Warner Bros. Entertainment’s newest superhero film “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” came out on March 25, and as a staunch comic book fan, I would say it was disappointing.
When I first walked out of the theater, I thought it was terrible. The pacing was off, the characters, primarily Batman, Superman and Lex Luthor, felt wrong and a fair number of scenes in the movie felt shoehorned in.
But then, as I’ve had time to process the movie, I’ve just come to feel disappointed in the movie for what it could have been.
The parts of the movie that focused on Batman were stellar. Ben Affleck did a wonderful job of portraying both Bruce Wayne and Batman.
In comparison, the parts that featured Superman, as portrayed by Henry Cavill, were less than stellar. The character felt rather bland and one-dimensional.
While watching the movie, I found myself wanting to skip through the scenes that didn’t include Batman.
This difference in quality is what makes the movie so disappointing. The Batman-centered parts just make the rest of the movie look awful in comparison.
Had it just been a Batman and Superman movie focused on the two of them coming into conflict over differing ideologies, it would’ve been great.
Instead, the movie took too much time away from establishing the other characters and tried to fit in as many characters and minor cameos for future films as possible. This scattered, unfocused approach kept most of the characters, save Batman, from being fleshed out and developed.
But instead, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. felt that they needed to emulate the cinematic universe created by Marvel Studios.
As part of that attempt, they added extra characters and a tacked on, overarching plot contrived to prepare for the upcoming Justice League movie.
This is an effort to compete with the largely expanded universe that Marvel built over the last 10 years.
Marvel did a great job of building each of their characters in their universe, with each character getting their own individual movie to build and establish them.
These established characters allowed Marvel to bring them together in “The Avengers” without it being a ham-fisted, cluttered mess.
In contrast, the DC universe did a poor job of establishing its characters, especially when it came to Superman, who is seen by many as their flagship character.
The world established by “Man of Steel” was a fledgling one where the only individuals with powers were Superman and the Kryptonians.
Much like Marvel, they should have rolled out their movies, and the heroes portrayed, slowly and with care.
It is understandable, on the other hand, why Batman was included in the way that he was. While the Nolan trilogy of films ended in 2011, those films did a good job of giving us a primer for understanding the character we see here.
The same can’t be said of Superman or any of the other characters in this film.
The additions of Wonder Woman and the other heroes, namely Cyborg, the Flash and Aquaman, could also have been handled better.
These cameos only served to detract from the plot of the movie and it just reminded me of how this film seemed only to build the future DC universe.
The problem with that is that “Dawn of Justice” has been critically panned. It currently sits at a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is lower than “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.”
With a reception like that, there may not be a future for this universe at all.
Marvel’s line of films can survive a bad movie or two, because they’ve established that they can do really good movies such as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Iron Man.”
Overall, I didn’t hate “Dawn of Justice.” I just hope that with future films, DC is able to learn from their mistakes and adopt a more Marvel-style approach to building their cinematic universe.
Russell, a freshman journalism major from Charlotte, NC, is an opinion writer.