Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start again: This is the much-awaited (maybe) comparison of Marvel's Captain America: Civil War, and DC's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Now, on the surface, these two movies seem to have a lot in common. They’re both big-budget summer action films where superheroes who should be working together fight instead, because of a relatively petty issue that they could easily resolve by communicating if they really tried. However, these movies have a lot of sizable differences, which add up to make them into two very different films.
I’ll tackle Batman
v. Superman first.
To start,
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is long.
It’s a long movie, and I swear not a minute of it is wasted. It’s stuffed to
the gills with plot. There are at least two and half different plotlines in the
theatrical cut alone; I hear there are even more in the director’s cut. Most of
the plot is setup for Batman and Superman fighting; and boy is there a lot of
setup. I don’t want to spoil any of it, but let me just say: there are more
villainous machinations and philosophy-rationality discussions in Batman v.
Superman than there are actual brawls between Batman and Superman. In addition
to all the philosophical rhetoric and plot twists, there’s also a generous
amount of setup for future DC movie-universe films. I’m not a hardcore DC fan,
so I didn’t catch all of the hints while I was watching the movie, but I got at
least some of them. And then, of course, there’s a subplot meant to set up the
DC’s incoming Justice League movie.
All this
adds up to a film so full of things happening that it’s hard to follow
everything at once. Batman v. Superman is so dense, so stuffed with important
plot pieces that my only impression walking out of the theater was “sensory
overload”. It took me the better part of two weeks to really work through
everything I vicariously experienced in the movie. For a movie called Batman v.
Superman, there’s a lot of expositing, a lot of storytelling twists and turns,
and not a lot of fight scenes. (In fact, 90% of the fighting is relegated to
the last half hour of the movie. The rest of the movie only has a Superman
rescue montage and like one scene of Batman doing Cool Stuff.)
So Batman v.
Superman is too much material crammed into not enough space, with a much darker
tone than you would think given the subject matter. Let’s look at Marvel’s
Captain America: Civil War.
Unlike DC,
Marvel has already established a strong movie brand and found their niche as
far as storytelling goes. They’ve got a handle on the tone of their movies, and
though I think the actual writing in their films has been going downhill of
late, they know what works for them.
So Captain
America: Civil War is, in essence, more of the same. It’s got all of the
characters you know and love from the previous movies. It’s got peppy,
fun-to-watch action scenes sprinkled throughout, along with snappy, humorous
dialogue. It’s got a smattering of thought-out character moments, and a plot
that makes sense if you don’t think about it too much. In short, it’s got
everything we’ve come to expect from Marvel over the past few years.
To be
honest, I enjoyed Civil War a lot more than Batman v. Superman. Civil War was a
lot less complicated, easier to follow, and didn’t require as much active
thought from me. It also had a more light-hearted tone. Batman v. Superman is
dark and gritty and believes that the road to hell is paved with good
intentions. Civil War believes that power corrupts, but ultimately justice can
be served if we try hard and commit to it. That’s a big difference in tone
right there, but that’s not the end of it. Batman v. Superman is almost entirely
consumed with its philosophy—that power is a corrupting influence with no moral
compass, no matter a person’s intentions. By contrast, Civil War doesn’t touch
on its own philosophy hardly at all, and even contradicts itself at points.
What it comes down to is that Civil War doesn’t take itself half as seriously as
Batman v. Superman, so it’s more fun to watch.
The thing
is, though, I don’t think either of these movies is really the best it could
have been, and ultimately neither of them are a completely enjoyable
presentation of what they promised. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
any movie that promises me Batman and Superman fighting each other has a heck
of a premise to live up to. The same goes for Civil War: the filmmakers had a
lot to set up if they were going to get me to believe that the Avengers would
really split apart and fight each other. Both movies tried to live up to their
premises, but neither of them accomplished it really well. Batman v. Superman
spent too much time on the buildup. It’s so dark and complicated that by the
time it gets to the actual fight, you hardly even care anymore. Civil War didn’t
spend enough time building things up;
it presented a philosophy of sorts for both sides of the conflict, but then had
the characters contradict themselves multiple times. Essentially, Civil War
seesawed back and forth between a dark, serious plotline and the upbeat,
enjoyable action sequences we’ve come to expect from Marvel. It couldn’t pick a
tone, and I think that was its major flaw.
I do think
both of these movies are worth watching. Civil War certainly isn’t the worst movie Marvel’s
ever made, and it did have its share of worthwhile moments. Batman v. Superman
is… an experience. I actually did enjoy it, but not all of it. If you watch it
for anything, watch for Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.
They were definitely the highlights.
Both these
movies are worth watching, but I think they both represent missed potential on
the parts of their studios. To quote the Honest Trailer, Batman v. Superman “burned through like six movies’ worth of good material”, and suffered for it.
It was too rushed, trying to get us to care about too much in too short a time
span. By contrast, it was obvious that Civil War was, at least in part, riding
the wave of popularity Marvel has accrued with its past movies. It’s my
personal opinion that the writing in Marvel movies is starting to go downhill,
simply because Marvel knows that any movie they slap their name on will sell like
hotcakes. Essentially, they’re getting lazy, instead of using that branding
potential to break new ground and explore new territory film-wise.
In closing:
both of these movies represent their respective studios’ shortcomings. Captain
America: Civil War rides a wave of previous successes, not bothering with
internal consistency because the writers know people won’t care; it’s Marvel,
and Marvel movies are good. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice tries
desperately to build up everything in the DC universe at once, hoping that
something will stick and get people to come back for the next DC film. So both
of these movies have their good points, but neither reached their full
potential. Neither of them could decide exactly what they were trying to do.
Maybe they’re more similar than I thought.
