Super-angsty super-foes
Apr 2, 2016- Somewhere past the halfway
mark in DC’s new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, you’ll be tempted
to take off those plastic 3D goggles, slump back in your seat, and close
your eyes, if only to give your senses a break from what they’ve been
put through thus far. Indeed, this is a film so overstuffed, so noisy
and so very disjointed--hopping as it does from subplot to subplot with
the coherence of a madman--that it leaves you very little time to digest
who is who and what is what, not to mention why you should care about
any of it at all. Were there even a modicum of wit thrown in there, a
few jokes, perhaps it wouldn’t have been quite so exhausting--but
director Zack Snyder has opted to take a trip down dour lane, where
everything must be invested with Deep Meaning, and where humour doesn’t
exist. Botched is an understatement to describe what Snyder’s done to
the material here; pulverised would be much more accurate.
The film opens where 2013’s Man of Steel (also directed by Snyder) left
off, or rather, in the middle of the climatic battle in that film where
Superman FKA Kal-El (Henry Cavill) is swooping around in the skies,
fighting the forces of his Kryptonian arch-enemy General Zod (Michael
Shannon), and essentially razing down much of the Metropolis skyline in
the process, as you do. And who should we find down on the ground,
getting his boxers in a twist over all the destruction he’s seeing
around him, but ol’ Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), in town to check in on
Wayne Enterprises’ Metropolis office--Gotham is, according to this
iteration, just a stone’s throw away. And it’s about to get worse. As
Kal-El and his alien foes hurtle through the air and crash through
concrete, they eventually happen upon Bruce’s building, and it, too, is
reduced to rubble, crushing most of the people inside.
Of course, one could argue that Bruce
himself should really be no stranger to collateral damage, having no
doubt caused a few unintentional civilian deaths and one or two cracks
to public infrastructure while trawling Gotham in his Bat-avatar
fighting evil. But he clearly feels he has the higher moral ground here
(that, or he’s a distinctly Hulk-ish shade of envy), and decides that
Superman is far too powerful and dangerous, and must be stopped. As he
goes about bulking up and devising weapons to that end--as well as
brutally roughing up random criminals, presumably to loosen up the rusty
muscles--the real Clark Kent is behind his desk at the Daily Planet,
and let’s just say, he’s not too impressed with Batman’s recent-most
spree of vigilantism either. The stage thus set, albeit rather murkily,
for confrontation, all we need is a little push from a megalomaniac with
vague motivations, in the form of billionaires scientist Lex Luthor
(Jesse Eisenberg), to trigger the titular clash.
It’s pretty exciting stuff in theory, this sort of meeting of iconic
characters whom we’ve watched go about their individual businesses for
so many years. And this film is just the beginning, apparently; an
ensemble Justice League feature is to follow in 2017, none-too-subtle
teasers for which are plugged here. But there’s a sense that DC and
Warner Bros might have jumped the gun somewhat, no doubt in a rush to
compete with Marvel’s success with such crossovers with the Avengers.
However, though it might be naïve to expect a standalone film in the
genre anymore--properties are increasingly being tied together in
ambitious, cross-promotional “world-building” efforts--even in the
capacity of connective tissue, Batman v Superman just doesn’t make the
cut.
I won’t deny there’s potential in the
premise, ie the idea of holding these super-forms accountable for the
vast wreckage they leave behind every time there’s another battle royale
to save the world, to see these events from the perspective of the
people on the streets. It’s sort of a look inward at the genre itself,
the over-the-top violence it often peddles: How many civilians is it
okay to kill in the service of wiping out a wider terrorist threat?
Should heroes act “unilaterally” or should they be governed? These are
interesting moral questions, but Snyder proves incapable of addressing
them in any meaningful way. There’s certainly enough pretentious
pseudo-profundities about gods and men floating around here to fill a
tank, but at its core, the logic behind the animosity between Batman and
Superman--that all-important ‘v’, if you will--just feels too flimsy.
You’re never actually clear on why Bruce is so intent on killing Clark,
or why Clark hates Bruce back with such a passion either; they
frequently give the impression of two petulant narcissists defending
their turfs, little more. The screenplay by Chris Terrio and David Goyer
seems designed, then, to distract us from this absence of purpose by
piling on storyline upon storyline and switching between these every few
minutes, leading up to a loud, chaotic finale wherein a key plot point
is so ridiculously engineered that you might actually burst out
laughing.
And Batman v Superman pretty much lays waste to acting talent the way it
does buildings, particularly the second-tier cast, featuring returnees
like Amy Adams, Diane Lane and Lawrence Fishburne, as well as new
recruits like Jeremy Irons and Holly Hunter, most of whom only exist to
serve up snippets of perfunctory exposition. As for the leads, Affleck
takes the prize as the most morose and the least memorable Batman of all
time--he might physically fit the role of an ageing superhero, but he’s
given little to do except brood, tinker with machinery, and rasp out
unintentionally funny fighting talk (“Do you bleed? You will.”) from
under bulky metal headgear. Speaking of unintentionally funny, the
single expression that Cavill maintains for majority of running
time--eyebrows furrowed, lips pursed--had me in stitches every time he
came on screen; the actor is still as stone-faced and bland as he was in
the last film.
But the worst, by far, is Eisenberg, whose unhinged, chattery villain is
so unbearably forced--a performance that reminds uncannily of Shahrukh
Khan--you just want to swat him away. To add to everything else,
treatment of female characters is shabby at best, where they represent
pretty things always needing to be rescued. Yes, yes, Wonder Woman
(played by Gal Gadot) does put in an appearance, but we learn nothing of
importance about her other than that she looks very nice in backless
cocktail dresses, and of course, that gold-embellished costume.
The main problem here is that Snyder has seriously overreached,
seemingly aspiring to both the dark thematic undertones of the Dark
Knight trilogy, and the wanton CGI-borne spectacles of something like
the Transformers, resulting in a bizarre mix that proves neither
thought-provoking, nor moving, nor in any way enjoyable--just a dismal
two-and-a-half-hour long plod. If DC had any smarts, they’d keep Snyder
well away from the next one.
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