Batman v Superman: Thank you Zack Snyder for ruining two of our iconic superheroes

I wanted to believe that the critics were wrong, but sadly Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is Hollywood’s Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, it might break all the box office records, but this was a terrible movie. There are no two ways about it. Sorry Zack but you just ruined two of comic book’s most iconic characters at the same time and while it might mint money at the box office (because we all love Bats and Supes and HAVE to watch it), but they should really keep you away from comic book movies, as several petitions suggest.

Maybe this would’ve worked 20 years ago, when superhero movies catered to adolescent teens, but it certainly won’t work in a world where the genre has been elevated to an art form. We have dorky superheroes, cool superheroes, superheroes being real people, superheroes dealing with real-life issues like racism and rape.

Frankly, a one-dimensional slam-fest was never going to cut it in a world that has seen Iron Man, Deadpool, Daredevil, Captain America or even Star Lord. The conversation has just moved forward and Batman vs Superman is like a sexist 60s ad which is way out of its time and doesn’t even have Don Draper’s insane charm to pull it off. If Fox and Marvel are civilisations that have discovered time travel, then DC is still trying to build a fire, and doing it quite badly – to be fair.

Critics reacting to BVS

Zack Snyder’s BVS tries to follow the same path that was trodded on by Nolan in The Dark Knight trilogy. It failed the first time when we saw him turn the world’s biggest boy scout into a murdering maniac. The problem is that Snyder doesn’t have Nolan’s storytelling ability (very few directors alive do) to weave a tale and this leaves our two superheroes look like overgrown toddlers battling, which to be fair can also work, if there was a story to tell.

Batman v Superman seems to have been hit by the same ailment that afflicts modern-day Bollywood movies where they think a star (here the stars being two of the most iconic superheroes of all times) is enough to sell a project, eschewing the need for storytelling or even a semblance of a script and seems to have spent that money on marketing. 

There are so many moments that are jarring that it’s not even funny. From Eisenberg’s SRK act from Darr (an observation made by many including director Bejoy Nambiar and blogger Arnab Ray) to Henry Cavill’s inability to emote, there are too many places that the movie falls flat. There are plot holes galore and the particular bit about creating Doomsday could’ve been better thought. As for the final fight sequence, why couldn’t Wonder Woman use the Kryptonite spear on Doomsday instead of Superman?

Ben Affleck’s Batman isn’t that bad, but that’s not much to write home about a movie we all craved so much for, while Lois Lane seems to be a call-to-order damsel-in-distress and appears whenever the plot requires her to be.

How critics reacted after seeing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 

Zack Snyder isn’t a bad director per se, and I quite enjoyed the cult classic Watchmen, which paid proper tribute to the graphic novel by the same name helped by some stellar actors including Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Matthew Goode and Jackie Earle Haley and amazing soundtrack including the best of Hendrix, Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel. His 300, while not a great script by any stretch of imagination had its epic moments.

But the problem is his slavishness to the source material doesn’t translate well to the big-screen and you can see pastiches from comic arcs like 'The Dark Knight' arc and the 'Death of Superman', but they just don’t come together to form a cohesive story.

Watchmen was certainly not a bad movie. 

What DC must realise is that like Superman in this movie, they do have great power and they are using it to destroy icons dear to many, many of us.

The studio has had a horrible track record in comicbook movies other than some of the Batman films, and this movie will be their X-Men: The Last Stand. While Fox held up its hand and changed the X-men films, going so far as to create a timeline where The Last Stand didn’t exist.

We will see Marvel's take soon

Redeeming Feature

The only redeeming feature in the movie was the promise of things to come. The post-apocalyptic future in Batman’s Knightmare where he faces off against Superman is a hat-tip to a famous arc where Superman is raised by Darkseid instead of Jonathon Kent, and unleashes the dystopian madness that Batman fears.

This is followed up by The Flash turning up in what looks like a portal (one of his powers include the ability to travel through time), telling Bruce that he was right about ‘him’ which we assume is Superman and that Lois was the key (we assume to controlling a marauding Superman). There are also hints of the infamous 'Injustice: Gods Among Us' in which the Joker tricks Superman into killing Lois and unleashes the madness in him.

Hopefully, we will revisit that arc in the future, because it will take a lot to forget the mess Zack Snyder has landed DC in after this movie.