I’m sharing this Batman v Superman review because it’s representative of pretty much every negative review of the film. An entertaining critic who generally gives thoughtful reviews gives a few valid critiques, but ultimately seems to have not paid attention to huge chunks of the film. And seems not to remember that part of a film critic’s job is to look for metaphors (maybe because, as good as Marvel’s films have been, they seem to be straight-forward, relatively metaphor-free and easy to understand, and they may have trained us all to expect that from superhero movies).
Watch this review, and then read my own beneath it. If you haven’t yet seen the movie, there are MASSIVE SPOILERS ahead, so don’t watch the video and don’t read on…
Still there? Ok:
One of this critic’s main gripes is that Batman kills people in this movie. Several people. Well, Batman’s been murdering people left and right in films ever since 1989’s Batman (where he did it with a psychotic smirk. Go back and watch it). This Batman’s body count isn’t any higher than Keaton’s, or even Bale’s. This is as strange as all those people who claimed “Superman doesn’t kill” when Superman’s killed plenty of times (even killing Zod twice in the comics and again in Donner’s Superman II… again with the psychotic smirk that we all found charming at the time. Maybe it was an Eighties thing.).
The critic says the movie didn’t even attempt to explain why Batman’s moral code has been abandoned. Of COURSE it explained why his moral code had eroded over the years. Bruce delivered an entire monologue about it to Alfred, just after Alfred (contrary to what this guy says) told him he was going too far.
If the critic’s real complaint is that Batman doesn’t seem to feel any *guilt* over the killings, well, maybe. But here’s the thing: that’s one of the main themes of the movie! Possibly THE main theme! It’s the reason your gut is probably telling you this was more a Batman movie than a Superman one: it was about *Bruce’s* painful journey into darkness and back out again.
Batman’s taken a step into the dark side. Alfred warns him that his branding criminals and becoming more ruthless is crossing a line. He told him that sort of thing is what turns good men bad. Bruce himself said it’s rare that good men (at least in Gotham) remain good, and whether he knew it or not, it was pretty clear to the audience (the audience that was paying attention) that he was also referring to himself. The movie was showing us that Bruce was at a crossroads. Seeing Superman as a two-dimensional alien monster who needed to be murdered was representative of that, and if he’d gone through with it there may have been no coming back for him.
Zack Snyder brilliantly shocked Batman back into his senses during the moment that most critics seem not to have understood at all (and if they did understand it, they just didn’t appreciate it): the moment when Batman was stunned just by hearing Superman utter the name “Martha.” And here is where the film is at least an order of magnitude smarter than its most vehement critics:
“Martha” was not just Martha.
In Bruce’s nightmares, his mother Martha represented the good in him. We didn’t see her get shot over and over again just to remind us Bruce had a traumatic childhood. The repetition of that nightmare was to show us the goodness in Bruce being snuffed out by the surrounding evil. When the dream finally showed the light fading from Martha’s eyes, and Bruce’s father whispered “Martha” with his own dying breath, that was a *metaphor* for Bruce completely losing his way. Bruce knew this himself on some level. That’s why hearing Superman also whisper “Martha” just before he was about to die gave Bruce pause.
The necessity of murdering Superman had been a two-dimensional, black and white matter to him. But then Superman said the one word that reminded Batman of the goodness that was supposed to be within him. And Lois (the reporter, a metaphor for “the truth”) dived between them, literally adding a third dimension to the fight. This combination forced Batman to see Superman not as an alien object to be destroyed, but as a person with a human mother — a person who, even as Batman was about to murder him, was only worried about the safety of his own “Martha.” A person who was BEGGING Batman to save her once he’s gone. That’s why Batman threw away the kryptonite spear and swore “Martha will not die tonight” (metaphor, people); he didn’t just decide to save Clark’s mom, he decided to save *himself.* To pull himself back from the precipice.
The resulting fight with Batman alone in the darkness facing more than a dozen killers, culminating in him shielding Martha (who was now the personification of goodness) with his body from the exploding flame thrower couldn’t have been a more blatant visual metaphor for his jaded, blind rage at last being burned away in a crucible. That was the significance of Bruce NOT branding Lex at the end. The encounter with Superman and Bruce’s choice to save “Martha” had restored him to the man he’d always tried to be.
It’s just astounding to me that very few professional critics seem to have noticed any of that. They’ve been too busy saying how confused they were, and how disappointed they were that it wasn’t a simpler story, to even bother dissecting the abundant – and expertly deployed – visual metaphors. I remember a time when that’s the sort of thing critics loved to discuss. I remember a time when critics saw a “confusing” movie and were eager to find the meaning in it, instead of annoyed (or even oblivious to the fact) that they were being asked to.