Arts & Entertainment
Scathing Reviews, Trailer: 'Batman v. Superman' is 'A Stink Bucket of Disappointment'
The reviews are in for Friday's world premiere of "Batman v. Superman: The Dawn of Justice," and they're diabolical.
The wait may not be worth it, according to scathing early reviews that call it everything from a “crime against comic book fans” to “a stink bucket of disappointment” to a “cynical cash grab” by Warner Brothers and DC Comics, which collaborated in the film that cost $250 million to produce and around $150 million to market.
Even Adam Graham, a reviewer from the The Detroit News, claimed to be exhausted by the showdown in his hometown.
“The heavyweight title bout between Batman and Superman is a smash to the senses, the same way being tossed around in a rollover car accident would jolt one’s system.
“That is the level of roaring, unrelenting punishment acted out in director Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which is at once overstuffed and undercooked. The movie crams together a Batman story, a Superman story and lays the groundwork for several side tales, all in the space of a cluttered two-and-a-half hour collision that aims to bludgeon viewers into submission.
“It’s a lot, and yet the experience is rather empty; underneath all the smashing and crashing there isn’t much there. It is so burdened by its responsibility to set up a franchise that it barely takes the time to exist in the present, and Snyder is so encumbered by the idea that superhero films are supposed to be serious business that he forgets to have any fun. This is Batman and Superman, not a funeral procession.” Read the full review.
A.O. Scott of The New York Times also poked at Snyder as a fun-hater in the movie. He said the showdown is, “depending on how you look at it, either a diabolical stunt cooked up by Lex Luthor or a cynical cash grab engineered by DC [Comics] and Warner Brothers.”
“For fun there are shots of the heroes shirtless and of Lois Lane in the bath. But the point of ‘Batman v Superman’ isn’t fun, and it isn’t thinking, either. It’s obedience. The theology is invoked not to elicit meditations on mercy, justice or sacrifice, but to buttress a spectacle of power. And in that way the film serves as a metaphor for its own aspirations. The corporations that produce movies like this one, and the ambitious hacks who sign up to make them, have no evident motive beyond their own aggrandizement. Entertainment is less the goal than the byproduct, and as the commercial reach of superpower franchises grows, their creative exhaustion becomes ever more apparent.” Read the full review.
Ale Abad-Santos of Vox Culture called it a “crime against comic book fans.”
“Allow me to let you down easy: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner Bros.'s most anticipated superhero slugfest in history, is not great. The goodwill that Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, and the late Heath Ledger fostered in the studio's “Dark Knight” trilogy feels like a relic from eons ago. (The final movie in that trilogy, 2012's “The Dark Knight Rises,” isn't even five years old.) The few bright spots of 2013's “Man of Steel” — Kevin Costner and Diane Lane's humanizing portrayals of Pa and Ma Kent, Amy Adams's Lois Lane, the initial awe of Superman taking flight — are but a distant memory.
“In their place is a stink bucket of disappointment, a sad and unnecessary PG-13 orphan fight that director Zack Snyder believes is an homage to DC Comics' most iconic heroes but is more along the lines of a home invasion perpetrated on comic book culture — save for one absolutely glorious moment that Snyder and friends may have accidentally lucked into.” Read the full review.
The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin says Marvel Comics needn’t lose any sleep.
“No major blockbuster in years has been this incoherently structured, this seemingly uninterested in telling a story with clarity and purpose. It grumbles along for what feels like forever, jinking from subplot to subplot, until two shatteringly expensive-looking fights happen back to back, and the whole thing crunches to a halt.
“That Wagnerian final brawl is exactly what you want in a film called ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ – but it doesn’t come close to compensating for the blithering chaos that preceded it. The first hour in particular is so haphazardly assembled, I honestly wondered if a reel had gone missing from the projection booth.
“Perhaps the kindest thing you can say about Zack Snyder’s film — a sequel to his superb standalone Superman movie Man of Steel (2013), but also the lodestone of a new DC Comics Extended Universe, around which further DC films will cluster — is that its ambitions wildly exceed its reach.” Read the full review here.
Scott Mendelson writes for Forbes that the movie is “a treat for the eyes, but it will hurt your brain and break your heart.”
“ ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ is not a good movie. It offers a truly unengaging Batman and then allows that character to dominate the proceedings while providing a painfully mopey and grim Superman-and-Friends narrative where the only ray of light comes from its homicidal arch-villain. The action scenes get better as they go along, but they aren’t as clean and as comprehensible as Man of Steel’s daylight smack downs. Read the full review here.
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» Photo via Warner Bros.
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