Alright so I
just watched the extended version of “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice” for
the first time, right after I watched “Captain America: Civil War” on Netflix.
Listening to different sides of the argument for both movies, as well as,
watching the movies through a different lens helped me to create a less biased
comparison of the two properties. I have written a comparison of some main
points that might clear up the argument between these two movies. I’ll have it
known that I never completely hated the theatrical release of “Batman V.
Superman” I just thought it was ok. So here we go with…
Round 1
Miscasting
Marisa Tomei Vs. Jesse Eisenberg
One of my biggest hang-ups about BvS
was the casting of Jesse Eisenberg as “Alexander” Luthor. Basically, every time
he was on screen I wanted to claw my eyes out and wish for the sweet release of
death. He completely took me out of the movie with his horrendous approach to
someone who was supposed to the pinnacle of human power going someone who was
the pinnacle of power. I understood what they were going for, they wanted to
show that if a Luthor existed in this timeline he wouldn’t be the
stereotypical “stuffed shirt business
man” that we’ve been made to associate with Lex Luthor from comics, animated
outings, etc. It’s just extremely hard to disassociate the Luthor we have been
seeing throughout most of our lives with the Luthor we got. I don’t want a new,
edgy Luthor to appeal to millennials who have a different concept of wealth in
this day and age. I want my Luthor. I get that we are supposed to like change
but this was almost a complete 180 from the type of Luthor we have come to
expect. I know this is what they were trying for, to see these characters
through a new lens, but this character was a bit too “on the nose” for what we
expect from billionaires today and didn’t sell me as a real threat to Superman
at all. Eisenberg’s Luthor can’t really hold a candle to Hackman or Rosenbaum
(Lex Luthor from “Smallville”). It was the only reason I held a major grudge
against this movie from the beginning. Want to appeal to the new generation of
billionaires? Let’s literally cast the person who was cast as the creator of
Facebook in a different movie. Ridiculous.
“So, Spider-man is young in this
movie right?” “Yes.” “That means we have to cast a younger Aunt May right?” “No
not really…” “Oh C’mon, she’s AUNT
May not Grandma May, she should be around the same age as her sister right?”
“Yeah, I Guess that’s right…” “So let’s cast a young, attractive actress as
her, and point out in the dialogue how young and attractive she is.” “ummm… Ok
I guess… but won’t the fans be a little put off by that? We had an older women
portraying her for a while, Rosemary Harris is still a beloved Aunt May.” “Who
cares about the fans” this is how I imagine the conversation went when casting
Marisa Tomei as Aunt May. Seeing her there was a distractor but not as much of
distractor as seeing Eisenberg as Luthor since I had to see a lot of Eisenberg
and only a little of Tomei. I know I will be seeing more of these characters in
movies to come and it makes me a bit uneasy.
Eisenberg
was too present and served a far greater role in the film to make my hatred for
him grow exponentially.
Winner: Civil War
Round 2
Good New Casting
Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland Vs.
Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Jeremy Irons
This is basically a competition between
the unknown and the known. We are trying to compare two actors we know very
little about and two actors we know a lot about (with the support of one
actress we know very little about). As it stands it is a little more even than
I could have imagined.
On the one hand we have two actors
giving the characters accents very convincing accents that match the tone of
what their characters should be going for. Boseman gives us a great
interpretation of an African accent and Holland gives us the New York accent
Spiderman has sorely been missing. These actors gave life to characters that
held special places in fan’s hearts. Holland specifically has two other Spider-men
to compete with, but he came out swinging and proved to the audience that he
had what it took to carry this character into the new age.
On the opposite hand we have
Affleck, Irons, and Gadot. Affleck faced controversy since the very beginning
when he was announced as Batman, but he turned out to be the Batman fans have
been wanting for a long time. He is a fan of the series and showed his
experience with character in his portrayal of the role, by bringing new life to
a character who has shared this mantle with four other actors (excluding small
screen and voice). When Keaton was announced as the original Batman he was met
with similar controversy and turned the opinion of the masses around, Affleck
did the same here. Gadot had smaller shoes to fill but those shoes were still
enormous. Lynda Carter has been the only real Wonder Woman we have known for a
long time until Gadot came in swinging her sword and whipping her lasso. She
had limited exposure in this film but stole the show for all intents and
purposes. Alfred has been played to perfection first by Michael Gough, then by
Michael Caine. Jeremy Irons was attempting to fill a role that no one thought
could be played any better, but he found a way. Who else could step to the
challenge if not a classically trained actor like Irons. He brought light to
this character that turned the character around and that is what we expect from
great actors. So even though I love to give credit to lesser known actors the
casting of Batman V. Superman for these pivotal roles was too good to ignore.
Winner: Batman V. Superman
Round 3
Fallout
Metropolis Vs. New York, Washington
D.C., Sokovia
Both of these movies feature fallout
from previous movies in the series. Metropolis for BvS, and a myriad of
locations for Civil War, the question is, who did a better job of painting a
picture of the loss from the previous movies?
BvS had a full scene where Bruce
Wayne tore through the streets of Metropolis to try and save his employees.
This scene was obviously a ploy to answer for the countless lives that were
lost during the events of “Man of Steel,” to appease fans (like me0 who were
put off by all the destruction; this ploy worked gang busters in the grand
scheme of things. It served as a grim reminder of what tragic events really
looked like to those directly affected by them. Bruce Wayne stopped to help
everyone he could and all he could do besides that was look in horror as these
godlike creatures literally tore through a city. It was one of the most
powerful scenes I have seen in a comic book movie.
All we got was a brief synopsis of
the events from past movies from General Ross, and a tear filled cry for help
from a mother of one of the victims from the past. I need a bit more to go off
of for a plot of the movie. The counter point to this is that they don’t have
to go in any more detail since we had movies describing what we went through
for each, the footage Ross shows is just a new perspective on events we have
already scene. These moments are powerful but nowhere near as powerful as the
fallout from BvS.
Winner: Batman V. Superman
Round 4
Casualties
Superman Vs. Warmachine
Both of these movies have casualties
from the fight between the main characters and it begs the question, which was
worse? Which effected the main characters more? Which will most likely have
more fallout for future movies?
In Batman V. Superman, we are given
the tragic death of Superman. This may bring up some old scars from seeing that
event in the comics back in the day (since that event has been directly tied to
the downfall of the comic industry). Regardless of how you feel about the death
it still brings a lot of weight to the movie, we are met with real loss and
that is something Marvel hasn’t done since the original Avengers movie. We even
feel the effects of Superman’s death in the movie that came after “Batman V.
Superman,” “Suicide Squad.” Now, is this going to stick? No. He’s already been
announced for “Justice League,” but in pure storytelling this death means
something. If it wasn’t for that scene of the dirt shifting at the end I would
call this perfect.
With Warmachine being crippled we
don’t get anywhere near as much fallout. Yes, when it happened it did shock us,
but there wasn’t any real weight behind it. With his best friend being Tony
Stark you know there isn’t going to be much to it. He’ll have a little bit of trouble
getting used to new robot legs and be fine after. Even in the movie, when it
happens there isn’t a whole lot of focus pulled. He gets hit, Tony gets mad, we
see him getting checked out at a hospital, we see him getting used to the new
robot legs, that’s it.
Winner: Batman V. Superman
Round 5
Writing
So the writing in Batman V. Superman
is a mess from top to bottom, even with the extra scenes in the ultimate
edition we are still left with a lot of holes in the story. It’s serviceable but
you can tell there was a great deal of struggles between the writers to make
everything coherent. There is still no reason to have Flash coming back to see
Bruce since he does nothing with the information, the “Martha scene” is still
lazy and uninspired. The extended cut does manage to plug a few holes, but the
ship is still sinking. I liked the dark tone that they went for, but it didn’t
make up for the mistakes that came from putting too many cooks in the kitchen.
Civil War had one of the more coherent
stories, but it had some struggles as well. Their “Martha scene” was Tony Stark
just deciding out of the blue to listen to what Steve was talking about. The
setup to eventual reveal of Winter Soldier killing the Stark parents was a
better payoff than…. Well anything the Batman V. Superman movie was attempting
to do.
Winner: Civil War
Round 6
World Building
It was up to Batman V Superman to set
the tone for all future DC movies to come. We had to get excited for anything
they were hinting at so we would eventually want to see the future movies. Did
they do that? Kind of, it was just a tad sloppy. When I saw the Darkseid
parademons I started to geek out, when I saw the Flash scene it felt show-horned
in, when I saw the videos of the other superheroes it felt lazy (especially
with the character symbols being in place with no setup to how that happened),
but even though it felt lazy I still enjoyed it.
There was no real world building
from Civil War, the most we got were post credit scenes hinting at the Black
Panther movie and “Spiderman: Homecoming.” Aside from that all we know no is
that The Avengers are basically The A Team now: people hunted by the law trying
to help others.
Winner: Batman V. Superman
Round 7
Choreography
Both of these movies had amazing choreography in them, so
much so that it is almost impossible to figure out which is better. On the one
hand, we have Batman in the warehouse fighting exactly how you would think a Frank
Miller inspired Batman would fight. He’s heavy handed making quick strikes to
try and end the fight fast. We also have Wonder Woman and Superman fighting exactly
how you would assume they would both fight. Wonder woman fighting like a Greek
solider, Superman fighting like he has no idea how to fight. On the other hand,
we have Black Panther fighting exactly how you would assume he would fight. A
certain flow to his movements that make us believe that even if he wasn’t
wearing his suit you could tell it was Back Panther just by the way he moves.
The same can be said for Black Widow, Spiderman, the Winter Soldier/Captain
America team up. It’s all just a bit too close to call.
Winner: Draw
Round 8
Handling the source material
Both
of these movies are drawing from the some of the most popular stories either
company has produced. Civil War was a world changing event for Marvel, the
fallout leading to some great stories (Death of Captain America) and some not
so great stories (One More Day). The movie version took some different steps,
from the original comic. It had to because a lot of the characters in the
original Civil War comic weren’t introduced before the movie. They didn’t get
to go into the moral gray area of teaming up with villains. They completely cut
out Director Maria Hill and replaced her with General Ross. What we got was a
shadow of the original story. It’s still about registration, and the plot still
works but it didn’t have teeth like the original story.
In order, to ask “How did Batman V.
Superman handled the source material?” we first have to ask “what source
material?” Are we talking about Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns? The Death of
Superman? Flashpoint? This movie was drawing from so many different comics it
lost focus. Yes, there are a lot of references to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight
Returns but then you throw in the Death of Superman and we have a bit of a
mess. Instead of Superman being sanctioned by the government to take down Batman
we have him trying to take down Batman because Lex Luthor is blackmailing him.
Instead of Superman being taken down by Doomsday in 1v1 combat we have him
taken down by Doomsday when it was 3v1 combat, and that opens even more plot
holes. Why couldn’t Wonder Woman stab Doomsday with the spear? The world may
never know.
Winner: Civil War
Final round
New Costume Design
Batman and Wonder Woman vs. Black
Panther and Spiderman
In this round we have an interesting
match-up. Two characters who we have seen multiple times, played by multiple
actors, and who have had multiple costume designs. We have two other characters
who have either never been seen or haven’t been seen since the 70’s.
When we compare Spiderman’s costume
in Civil War to Batman’s costume in Dawn of Justice it is almost impossible for
us to make comparisons without noting the old costumes and seeing where the
current costumes match against them. In the case of Batman I can’t say that
this is the best Batman costume I have ever seen. Bale’s suit seems much more
functional, and even Keaton’s suit seems better suited to the character.
Affleck’s suit has the big bat, which is nice but the rubber hood is completely
distracting, as well as the random and unnecessary lines going all over the
suit. It’s far from the worst suit we’ve seen (that honor still belongs to bat-nips),
but it definitely isn’t the best. When we look at Spiderman’s suit he is given
a slight advantage. The only suits he has to compete with are Garfield’s and
Maguire’s, but this also makes it a little harder. There is no clear winner
between the three. Do we pick the more animated looking suit that is closer to
the comic because the eyes can squint? Do we pick the best looking realistic
suit worn by Garfield? Or do we pick the original based purely on nostalgia? I’m
willing to give the newest Spiderman the advantage because we got to see the “homemade
suit” and the new clean suit. We got the squinting eyes, plus we got a tiny
spider instead of big spider.
Let me preface this next part by
saying both suits are great. Wonder woman does the exact opposite of Batman and
tones the suit down a few notches. The problem I have with it is that it seems
a little too toned down, the suit is missing a bit of flair. On the other hand
Black Panther’s suit is just perfect. It does what none of these other suits do
and allows me to believe that a person would actually wear this into battle. Sure
it has a gimmick, but the gimmick doesn’t really define the suit. He’s a cat,
but he looks more like a cat warrior than anything.
Winner: Civil War
When it is
all said and done both of these movies do a lot of things really well, they
fumble but every superhero movie has some fumbles here and there. I think that
these movies are exactly equal as long as you take the Ultimate Edition into
consideration. Neither of these movies would make my “top 10 of the year list”
but I didn’t hate either of them. I had a different appreciation for both. My
original reaction to BvS was disgust because it let me down so hard, but it
eventually won me over with the extended edition and me taking other factors
into consideration. I initially loved Civil War but it started cracking with me
the more I thought about it and the more I watched it.
