--Alfred Pennyworth, Batman v Superman
"That son of a bitch brought the war to us two years ago. Jesus Alfred, count the dead. Thousands of people. What's next? Millions? He has the power to wipe out the entire human race, and if we believe there is a one percent chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty."
--Bruce Wayne, Batman v Superman
One of the most controversial films of its decade, Batman v Superman was released in early 2016 and has recently passed its four year anniversary. For all of its promise, Batman v Superman suffers from the same key problem as the eighth season of Game of Thrones: it rushes ideas that truly do have merit because the creators did not want to tell the story over a more prolonged period of time. Putting the death of Superman in the second DCEU film is a horrible storytelling strategy! Now, this does not mean that everything in the film is an utter disaster. Far from it! It does try to address a host of important philosophical topics while referencing all sorts of DC figures like Man-Bat, Joker, and Darkseid. It does have solid action sequences. However, it tries to accomplish too much too soon.
Several performances easily rank among the best components of the film. Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is one of the better parts, as is Ben Affleck's Batman; it is hardly surprising that Wonder Woman's later solo film is the best the DCEU has offered thus far. The different take on Batman here deserved its own prequel to show more of how this "Bat of Gotham" became a figure who deserves condemnation for his own injustices (branding criminals and sometimes torturing them). Some of the supporting characters simply are not realized as well as these two.
Jesse Rosenberg, for example, plays a strange version of Lex. He is awkward, scatter-minded, and fixated on Jolly Ranchers. It is even confirmed that he is the kind of person who mistakes familiarity with history, linguistics, and books for philosophical intelligence. In short, he is weak intellectually and as a character. Martha Kent, Lois Lane, Alfred Pennyworth, and several other side characters fare better, but the film belongs to Batman and Superman first and foremost.
Aside from the performances of Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck, the most competently executed part of the movie is the action. The "Knightmare" scene is spectacular, the titular fight between DC's two most recognizable icons is handled well even if it is brief, and a warehouse fight involving Batman is excellent. However, there is far more filler than action throughout the film. If all of the storytelling was as superb as the majority of the action and effects, Batman v Superman would be a far better movie--yes, the "Ultimate Edition" is supposed to be far better at telling the story, but here I am only analyzing the theatrical cut.
Story
A year and a half after Superman saves Metropolis from Zod, Lex Luther seeks to create a "silver bullet" to allegedly stop further Kryptonian attacks, and Bruce Wayne, who witnessed the destruction of Metropolis, has descended into his own kind of villainy. Both men fear or despise Superman because of the possibility that he could use his powers to threaten all of humankind (of course, both are using obvious slippery slope fallacies). Lex Luthor soon conjures up a plan to force Batman and Superman into a fight to the death, as both figures are obstacles to his goals.
Intellectual Content
Director Zack Snyder crammed a wide array of philosophical ideas or references into Batman v Superman, but they are often most evident in the characterization of major presences in the film, like Batman and Lex Luthor. For instance, Batman implements a moral framework that favors preemptive, preventative killing instead of waiting until someone has done something to deserve death, which naturally leads him to literally equate a 1% probability of Superman destroying humankind with absolute certainty. Most people have thoroughly unsound epistemological ideas, but they can still distinguish between the concepts of minimal evidence and absolute certainty!
Snyder's Batman as he is initially presented simply cannot tell the difference incidental destruction of Metropolis in an effort to save the planet and malevolence. Moreover, this Batman's behaviors reflect the petty assumptions he makes about morality. He tortures criminals in unbiblical ways and even seems to approve of prison violence targeting people he has branded (not that prison is Biblically just even without sexual or nonsexual assaults), allowing his weariness of life in Gotham to reduce him to committing injustices he would otherwise try to thwart.
Lex has his own fallacious beliefs, including the belief that power is always malevolent--which is especially ironic given that his inherited corporation appears to have a great deal of social, political, and research-based power. Just prior to the fight promised in the title, Luthor goes so far as to posit the philosophically invalid claim that a deity cannot be morally good and supremely powerful simultaneously (he uses the phrase "all powerful" without even clarifying if he means the power to do anything at all, which is logically impossible for any being, or immensely powerful). Now, none of these idiotic beliefs on the part of the characters signify artistic incompetence, but the movie is nonetheless full of blatantly fallacious assertions.
Conclusion
For all of its shortcomings, Batman v Superman still gets far more right than Suicide Squad, Justice League, and Aquaman, with Justice League being the only one of those three additional films that suffers more from sheer mediocrity than anything else. Shifting from the darker themes of Batman v Superman to the cheap nonsense of Aquaman has not been a healthy change for the DCEU, even if Wonder Woman, Shazam!, and Birds of Prey are much better films than Batman v Superman despite being lighter in tone. The second entry in the DCEU could have nevertheless been a far more focused film.
Content:
1. Violence: The PG-13 rating tones down fight sequences that could have been quite brutal, but there are plenty of serious blows that land on numerous characters.
2. Profanity: There is not much profanity in Batman v Superman, but "goddamn," "bitch," and "shit" are used.
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