniskirt. (It also has Amy Adams in a bathtub, and Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck shirtless for the ladies.) That in and of itself almost negates Every G_ddamn Scene Eisenberg Is In.

Almost.