
To make matters worse, more recent DCEU movies have retrospectively rendered most of Batman V Superman's setup obsolete, with many of the seeds failing to grow into anything of substance. Batman V Superman's core story was convoluted enough, but the added burden of fleshing out an entire shared universe was the cinematic equivalent of forcing down dessert after an all-you-can-eat buffet - seems like a good idea at the time, but the end result is bloated and messy. This meant introducing Wonder Woman as well as Batman, teasing the other members of the Justice League, hinting at future enemies, and laying the foundations of plots intended to pay off further down the line.

Keen to catch up, DC essentially jumped from Man of Steel to Justice League, leaving Batman V Superman to do all the necessary set up. Marvel spent years building up to their first team-up extravaganza, giving Captain America, Hulk, Thor and Iron Man their own solo movies, and establishing each superhero's character ahead of time. While the idea made sense in theory, the execution did not. Zack Snyder had a difficult enough job on his hands crafting a sequel to Man of Steel that properly introduced a brand new Caped Crusader, but the task was made infinitely harder by Warner Bros.' push for a DC shared universe to rival their Marvel counterparts.
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Related: How to Watch Every DCEU Movie Online The Weight Of DCEU Setup In Batman V Superman, the reason for the titular clash is just one big misunderstanding that a simple conversation (or a simple name, as it turns out) could solve. Snyder takes large cues from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel, but misses that the point of their comic feud was genuine dislike and two vastly different methods of fighting crime. Why any of above actually happens is anyone's guess, with Lex's motivations frustratingly ambiguous.Īll of this clunky setup makes the final battle between the Bat and the Kryptonian somewhat underwhelming. Finally, when the whole plot is foiled and the DC Trinity join forces, Luthor just unleashes a Kryptonian monster that he whipped up in Act 2. The villain later kidnaps Lois Lane in order to attract Superman's attention, only for Lex to reveal he also abducted the hero's mother when Clark arrives. Luthor somehow uncovers the true identities of both Batman and Superman, and pits the two against each other, but the scheme relies far too much on Affleck's Batman picking and choosing when to be intelligent. Lex Luthor's master plan is perhaps the biggest culprit, leaving the audience to fill gaps and find connections that often simply don't exist. Most films live or die by the strength of their plot, and striking the right balance of simplicity and complexity is a coveted art that few superhero movies get exactly right, but Batman V Superman's story is an over-complicated and incoherent tangle of coincidence, convenience and assumption. How could a Norse god and an archer few outside of comic circles had heard of before 2011 compete with that? Here's exactly where Batman V Superman went wrong, from studio interference to ill-advised casting. On paper, Batman V Superman was a sure-fire winner, pitting the two biggest superheroes in the world against each other. Related: Batman V Superman: Lex Luthor's Painting Explained were aiming and eventually led to DC's current, less interconnected, approach - a strategy that is finding significantly more success. But it's impossible to deny that Batman V Superman landed very far from where Warner Bros.

There's certainly a lot to enjoy about Snyder's vision, and the ongoing campaign to release the Justice League Snyder cut proves how strongly the DCEU resonates with some. Released in 2016, Batman V Superman reunited the core Man of Steel cast, and also introduced Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and Jeremy Irons playing Alfred Pennyworth, turning Snyder's Superman world into a fully-fledged DC universe. Unfortunately, that momentum was never capitalized upon, as Snyder and Warner Bros.' next effort, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, attracted a more scathing response and under-performed financially.

Although the Superman reboot garnered mixed reviews, something the DCEU would become accustomed to, it scored big at the box office, proving Snyder's darker version of the Kryptonian Boy Scout had serious potential. What went wrong with the DCEU's Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice? Zack Snyder made a strong start to his DC tenure, with Henry Cavill donning the famous red cape for Man of Steel in 2013.
