What would you do if you had to deal with a man powerful enough to destroy the world? A man who just laid waste to one of the largest cities on Earth while “defending” it from an alien; a man who claims to have our best interests at heart but—like so many of us—would do anything to protect the people he loves, regardless of the consequences? This is the central question posed by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Unfortunately, the movie completely fails to really explore it, let alone deal with its ramifications. Snyder’s sequel to the controversial Man of Steel reaches for profundity but settles for melodrama. That said, it’s not terrible entertainment. Seeing Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman (Henry Cavill), and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) together on screen for the first time is exciting enough, and Affleck in particular delivers a laudable performance as Gotham’s Caped Crusader. While this installment is mediocre, it sets up for future promising DC films.
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Batman v Superman v Doomsday v Jesse Eisenberg, Oh & Wonder Woman
Arguably the greatest challenge in making a trailer is treading the fine line between piquing the audience’s interest and spoiling the movie. But this trailer doesn’t even try. It opens with some nice banter between Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent as each of them argues why the other’s Superhero isn’t so super. Their critical comments regarding the darker side of superheroes taking the law into their own hands fit nicely with Snyder’s grittier tone. But as the trailer moves on, you gradually realize that this isn’t a trailer, it’s the whole freaking movie. The trailer essentially reveals the entire plot. Batman and Superman’s verbal disagreements escalate into fist fights, okay no surprise there. But then Jesse Eisenberg (allegedly playing Lex Luthor but really just playing the same character he plays in every movie) gets bored watching them not kill each other fast enough, so he uses the corpse of General Zod to create what appears to be a hybrid of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a Lord of the Rings Cave Troll (though it’s probably actually based on the comic villain Doomsday). Then Batman and Superman resolve their differences to take on this greater threat. Oh yeah, Wonder Woman’s there too, but given her utter lack of dialogue, it doesn’t look like she’s the strong, interesting female superhero we’ve been waiting for. A trailer for a movie with such well known characters as Batman and Superman doesn’t need to explain the entire plot. It just needs to show us that there are well motivated reasons behind the conflict between these two heroes. This trailer was made by people at Warner Bros. who didn’t actually work on the film, and it shows. It feels far more clumsy than previous trailers and reveals far too much. To paraphrase Superman, Warner Bros. “What have you done?”
Grade: F
Warner Bros. needs to learn from J.J. Abrams: When it comes to trailers, less is more
Here is the trailer itself. Watch at your own risk.