Some people are a lot more serious about their superheroes than others. They talk about Superman like they’re talking about Congress. Listening to them, you’d think Aquaman was real. They not only don’t like the old Batman TV series from the 1960s, but they’re actually offended by it. They’re more interested in subtext than stories. They don’t cut loose, they unpack. They’re rarely funny. The kid inside them that got interested in this stuff in the first place is forgotten and replaced by an adult who can’t admit that he likes something that’s fun and trashy and silly. No, he is an Art Appreciator and when he talks Batman and Superman he dons a smoking jacket and a monocle. Or at least he digs out his old college philosophy class notes.
I’m not saying that these people are all bad. I like many of the things that they like. And serious pondering about superheroes has produced good stuff (Frank Miller’s 1980s peaks are still great today; I also vouch for the George R.R. Martin-edited Wild Cards book series.)
What I am saying though is that the personality specimen above is the perfect audience for this sluggish, annoying, shitty, endless, Rush triple concept album of a movie.
It’s a film that takes itself so seriously that it seems to think that excitement or suspense is beneath it. Subtlety-impaired director Zack Snyder is too busy stroking his chin over fake “deep thoughts” about the real-life implications of Superman (an oft-used theme in science-fiction—it’s just the old Stranger in a Strange Land story, for Chrissakes—re-heated here straight from the back of the fridge). If an interesting twist happens, it’s probably one of Bruce Wayne’s dream sequences. Snyder also buries his artless action scenes under CGI like dirt on a grave and gives his actors exactly one note each to play in this symphony of shit. There are hardly any characters here, just brooding statues and a few thudding battering rams (Jesse Eisenberg tries his best to ham it up as a shaggy hipster Lex Luthor, but Snyder keeps him on a short leash so as to not interrupt the film’s downer dirge). The only way to see dimension in these people is to pay extra for the 3-D version.
The film’s most unforgivable sin: It feels longer than a flight to Hawaii. It’s two-and-a-half hours, feels like two-and-a-half days. That’s a lot of time to spend with a million explosions that don’t matter and a cast of characters who matter even less, especially when the leads are the famously wooden Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck.
Is it possible to make a good film that draws inspiration from Frank Miller’s classic apocalyptic superhero noir story The Dark Knight Returns? Yes, but it takes a director with more of a maverick sensibility than you’ll ever get from Zack Snyder, whose resume is dominated by big-budget remakes and comic book adaptations. He doesn’t create worlds. He’s not a provocative artist-type. Nobody cares what he thinks. He has a sensibility, sure, so does the creator of those ugly “Affliction” T-shirts. Snyder is a Hollywood hack whose skill is simply taking someone else’s world and then making it louder. He doesn’t have a point-of-view; he has a volume knob.
The couple next to me at the theater brought their kid, a boy maybe 7 or 8 years old. I felt bad for him. This isn’t a kids movie, not because it’s too disturbing, but because it’s so brutally unfun. Neither Batman or Superman do anything cool or clever or even make a wisecrack. No kid is going to walk out of this jumping around and imagining that he’s one of the characters.
The boy fidgeted constantly and asked his dad for the time every twenty minutes. At one point, he completely lost interest in the movie and climbed up on his seat with his back to the screen. He was looking at the window in the back of the room where the light from the projector was shining through. He stared at it for several minutes, sort of fascinated. It was more interesting than Superman and Batman.
I don’t talk at the movies, but I kept wanting to say out loud, “I’m with you, kid”.