By now, everyone has pretty much made their say on Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice. As it stands, it still has an average score from fans while the critic reviews pan even lower than Man of Steel (55/7.5 critic vs fans on metacritic).
What exactly has made this franchise so polarizing compared to Marvel flicks such as The Avengers being easily embraced? Well, the film itself is a bit of a mixed bag, there’s some highlights and strong character performances but there’s also this nagging sense of pacing as events run on a bit of the long side or the tone doesn’t really match up that well.
The notion of how much Warner Brothers depends on this film exceeding Man of Steel are pretty great. There is no real time to go back to the start and signs of an audience being disinterested in the overloaded swath of cape films is starting to show. While WB can mix things up a bit with Suicide Squad as it offers something more similar to Deadpool that came out in Feb, the plans for Justice League is the end goal.
Going into the film, I’ve always been more of a DC fan especially as of late. More titles from DC are on my pull list and despite DC trying something different with DCYou to which under preformed even in their flagship titles such as Omega Men, I’m really glad they took the chance as there’s no way something like Prez, let alone Omega Men, would ever be done by Marvel as it is currently.
The film itself tries to establish a lot of seeds for future films and to most critics, it was jarring and pointless (much like Thor’s subplot in Age of Ultron to setup his third film). There’s barely any pay off at the time and they mostly seem bored of just sitting through a 2 hour flick. On the other hand, any critic that seems to identify with Superman mythos is quick to point out how it isn’t the “correct” take on the title character yet this is probably the only point in the franchise where the audience can see Superman take on threats that involve more than just catching things.
Overall, it isn’t going to win over anyone that has already bowed out their interest in Superman, the film still pushes the character forward in the tone established in Man of Steel. It’s certainly more favoured towards Batman as for those curious about how Ben Affleck portrays the cape crusader are in for a treat.
Extended thoughts in podcast form after the jump.
