I'm delighted that Crudblud has finally resumed the Batshit Odyssey and
reviewed BvS. I largely agree with most of it, and especially how overwhelming it feels to try to appropriately criticize a movie this monumentally, fundamentally wrong-headed and broken. The best thing I can do, I think, is just sort of list all of my issues with this movie one after the other, and not to spend too much time or effort on trying to summarize it all. I've ranted about BvS in this thread many times over the years, but it'll be nice to have all of my points, or near enough, in two posts.
If I had to point to what's the biggest issue in BvS, which is no easy task, I think I'd single out just how hollow the central conflict - the "v" of the title, so to speak - feels, and how little of the movie contributes to that conflict, despite being ostensibly presented as such. Let's start from the beginning. I actually don't think that Bruce's introductory scene on the ground in Metropolis during the flashback to MoS is a bad one. I mean, it wouldn't be the beginning of my ideal capeshit film, and I think it's really tacky how heavily and deliberately Snyder invokes the imagery of 9/11, but there are a lot of things that work here. Bruce running into danger while everyone else is running in the opposite direction is a strong visual, there's a poignancy to Bruce comforting the young child that's surprisingly gentle for Snyder, and Bruce's furious glare at Superman says far more than any dramatic speech or vow of revenge would. If nothing else, the scene is at least clear. It very firmly establishes Bruce's personal animosity towards Superman. There's still over two hours of movie to go before Batman challenges Superman, so you'd expect his opinion of Superman to be expanded upon in that time, right?
But it isn't! It's all just red herrings and pointless diversions, most of which stem from Lex Luthor's ridiculous and overly-complicated master plan. For example, there's Guy With No Legs, as Crudblud dubbed him. He's an employee of Wayne Enterprises who lost his legs during the destruction of Metropolis, and is now a hobo. Bruce tries to do right by him by sending him disability or compensation checks, but they're returned uncashed, with "YOU LET YOUR FAMILY DIE" scrawled on one of them. This is actually Lex's work, though - he's intercepted the checks and sent them back with that message. In the meantime, Lex seizes on Guy's disability and financial straits to groom him into becoming an anti-Superman activist who will testify at the congressional hearing - except Lex puts a bomb in his chair, which explodes and kills everyone. Now, Lex does all this because...because...he's trying to unnerve Bruce (whom he knows is Batman, because reasons)? He tricks Bruce into thinking that his former employee blames him for what happened, has refused his money, and become a suicide bomber. Well, I don't know if Bruce could reasonably be expected to know that it was Guy who blew up the hearing, as only Superman, being the only survivor, could have reported on what happened. But we'll give the movie the benefit of the doubt and say that Bruce has been successfully tricked into thinking Guy rejected his money and blew up a congressional hearing instead. What does this actually change between Bruce and Superman? Bruce already hates Superman and already thinks he's a danger to the world. What was the point of this whole scheme?
A subplot that I find even more frustrating concerns the character of Kahina Ziri. She supposedly witnesses the chaos that Superman causes in the fictional African nation of Nairomi near the beginning of the film, and publicly accuses Superman of killing innocent people and not caring about whom he hurts. I think it's a pretty bold idea and a strong visual to have an African woman call out Superman, with all his power and privilege, and basically challenge him to do better, and the movie is clearly drawing a parallel between Superman and real-world American military intervention. This is what motivates Superman to decide to start looking for out the powerless instead of just responding to major catastrophes, and this ends up with Clark investigating the stories of Batman and the stabbed prisoners. So far, so good...but no, because then it turns out Kahina was lying the whole time. Instead of being a character with agency, she was just another one of Lex's hired pawns, and is murdered after she has a change of heart. Turns out Superman had nothing to worry about and no need to change his priorities or worldview at all! What bullshit! Snyder teases this really provocative and
genuinely deconstructive idea, and then he chickens out on actually following it through!
I just mentioned the prison stabbings, which are also weird. This movie first indicates to us that this is a darker Batman who's been pushed over the line by showing us that he's been branding criminals that he captures with the shape of his bat symbol. This is what gets Superman on the case of Batman, and I do think that having him stand up for the rights of prisoners is a refreshing character beat and a very Superman thing to do. However, the movie textually is less concerned with the cruelty of branding prisoners and more with the fact that branded prisoners are being murdered by other prisoners when they're in jail. In Superman's eyes, Batman isn't just being cruel; he's responsible for these deaths. So now we have a clear ideological conflict between Batman and Superman...except that no, because it turns out that Lex was paying prisoners to murder the branded criminals. See, Superman doesn't really have a big problem with Batman after all, because it was all Lex's fault. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, the movie treats Batman sparing Lex his brand at the end as a turning point for him and a sign that he's moved past his darkness, but why? The brandings were apparently only bad because of the prisoners being stabbed, which only happened because of Lex's machinations.
There are more examples in the movie of how the enmity between Batman and Superman, or the enmity between Superman and the world at large, all come down to Lex's ludicrous and convoluted master plan rather than genuine ideological conflicts between the characters. The only conflict between them that isn't engineered by Lex is the one that's established at the very beginning of the movie - Batman's anger at Superman over the events of MoS. Instead of building on that, Snyder just wastes two hours of screen time on Lex's diversions and manipulations. It's narrative dead air, and it's dogshit storytelling to have both main characters be manipulated by another character this much. Agency is important. There's a world of difference between Batman and Superman fighting because they chose to and them fighting because Lex has manipulated them into fighting. I honestly believe that Snyder doesn't understand this. If asked about it, he would probably say, "What does it matter if Batman and Superman meant to fight or if they were tricked into fighting? What's important is what's on screen. The scene of them fighting would still play out the same way, so it wouldn't make a difference to the audience."
And even setting aside the fundamental problem of Lex's master plan fatally undermining the conflict between Batman and Superman, the fact is that the plan is very silly on its own merits. It's way too complicated, it relies on specific actions being taken by multiple other characters that Lex had no way of accurately predicting, while it also paradoxically has weird blind spots like Lex bizarrely equipping his men with rare, experimental ammunition that can be traced back to him, which Lois inevitably ends up doing. That last detail especially grates on me because it's such an obvious and weak pretext on the part of the screenwriters to get Lois involved with the main plot. They really couldn't come up with anything better than our supposedly ingenious villain conveniently (and for no discernible purpose other than
reasons) using special ammunition that would lead right back to him? The movie would be have been much stronger and more focused without Lex's goofy master plan dictating the plot. If they really wanted Lex in this movie, then they could have kept him in the background as an agitator, someone who's trying to pit the rest of the world against Superman, and that would have been a good tease for him to maybe be the main villain in a later movie.
I'm going to keep talking about Lex! Without even discussing Jesse Eisenberg's performance, this character is terrible as written. Most of his dialogue feels like it's meant to reinforce either how smart or how weird he is. Regarding the intelligence aspect of it, this is not a convincing depiction of a smart person. I know I've shared
this article before, but it really does do a great job of breaking down the superficiality and utter inanity of the intelligence that Lex supposedly displays. There had to have been a better way of showing off how smart Lex was. Like, maybe the movie could have shown him designing the anti-metahuman weapons he was interested in, or perhaps building a power suit for himself. Or maybe they could have shown us how Lex discovered the identities of Batman and Superman - it really grinds my gears how the momentous story detail of Lex Luthor knowing who Batman and Superman are is treated in such a casual way. Even just giving him a few scenes of technobabble would have been more effective than "Let's have him bring up Icarus; only really smart people know the story of Icarus!" As for Lex's weirdness, it doesn't serve any narrative purpose, I can't imagine any actor somehow making his lines not incredibly annoying, and I'm pretty sure that it all came down to just another capeshit movie trying to make its villain more like Heath Ledger's Joker from TDK.
A bit about shared universes now - I get why Snyder didn't want to just copy the MCU and put teasers for upcoming movies at the end of this one. There's nothing wrong with trying to integrate those elements into the movie properly. However, having Wonder Woman just watch three teasers for upcoming movies directly before the climax of this one, with dramatic music blaring as our title characters prepare for their final showdown, is not what I'd call good, organic integration. There must have been so many ways to hint at the existence of Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash without having to just watch these videos back to back in such a clumsy, forced way. Maybe Clark or Lois covered a high school football game that Cyborg played in for the
Daily Planet. Maybe Batman investigated the convenience store robbery when he heard about the involvement of a super-fast metahuman, logically suspecting Superman. Maybe Wonder Woman knows about Atlantis or has encountered its people in the past. And if they really wanted to keep the videos that we saw in the movie, they could at the very least have pushed them to way earlier in the movie, maybe with Lex showing them to Holly Hunter during the scene where he talks about metahumans. Also, implying that Lex is the one who designed these capeshitters' logos is really fucking lame. It makes the whole universe feel so small.
That being said, Wonder Woman watching these teasers right before the climax of the movie isn't nearly as bad as the ridiculous "Knightmare" scene. I really feel like this scene was almost forgotten in the wave of negative criticism that was directed at BvS after its release, and as such has never gotten the shit it truly deserves. Because it really is one of the worst scenes in the movie. For one thing, it's just another teaser for an upcoming movie. This scene goes on for five minutes and bears no relevance to the actual movie it's in, being immediately forgotten and only brought up again in the Snyder cut of JL. And not only is it just a teaser, it's also a really bad teaser. It's - intentionally, I believe - vague and obscure, beginning
in medias res and providing no explanation to the audience of what's going on in this scene or why. I don't think there's anyone in the world, no matter how much of a DC fan they might be, who could have watched this scene for the first time without being baffled. Again, to stress this point, this isn't simply one line of dialogue or a brief exchange, it's a whole five minutes of the movie, nestled right in the middle like a short film. It's insane that Snyder thought it would be a good idea to interrupt his own movie and confuse the audience for five minutes with this fever dream, and it's even more insane that a producer didn't intervene and insist that the scene be cut. Also, I have no doubt that the presentation of Batman as a trigger-happy gunslinger and Superman as a murderous dictator were for the sake of edge and shock value more than anything else.
Speaking of bad scenes, let's discuss the most infamous one of all - "Martha." While it was universally mocked when BvS first came out, this scene does play a key role in the efforts of Snyder fans to argue that BvS is actually a good movie and is simply misunderstood by people who didn't "get it." Their argument goes that of course Batman doesn't
really spare Superman's life simply because his mother has the same name as his. That's just a coincidence that gets Batman's attention, and by extension has him realize exactly what he's doing. He's about to kill a defenseless man in cold blood, a man who means no harm and has objectively done great things for the human race, a man who has someone who loves him enough to dive between him and his would-be killer, a man who loves and cries out for his mother, just as Batman remembers doing himself as a young boy all those years ago when his parents were taken from him. Batman realizes that because of his fear and paranoia, now
he's the man with the gun, and he's the one who's about to permanently separate a loving mother and son. And so he flings his spear away in disgust, etc.
I have no doubt that this was the intended takeaway for audiences in this scene. And as described here, I think it sounds perfectly fine. Poignant, even. Unfortunately, the scene doesn't quite resonate this way on screen, and the main reason why is the "Martha" factor. The movie puts way too much emphasis on this odd maternal coincidence and plays it up as a huge dramatic moment that's enough to throw Batman for a loop and change the whole situation, even if we're meant to understand that it's not in and of itself the reason why Batman spares Superman. That's how movies work, after all - once you frame something as being important using the language of film, then it becomes important to the movie regardless of whether that's consistent with the characters or story. Batman and Superman having mothers with the same is important to this movie because it's framed as being important, and no after-the-fact rationalizations will change how this scene actually plays out. The end result is that the audience is primed by a scene like this to immediately start thinking about geeky capeshit trivia instead of actually being moved by Batman's arc.
I honestly don't think that the "Martha" coincidence should have been brought up at all. Like,
maybe they could have squeezed a reference to it at the end of the scene and put it in place of Batman saying "Martha won't die tonight" to Superman. I think with that line the film is trying to suggest that Batman might actually find some psychological closure for his failure to protect his own mother by saving Superman's mother - which is genuinely a pretty ambitious and interesting idea for Batman. But they didn't really need to invoke the coincidence to communicate that idea, and could have conveyed it just as easily - and a bit more clearly, too - by simply having Batman say something like "I lost my mother when I was a child. I won't let you lose yours," to Superman. Like I said, the coincidence is just geeky capeshit trivia, and bringing it up at all risks overshadowing the poignancy of Batman's arc. I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I honestly suspect that it was Snyder himself who decided that this bit of trivia needed to be "addressed" and worked into the story. It feels like the kind of thing a dumb fanboy like him would insist on including in the movie.