Andy Naylor comes to the defense of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice…
Spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.
Okay, here’s a sentence that is going to cause some controversy. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is not that bad a film. Whoa, calm down. It really isn’t. I’m not saying it’s a fantastic movie, I’m not saying it’s as good as previous incarnations of Batman or Superman, but it is not a terrible film.
It does have terrible attributes in places, but equally it has some really good stuff in there too. When the fanboys erupted in disgust at the casting of Ben Affleck I simply shrugged my shoulders and thought to myself, “I remember a similar uproar about Heath Ledger” and we all know how that turned out. Affleck is a good Bruce Wayne and an equally good Batman, if you think otherwise there is a word to describe you – wrong. He was definitely the highlight of this movie. He brought a broken, weary and mistrustful element to the character that previous actors didn’t. It very much reminded of the Thomas Wayne incarnation of Batman from The Flashpoint Paradox animated movie. His outlook on life completely warped through 20 years of fighting crime and dealing with the scum of humanity. This mistrust builds into a good and believable reason for him to go after the Man of Steel. As good as Affleck was, he was matched by Jeremy Irons as the faithful Alfred. If anything, there wasn’t enough interaction between the two characters in the movie.
I agree, areas of it weren’t great. The special effects have been mentioned as a real put off, but people watched and like Star Trek Into Darkness. Abram’s managed to hide a pretty dire movie behind some eye-popping special effects (and lense flare) and get away with it, because well everyone loves J.J., Zack Synder can’t get away with special effects? Please, if your issue is with something being special effect heavy then you’re pretty big hypocrite. And probably quite superficial.
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Two things that stood out for me as being truly diabolical about Batman v Superman.
- Jesse Eisenberg. Irritating throughout. Not in a “that character is an evil bastard kind of way”, you know like Joffery, but more of a “what are you doing to this fabulous character you utter, utter turd?” He was just awful. I could use a variety of words similar to awful, but you get it. It’s like he was going for Joker-lite and instead came across as that arrogant kid in school who thinks he knows everything but really doesn’t so we laugh at him when he’s wrong because everyone hates him.
- The score. Any great film has a great sound track. Every single one of your favourite films will have an iconic tune or song to accompany it. I can’t hear The Power of Love without instantly wanting to watch Back to the Future. Or think of Alien, where the score adds to your tension, gets underneath your skin to make you feel even more uncomfortable. You want to hate it but at the same time you’re equally impressed by its effect. All the score for Batman v Superman did for me was jar me out of my concentration and constantly make me grimace when it was combined with Lex Luthor being on-screen.
Despite these negatives, it’s still an okay film. It’s a solid 6 out of 10 film, not whatever the ridiculous low ranking from Rotten Tomatoes is. It’s got about as much plot to it as either of the Avenger films, but because we all love Whedon we overlook the shortcomings in them. Just get over the Synder hate that fills your souls and accept it’s an average superhero film that is getting an unwarranted amount of hate.
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Andy Naylor
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Originally published April 6, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
