I loved Man of Steel. I’m going to get out of the way up front. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but I thought it was very well done and I had a great time with it. To be fair I am not a Superman fanboy. I like Supes, I know his basic mythology, and the little kid inside of me gets kind of excited anytime I see him flying around doing super-stuff. But I enjoy stories that ask some harder questions, or that deal with the idea that part of what heroes do is make difficult choices. Man of Steel works for me precisely because it forces Superman to make difficult choices, where there is no particularly satisfying answer.
In a world where people seem to have totally unrealistic expectations of what other people, especially the government, can or ought to do for them, I have less use for escapism than I did even a decade ago. I like a movie that has the guts to say, “Superman can fly in space but do you know what he can’t do? He can’t use his powers against an equally powerful foe without incurring collateral damage.” Because if Superman were real, that would absolutely be the case. Paramedics, firefighters and police officers would love to save everybody, to not have to make difficult choices, but they all make difficult choices every single day. You can’t do all of the good, you can only do the most good that you possibly can. If a man were super-powered, he could save everybody out of a burning building, but if he had to fight a super-powered foe, the playing field is leveled. And so is everything else, because the collateral goes up exponentially the more power is in play.
So when I heard Zack Snyder was making a sequel to Man of Steel, and that it would have Batman in it, I was at first apprehensive that they were going too far too fast, and then I was curious, and finally pretty excited. The trailers got me pumped. Looked like a comic book come to life, in the way that the Marvel movies do.
Having seen it, I can only describe myself as conflicted. I enjoyed whole swaths of it. I think Ben Affleck was fantastic. Gal Gadot did very well with the small amount of material she had, and Henry Cavill remains a great Superman. Laurence Fishburne is fantastic in his limited role as Perry White. Jesse Eisenberg, Holly Hunter, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, everybody does solid work in this. The performances were maybe my most favorite aspect of the movie.
The issues I have are, basically, three. The first is that the pacing is kind of strange. The middle of the film starts to drag as we wind up stuck in the middle of sort of a thriller that has pushed our caped heroes more or less to the sidelines. I enjoyed what the film was doing, but I missed having some action beats in the middle that would drive the pace a bit more.
The second was that the way Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg are introduced feels completely gratuitous. It doesn’t service the film at all, or the pacing of it, it only serves to make sure you are aware that the earlier mention of “metahumans” is relevant to the big picture moving forward, and it has no real place in this film, certainly not at the moment where it is inserted.
The third is more difficult to pin down. The film has a strong story, as far as what happens and the reasoning behind it, but because we haven’t any prior history with this version of Lex Luthor, and only one film’s worth of history with the Cavill of Steel, there’s a sense that the legwork they’re doing to establish the DCEU, is actually taking away from this film.
By way of example, the two Avengers films don’t leave a lot of room for character development on the part of anybody but Banner, however most of the other heroes have solo films and those films focus very strongly on them, even when other MCU characters show up to party, so the Avengers movies can play fast and loose with things like character arcs because each Avengers picture is the climax to that particular MCU Phase.
Batman v Superman, however, hasn’t earned that luxury. And as great as Batfleck is, and as much as I am a Batman fanboy in the extreme, I feel as though Superman got boned. Batman not only has the most memorable scenes in the film, but because we have seen so many Batman stories on film, and because the most recent three have done the character such wonderful justice, I think you can get a sense of who Batfleck is and where he is in his career without needing a lot of explanation. My friend Darek’s son, Ean, nailed it on the ride home when he said, simply, “he’s old and he doesn’t care.”
Superman’s story is built on the foundation of Man of Steel, but the guy has very little to say or do for most of the movie. The ending did do a nice job of earning Superman the love and respect of the people of Earth, in a way that the end of Man of Steel didn’t, and I hope Justice League acknowledges that and lets Superman be Superman in earnest.
Zack Snyder has said that there is an R-rated Ultimate Cut of the film coming to Blu-Ray. Whether or not that is a good thing will depend on what the material is that he’ll be adding back in. Because anything that fleshes out Lex Luthor, and the Superman-Lois story, will be most welcome. Almost anything else is likely to do more harm than good. Entire characters (such as the one played by Jena Malone) were cut from the theatrical version, so I’m going to be watching for details about that release with great interest. Henry Cavill is a great Superman and he deserves a Superman film that lets him own the character the way “The Dark Knight” let Christian Bale own Batman.
Would I watch this movie again? Yes. I would, and I will. Do I love it? No. Not in its current form, at least. But Batfleck alone is well worth the price of admission. There is a lot of talk about the brutality of this Batman. As a lifelong fan, I’m here to tell you, it isn’t a problem. First of all, Keaton’s Batman killed people, a lot, and Batfleck is no worse a killer than him. Secondly, Batfleck has a character arc, and it’s the most successful arc of the film, without question. In the hands of the right director it would have been powerful enough to destroy people in their seats, but in Synder’s hands it’s merely a good story passably told. In short, to pick up where Ean left off in his assessment; Batman is old and he doesn’t care; but this is the story of how he learned to care again.
I hope the Ultimate Cut will make me care about the rest of the story as much. For now, I give the film a 7.5 out of 10. It’s got problems, but if you love Batman, you need to see it. It is without question the best live-action representation of that character in his entire 77 year history. The world needs more Batfleck.
[Note: Having now seen the BvS Ultimate Cut, most of my misgivings regarding the film are swept away. I’d give it a 9/10.]
