Dawn of Justice’ turns 7

Can one speak of disappointment when expectations are practically non-existent? ‘Man of Steel’ (‘Man of Steel’, 2013) and its more than irregular results —an impression endorsed not long ago by a third review of the film— almost completely ruined the possibility that something could be expected from ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ (‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’, 2016), a title that, a priori, should have made the kid who grew up wanting to see Batman and Superman on the big screen tremble with excitement distributing lumps like loaves.

Unfortunately and, as I say, derived from how little I enjoyed that new approach to the superhero par excellence —just like that, without specifying an editorial—, nor the announcement that Superman’s adventures would continue on the big screen with face to face with the dark knight, nor the fact that the second film of Zack Snyder in DC were to suppose the stone on which the future of this cinematographic universe will settle, they supposed for those who subscribe to this news with which to take the “hype” to the extremes that have been experienced by the network.

Torpedoed from the start

Let’s be clear, and let’s be clear from the beginning: if you’re going to shoot a two-and-a-half-hour film, it’s because you have a script in your hands that justifies, beyond any possible doubt, every second of projection. Because, as has been said on some occasion in these same lines, duration and epic do not go hand in handfar from it.

Unfortunately, Snyder must have thought just the opposite, and his bet, the one that ends up costing him the tape to scratch at the levels it does, is one of those “the more the merrier”. And anything farter from the reality.

Let’s take the beginning of the film as an example: the unnecessary insistence on the origin of Batman —seriously, how many more times will we have to see the same scene from different angles?— is followed by one of the best sequences on the film, one of exemplary rhythm that already exposes in a precise way the motivations of Bruce Wayne to want to knock down Superman. no more is needed. In fact, insisting what is insisted on what is exposed from here until the de facto confrontation ends up playing against it, blurring the whole to the unspeakable.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Already in the reproduction of the demolition of Metropolis that we witnessed in ‘Man of Steel’, seen at street level and through the optics of Bruce Wayne, problems begin to be seen that the tape will only aggravate as the film progresses. footage. Problems that begin as an anomalous malformation that nestles in the wrong part of his dialogues and that little by little takes on the appearance of a tumor on the hand of an action that moves in a disjointed, fragmented waypresenting characters and plot lines with unheard of clumsiness.

Without wanting to go into more detail, suffice it to say that accompanied by three or four fleeting glances at the clock and the occasional snort of exasperation, the exquisite corpse that is all this stretched-out first installment of ‘Batman v Superman’ evidences, and it does so alarmingly, a flagrant and depersonalized mediocrity on the part of a director who narrates with reluctance, in a troubled and unclear way and who continues to believe that, If something doesn’t have claw, idling it will solve it.

Dizzying the partridge with wasted talent

Snyder’s lack of visual ideas—note the Batmobile chase and how he’s made a fool of by any Christopher Nolan shot for his Batman trilogy—is underlined, marked in bold, and in slightly larger font size for a erratic script that, perpetrated again by david goyerand also signed by Chris Terrioseems to want to avoid maintaining a certain dignity at all costs.

A quality whose absence is revealed by the fact that, Without a doubt, he is the worst character in the entire production: Lex Luthor. Prisoner of an irrepressible verbiage that is soon perceived as an insubstantial chatter covered in false importance from which it is impossible to extract anything at times —and there you have summarized everything that precedes the climax on the tape— the megalomaniac is incarnated with very poor results by Jesse Eisenberg.

His Luthor gets mad at every intervention; from his casual and not very charismatic presentation to that more than foreseeable end that is reserved for the quintessential nemesis of The Man of Steel. With only a specific moment to value positively, the truth is that henry cavill not that it does much better.

Rather, his very broad shoulders prove even more ineffective than in ‘Man of Steel’ for carry the charisma that Superman should necessarily give off —we miss you, Christopher Reeve— and the “stick face” that he drags along throughout the performance greatly complicates the already complex empathy with the superman of enormous powers.

Above both -although not at a great distance, the truth- is the Batman of Ben Affleckconvincing above all for its physical imposingness since, again by the hand of the script, his crusade, interests and motivations are put at the service of becoming a mere puppet in the power game that Luthor poses.

and okay, gal gadot She doesn’t look bad at all as Wonder Woman, but her character is another who, together with the string of secondary characters —Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is hilarious, although not as much as Perry White (Laurence Fishburne)—, are there just as they might not be. I don’t know if I explain myself.

Batman v Superman: great scattered moments that do not quite meet expectations

To the combination of all of the above, and stressing once again the exasperation and tedium that seized this viewer during the hundred minutes that separate the start of what really interests the action, they cannot face the loose moments in which that something else is glimpsed I should have treasured the tape.

Something else that leads the nods to comic book readers and what Zack Snyder points out about the future of DC on the big screen —an ambitious plan designed before knowing the results at the box office— and that, when it explodes with all its fury, it is too late… and too loud.

And I am not referring only to auditory noise, which is also, but to the overwhelming nature of a set piece colossal of about half an hour that, without success, It tries to balance the scale of the brief interest that all the previous footage has aroused.

For many, among whom I wish they had counted me, being able to see what is projected in those minutes of the last act will be the realization of a long-cherished dream; but to those who are not fooled by pyrotechnics tricksthe flimsy base substrate will have put into question any future stake for a long time.

He said at the beginning that he could not speak of disappointment because there was no hope in the possibilities of the Zack Snyder film. But I think that the term could well be used to express what deeply disappointing which is the experience of watching ‘Batman v Superman’. A disappointment that cannot be covered either by the impeccability of its technical invoice or by the desire that there be more behind the false epic facade of a film that, in the end, does not know the true scope of the term.

In the end, this 250 million dollar behemoth did not deliver in movie theaters with the economic objective —which is what all this is really about— and although Warner supported the plan to start filming Justice League, a little less than a month after the premiere, the stage of Zack Snyder was doomed.

With 873 million collected, perhaps it is not possible to speak of a failure at the box office but, 7 years later, we already know that ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ began to sink definitively the aspirations of the Distinguished Competition to be able to face La Casa de las Ideas. Having seen what has been seen, in Marvel they can continue to breathe easy. At least, until now; We’ll see what happens with James Gunn’s stage.

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