In Defense Of 'Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice'

This weekend saw the opening of a movie that I did not would be happening in my lifetime, which is the fight between Batman and Superman taking place on the big screen in live action for the world to witness. Although the movie has started to receive from negative reviews from the critics that have seen the movie from general movie goers the reception is a bit more in favor of the movie. Now before I get any farther into this article, "Batman v. Superman" is not the perfect movie by any means, but I like to believe that the positives within the movie outweigh the flaws that it has. Therefore, I would like to lay out my argument for why I support this movie and why I think that everybody should see the movie for themselves before passing judgment on the film.

(Also if you have not seen the film yet I warn that this article may contain spoilers for the movie. So read on at your own risk.)

To get started let's talk about some of the negatives that the film has gotten from critics before getting into the better parts of this film. To begin with the writing in "Batman v. Superman" is bad. Not only is the writing bad but the writing is lazy to me. I am a guy who has become pretty invested into the DC universe over the past few years so I know the basics of characters, and what Zack Snyder was hoping to set up for his "Justice League" movie. However I still found that some of the referenced that are used by Snyder, David Goyer, and Chris Terrio are lazy and just plain confusing at times within the film. Such as their ending to reference to Darkseid made by Jesse Eisenberg. If you are not a comic book fan that line is going to seem insane and completely from left field. Hell I'm a comic book guy and that line still took me for a bit of a loop.

The editing within this film was not the greatest either with a lot of the scenes seeming to be hastily chopped apart or split up for no real reason other than that the editing guy was told to edit and so he started to split stuff up for no reason. If the editing of a film is bad than it can be confusing for the audience to follow along where the director is trying to take them and it can also make the film seem to drag on longer than it should by forcing certain scenes to go on longer than they should. One example of this for me would be the scene where Lex Luthor is attempting to get the senator to hand him over all of the Kryptonian evidence the what left after the events of "Man of Steel" and let's just say that there are two cuts too many within this brief exchange, which just makes the scene seem tedious and a chore to watch for the audience.

Speaking of Lex Luthor let's talk about the writing for the characters within "Batman v. Superman" themselves you have two of three main characters within this film Lex Luthor and Superman having some of the worst lines in the whole film is definitely a mistake on the parts of the writers. When you have to rely solely on the charisma of the actors to be able to deliver their lines without actually giving them good dialogue is failure on the part of David Goyer and Chris Terrio. But to be frank, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor was not the most enjoyable thing for me to sit through during this movie. Somebody obviously told him that this would be his "The Dark Knight" and tried to be the next Heath Ledger with his interpretation of Luthor within this film. This also ties into one of the biggest problems that people have with this film, which is the switch that Batman has within the film from hating Superman and wanting to kill him, to becoming his best friend and on his side to stop the plan that Luthor has put in motion was a little stilted and rushed. However, I feel like that is the cause of the bad editing once again and might not be on the shoulders of the writers themselves this time.

But now that the bad things have been pointed out, let's get to the good and great things that are present within this film of the Dark Knight versus the Man of Steel. First of all you have to talk about the action scenes that Snyder was able to put together during this film both the big fight between Batman and Superman and the final fight with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman taking on Doomsday was a sight to see. Plus being able to watch Batman actually take Superman down to his level and demolish him during that fight and be the definitive winner in the end was fantastic. Snyder has the amazing ability to accurately make these fight scenes look like full spreads ripped out of a comic and they look absolutely fantastic to watch on the big screen.

You also have to talk about the characters that absolutely work during this film, which is mainly Batman and Wonder Woman, who were able to absolutely kill it during this film. Especially Ben Affleck who was able to portray an old and grizzled Batman that definitely has a darker view on what the world is and how he views people that commit crimes and hurt innocent people within this new worldview that he has. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was also excellent to see, especially her action sequences, which really show the power that she is able to have as this Amazon warrior.

If y'all have not seen the film yet I encourage you to see it yourself and make your own judgments on the film. I am personally a fan of the film despite a few of its shortcomings so I encourage everybody to see the film themselves.

Also if you want to see some real big movie fans and comic book guys talk about their thoughts on the film I highly recommend watching this spoiler cast done by some of the guys over at Collider.com including my favorite guy John Campea. Fair warning though the whole video is 45 minutes long, but it is worth the watch if you want to learn a bit more about the film itself.