K-SCORE: 37
Director: Zach Snyder
Writer: Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer
Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavil, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Gal Gadot, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Diane Lane
Spoiler Level: Major
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has dream sequences within dream sequences. That’s a bad sign for a film that’s primary subject matter is something other than dreams. I actually wanted to like it for a while because it addresses the hilariously huge amount of collateral damage that occurs at the end of Man of Steel, but then something happens - Jesse Eisenberg appears.
Having two heroes genuinely fight each other would be a different take that could reinvigorate a genre that is so cliche-ridden, so predictable in structure and content and style, that it’s approaching Hallmark romance level. But the writers of this thing ultimately are scared to make bold choices with conflicts between these superheroes and so of course they forget everything and end up allies so they can tackle the latest soulless monster thrust upon the world in the eleventh hour and turn off that giant skybeam that we assume is bad. Even if they hadn’t been pathetic cowards, they would have been screwed. Superman’s dumb. He wins every fight because he no weaknesses except kryptonite, so you can have him battle Batman, in which case he’ll win for sure, unless Batman has kryptonite, in which he’s just a man fighting Batman. You don’t want to be a man fighting Batman. He’s Batman. The film bounces between kryptonite and no kryptonite for a while and then settles sort of on kryptonite but more on damsels nearly drowning or getting burnt.
Jesse Eisenberg steals the show though. And by that I mean he steals any potential quality right away from any of the other creators with a Lex Luthor performance that is challenging Eddie Redmayne’s Jupiter Ascending villain for weirdest and most distracting in the history of filmmaking. Every line of exposition is delivered like an emotional monologue; every intimidating threat is delivered like a throw-away joke; everything you need to hear to follow the conflict in the film is whispered, and everything he screams is about drinking or his father or something else irrelevant. The whole film takes fifty miss-turns, but he’s really the embodiment of that. The other actors are okay. Cavil is appropriately muscular and boring as the titular Superman. Affleck isn’t horrible as Batman, but I don’t like that the first time you see him take up cape and cowl, he looks tired and ready to retire with lines like “Criminals are like weeds. You pluck one and another immediately grows in its place.” Dynamite Batman; glad you still stand for something in this, the first film with this specific character take. Jeremy Irons as Alfred jumps right in with a brief and specific performance that’s created as if you’ve already watched a hundred hours of his epic series with Affleck where they battled The Joker and The Riddler and Two Face and all the rest and now have the finely-hewn Batman thing down and just few old-man themes to tie up. Amy Adams is a journalist, who like Laurence Fishburne, is more into getting news than reporting it. This Lois Lane really needs to watch Arrested Development. Never be a part of the story; never be a part of the story.
And Gal Gadot is here, blocking things that should consume her entire body with a buckler the size of her stomach, much like Captain America. At least she’s not sailing with Chris Pine’s dick to 1920s London. I’m quite thankful all we got with her was a cheesy line, “I thought she was with you,” which, if you think about it, really reveals how confused these stories are. I know I watched Wonder Woman and this courtroom drama in the wrong order, but I’m the only one who did it chronologically, so I’m the only one who can appreciate Wonder Woman’s storyline. She thwarted a chemical attack and Ares in World War I and then worked in a desk job for ninety-five years before slicing a kryptonian ogre in the back of the knee with a sword.