You might have heard: Batman V Superman is finally out this weekend. You might have also heard that it’s a raging dumpster fire of a movie that will more than likely enrage you if not approached with caution. If you’re expecting this movie to be on par with even the worst Marvel movie out there — then run as fast as you can.
This is not a movie that will fill you with joy or happiness that The Force Awakens did, despite the fact that the bar was set so insanely high for J.J. Abrams that he had more ways to fail than succeed. Nope, instead Batman V Superman is everything that The Force Awakens could have been if handled as poorly as this movie was.
Basically, any hipsters out there who were wishing that The Force Awakens was this generation’s Phantom Menace — well, Zack Snyder has gift wrapped this bad boy for you. It’s not terrible but boy does it try so hard to be the worst thing you will pay to see at the theater this year.
Here are ten things you need to know about Batman V Superman:
1. There are ways to enjoy this movie — and that involves lowering your bar as low as it can go and then taking it lower. You know what, just leave the bar at home. What you need to do is help this movie across the street like the boring old lady that it is. Check your brain, expectations and most of your self-respect at the door and this movie will blow you away. Some directors have to make studio flicks so they can go out and are their passion pieces, but Christopher Nolan does this by slapping his name on Executive Producer credits on movies like this. Being in anyway associated with this movie is why we’re going to get Dunkirk from him — so at least Batman V Superman is worth it in that way?
2. It’s just bad, like really bad. There are lines of dialogue in this movie that you can literally see the pain on Ben Affleck’s face when he’s saying them. Yeah, things are so bad that even Ben Affleck is pained. He reportedly re-wrote most of the movie on the fly too. We need to keep whatever version of this turd existed before that locked away and buried in a silo miles under the ground somewhere.
3. At one point, Bruce Wayne sees a vision of someone from the future telling him that he’s right about Superman being a menace and that Lois Lane is the key. The character then breaks from his speech to say ‘I’m too soon. Yeah, I’m too soon, aren’t I’. You’ll spend then next five minutes wondering if this was meant to be funny or is yet another in a long line of unintentionally hilarious moments. The religious allegory stuff is way too on-the-nose too — ditto with the 9/11 stuff at the beginning of the movie with Bruce Wayne running into the dust cloud to save people.
4. One thing that had nothing to do with the movie but was one of the worst bits was the girl who kept taking out her phone. It was the most aggressive and painfully cliche use of a phone in a theater I have ever seen. Seriously, guys, it was like she was determined to put on a Floyd-less laser light show for the theater. Folks, don’t be like this girl and twirl your phone with the brightness all the way up in the movie theater. The glue will still be there at home to be licked and sniffed when the movie is over. Zack Snyder might even be there to assist. But not even this pain train deserves this treatment and neither do the people who paid for a ride.
5. Back to the mess at hand though, Jessie Eisenberg is about as over-the-top as it gets. The dude is all the way out on Pluto he’s so far out of his mind while hamming it up. Strangely enough, he’s actually enjoyable against the backdrop of the rest of this flick. That’s not an endorsement of his performance but the rest of the movie is so bad that watching Eisenberg reach Nic Cage levels of hamming it up is almost legendary.
6. There were some positive things about the movie. Wonder Woman kicks a ton of ass, and you’ll walk away excited that she’s getting her own stand alone movie. But even something as badass as Wonder Woman is ruined by Zack Snyder. I can only see Wonder Woman doing things in slow motion so many times before I decide to fall back asleep. Jeremy Irons as Alfred was also fantastic, but we didn’t see hardly enough of him to fully appreciate him. Maybe the fact that Snyder and company had so little time to mess these characters up is partly why we appreciate them so much more.
7. Perhaps the worst part of the movie is when Batman and Superman form their allegiance. This is something that was poorly set up anyways but the botched execution is actually mind numbing. Batman has Superman pinned and is ready to kill him when Superman reveals that Lex is going to kill his mother Martha. This causes Batman to have some sort of epileptic revelation that their mothers share the same first name so they should team up. Literally he goes from being wholly convinced that Superman can and probably will kill everyone — and is spot on about his powers being way too much to trust — but says f–k it, our moms have the same first name so let’s be BFF’s for life.
8. There were two moments that the audience genuinely appreciated, as did I. The first is when Batman rescues Superman’s mom and tells him he’s a friend of her son. Martha makes a quip about capes, and Diane Lane single handily has the best three second in this three hour mess. The other is when Wonder Woman saves Batman, to which Hans Zimmer’s score ramps things up in a way that is so undeserving of this picture. People clapped, but it wasn’t like the applause that moments in Star Wars got. This was more of an applause that felt like we had to clap since there was nothing else worthy of that sort of treatment.
9. The foreshadowing of the Justice League is also pretty on-the-nose. We see cameos from Ezra Miller as an out of costume Flash and Jason Momoa as Aquaman but it’s through CCTV footage that Bruce Wayne discovers on Lex Luthor’s servers. But the final moments of the movie are filled with Ben Affleck’s face (in a close up that looks like it pains the hell out of the actor) and a monologue about how ‘men are still good’. It’s tacky as hell but at least it’s something to look forward to?
10. Oh yeah, Superman dies at the end. Like, he doesn’t actually die but there’s a good five to ten seconds where you think that Snyder has actually killed Superman in a way that is way too brilliant for him to have stumbled upon. Of course, the last shot of the movie is of dirt on Clark Kent’s coffin literally moving half a centimeter before cutting to black. That’s when we all sat back in our chairs, comfortable in knowing that the Snyder we love to hate hasn’t really changed at all — he’s still the right brand of awful.
Verdict
You’re going to see this movie, just accept that as fact. It’s not going to be good, but you can still enjoy yourself anyways. GO in knowing that it’s going to be terrible and you’ll actually have a better time than all of the negative reviews are implying. It’s not that the movie is put together in an unattractive way — it can still be projected onto a screen and shake your seats.
But that’s all it does, and thankfully audiences have gotten too smart for that to be enough. That’s actually a positive, if you think about it, as ten years ago this might have been a mild critical success. We’ve come to expect more from our films these days though, and Batman V Superman flies well below the median for quality that we’ve grown accustomed to.
