My Take On "Batman V Superman: A Pretty Good Batman Movie"

Turns out I didn't have the necessary strength to resist watching "Batman V. Superman." And it turns out it was actually a decent action flick and one of the greatest Batman movies to boot. If you just remind yourself that Henry Cavill is playing somebody who just resembles Superman, you will be fine.

The movie isn't nearly as bad as the critics say. The fans seem to understand this. And I'm not bashing the critics. I probably got to enjoy the movie because I read two dozen reviews that put the bar really low.

The movie suffers for the same reason its prequel suffered: it shits all over the canonical Superman. There are plenty of alternate universe stories in which Superman is evil; this Superman is just kind of a pathetic schlub. The canonical Superman wasn't just super because of his powers; he was super because he was superhumanly noble. He exercised restraint, was not vengeful or boastful, and he always found a way to do the right thing. He even earnestly enjoyed using his powers for good while getting zero props in his actual life as Clark Kent, all things Christopher Reeve captured so well that I feel sorry for every other actor who will ever play Superman after him.

Furthermore, he always found a way to use just enough force to end a threat. In the case of the Kryptonian villains, that meant killing them. But otherwise, he would tone down his application of his nearly limitless strength to restrain an opponent. Superman is not like a little boy who crushes insects just because he can.

Meanwhile, Zack Snyder's "Superman" flies a human opponent through several walls at nearly supersonic speed. We didn't get to see the bloody remains that no doubt covered Henry Cavill's character in the aftermath, and the scene was played for laughs. Maybe the guy didn't actually get pulverized to death, but the film seems to have left it ambiguous enough that it doesn't mind if that's exactly what we infer.

It's not that Superman should never kill. But he is a god. He is so far above most of his opponents physically that he can stop them the way an adult stops a toddler. He only stops pulling punches when the threat is on his physical level of strength and toughness. Yet in BVS:DOJ, we get to see him acting as petty as any of us and smash a relatively very delicate human because he's kinda pissed.

This insult to the character actually works for a movie that is setting up for Batman to kick his ass, however. Henry Cavill's character is clearly pitched as a threat that an extreme quasi-fascist like Bruce Wayne would want to eliminate. So the movie really works as a showcase for a pure version of Batman, one that kills and maims in the course of battle. I was rooting for Batman to beat this pretender to death.

This movie has so much to hate and to admire. It's no wonder the reviews are so thoroughly mixed. What's good in the movie is the dumb, loud destruction, a Batman infused with a Ben Affleck who has something to prove, and the nods to the comic geeks who worship Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns." There were also nods to "The Death of Superman" story line, but nobody worships that because it wasn't that good.

The critics have done an awfully thoughtful and complete job of telling us what the detestable things are and why they are detestable. The detestable things, however, add up to less than their sum. Sure, there were times I rolled my eyes (the shell of a cannon fired in tribute, falling in slow motion?) or sighed in frustration. Sure the movie made a goal of avoiding joy or even sunlight (the outdoor daytime scenes are almost relentlessly overcast, and when there is sunlight, it is harsh desert light in a scene that quickly explodes into executions).

But I just don't think it was as jumbled and messy as they all made it out to be. I say that even though Snyder keeps shoving messianic images of this average man down our throats till we occasionally gag. I say this despite Zack Snyder's Superman floating above flood victims long enough for them to supplicate with grins and outstretched arms (a motif that appears again when he rescues a girl in Mexico from a burning building in a scene that made me cringe).

The film's great sin remains Zack Snyder's insistence on sucking the joy, hope, and nobility out of the Superman mythos, and leaving us with this Elseworld character who has all of the right powers but not the right soul. This Batman is the most logical and simultaneously most faithful adaptation of the icon. This Superman is just some unremarkable guy with Kryptonian genes. I guess his Batman brooding mixes perfectly for Snyder since Jesus never seemed to smile either. And this is definitely supposed to be Krypton Jesus we're watching here.

I say that only to turn around a say that I loved how Henry Cavill played this other Kryptonian, particularly in the final scenes of the movie. That's because the script raised the stakes in the third act. We got to see a passionate sorta-Superman. We got to see him being brave as he faced real danger from a well-prepped Batman and then from a shitty-looking Doomsday.

I don't know if I should be ashamed to admit that a lot of this acting that I loved was done by Henry Cavill's hair. In the final act, his hair is washed out of its severe Eddie Munster comb-back into the the hanging curls that evoked the classic spit-curl that everyone recognizes as Superman's. Maybe I should also be a little embarrassed to admit that my five-year-old self used to pull down a bit of my kinky curly 'fro onto my forehead, then lay face down on my pillow for a few minutes so I could have an African Superman curl for a few seconds, until my hair sprung back into its natural upright position. Either way, Henry's wet hair helped him look more like the real deal as he put his life on the line to save others.

Zack Snyder says he has made Superman more realistic. But making Superman a flawed, struggling human means altering the character into something that's just not Superman anymore. Never mind that a god-like alien that passes for white really doesn't have a hope or need of being more realistic. This modern cinematic Superman is as true to the character as Adam West's campy Batman was to his source material. You wouldn't make Batman clumsy or nervous around violence. You certainly wouldn't make him dance the Batusi. Why would you make Superman so ordinary in bearing and in spirit?

I've said before that in a proper work of Superman fiction, Superman really ought to be able to save most everybody. But I'll admit that a more realistic take on Superman would still allow for an uncomfortable amount of casualties. The depressing fictional death toll of "Man of Steel" isn't the problem with Snyder's Superman. He is simply too brooding, too severe, too conflicted, too sad despite his immense capacity to help so many people.

This Superman does make sense considering the shitty parenting he got. (His earth father suggests that maybe he should have let a bus full of his classmates drown to conceal his alien nature. Then he forces young Clark to let him die to carry on the deception.) But this Jonathan Kent and this Kal-El/Clark Kent are just not the same good people that occupy all the other Superman stories. Snyder might as well have written a scene in which Jonathan caught young Clark burning the paws off of kittens then decide to train him to kill other serial killers.

What a shame that to get the perfect Batman we had to endure the worst "Superman". Along with the rest of humanity, I enjoyed that amazing viral clip of "Sad Ben".

But Ben Affleck has nothing to cry about. He portrayed the shit out of Batman. He has now joined the ranks of Christoper Reeve and Heath Ledger for defining a character for the rest of the existence of the human species in its current form. As long as people talk about these characters, they will talk about how these select actors mustered the skill to play them better than could be hoped for by any reasonable person. I just hope this doesn't mean Ben Affleck has to suffer an early, tragic death. Which seems to be what happens with these things.

A lot of people rave about Gal Gadot as the bright spot of this film. But honestly, I didn't care for her or her accent as the civilian Diana Prince. Yet she electrified the screen when she leaped into action. (I am goosebumping now just thinking of the cheesy riff that played as she lowered her gauntleted forearms to reveal her tiaraed face and flowing locks.) She got the eager immortal warrior right.

Affleck remains the one to watch. In fact, I hope someone re-edits this movie so that it's a proper Batman film. Just remove the solo Superman scenes and all the Lex Luthor scenes and we should be good to go.

Oh, that's right...Lex Luthor.

You know, as much as I go on about how this cinematic universe desecrates the Superman character, I really should save some of that vim for how much they mutilated Lex.

I want to like Jesse Eisenberg. I can't help but think he could play me in my biopic even though I'm black. But this time around he's all bad improv and forced weirdness and ticks. I wanted to enjoy his Luthor, but he never let me forget that I was watching an actor trying to do something interesting.

I was able to enjoy this film even though I knew everything that was going to happen. I wanted to see how a noted visual director brought them to the screen, and I'm glad I did. So I can easily recommend that if you like such things, see the film. If you are a fan of Superman, you will enjoy it more if you can find a way to pass out while Ben Affleck isn't Batman-ing on the screen.

The Unappealing DC Cinematic Universe

Well, Batman v. Superman is upon us. I'm not going to see it. That one trailer -- the one with Wonder Woman battle-crying her way into our hearts -- did look cool. But I can't deny it anymore. DC characters are generally too powerful to be interesting or to let me suspend my knowledge of biology and physics.

Plus, the Superman of the DC Extended Universe is no longer the enjoyable boy scout that Christopher Reeve played with well-timed smirks. Now he's just a boring "flying brick" who doesn't seem to care about humanity the same way Christopher Reeve's alien god did. Reeve made us love Superman so much that we mourned his crippling accident and later his passing. I really don't see us ever caring that much about Henry Cavill.

It's funny. Christopher Reeve was a dyed-in-the-wool progressive liberal (which really shows in the lamentable 'Superman IV: The Quest for Peace', which Reeve helped write and direct, but which was ultimately butchered). Maybe that's why his Superman was so earnest. So nice. Reeve's alien with god powers wearing primary colors gave human form to an ideal United States. It gave Americans a chance to feel good about their own superpower nation-state, even if they didn't realize it.

To this day, when I hear that stirring John Williams score, I want to run out and help save people from danger. I want to make sure that nobody dies.

I also got this feeling when I was watching Henry Cavill's Superman in action in "Man of Steel". But for the wrong reasons. I wanted to save all the thousands of people who were dying as a direct result of Superman's rumble with Zod.

I'm far from the first to write about how disappointed I was with Superman's latest cinematic incarnation. But it's important because this disappointed shadow is so long and so dark that it has actually scared me away from attempting another DCEU experience. I don't want to be so terrified or sad during a Superman film ever again.

I suppose "Man of Steel" had to happen. America had to see its god-powered avatar powerless to stop a  9/11 event. That doesn't mean it belongs in a Superman movie, however, because it betrays the Superman mythos. Superman would have stopped the planes from reaching their targets. Superman might have even been able to get aboard the planes and disable the terrorists with minimal loss of passenger life. And maybe nobody would have died at all.

Christopher Reeve managed to save everybody. And when he discovered that this meant the death of the woman he loved, he used his god-like powers to fly faster than light and turn back time. Henry Cavill couldn't be bothered to fly Zod a few miles out of the urban sprawl. He even pulled Zod miles into outer space, but couldn't manage to alter their re-entry trajectory a few degrees so they didn't land right smack in the middle of the same couple of acres of Metropolis.

Henry Cavill is one of the best-looking men on earth, easily in the top tenth of a percent. But there is something wolfish about his handsomeness. His looks predatory, like a man who knows his looks outstrip any other quality he has, so he might as well use them for personal gain. His lantern jaw is certainly supermanly (in fact, his jaw is almost a character in itself ) but the rest of his face -- his smiling blue eyes beneath those fierce eyebrows -- strike me as a bit callous. His face doesn't say pretty, guileless boy scout the way Reeve's face did. And the look of (not "on") Cavill's face didn't tell me he really cared about the mortals that were exploding around him as he and Zod knocked buildings down. Cavill was perfectly cast for the Superman of Zack Snyder's visually impressive but joyless film.

It's a shame I probably will never see this film because I keep hearing that it got Batman exactly right. Like everyone else who cared, I initially guffawed at the choice of Ben Affleck for Bruce Wayne/Batman. But then I read an article that pointed out why Afflecek, whose acting career was a well-worn joke at that point, would be perfect for the role of an older, more bitter Batman based on the coming-out-of-retirement Batman of Frank Miller's classic "The Dark Night Returns." I was sold since then and looking forward to Affleck making the scoffer's eat crow.

And from what I've heard from I've read and heard, no matter what anyone thought of the overall movies (and most critics do think it's a mess), Affleck's performance was the best thing in the film. Sadly, this is another indictment for the DCEU. The Batman Affleck so superbly inhabited is an out-and-out neofascist.

Look, Batman has never been a friend to the people. He's a man born into one of the biggest fortunes on DC earth. Then he uses that wealth to outfit himself with high tech weaponry to beat the hell out of the criminal poor. He does not use his wealth to prevent crime by helping alleviate poverty in his city with programs to help poor Gothamites to learn how to program computers. Batman clearly votes Republican. He's too smart to be one of the xenophobic racist goons that bay and howl in approval at a Trump rally, but you get the impression that Bruce Wayne nods along when he watches an interview with Dick Cheney. And this is the best character the DCEU has to offer.

Superman is almost impossible to make interesting. Your best bet as an actor or a writer is to make him likable. Christopher Reeve managed to do so to such great effect that he has become the standard by which all Superman actors past and present have been compared. Brandon Routh might have been almost as memorable if he'd been given a better movie to work in. It's too bad that DC has chosen to distance itself so much from the camp of the late 70's. Surely they needed to make the material a bit more serious, but it looks like they went over the cliff in an effort to stand apart from Marvel's effort. These movies are some depressing shit that serve the jackbooted Batman, but tarnish the Superman myth.