BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE: Yeah, No.

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BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

(Dir. Zach Snyder, 2016)

DC pitting their two biggest, most iconic superheroes – Batman and Superman - against each other in order to jumpstart their cinematic universe looked like a questionable premise right off the bat – pun intended.

Especially since I, and many others, hated the first installment of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe), Zach Snyder’s SUPERMAN series reboot MAN OF STEEL.

So I went in to Snyder’s follow-up/BATMAN reboot with exceedingly low expectations, but was still majorly disappointed.

For BATMAN V SUPERMAN is another round of boring bombast surrounding a couple of dark dullards without a lick of compelling storytelling to be found. There’s also a severe lack of humor, and anything resembling a fresh style.

Henry Cavill, returning as the red caped crusader as well as giving us our first real taste of his Clark Kent persona (we only got a glimpse of him getting the job at The Daily Planet in MAN OF STEEL at the end), and Ben Affleck, making his debut as the Dark Knight/Bruce Wayne, both brood up a storm but there’s nothing really that intriguing about their characters. They’re just overly self serious, bland dudes is all.

The film tries to simultaneously function as a sequel and a origin story for Affleck’s incarnation of Batman, but it strongly appears that his/Snyder’s version of the character is a continuation of the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale model as there are references to The Joker, an identical bat cave, and restagings of his parents’ murder and his being attacked by bats in a well as a child that attempt but fail to recreate the gravitas of Nolan’s work.

We learn that while Superman was battling General Zod and reaping mass destruction on Metropolis in MAN OF STEEL, Wayne was one of the many folks in the rubble building up a hated for Superman. Just like many in the audience.

Clark Kent, for his part, dislikes Batman, labeling him a “bat vigilante” and “a one man reign of terror” so the stage is set for what Lex Luther (Jesse Eisenberg) bills as “the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world.”

Eisenberg’s Luther is an unhinged, mad scientist who, of course, wants the two leads to fight and destroy each other so that he can…uh, I forget exactly what his plans were for after that but we’ll just go with world domination. Eisenberg locks in to the villain role with a lot of crazy conviction, but I never bought him as Luther. He reminded me of the Jon Cryer role in SUPERMAN IV – Luther’s (then played by the great Gene Hackman – now, there’s a Lex Luther!) newphew/flunky. He seems like the guy who’d be fetching stuff for Luther, not actually be Luther.

Whatever the case, this movie plays out exactly how you’d expect with no surprises. Batman and Superman fight, then bond together to fight a ginormous, grotesque creature that Luther created from Zod’s DNA, with the help of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), whose addition here feels like an afterthought.

David S. Goyer (MAN OF STEEL) and Chris Terrio’s (Oscar winner for the screenplay for Affleck’s ARGO) screenplay is full of pretentious dialogue about good, evil, “god versus man,” etc. but none of it comes together to form any meaningful theme. There are also a few incredibly weak plotpoints that would be a Spoiler to complain about, but I'll just say that in the worst one they make a connection between the feuding leads based on a coincidental name in their families. Man, that made me cringe.

So did the dream sequences - one a dream inside a dream deal - which were ultra unnecessary. 
Amy Adams, reprising Lois Lane, puts some genuine passion into her part, and her fellow returning cast members (Lawrence Fishburne as Editor Perry White, and Diane Lane and Kevin Costner (a dream-set cameo) as Superman’s earth parents) are all fine, but in the messy machinery of this movie they are little more than cardboard cogs.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Irons takes over from Michael Caine as Batman’s butler Alfred and has a few of the film’s only mildly amusing lines, and there’s a welcome turn by Holly Hunter as a senator who wants to hold Superman accountable for his actions in the previous film’s climax, but sadly a hearing scene in which Superman stands before congress is cut short before he gets to testify. Silly me for thinking that Superman could offer any plausible justification for the sins of MAN OF STEEL. Also Hunter’s role here may remind some folks that she was in a movie that dealt much better with the accountability of superheroes: THE INCREDIBLES.

Folks complained plenty when Affleck was cast, but he does an admirable job with the underwritten role. He mostly just has to grimace behind a mask while the special effects people rig things to explode around him and he can certainly pull that off. Affleck’s Bruce Wayne persona is basically just a collection of suave poses with flashes of his bedroom eyes and he hits the mark with that too. If only there was something more to flesh out there. I mean, Will Arnett’s Batman in THE LEGO MOVIE was more complex than this guy!

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (stiff, clunky title) is the first big, bad movie of the year – an awful, mess of a wannabe epic that casts a dark shadow on the future of both superhero franchises as well as the entire DCEU. The two JUSTICE LEAGUE movies that are set for 2017 and 2019, the next we’ll see these characters, really have to be something special to redeem the whole enterprise, but Snyder is set to direct those too so I’m not counting on that to happen.

Oh, and don’t worry about staying to the end of the credits because there is no stinger – that’s something they surprisingly haven’t stolen from Marvel. 

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The Upcoming Superhero Showdown

A few weeks back while attending a movie at a multiplex, I saw posters for the two big superhero movies that are coming soon side by side: Zach Snyder's BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (opening this week), and Anthony Russo and Joe Russo's CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (opening May 6). It was funny how much the posters looked alike: superheros facing off in profile; one masked, one not; similar color scheme with bluish gray sky in the backbround. 

The posters also pit DC against Marvel. DC is in the process of mounting their own Cinematic Universe to rival (and copy) Marvel's extremely successful business model with scores of movies in the pipeline, including two JUSTICE LEAGUE films, their equivalent of Marvel's AVENGERS movies. Between the two comic book companies' plans for world domination, we're not far off from a world in which a new superhero movie is released every weekend. But DC has a lot of catching up to do to get where Marvel is - CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is the beginning of phase 3 of their Cinematic Universe - meaning that it'll be a decade before we get to whatever DC's equivalent of DEADPOOL is.

Now, I've enjoyed quite a few superhero movies. I think Marvel has a good thing going on for the most part and I've given good reviews to two out of the three IRON MAN movies (2 is the weak link), the previous CAPTAIN AMERICA entries, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, ANT-MAN, and the two AVENGERS films. The THOR movies I'm not a fan of, but overall there's a lot of fun to be had within the interlocking continuity of the multiple franchises.

But, yeah, there is a saturation point and according to filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) was about a former star of a comic book film series, we've reached it: 

“They (superhero movies) have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and shit that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”

The new Dark Knight, Ben Affleck, recently responded to Iñárritu's remarks: 

“Alejandro is also given to over-statement. I wouldn’t call it cultural genocide, but he’s brilliant and his point is taken that you can’t just swallow up cinema with any kind of movie.”

The buzz for BATMAN V. SUPERMAN has been very mixed - the film is currently at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it'll no doubt be a huge hit. Both characters have huge fan bases, or fanboy bases, and this weekend there's little in the way of competition - doubt MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2 will steal much or any of its audience.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is going to clean up too as I predict it'll be better received and it has a ginormous cast of superheros with almost every Marvel character making an appearance including the much hyped re-introduction of SPIDER-MAN. 

So it really doesn't matter if we've reached, or gone past, the point of over saturation, because unless there's a series of bigtime flops in the genre, we are most likely going to have superhero movies coming at us for the rest of our lives. That may be depressing news to those who feel the way that Iñárritu does, and Affleck is right - he does have a point - but for those of us who used to be disgusted, but now try to be amused (to steal a line from Elvis Costello) it's just a given that these are incredibly profitable properties that are going to be around for a long time.

The posters above certainly won't be the last time that competing franchises look exactly like each other.

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ZOOTOPIA: A Delightfully On Point Takedown Of Racial Profiling

ZOOTOPIA (Dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore, and Jared Bush, 2016)

Earlier this week, I caught up with the #1 movie at the box office right now: ZOOTOPIA, the latest animated family feature from the Walt Disney Corporation. I had been initially dismissive of the film, having skipped an advance screening of it for a weird Neil Young double feature, but I heard that many critics were raving about it being a clever topical takedown of racial profiling so I just had to check it out.

ZOOTOPIA takes place in a world with no humans, only animals, who were once savage but have evolved, and formed a civilization in which they walk upright, wear clothes, and work regular jobs. Ginnifer Goodwin voices our plucky protagonist, a rabbit named Judy Hopps, who dreams of being the first bunny police officer. Thanks to the city of Zootopia’s new Mammal Inclusion Initiative, she gets her chance but is assigned to parking ticket duty by the chief of police, who’s an intimidating buffalo voiced by Idris Elba.

Because of a bias against foxes – we see her being bullied as a child by a fox in the opening sequence, and she carries “fox repellant” given to her by her parents – she follows one that looks suspicious to her into an ice cream store, but finds out it’s just a doting dad, named Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman) trying to buy a popsicle for his kid.

When the elephant run establishment refuses service to Nick and his offspring, Officer Judy steps in and calls out the store’s unsanitary conditions, which include an elephant employee scooping ice cream with his bare trunk – heavens! The situation is resolved with Judy buying an elephant-sized popsicle for the thankful father and son.

However, Judy soon finds out that she was hustled by Nick, who takes the huge popsicle and makes it into hundreds of tiny popsicles to sell to business suited rat population. Judy tries to arrest Nick, but finds that she can’t make any of the charges stick.

Defeated yet still trying to prove her worth, Judy gets into a chase after a crook named Duke Weaselton (Alan Tudyk), inside the segmented city within a ciry, Little Rodentia.

This gets Judy in trouble with the chief, but, via the surprise support of the Assistant Mayor Bellwether (Jenny Slate), it leads to the officer bunny getting put on a major case involving a series of missing animals. Turns out that Nick can help with a lead, and the duo hit the trail, which involves a cameo by Tommy Chong as a hippy yax who’s the “emotional life coach” at a naturalist commune, an arctic shrew crime boss named Mr. Big (Maurice Lamarche doing his best Marlon Brando), and, in one of the movie’s funniest scenes, the city’s DMV being run by sloths – get it? 

The well cast Bateman, at his cheeky best, and the equally Goodwin, giving it her all, play off each other well and do a lot towards making this the likable, yet appropriately apt, exercise that it is.

ZOOTOPIA may have made by committee – there are three directors and seven “story by” credits, but its sharp screenplay (credited to only two names - Jared Bush and Phil Johnston) that serves up a lot of on point social satire. Just about every joke lands, and there’s genuine feeling behind its message, which is basically ‘let’s recognize and put a stop to negative stereotyping and discrimination.’

It’s voice cast is energetically up to task throughout – though I could’ve done more with J.K. Simmons’ Leodore Lionheart, the lion mayor of Zootopia, and less with Shakira’s pop star gazelle (named Gazalle, of course), but I know they’ve got to work that teenybopper pop angle in order to sell some soundtracks (you just know that this one won’t push anywhere near as many units as FROZEN though).

A delightful family film that actually has as much depth as it does heart, ZOOTOPIA is a really good sign for the future of Disney’s Animated Classics division. With hope, other lesser animation studios will take note and start to tackle real, relatable issues more in their movies. I’m looking at you, Dreamworks!

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