Review: Batman vs. Superman

Story by Gracie Kost

Photo Courtesy of MCT Campus

My eyes flickered open to yet another dramatic scene of Lois Lane being saved by Superman. I was only 45 minutes into the movie, and I realized I had dozed off for the third time. I readjusted my position, hoping this time I wouldn’t drift back to sleep. I tried my hardest to focus on the most confusing and boring movie I had ever seen.

I am willing to see pretty much any movie, any genre. Batman V. Superman covered any genre from romance to science fiction, so I figured I would be at least pleased by the end of a movie starring one of my favorite actors, Ben Affleck. I was wrong.

Overall, I did not enjoy this movie and neither did Rotten Tomatoes – who only gave them a 29% rating.To start, the movie was incredibly long, and many points I would find myself very confused about what was going on. I may not be a superhero expert, but the movie was hard to follow in general– you pretty much need to go into it with prior knowledge of each character’s history.

In addition to the movie lasting two and a half hours, every superhero movie plot tends to outline the same idea. The superhero has an enemy and spends an hour or more fighting it off, trying to find ways to save Earth, making the movie very repetitive and boring. Also, there were several characters introduced more than halfway through the movie, adding to the already complex story line.

The movie opens with a scene in the fictional city of Gotham; there are aliens invading and destroying all of the buildings. Bruce Wayne is driving through the crowds of frantic people trying to get closer to the action when he notices Superman, played by Henry Cavill, flying around the tops of buildings saving people. There was a growing theory that both heroes were using their own morals, which didn’t always point the same direction as the government’s. Superman was so powerful people started to fear that if he were to go rogue, they wouldn’t have any control.

In my opinion, Superman was a good guy – way better than Batman. The people made Superman out to be much worse because occasionally  when he would save somebody, he would end up leaving a few people to die. I don’t think that Superman has the heart to take over the world with his natural born powers. However, Batman was just overall much darker and more ominous. His desires to be like Superman did not go unnoticed.

The relationship between the two heroes was foreshadowed throughout the script, up until the last 45 minutes by villain, Lex Luthor. He established a hatred between Batman and Superman by setting them up to battle to the death. After dragging Lois, Superman’s love interest, to the top of a tower and threatening to kill her, he persuades Superman to fight Batman in order to save his mother. Luthor is a character who didn’t like everybody calling Superman a “god,” and did everything in his power to destroy him.

Although Jesse Einsberg was a phenomenal actor for this character, I hated Luthor. He was creepy and always twitching. I could never understand what he was trying to say.

One of the more confusing portion of the movie was where Lois Lane finds herself facing death once again. Superman saves her from some place in the Middle East which ignites a war and results in thousands of deaths- all of which held Superman responsible. Most of the time during the movie, when I wasn’t asleep, I would be leaning into my mom’s chair, whispering to figure out what in the world was going on (ok and maybe gushing about Henry Cavill’s defined bod.)

Acting and casting was done well. Luthor was played by Jesse Eisenberg – personally thought he did an excellent job of being a creepy, evil, awkward villain. Henry Cavill as Superman was fitting enough. He did a decent job of playing a hero, but an even better job as the ordinary Clark Kent. Ben Affleck was cast perfectly as the more brooding and dark Batman, but I think he would be perfect as anybody.

Don’t get me wrong, I was psyched for this movie,  I personally didn’t like that Affleck was portraying the more villainous role, and that Superman had a small amount of the limelight. The movie was two hours and 33 minutes of awesome special effects and superheroes fighting, but really, how long can one watch the same old fighting superheroes come close to death until a new power is suddenly uncovered to save the day.  The movie concludes perfectly set up for a sequel, with the promise of Batman uniting with Wonder Woman to uncover more superheroes in hiding and find justice for Superman.