Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice didn’t do well with critics, but was a giant hit with fans. The New Republic called it an “indigestible, posturing, two-and-a-half-hour mope-fest,” while Time Out blasted it, calling it “a $250 million tombstone for a genre in dire need of a break.”
In my written review I gave it an unenthusiastic two out of five star rating, describing it as “essentially a long trailer for the next DC superhero ensemble movie tagged on to a WrestleMania style smack down.” On my regular Canada AM review segment I joked it should have been subtitled Yawn of Justice.
About four seconds after I wrapped my television review the first of many tweets and facebook responses started cluttering up my social media pages. I’d detail them all individually, but most of them were variations on this one from Frank in Nova Scotia: “@RichardCrouse good thing #DawnOfJustice was made for fans and not critics. These are usually the good ones. Can’t wait to see it.”
I hope Frank liked the movie. I suspect he was part of the opening weekend’s overwhelmingly male demographic—66 percent of the audience were male, 63 percent between the ages of 18 and 34—who flocked to the film. Also, his twitter cover page shows Superman shooting lasers from his eyes at Batman. I imagine if he could find a picture of Supes blasting a critic he would have used that one instead.
Superhero movies tend to accentuate the divide between critics and fans and rarely has the gap been wider and deeper than it is in the reaction to Batman v Superman.
The thing is, there shouldn’t be a divide between professional moviegoers and fans. It’s not Criticman v Fandom or Us v Them. We share a love of story, characters and images on screen. We may express our opinions differently, but as Devin Faraci pointed out recently film critics are film critics because they are passionate about movies. Take Movies.com writer John Gholson for instance. In response to the blow back his negative review of the film received he tweeted, “If you think “I wanted to hate” BVS, you’re out of your mind and the reason I’m still upset days later is because I wanted to LOVE it.”
For sure there are critics who automatically dismiss superhero movies. Or romantic comedies, or whatever your favourite genre, but no one forces you to read them. Choose your favourite film critic like you would a friend, someone who shares your enthusiasms, or challenges them or whatever makes you happy. The point is no one is holding Batman’s grapple gun to your head making you read bad reviews of your fan favourites.
Better yet, take musician and social activist Jello Biafra’s advice. “Don’t hate the media,” he said, “become the media.” It’s never been easier to express yourself publicly, whether it’s on your own blog or social media but here’s a pro tip: go see the movie before sharing your thoughts.
Not that reviews or blogs were going to make a great deal of difference to Batman v Superman’s box office fate. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore nailed it when he said, “Reviews don’t matter. The Batsuit and Superman’s cape are made of Teflon.” The movie was review proof as evidenced by its 29 percent Tomatometer score compared to its massive $ $166.1 million North American take.
Richard and “Canada AM” host Beverly Thomson have a look at he weekend’s big releases, the bombastic “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2’s” souvlaki slapstick and the terrific tension of thriller “Eye in the Sky.”
Superhero geeks need not fear, this column will contain no spoilers.
In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the world’s two most famous caped crime fighters throw down, wrestling literally and figuratively to determine what kind of hero is best suited to serve the world’s needs.
The story picks up after the action in Man of Steel, which saw Superman (the square-jawed Henry Cavill) protect the planet by destroying half of Metropolis in an epic battle with the evil General Zod (Michael Shannon).
Batman (Ben Affleck), unimpressed with the collateral damage, joins the contingent of folks who see the Last Son of Krypton not as a champion but an alien threat. A battle ensues.
Who will win? Other than Kryptonite, Superman has no known weaknesses, so this would seem like a fairly one-sided fight, but Batman has skills as well, so who knows?
To get to the bottom of the matter I held a highly unscientific Facebook Batman v Superman poll to determine a winner. It drew mixed results.
“Brains over brawn,” wrote one FB friend, “Batman for the win!”
“Superman could basically fly down at super speed striking Batman before he could even sense he was coming and turn the Bat into vapour,” wrote a Superman fan.
Another wasn’t so sure. “Both seem to wear their underwear over their pants… it is a tough call.” Whatever the outcome, expect a wild showdown. But that’s on screen. It’s make-believe. What about Reel Life v Real Life?
The Caped Crusader and Supes have been duking it out for decades at the box office but Batman, specifically the Christian Bale era, comes out on top. The Dark Knight Rises and The Dark Knight KO the competition, with the 1978 Superman, the first Tim Burton Batman and the recent Man of Steel rounding out the top five.
Batman also brings in the lion’s share of the marketing money. According to comicbookmovie.com Batman sells almost two-to-one to Superman products.
That means more parents dress their kids as Batman than Superman at Halloween and that includes Ben Affleck and Christian Bale who met at a costume store last year as they shopped for Batman outfits for their kids.
What about prestige? Again Batman is victorious, with three Academy Award winners — Affleck, Bale and George Clooney — playing the Bat at one time or another.
As for the Metropolis Marvel, Oscar winners Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood both turned down the role as did best actor nominee James Caan who said, “There’s no way I’m wearing that silly suit.” Oscar winner Nic Cage wore the suit but his Superman story never made it before the cameras.
So far my Reel Life v Real Life look at Batman v Superman favours the Dark Knight, but Clark Kent’s alter ego is still a formidable foe.
Keep in mind, without Superman there may never have been a Batman.
Predating the Caped Crusader, the Man of Steel is a pioneer whose popularity helped create the superhero genre. Since then he’s been ubiquitous, inspiring an American Sign Language symbol, movie serials, TV shows, comic strips, pop songs — (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman by The Kinks among many others — and even a Broadway musical called It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman.
Finally, as one of my Facebook friends pointed out, Superman has at least one insurmountable advantage over Batman: “If Superman loses the fight he can fly back in time to fight again.”
In 1984 raspy-throated singer Bonnie Tyler warbled, “I’m holding out for a hero.” At the time I didn’t get the song’s sexy undertones but was reminded of the tune as I watched “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Thirty odd years later it’s quite clear what kind of hero Bonnie Tyler was looking for—“It’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet!”— but it’s less certain what kind of hero the city of Metropolis wants or needs.
Ben Affleck plays Bruce Wayne as a weathered crime fighter, someone his trusty butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) says, “got too old to die young, and not for want of trying.” Banged up and grumpy, his fellow crime fighter Superman (Henry Cavill) is in his bad books after tearing up Metropolis and knocking over Wayne Tower, killing many of those inside, during an epic fight against villain General Zod. “Maybe it’s the Gotham City in me,” says Wayne. “We have a bad history was freaks dressed as clowns.”
He’s not the only one to have a bone to pick with The Last Son of Krypton. Distressed by the Man of Steel’s seemingly uncontrollable power Congressional Superman Committee head Senator Finch (Holly Hunter) finds a supporter for her Aliens Are Un-American campaign in a Machiavellian tech mogul named Alexander “Lex” Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). “The world has been so caught up by what Superman can do,” Finch says, “we haven’t thought about what he should do.”
All this leads to a superhero showdown, a battle of the behemoths, cowls v capes. It’s Batman, a billionaire vengeance seeker with a bursting bank account and cool toys, v Superman, an alien with good intentions but uncontrollable powers. “It’ll be the greatest gladiator battle in the history of the world,” giggles Luthor.
Who will win? Who should win? Will it be the hero Bonnie Tyler is holding out for?
Wrapped around the central storyline is the introduction of lasso-wielding Amazonian Diana Prince a.k.a. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Luthor’s crazy schemes and the appropriately named Doomsday, a Kryptonian killing machine.
These are jittery times and “Batman v Superman” is a jittery movie. Luthor’s xenophobic notion that Superman is a dangerous alien, an “other” who we don’t quite understand, is ripped right out of Donald Trump’s playbook. “People hate what they don’t understand,” says Martha Kent (Diane Lane).
Mix that with depictions of the death and destruction on city streets and all-too-familiar shots of buildings with smoke oozing out of them and you’re left with a movie that as feels timely and ripped-from-the-headlines as a movie about tights-wearing superheroes can be.
Other than that it is essentially a long trailer for the next DC superhero ensemble movie tagged on to a WrestleMania style smack down. Director Zack Snyder does have a flair for staging darkly dramatic scenes—Superman surrounded by Mexican Day of the Dead revellers is a stunner and the image of Supes casually kicking the indestructible Batmobile out of frame with a flick of his foot is very cool—but while he is entertaining your eye he does little to engage your brain. There is tons of psuedo-intellectual talk about gods and monsters but it’s all surface, chatter meant to make the film seem smarter than it actually is. Very little of what happens feels motivated by the characters. It mainly feels as though someone came up with a grabby title and crafted a set of circumstances to justify the name. Characters talk and interact with one another but it feels in service of the title, as if they are all simply brand ambassadors, rather than living breathing people.
The performances are, if not super, then fine. As the superheroes Affleck makes a better Bruce than Bat and Cavill is suitably steel-jawed. Eisenberg plays Lex as a twitchy Mark Zuckerberg in a performance that suits the wonky tone of the film. The women aren’t given much to do, but Adams finds Lane’s pluckiness and Gadot shows real promise as Wonder Woman. Nearly everyone gets overpowered by the CGI overkill of the final hour, but I suspect fans aren’t looking for nuance as much as they are mega action and that Snyder delivers.
“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is bombastic. The experience of watching it is like having a drunk at a bar tell you the story after five beers. It’s loud and in-your-face with the occasional maudlin moment.
There was a time when superhero movies were fun, escapist entertainment. Those days seem to have passed. There are a total of two laughs in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” although there are several other unintentionally laughable moments. Now our caped and cowled heroes are as dark and troubled as a reject from a Kafka novel which, in this case, makes for a rather loud but dreary night at the movies.
Watch Richard’s CP24 reviews for “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Far From the Madding Crowd” and “Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police” with host Marci Ien.
It’s not a spoiler to let you know the Avengers save the world in The Age of Ultron. The spectacular six have rescued the planet before and, no doubt, will save it again in future. In superhero movies the globe is always on the eve of destruction.
The original movie, 2012’s The Avengers, saw the team protect the planet from Thor’s evil brother Loki while in Superman II the Man of Steel battles three Kryptonian criminals set to obliterate our orb. A baddie named M tries to wage world war in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and recently the Fantastic Four prevented a giant cosmic entity called Galactus from gobbling up the earth.
“I see a suit of armour around the world,” says Tony Stark in Age of Ultron. “Peace in our time, imagine that.”
The movies get bigger every time out and with thirty more superhero flicks scheduled for the five years—including Deadpool, Doctor Strange and Gambit—the mind reels at the ways villains might endanger our world. It sounds entertaining but haven’t we’ve already been there? Where do you go from the threat of total annihilation?
Diminishing returns in terms of audience reaction, that’s where. We all know The Avengers will pull out all the stops to save the earth. Buildings will crumble, trucks will go airborne and giant cracks will appear where city streets used to be but by the end credits you know everyone will emerge relatively unscathed, with the bad people vanquished and the good guys grinning from ear to ear. Viewers are left with CGI fatigue, but dammit a catastrophe was averted. Again.
But we’ve been there, done that. Why not freshen things up and turn back the hands of the doomsday clock a few minutes to create tension in the form of different kinds of situations? It sounds counter intuitive—bigger is always better, right?— but imagine Captain America going mano a mano with Kim Jong-un or Iron Man shrinking down to the size of a microbe to battle cancer from the inside à la Fantastic Voyage.
The real world is a very complicated place. Every day the news delivers more bad information than all the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined. Stories of beheadings, terrorism and all manner of terrible behaviour flood the airwaves aching to be corrected by some sort of superhero. How great would it be to see warrior princess of the Amazons Wonder Woman unleash the Lasso of Truth on the Canadian Senate or weather maven Storm get all medieval on climate change?
An injection of real world issues might not make for big box office, but it certainly would infuse the movies with a sense of unpredictability—just like real life events. Real life is messy and volatile and that’s what keeps it interesting.
I understand one of the reasons we go to movies like The Avengers: Age of Ultron is to see things we’ll never witness in real life, but it’s hard not to agree with Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) when he says, “We’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow—it makes no sense!” These movies try to dazzle our eyes—and they do!— but bringing them down to earth, literally, might help us engage our brains as well.
Watch Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Far From the Madding Crowd” and “Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police” with host Marci Ien.
“Can we hold them?” asks evil scientist Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) as a team of superheroes tear up his supposedly impenetrable HYDRA lair.
“They’re the Avengers,” comes the reply. The only thing missing is the “Duh!” at the beginning of the sentence.
Not only does the exchange answer the question of every film producer who has a movie opening opposite “Avengers: Age of Ultron” this weekend but it also sets a loose, funny tone for the film.
Twenty seconds into the movie we’re already engaged in a wild action scene that puts them in possession of an ancient gem containing artificial intelligence. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) intend to use the technology to build a peacekeeping army—“I see a suit of armour around the world,” says Stark. “Peace in our time, imagine that.”—but the plan backfires and instead of creating a global peace initiative they create a robot monster named Ultron (voice of James Spader). “I really miss the days when the weirdest thing science created was me,” says Captain America (Chris Evans). Hell-bent on improving the world by exterminating humanity, Ultron says, “When the dust settles the only things left will be metal.”
Cue the metalocalypse.
While many superhero movies have chosen a dark road—think Christopher Nolan’s ennui ridden “Batman” movies or the dour looking “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”—director Joss Whedon delivers action with a grin. There’s always time for a quip in “Age of Ultron.” The wisecracks are the glue that hold the film together, acting as a bridge between the battle scenes.
Stark is his old cocky self with none of the insecurity of the emo “Iron Man 3” in sight. Gone is the introspection of “Winter Solider.” Sure, Banner is still tormented by his Hulk alter ego—but let’s be honest, if you take away his torment, you take away his character—but nonetheless finds time to do a faceplant into Scarlett Johansson’s chest and Black Widow (Johansson) shows more of her feminine side than ever before, but the film is less interested in the characters than how carnage the characters can cause.
There are action scenes galore. If all you want are trucks flying through the air, buildings crumbling and Iron Man assembling and disassembling, look no further. It’s a smorgasbord of skirmishes, a constant barrage of action scenes, many of which appear in a blur, just glints of metal and flashes of colour. These sequences are stuffed to bursting with an overload of CGI that becomes less interesting the more you watch.
One of the reasons we go to the movies like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is to see things we’ll never see in real life, but it’s hard not to agree with Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) when he says, “We’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow—it makes no sense!” Whedon has tried to dazzle our eyes—and he does!— but has forgotten about engaging our brains.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
