What happens when you let a kid loose in a sweet shop? In the case of Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, the kid in question is a bit of a Minotaur and the sweets have all been lain out in fine bone china bowls, so the result is fragmented carnage. Zach Snyder hasn’t necessarily done a terrible job with the film, but it certainly isn’t the work of perfection that it could have been. Luckily, expectations were low for the follow-up to Man Of Steel, so despite it not being epic, it does end up being an entertaining jaunt into the classic comic book face-off.
Arriving on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download in the UK on the 1st August, it’s undoubtedly a must-watch for comic book fans, but we can’t help but feel it was a missed opportunity in the end. The characters and delivery is strong and there are some impressive action scenes to look forward to, but the progression of the story felt disjointed and disperate at times, while emotionally it struggles to connect with such a cold spirit behind it all.
The story picks up after the battle between Superman and Michael Shannon’s General Zod in Man Of Steel, with a few scene setting elements to introduce Batman into the mix as the disgruntled masked crime fighting vigilante of Gotham City who sees people close to him killed during the city-scape scrap. As more and more questions about the trustworthiness of Superman start to arise, spurred on by the efforts of madman magnate, Lex Luthor, Batman puts a plan in place to go toe-to-toe with the Kryptonian.
In general it works as a decent setup to the battle, with the real villain story of Lex bubbling away in the background and the mystery woman arrival of Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) into the equation, who later gets in on the alien butt-kicking action as Wonder Woman. However, it isn’t instantly clear how all of the threads work together, so they end up feeling like unconnected wisps of storyline without clear direction. A big part of this is the fact that it turns out that Gotham City is a very close neighbouring hub next door to metropolis, which is both ridiculous and unclear throughout the film. When you get this, it suddenly explains why Batman is miffed at the building that is destroyed by the super-powered punch up between Superman and Zod, because it’s his building and his employee that dies inside it when it collapses.
However, this is just one example of a stream of floating bits that makes up the film’s progression, as though the film is hoping to get around complex story arcs by being intentionally evasive about them. We like a film that challenges the viewer as much as the next cinema fan, but there still needs to be some interlacing of threads for it to feel like it has meaning.
Batman Vs. Superman Dawn Of Justice is pitched on the darker side of the superhero movie spectrum, which we liked, but unfortunately there are just a few too many clumsy results of this to feel anywhere near well balanced. This ties in with the lack of warmth or credible emotional connection between the characters due to the tendency to favour more unconfortable scene construction in the film. There are times when it kind of looks like Clarke and Louis are more like acquaintances with benefits than a proper couple.
There’s also an uncanny convenience to everything, and while we should expect Superman to save Louis Lane, she needs to at least get a little scream out before he shows up to snatch her comfortably from the sky. Equally, the fact that he fails to at least mention his mum’s predicament for such a long time as he dukes it out with a supped-up Batman seems preposterous. In fact, the whole setup to their fight is probably the clumsiest section of the film, which could have easily been orchestrated to be much less over-baked.
There are no complete duffs in the cast, but Jesse Eisenberg comes very close at times, channeling more Joker with a disturbing past than the ruthless megalomaniac psychopath he should have been. That aside, he does have a certain vicious streak that does enough to add a little fear factor to the plot.
Ben Affleck isn’t bad as Batman and Henry Cavill is Superman on steroids. They may not be historic performances, but they do just about get the job done. However, there are a few stand-out performances, with Gal Gadot leading the way as a very sophisticated Diana Prince. She slinks across the screen with high intelligence for the most part, which is cool enough all by itself, but when she finally hits the ground running as Wonder Woman she looks every bit the part, so it looks likely that Wonder Women (2017) is going to be the best of the new movies from DC.
Jeremy Irons is also brilliant as an incredibly sardonic, sarcastic and fatherly Alfred, and the fact that he appears to be the sole technological accomplice to The Bat only adds to his impact in the film.
There’s a lot of action to the Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice DVD, but it’s not always credible, with some of the blows looking every much the CGI effort that they are. This is added to a little by the arrival of Doomsday into the mix, although, in all fairness it does make for a high-impact ending. What happens when you let a big kid with vague delusions of complexity loose in a movie production lot with no budget constraints? You get an intense film from start to end, which works in its favour for the most part, but everything ends up all over the place before things get wrapped-up with a sugar-high finale. Hopefully, the sequel, Justice League, will be able to make up for some of the missed opportunities.
Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice DVD review: 3/5
