Film Review – Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice -3D

Film Review – Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice -3D

With great expectations come great disappointments...i dunno who said that and I am guessing its not Tobey Maguire from the first spider-man movie but it aptly fits the film I am going to be reviewing this week. Batman Vs Superman – Dawn of Justice has been in the works for almost a couple of years and has aroused great expectations from all film aficionado's. And not only because of the interesting premise- the clash between two do-gooders, two superheros, but also because of the interesting cast choice- Ben Affleck as the batman. Now there were a lot of detractors who prophesied that casting an over the hill actor like Affleck in a role requiring a macho action star was going to have a disappointing end and they have been proved right. Ben affleck does indeed look completely out of place as the suave Bruce Wayne but considering the storyline features a washed out version of batman who has been fighting crime- unsuccessful at that- for twenty years, Ben Affleck with his negligible screen presence fits the role of an afterthought superhero. Unfortunately he gets more screen time than the more popular superman character played by Henry Cavil. Which contributes a lot to the overall disappointment of the film.

The storyline is simple – batman feels superman is reckless and is not worried about collateral damage to the hundreds of civilians (dead civilians) who get caught in between when superman is fighting super-villains. On the other side of the equation superman is worried that batman is a lone vigilante who doesn't care about law or justice and simply hunts down criminals as a vendetta. So superman wants to bring batman to justice while batman simply wants to kill off superman to remove any alien threat to the planet. And just when you think the movie gets interesting and the two heroes face off for a showdown the plot  borrows from countless Indian movies which utilize the “mother sentiment” to have a dramatic turning point.

In this instance it is a dying superman who is critically weakened by batman's kryptonite bullets shouting his mother's name- Martha, which coincidentally is also batman's dead mother's name, which means ultimately that batman doesn't kill him but embraces him as brother. At least they stopped with that. Any more clichéd and they could have released it as a straight Tamil movie. Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane who is a reporter discovers that the whole showdown was orchestrated by Jesse Eisenberg who plays a young Lex Luthor and the two superheros join hands to find Luther who has by now found himself a convenient super-beast made from alien DNA. The climax involves a motley group of beaten down metahumans like superman and the wonder woman joined by a lone normal human batman in battling the  creature. Ultimately superman makes the supreme sacrifice of killing the creature with a kryptonian weapon and in the process killing himself off.

Director Zack Snyder who made the eminently watchable 300 has badly erred in making the farce of a superhero movie which cannot hold the audience's interest beyond the first few minutes. An interesting plot goes haywire in execution.

Verdict- watch for the TV premiere.