Batman v Superman : Dawn of Justice – What was wrong and how they should have done it

I have already posted my spoiler free review for this movie, and here I am, back again, writing another post about the movie. This movie is so bad, that I could not control myself from punching the keyboard again to write this post. This time, I will put details of what did not work in the movie, spoilers included. I am also going to put my thought of how the same story could have been told differently, in much more entertaining way, still maintaining continuity with MoS and Justice League. So, if you have not seen the movie, and planning to watch it, please stop reading now. I will give you few more lines to skip this article before I go for analysis of this movie, on how bad it is. I am not going to repeat what I have already written in my earlier review, but going to give you the points why this movie is so bad that this series should be stopped right now. We need another reboot, or if not possible, stop it all together. I refuse to let fans like me taken for granted by DC/WB and serve us such bad movies. I would be happy to continue with their comics and TV/Animated series. 

[[SPOILER ALERT]]

[[SPOILER ALERT]]

What was wrong with this movie

Dream Sequences: There are too many dream sequences in the movie. The movie starts with Bruce Wayne dreaming about his parent’s death, leading to another dream of him falling into a hole filled with Bats. These Bats then lift him in thin air to the surface. No logic, but hey, it was a dream, and required to establish Batman to the non-Comic-fan viewers. So, overall, this dream sequence is fine. But, and there are many buts here. Later in the movie, Batman has another dream, when he see Superman as a fascist dictator with an army at his disposal. Batman is a revolutionary, using guns to fight this army and killing them. What is the need of this scene in story? To show how Batman feels about Superman? Maybe, but it is not convincing based on Batman’s own actions. I will cover than later in this article, let’s talk about some more dream sequences first. There is Flash shown for few seconds, warning Bruce Wayne about Superman. Now, I am not sure if that was dream or reality, but sure our Detective considered it as a dream in the movie. He simply forgets about that warning, and does nothing at all. Or maybe he did something which is not shown to us yet, after all, we are watching a prequel, and not a standalone movie here, right? Batman didn’t even try to find out the identity of Flash, as at that point in movie, he did not know anything about Flash. So, I consider this as another forced scene as dream sequence. After all this, Superman also thinks that why not get a dream sequence of his own, and he had one, with his father somewhere on icy mountain. Sorry folks, I was also excited to see fortress of solitude when I saw him walking on ice with snow all around. But there was no Fortress of Solitude in this movie. Instead, we are greeted with another dream sequence of a conversation with his dead father. Again, I am not so sure if Superman actually went there and saw his father or sleeping in Metropolis and dreamed all of this, including going there. I was worried that next will be Doomsday dreaming of a Bollywood number with Wonder Woman. 

Batman v Superman, the conflict: This was another weak, very weak point of the story. The main plot is based on their fight, and it did not work. You have Batman, who don’t care if he kill people, be it by gun or by taking Doomsday to a populated city, from, and mind this, from a non-populated area, where a lot of innocent people will get caught in cross fire and killed. Now, this Batman, has a problem with Superman, because Superman’s fight in MoS killed a lot of innocent people who, again, who were caught in cross fire. Dude, Superman had no choice, but you had a choice with Doomsday, and you took him straight to Gotham, instead of sending Superman or Wonder Woman to fetch the spear and continue the fight at non-populated area. But no, the fight does not look good if buildings are not cut in half by laser beams, right?  

Battle of Century was another disappointment. Superman was no Superman, he was just used as a punching bag. It was not a fair fight at all. Why call it a fight of century when you already have pinned down one guy from the very beginning? I get it that Superman doesn’t want to kill Batman, but hey, what was stopping him from using his laser eye to melt the kryptonite gun from Batman’s hand? He could have used his laser to trap Batman within rubbles. But that would not have shown Batman winning, and about to kill Superman. Yes, they think it is fine with Batman to kill Superman because Superman is responsible for death of people. I checked my ticket again to ensure that I am watching BvS, and not the new Netflix DareDevil with Punisher on rampage. So, this is our famous detective, who always think rationally, ready to kill Superman, because deep down, he is fully convinced that Superman is a deadly threat to this world. All that was still acceptable, but suddenly he hears his mother’s name. Martha!! Wow!! All rational thinking, threat to the world goes out of the window, and he becomes Superman’s pal. Sorry, this is not my Batman, this can never be my Batman. 

Superman: Oh well, he was there in the movie, as a supporting cast. He is alien and not human. He is shown as God like figure to public, and his character does not bond like we have Superman in our heart. There was more of Superman than Clarke Kent in the movie. That is the reason his death was not as shocking as it should be. Plus, we all know that Superman did not die in his fight with Doomsday, so why bother about his death when we know he is going to come back. This makes the climax of the movie an anti-climax, as we felt nothing at all. And his obsession with Luis Lane is too much, as in the middle of his fight with Doomsday, he sense danger for her and took his time off to saves her from drowning. Talking about distraction, how can you believe this when he was not able to detect a bomb ticking just 3 feet away from him and he was not even fighting? Plus, he, for no reason, decided to take charge of stopping Batman, even threatening him that it is a mercy act. This means next time he will kill Batman, isn’t it? Or maybe I assume too much, he will just snap Batman’s head and cry like MoS. But his tone and face makes the threat real to Batman. This again got me confused. I was thinking that Batman should be on the wrong side and will fight Superman because of misunderstanding him as a threat. But here we are, Superman clearly mentioning that he IS a threat. A threat to anyone who does similar thing what he is doing. It is ok for him to kill in MoS, but not ok for Batman to kill someone who are chasing him for killing. And he will KILL Batman to stop him from killing others. Talking about hypocrisy, I think the script writers were on some kind of drugs while writing this stuff. 

Lex Luthor: Yes, he was in the movie, but I am not sure if this was the Lex or the Joker. Lex is supposed to be an evil genius, a scientist who has an ego, and hate Superman. But there is always a rational reason for his hate. In this movie, he is a psychopath, with no reason or logic at all. It was like they had Lex and Joker both in the script, where Lex was supposed to create confusion and fight between the two heroes, whereas Joker accidentally got hold of Kryptonian technology and creates Doomsday. But somehow, they merged both characters into one, and created this mess of a character. There is no logic for Lex’s actions. Why he wanted Batman to fight Superman, and was he certain that Batman will kill Superman? He could have killed Superman with a Kryptonite bullet or rocket. That would have been an easy thing to do. And why he creates Doomsday when he cannot control it? In fact, he is shown as benefiting by the destruction of Metropolis in MoS. 

And why he kept all the meta-human files with their not yet public logos is again beyond any logic. These meta-humans are not yet public news, so they have not yet started their costumed appearances, except Wonder Woman. This is clear because even Batman does not know about them. The clips also do not have their logos. But hey, they may have thought that we comic fans do not carry our brain and will cheer for upcoming Justice League movie. 

How they should have made this movie

Now, let me run my wild thoughts and put down something which could have saved this movie. Here is what they could have shown, still maintaining the continuity of the series and leading to Justice League. 

The movie starts with good promise, introduction of Batman, and his rage on Superman for the destruction of Metropolis and loss of innocent lives in battle of MoS. This is brilliantly shot and should remain as it is. 

The next hour should be spend on building the anger between Superman and Batman, without anyone (Lex) fueling it by sabotage. We don’t need Luis Lane being saved from terrorists. We need more confrontation scenes between Superman and Batman, the confrontation of ideology, where Batman finds it necessary to torture sometime for getting information out, and Superman is against it. I am ok with bad guys getting killed in fight with Batman, but not ok with him killing in cold blood. Think about the confrontation scenes, coupled with some quick action sequences of Batman and Superman together. Their confrontation would make sense as Gotham and Metropolis are across the bay, and while catching criminals, they can easily cross into each other’s territory. So, we have Batman who hates Superman already because of MoS, and Superman had enough of Bat vigilante to issue a final warning, which should lead to the main fight. 

There is another plot of Batman meeting Wonder Woman, and knows about her powers. He saw her actions in the past to save humanity, and see her as an ally he can use in future. He does a favor to her by destroying all her data from Luthor’s database.  She agrees to return the favor when time comes. Similarly, Batman knows the identities of other superheroes with data recovered from Luthor’s database, and acknowledge that they are doing what he is doing, so they are good guys. 

In parallel to the confrontation, US government worries about the powers of Superman, and wants a backup against him. They setup a committee to investigate, but as public opinion turns positive for Superman, they had to back down and praise Superman in public. But as we know authorities, they can’t just brush off the danger of Superman going rogue someday. So, they turn to Lex, who also hates Superman for same reason as Batman. But he need more than just control or kill Superman. He is a scientist, and sees huge opportunity in exploring Kryptonian technology for mankind. With secret government backing and access to Zod plus the ship, he started exploring the advance technology. He also procures Kryptonite in his quest against Superman, and knows the deadly effect of it on Kryptonians, including Superman. So, he builds a weapon which can kill Superman, and plan to use it only after Superman is defamed in public eye. Mind it; this is just a plan, as he does not do anything in this movie to defame Superman. This will be a plot for future movies with Lex in it. 

Batman and Superman fights, and this is without Kryptonite, as Batman is not aware about it. So, this fight has lots of action, plus dialogues. Remember the fight of TDKR? Something like that. Lots of distractions for Superman, with Batman doing one thing he knows, putting Luis in danger because he has been told by future Flash about Luis being Superman’s weakness. He cannot win this fight, but he dragged it long enough to let Superman know that he is not invincible. Superman is about to kill Batman, when Wonder Woman arrives and join the fight from Batman’s side. Superman is clearly outnumbered, but not down. The fight continues. 

Lex accidently creates Doomsday while trying to clone a super soldier from Krypton’s technology and Zod’s DNA. When Doomsday starts creating mayhem in Metropolis, the Trinity decided to join hands and fight it together. There is no friendship, no end of fight, but a common goal to save people, bringing them together and work as a team. Batman tries to find out the secrets behind Doomsday using his detective skills, while Superman and Wonder Woman fights this creature from hell. He got to Lex, get hold of Kryptonite, and use it on Doomsday, knowing that it can kill Superman as well. But this is a decision he took for the greater good, as he can see no other way of stopping Doomsday. There would be a dialogue between two superheroes where Superman is ready to take that chance and sacrifices himself for ending Doomsday. This dialogue is required, as Batman is not sure if this works, so he runs it with Superman before actually using the weapon. This scarifies of Superman made Batman realise that Superman is a good person, and not someone he should hate. But it’s too late; Batman has killed Doomsday and Superman. Superman is dead. 

Government did not take the fall and make Lex a scapegoat by putting the entire blame of Doomsday on him, throwing him in jail. Batman also finds out that Lex accidentally triggers a signal which has gone to some extra-terrestrial beings. Knowing the power of Aliens and their technology, Batman worries if they get more visitors from outer space. So, he decides with Wonder Woman to form an alliance of people with special abilities for earth’s defense, creating Justice League. He also honors Superman as true soldier and savior of the planet. 

We don’t need the last scene of Superman’s grave, as that should be kept under wrap for now, for another movie. 

So, this is the story I would have loved, as it has solid logic, still travelling the same path this current movie is intended to. Let me know your thought about this.