I mean, it could have been worse. I was late to watching the movie – anyone with young children is always late to doing anything – but all I’d heard in the lead-up was the splat of pop-cultural fans and critics throwing dung at the film from a great height. I thought it was going to be an abomination.
(click on PDF icon, above right, if you prefer back script on white)(Also: spoilers to follow)
Now, it’s true we expect fascist spectacle from Zack Snyder. He gave us 300 after all, a homoerotic fantasy 
about buff, perfectly proportioned, scantily clad men killing foreigners. And messengers from foreigners while yelling: ‘THIS IS SPARTA!’ And even the Spartans’ own babies, if they weren’t perfectly proportioned.
Zack’s apparently also keen on adapting The Fountainhead, written by the pin-up girl for American fascism, Ayn Rand.
So, sure, we get that from Batman vs. Superman. The big S poses, a lot, Wagnerian music rising. Cape fluttering gorgeously to one side. Always a wind blowing, fortuitously just strong enough to keep the cape out there, rippling. Attached to the brooding, mopey, vacant-eyed Uberman. The god, living among us, making lists of who is naughty, who is nice. Insufferably bland, improbable jawline, ripped abs, and an utter and complete lack of charisma.
Superman’s cape has more charisma than him. Seriously.
But it could have been worse.
Ben Affleck is quite good actually, given the material he was given to work with (as Harrison Ford said to Lucas regarding his wooden dialogue on the set of Star Wars: “George, you can type this shit, but you can’t say it”). In fact, Affleck’s probably the best part of the movie. Actually manages to capture something of the darkness and complexity of the Batman (though anyone would look like Marlon fucking Brando when standing in the vicinity of that constipated chin model, Henry Cavill). 
Wonder Woman is fine, given her limited role. My only complaint about Wonder Woman is the same complaint I have about every other female superhero: shoulders. Tiny. Little. Shoulders. It’s ridiculous we can’t have bigger female superheros: bigger shoulders, bigger thighs. Stronger. I just can’t bring myself to 
suspend disbelief for the supermodel waif. The only buff female superhero I can think of is Angel Dust from Dead Pool (the actress, Gina Carano, is an MMA fighter in real life).
So Wonder Woman has tiny shoulders, but otherwise is fine. The rest of the case is fine, except Lex Luthor, who comes across as an angry tech support guy with ADHD.
The action is ponderous, mostly. The Batman V Superman fight is kinda cool.
However (and surprisingly) the most interesting aspect is the philosophical. Most of time via Batman. “You’re not brave. Men are brave” he says, to Superman. He’s right. How can the Overman be brave when he is invulnerable? Why admire, or worship, one so untouched by regular human experience?
Batman also delivers this one: “My parents taught me a lesson, dying in the gutter for no reason at all… They taught me the world only makes sense if you force it to.” Good line. One that pretty much matches the existential imperative: “life has no meaning – it’s up to us to give it meaning.”
Sure, Snyder’s Batman is closer to the objectivist end of the existentialist spectrum, wherein Sartre argued each could become their own Uberman, if only they exercised their free will and made it so. But, you know, Sartre was a hobgoblin with a Stalin fetish, so best not take him too seriously.
I’m more at the Camus end of the spectrum myself, where one smokes a rolled tobacco cigarette, flips up 
the jacket collar, and walks through the rain contemplating the absurdity of the universe. Still, the Sartrian-existentialist bat makes a valid point in the face of the grand fascist predetermination of history’s Man.
Bruce: “He has the power to wipe out the entire human race, and if we believe there’s even a one percent chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty.” I mean: he’s right, again. We can’t rely on the good graces of an all-powerful being. He could lose his shit and turn on us at any given moment. What if Clark Kent has a bad day at the Daily Planet, drinks one too many whiskey sours after work, watches his favourite character die in Game of Thrones that evening and angrily smashes the coffee table with his fist? BOOM, the whole apartment complex comes down, that’s what.
Though the bigger problem, the real problem, is Superman ain’t so smart.
His imagination for super-deeds doesn’t extend beyond saving little girls from apartment fires and dragging an icebound ship out of the Antarctic. His decision-making process is apparently determined by what he’s watching on television at any particular time.
He’s the Brick from Anchorman of superheroes.
Superman: “I save lamps.”
Lois: “Do you really, Clark? Or do you just want to save all the lamps because you’re looking at a lamp?”
I mean, this clown could do all variety of quite useful things. Fly to North Korea, grab Kim Jong-Un, and hurl him into the Sun; vaporise Donald Trump with his eye-beams; take out ISIS; steal all the world’s Nukes and send them into outer space.
He doesn’t do any of those things. Kittens out of trees, from this dullard.
A further problem: I can see Clark Kent actually liking Donald Trump because: ‘he tells it like it is.’ Worse – and more likely, in the Snyder version – Superman might become a hardcore libertarian and fly around smashing up legislatures and public schools.
So yeah, Batman kind of has a point, his anger towards Superman entirely explicable after he sees him destroy half of New York.
Which makes the efforts of Lex Luthor to turn Batman against Superman even stranger. Bruce is already out to get the Man of Steel, is making preparations to do so, has compelling personal and philosophical motivations. So why get in the way?
Indeed, Lex’s nonsensical meddling (he pees in a jar and gives it to a US senator at one point) saves Superman, because he kidnaps Superman’s mom and her name happens to be Martha. So because Bruce’s mom’s name is also Martha, Bruce doesn’t shove that kryptonite spear right through the large S on the big guy’s chest. Wait, what?
At the end of it all Existentialist Bat, Ayn Rand’s Dullard, and Wonder Waif kill Doomsday. That’s nice. Don’t quite understand the point in creating Doomsday, given Lex can’t control him. But killing him, that’s nice. Superman dies (though I’m sure he doesn’t), but let’s pretend he really does die, which is for the best really given he was an all-powerful, godlike alien that could smite us if he gets angry enough when George RR Martin decides to go and kill John Snow for real next time.
Sure, without Superman we’re back to being ruled by mercurial billionaires with an apparently limited understanding of the relationship between inequality and crime; so limited in fact they think beating up petty criminals one-by-one is more effective than say, funding public schools or advocating for a higher minimum wage.
But hey, I’d rather the world as it is over one of Zack Snyder’s wet dreams.
Score: 2 stars (out of 5)
Bechtel test: fail
