Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

For years, DC Comics has struggled to successfully adapt its characters into movies. With the exception of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, they have had a spotty track record with ambitious, yet flawed efforts like V for Vendetta (2006) and Watchmen (2009), and outright commercial and critical failures like Jonah Hex (2010) and Green Lantern (2011). Meanwhile, DC’s rivals, Marvel Comics have been enjoying unprecedented success beginning with Iron Man (2008) and haven’t looked back since. In terms of franchises, they designed it so that all their movies exist in the same cinematic universe, which allowed characters from one movie to appear in a supporting role in another. This culminated with The Avengers (2012), which was a massive success.

Naturally, DC wanted to replicate this success and decided that Man of Steel (2013) would be the first installment in what has become known as the DC Extended Universe. Unlike previous Superman movies, it took on a decidedly darker tone to reflect the post-9/11 times in which we live in. While it made some fascinating tweaks to the Superman mythos, it courted controversy with its climactic showdown between Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod (Michael Shannon) that some felt was a betrayal of everything the superhero represents.

Man of Steel’s follow-up, the awkward-as-ass title, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), not only addresses the fallout of Superman’s actions but also ambitiously opens up the world by introducing Batman as well as several other superheroes (and villains) in what is seen as a lead-up to a Justice League movie, which will be DC’s version of The Avengers. This all rests on the financial success of Dawn of Justice and so a lot is resting on this movie, which may explain the all or nothing, go-for-broke scope and scale of the world it depicts.

I like that director Zack Snyder uses the movie’s opening credits to masterfully and succinctly sum up Batman’s origins. By now, most people know it and so it was a nice way of depicting it without holding up the narrative of the movie, much like how he did a great job of establishing the world of Watchmen in its opening credits. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) witnesses first-hand the wide-scale destruction of Metropolis as Superman and Zod duke it out. All he can do is watch as a good chunk of his office building is destroyed killing or maiming many of his employees.

More than a year after the climax of Man of Steel and the world is still reeling from the aftershocks of what happened. A United States Senator named June Finch (Holly Hunter) feels that superheroes like Superman need to be regulated lest they unleash more carnage. She temporarily allies herself with Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), a genius billionaire that has found enough Kryptonite to weaponize it so that he can stop Superman.

Meanwhile, Wayne is pursuing a Russian arms dealer in the hopes of finding out the man behind him, which maybe the same person that Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is investigating when she travels to Africa and is nearly killed for her troubles. Meanwhile, Clark Kent is concerned with Batman’s vigilante tactics and keeps tabs on his activities. This all builds to an epic confrontation between Batman and Superman that draws inspiration from the classic showdown between the two in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns complete with the former donning an armored suit to give him half a chance against the latter. Their fantastically choreographed battle royale in Dawn of Justice is all that I hoped it would be – epic and visceral. This is merely an appetizer for an even bigger climax as Lex unleashes a destructive force so powerful that it takes Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to stop it in a glorious CGI-intensive slugfest that is on par with anything seen in both DC and Marvel movies.

Ben Affleck is well-cast as an older, more world-weary Bruce Wayne, obsessed with stopping Superman to the point of being tormented by nightmares of being unmasked and killed by him. For Wayne, it is deeply personal as the battle of Metropolis opens his eyes to a much bigger threat than the two-bit crooks he’s been combating for 20 years. He is afraid of Superman’s power and what will happen if it continues to go unchecked. Anybody can be in the Batman suit but it takes something else to play Wayne that few actors have done it well. Affleck does an excellent job of conveying Wayne’s obsessive drive that is crucial to the character – better than anybody since Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s two Batman movies. He brings the right amount of gravitas required for the role, playing him as a tortured individual without overdoing it. The actor understands the anger that fuels Batman’s need to punish criminals and shows how this blinds him towards the bigger picture.

Henry Cavill continues his solid work as Superman, which tends to get lost in the larger than life portrayals of Batman and Lex Luthor. As the movie progresses, Clark beings to question why he should continue to help humanity when some don’t want it or want to regulate him. The actor continues to have nice chemistry with Amy Adams who returns as Lois Lane but this feels less like a second Superman movie than an exercise in cinematic world building as Snyder inserts visual references to future Justice Leaguers and, as a result, Superman feels marginalized to a certain degree. Maybe the numerous dream sequences (that visually echo Snyder’s Sucker Punch) could have been removed or limited in favor of more screen-time for Clark? Wonder Woman is peppered throughout a decent portion of the movie. Her enigmatic presence and Gal Gadot’s tantalizingly brief performance has me looking forward to her upcoming standalone movie.

I was pleasantly surprised by Jesse Eisenberg’s take on Lex Luthor. The trailers suggested a comedic manic performance that would be grating but instead he delivers a jittery, off-kilter performance, presenting a psychotic genius. Superficially, the actor channels his take on Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network (2010) and does provide much welcome levity in this ultra-serious movie. He also brings a wonderfully unpredictable energy to every scene he’s in. For example, there’s a scene where Lex delivers a speech in front of many people and as it goes on he begins to trip over his own words as if his mind is racing faster than his mouth can utter the words and he eventually gives up. For all of his nervy, jovial nature, there is an ominous contempt Lex has for most people because he thinks he’s smarter and better than everyone else.

If you liked Man of Steel than welcome to more of the same but that being said, Snyder has toned down his energetic style by largely foregoing his speed-up/slow down action sequences in favor of a more kinetic approach that works much better, especially late in the movie when Batman cuts loose on a room full of henchmen that includes a snazzy visual homage to The Dark Knight Returns, which should please fans. Even though it repeats the CGI-intensive large-scale destruction of Man of Steel’s climax, whereas that felt excessive, in an odd way it feels earned in Dawn of Justice. It is also nice to see that the filmmakers make a point of having all this carnage take place in areas devoid of innocent life. At times, the movie feels a bit overstuffed and could have used some judicious trimming here and there, but it’s a minor quibble because there is plenty I liked about it.

Ultimately, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a refreshingly provocative movie that has had a polarizing effect on viewers with some upset at how much liberties Snyder and co. have taken with the Batman and Superman mythologies and others having no problem with the radical changes that have been made. I’m of two minds about this movie. On one hand, I am of the generation that feels protective of what came before and how the past mythology should be honored, and on the other hand, I admire how the filmmakers pushed the envelope with the representation of these two iconic characters to the point that their origins are faithful to the source material on only a basic level, used as a springboard to go off in different directions than what came before. Some would argue that as a result, the filmmakers don’t understand these characters, but on the contrary, I think that Dawn of Justice dares to stray that far from the comic books, utilizing their basic elements as a foundation to then go and reinvent Batman and Superman for a new generation in a way that pushes buttons, stirs things up. This is something that Marvel has yet to do (if they are even interested in doing so) and makes these new DC movies distinctive from their rivals. Love or hate Dawn of Justice, people are talking about it and arguing passionately about its merits or lack thereof. When can you say a big budget comic book movie provoked that kind of reaction?

The Social Network

A film about the creation of website – really?! Have we finally run out of ideas for stories to tell? There must’ve been something deeper, more intriguing enough to attract the likes of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher as their involvement in The Social Network (2010) gives the film a lot of credibility. Based on the “non-fiction thriller,” The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, the film chronicles the origins of the immensely popular social networking website Facebook and turns out to be a familiar story about greed, jealousy and power – a study in class warfare: old money vs. New Economy dot com millionaires. What started as an idea shared among a small group of Harvard University students eventually became the domain of one person: Mark Zuckerberg. However, after Facebook became a legitimate global phenomenon and he became a billionaire, the others wanted in on the action (and the money) and lawsuits and court battles ensued. Because the notion of authorship is in question, Sorkin and Fincher apply the structure of Citizen Kane (1941), by telling the story via flashbacks from multiple points-of-view, while viewing it all through a detached journalistic viewpoint reminiscent of All the President’s Men (1976). The end result is an engrossing, intelligent look at young, ambitious men who made something that altered the popular culture landscape forever.


Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is super smart but socially inept, saying all the wrong things and this is readily evident in the film’s prologue when his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) dumps him, and seals the deal by telling him that he’s an asshole. Motivated by being dumped in public, he vents his frustration on his blog with a vicious diatribe. To get his mind off it, Zuckerberg creates a website called “Face Mash” comparing all the girls at school with each other. He does this by hacking his way into other websites on campus. With the help of his friend and fellow classmate, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Face Mash becomes a hit – so much so that it crashes the school’s computer network. Fincher quickly establishes Zuckerberg as a computer programming genius and, along with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pulsating electronic soundtrack, actually makes the sequence where the proto-Facebook website is created look cool. Reznor and Ross’ dark, brooding score perfectly complements Fincher’s often gloomy, atmospheric imagery. The director juxtaposes this sequence with a party at the school’s most exclusive club, the Phoenix S-K Final Club, in order to show how they both end up objectifying women, reducing them to sex objects for horny, young men.

Zuckerberg is busted for invasion of privacy and is approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) who have created a crude prototype of Facebook and they ask him to merge his ideas with their own. In return, they’ll introduce him to the higher social strata of Harvard. However, Zuckerberg’s gateway to the big time occurs when he meets Sean Parker (Justine Timberlake), the co-creator of the Napster, an infamous and very popular music file sharing website. Parker is a persuasive speaker and his slick ways impresses Zuckerberg as he sells him on the potential of Facebook on a global scale. Parker introduces Zuckerberg to nightclubs and, more importantly, appeals to his antisocial tendencies. Justin Timberlake does a fantastic job of playing Parker as a smooth-talking salesman cum New Millennium con man who is smart enough to recognize the Next Big Thing, latch onto it and ride it out to fame and fortune. He delivers a playful performance and there’s more than a whiff of a master manipulator as Parker comes across as someone who had an ethics bypass at birth. There is a delicious irony seeing a slick performer like Timberlake playing a slick entrepreneur like Parker. It’s like Parker is the Silicon Valley Tyler Durden from Fight Club (1999) to Zuckerberg’s socially awkward hacker. Parker is Zuckerberg’s unchecked id as he surreptitiously drives a wedge between the young programmer and his best friend Saverin.

Jesse Eisenberg is a revelation as he’s cast against type in The Social Network. Known for playing stuttering, loveable neurotic characters in films like The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Adventureland (2009), he shifts gears to play an aggressively ambitious nerd. His take on Zuckerberg is that of an extremely logical person with loads of talent to burn and who is motivated by rejection. He comes across as an insensitive prick that doesn’t have the time for people who can’t keep up with him and his fast mind. The film posits that the main motivational factor for him doing what he did was to climb the social ladder, to make money and to be the head of an exclusive club where he has the power to accept or reject people instead of being the one on the outside looking in. However, when it gets down to it being spurned by Erica was the prime motivator for Zuckerberg creating Facebook.

After making the popular tear-jerker The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Fincher returns to the moody, journalistic approach he took with Zodiac (2007), but where the latter was a slow burn over almost three hours, The Social Network moves along at a very brisk two hours as the talented young cast delivers Sorkin’s wordy screenplay in his trademark rat-a-tat-tat style. This film is absolutely dense with dialogue, even topping Zodiac with all of its scenes of theorizing about the identity of a serial killer. Sorkin had just come off the high profile flop of his short-lived television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and this film sees him back on familiar turf with fast-talking cocky characters antagonizing each other. His dialogue his smart and funny as it gets to the heart of the matter – providing Zuckerberg’s motivation and doing a great job chronicling just how Facebook came to be in an engaging way. Fincher and Sorkin have pulled off quite an accomplishment with The Social Network by making an entertaining and engrossing film about the creation of a website. The irony is that Zuckerberg created Facebook as a way for people to acquire friends and connect with each other while he is a deeply antisocial person who doesn’t really care about having friends. Of course, he’s now a billionaire, which I’m sure cushions the blow but the film leaves the lingering impression that he still wants to be with Erica and that this is something that no amount of money will make go away.

DVD of the Week: Adventureland

Summer jobs are usually the bane of a young person’s existence. They are what you slog through so that you can afford to go to school. They are the drudgery you endure while daydreaming of going to the beach, hanging out with your friends or going to see your favorite band – in other words, pretty much anything else but work. Summer jobs are a necessary evil and no one understands that better than filmmaker Greg Mottola who has masterfully encapsulated these feelings in Adventureland (2009), his follow-up to the popular hit Superbad (2007).

The film opens to the strains of “Bastards of Young” by The Replacements and right away you know you’re in good hands. The year is 1987 and James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) has just graduated from college. He is planning to go to Europe for the summer with his buddies; however, his folks can no longer afford to help him pay for it or for grad school at Columbia University in the fall where he hopes to study journalism. James makes some calls, does some legwork and realizes that, with his academic background and a resume with a severe lack of work experience, he’s not qualified for manual labor.

Faced with no other options, James decides to apply at Adventureland, a local amusement park. Much to his surprise, he’s hired right on the spot and put in charge of various games booths. He’s shown how everything works by Joel (Martin Starr), a terminally bored co-worker who’s clearly done this song and dance routine way too many times, telling James at one point, “So, your life must be utter shit or you wouldn’t be here.” While working at the theme park James meets Em (Kristen Stewart), an attractive co-worker with excellent taste in music, and whom he develops a crush on. He also befriends Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the park’s maintenance man, and who is in a local band in his spare time and claims to have once jammed with Lou Reed. James spends the summer hanging out with Em and his fellow co-workers and learns that if he wants to be a good writer he needs to have some life experiences under his belt.

Adventureland accurately portrays the thankless slog of a minimum wage job (“We are doing the work of pathetic lazy morons,” Joel deadpans) with repetitive tasks, annoying customers, and crap pay. The only thing that makes it remotely bearable is the people James works with – after all, misery loves company. Mottola includes all sorts of nice touches, like the cheesy Foreigner cover band that plays at the local bar, or the mixed tape of music that James makes for Em, which give the film a more personal feel. This is helped considerably by a great soundtrack that features the likes of Big Star, Crowded House, Husker Du, and The Jesus and Mary Chain – bands responsible for some of the best alternative music of the 1980s. Like the way music was used in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), the music in Adventureland transports you back to another time and immerses you in it.

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart have excellent chemistry together and do a good job of playing two young people that want different things out of a relationship. She has her own issues and they keep James always slightly at arm’s length. One hopes that despite the success of the Twilight films, Stewart will continue to make small, more personal films like Adventureland. Eisenberg nails the awkwardness of someone who’s had very few life experiences, especially in the romance and relationship department.

Mottola does a good job of portraying the brief flings that happen over the course of a summer. They are intense while they last even though they rarely do. He also accurately depicts how messy they can be, especially when you’re at that awkward age – your twenties – and are still trying to figure things out. Adventureland has an authenticity in how it feels to be in your twenties and to fall in love for the first time, stumbling through things, learning as you go. Whereas Mottola was basically a hired gun on Superbad, Adventureland comes from a very personal place and has much more heart while still being very funny and entertaining.

Special Features:

“Just My Life: The Making of Adventureland” takes a look at how this film came together. It was based on Mottola’s actual experiences working at an amusement park on Long Island during the summer of 1985. He talks about the casting of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart who, in turn, talk about their characters. The producers briefly mention how they were able to find a vintage amusement park. Also included is behind-the-scenes footage and clips from the film.

There are three deleted scenes with optional commentary from writer/director Greg Mottola and actor Jesse Eisenberg. We get more of the theme park’s managers played with killer comic timing by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. There is also an additional scene between James and Connell. Mottola puts this footage in context with the rest of the film and briefly explains why it was cut.

Finally, there is an audio commentary with Mottola and Eisenberg. They banter back and forth with a lot of self-deprecating humor. Mottola says that he didn’t want to make an “’80s kitsch-fest” and recounts some of his own experiences working at a theme park in his youth and how it informed the film. Eisenberg chimes in with the occasional comment and asks Mottola questions about the film. This is a very chatty track as they dish all sorts of trivia and filming anecdotes.

Jeremy, over at Moon in the Gutter, has been paying tribute to this fantastic film. Check out his posts, here and here.