10 @ a Time - Batman v Superman, Part 15

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Part Fifteen: Is She With You?

Welcome to the fifteenth installment of “10 @ a Time: Batman v Superman.” Last week we looked at Batman’s big fight and Superman’s second-most important act of heroism. Today, we get right back to the fighting.

[For those playing the home game, we’re looking at the “Ultimate Edition” home video release; for today’s 10@T installment, we’re looking from 2:24:15 to 2:33:50.]

DC's Holy Trinity. I'll leave you to work out which is the Father, which the Son, and which the Holy Spirit.

Alfred sums up this segment in a breathless, perplexed, “How best to describe it?” And I find myself in a bit of a conundrum as to how to review a segment of the film that is, essentially, all action, the first half of a great battle sequence. Doomsday having made his big entrance, we get our penultimate major story beat – the arrival of Wonder Woman – in advance of the grand finale, which we’ll cover over the course of the next two weeks. (The last is, of course, the death – such as it is – of Superman.) So I expect this piece will take a more aphoristic form, a less cohesive approach in treating the build-up to the payoffs in next week’s article.

Before I plugged into this installment, I happened to catch the last half-hour of Man of Steel on television, and I’m very glad I did, because there are a number of things from that film’s climax that recur in this one – as it should be, I’d say, since Superman is fighting the monstrous, mutated, reanimated corpse of General Zod. It’s not a shot-for-shot remake by any means, but it ticks off a number of boxes that are worth acknowledging, particularly for the benefit of those who’ve called out Zack Snyder for “mindless action.” If anything, these deliberate echoes demonstrate the thoughtful craft behind these scenes.

Anyone who thought Doomsday looked like a ninja turtle didn't watch the rest of the movie.

I mentioned last week that Doomsday’s powers appear, like Zod’s, to be “reckless and untrained,” but Zod was able to master his yellow-sun enhancements quickly because “I was bred to be a warrior [. . .] trained my entire life to master my senses.” Doomsday too demonstrates the same learning curve, blindly lashing out at first before realizing that his body evolves with each blow, turning his heat vision into a lethal weapon. And speaking of that heat vision, it’s worth noting that Doomsday’s eyes resemble hollow sockets filled with fire when he unleashes that warlike volley of heat vision – exactly the way Zod’s eyes looked as he tried to murder the citizens of Metropolis in the train station at the end of Man of Steel. His chosen method for executing Kryptonians has carried over into this second life, as well, but that’s for next week.

I don’t think Superman knows that Doomsday is a reanimated Zod, so it’s interesting that he takes a similar approach to battling this foe. It’s a quick moment, but Superman does try to snap Doomsday’s neck. Finding that method ineffective against such a burly foe, he proceeds to fly him into space and take the conflict away from earth – another reprise of Zod. When the fight comes back to the Gotham harbor, Superman proceeds to fly Doomsday through an exploding silo, just as he did with Zod in Smallville (though there was less fire there and more an explosion of grain). Lest we forget, too, Superman’s fight against Zod was precipitated by Zod’s threats against his mother, just as here the punching all started when Luthor menaced Martha. “All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again,” indeed.

There’s a very Kirby-esque shot of Metropolis citizens looking up at a flaming sky, the proper place of man amid the myth in his midst. We saw a similar shot in Man of Steel, but it’s worth noting that these sequences do something Man of Steel didn’t – Lois Lane is right in the thick of the battle. Man of Steel included the touching detail of Perry White trying to save Intern Jenny during the Battle of Metropolis, but Batman v Superman shows the way that Superman’s presence has already begun to effect positive change in the human race. I made much ado last week about Batman standing shoulder to shoulder with gods, but Lois Lane is there too. She goes back for the Kryptonite spear without needing to be told; put another way, she comes to the same conclusion as Batman, the world’s greatest detective.

Note that her bulletproof bracelets imitate the WW insignia.

Lois Lane isn’t the only heroine to make a splash during the Second Battle of Metropolis. “Where are the ladies, gentlemen?” Maria Hill asked in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and boy howdy does Batman v Superman begin to answer that question. We get one last reminder that Diana is trying to run away from her responsibilities before Superman sets the example for her. She’ll tell us that “man made a world where standing together is impossible,” but Superman seems to have remade the world such that it’s possible once more. She makes her grand debut during the Second Battle of Metropolis, with a rather clever fakeout where Batman is saved by a flying figure swooping down from the sky, and with that killer Wonder Woman theme blasting on the cello... if that doesn’t conjure genuine excitement, there’s the door, folks. Wonder Woman fits right into the battle, with the strength to withstand Doomsday’s blasts just as much as Superman can (Batman, however, ducks for cover – there’s excellent teamwork on display from people who have only just met, but Batman does kind of just stand around).

Batman has one round of Kryptonite left in his arsenal, and we’ve got two more rounds of “10 @ a Time” before we reach the movie’s conclusion. Next time, a hero, king, and sun-god falls.

Observations and Annotations

• Calvin Swanwick delays the nuclear option, which shows he’s come a long way from worrying that Superman might “one day act against America’s interest.” Here, it’s America making sure it doesn’t act against Superman’s interest. “Men are still good,” indeed.
• The telephonic voice of the unseen President is Patrick Wilson, a Zack Snyder veteran from Watchmen. Interestingly, he’ll pop back up in the DC Universe as Aquaman’s brother Orm, the Ocean Master.
• Speaking of Watchmen, does anyone else get a Doctor Manhattan vibe from the crackling dome of energy generated by Doomsday’s regenerations?
• Zack Snyder has never been shy about the Christological implications, which we’ll see in spades in the coming weeks. Here, Major Carrie “I just think he’s kinda hot” Ferris makes the sign of the cross when the President authorizes the strike on Superman.
• The shot of the skeletal Superman in space is borrowed from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. In both, Superman is devastated by a nuclear assault; here he’s restored to full strength by the sun, but there he’s rejuvenated by solar energy stored in plants.
• The big battle takes place on Stryker’s Island, located halfway between Gotham and Metropolis. In the comics, Stryker’s is an island prison where Superman’s foes are kept in maximum security.
• I love the five-o’clock-shadow look on Batman. It adds an element of grizzle to the Dark Knight, and it separates him from the clean-cut Bruce Wayne.
• Batman’s brief “ah, sh-t” moment was improvised by Ben Affleck. Thank heavens, too – it aligns nicely with the idea that Batman is already starting to lighten up.
• Wonder Woman tells her comrades, “I’ve killed things from other worlds before” – can we please get that movie next?
• Wonder Woman goes for Doomsday’s Achilles tendon, because of course she does.