Ten Years Later, Batman v Superman Still Explains Why the DCEU Collapsed

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice came out ten years ago, and it is still one of the most divisive movies in the genre. Some fans have come around on Zack Snyder's films in the years since, while plenty of others still blame him for the collapse of the DC Extended Universe. Whatever anyone thinks of it, this movie changed the course of the DC franchise, and its effects are still felt today. I want to explain why I think it was a failure, walking through the production, the movie itself, and how its reception reshaped the DC brand.

Man of Steel's Divisive Reception Set Up Batman v Superman

Man of Steel came out on June 14, 2013, marking Henry Cavill's debut as Superman, and it was divisive in its own right. It scored 56 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a 75 percent audience score, a 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb, and grossed 670 million dollars worldwide. I would call that a success for Warner Bros, though not a resounding one. It did just good at the box office, not great, and it did not do great critically either.

The major problem people had with Man of Steel was that it was too dark. Superman and Zod fighting through Metropolis in a way that likely killed over 100,000 people was a lot for a lot of fans to accept. A handful of people liked that darker version of Superman, but many did not. Even so, director Zack Snyder and writer David Goyer were announced to be returning for the sequel.

The Casting of Ben Affleck, Jesse Eisenberg and Gal Gadot Split Fans, and Bloat Worries Followed

About a month after Man of Steel came out, Warner Bros announced the sequel would be a Batman v Superman movie, revealed at Comic-Con to a lot of fanfare. There was some debate between Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan over whether Batman would be Christian Bale's version, keeping the same continuity as The Dark Knight trilogy, which had wrapped up just a year before Man of Steel. That idea excited plenty of fans, but everyone involved eventually agreed against it, which meant new casting had to begin.

Bruce Wayne went to Ben Affleck, a puzzling choice for most fans, especially since the last time Affleck played a superhero it went terribly. Jesse Eisenberg was cast as Lex Luthor, which raised eyebrows right away since people thought he shared no resemblance to the character and was a poor fit. Gal Gadot was cast as Wonder Woman and was criticized mostly for her thin frame. Rounding out the Justice League in smaller roles were Ezra Miller as The Flash, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, and Ray Fisher as Cyborg.

None of those castings had glaring issues on their own, but a lot of people were worried about how bloated this movie might get. The genre was fresh off The Avengers, a massive critical and financial success for Marvel, and Warner Bros wanted to rush out its own version instead of giving each character a solo movie first. Cramming the whole Justice League into just the second DCEU movie raised fears of a cluttered, unfocused film, and that is unfortunately what happened.

Principal Photography Went Smoothly, but the Trailers and Reviews Did Not

Filming ran from October 2013 to May 2014, and despite the uneven quality of his movies, people love working with Snyder. There were no glaring issues during production, and the cast had nothing but good things to say about him. The first teaser arrived in April 2015 and immediately sold people on this version of Batman, showing off two new suits for the character.

The first full trailer came in December of that year and was not met with much praise. People liked what Affleck brought to the role but hated what they saw of Lex Luthor. More notable was the reveal of Doomsday at the end, which all but confirmed the Death of Superman storyline was coming, something that did not excite many fans given this was only the second DCEU movie. Batman v Superman opened on March 25, 2016, and was met with less than stellar reviews. A few months later, Warner Bros released an extended edition, roughly half an hour longer, that promised to fix some of the plot holes and improve the film overall. Credit to Snyder, the extended cut really is a better version of the movie.

Why I Blame the Theatrical Cut, Not Just Warner Bros, for Killing the DCEU

When people look back at this movie now, they tend to revisit the extended cut because it is the better version, and if this were simply a review ten years later, I would do the same. But this is about why the movie failed and how it helped kill the DCEU, and the answer to both questions is the theatrical cut. It does not matter that the extended cut eventually showed up on Blu-ray. Most people saw the theatrical version, and that is the cut that led to the Justice League scandal and the rest of the DCEU's collapse.

A lot of people blame Warner Bros for forcing Snyder to cut half an hour, limiting his vision, and ask why Avengers Endgame could run three hours but BvS could not. That is partially true, but I think Snyder holds a lot of the blame too. Is he incapable of making a good movie under three hours? He likely knew he could not release a three hour cut, yet he built the film to need one anyway. Why do so many of his movies need extended cuts to work? Why can't they stand on their own?

If Snyder had stayed at DC and made his original vision of Justice League, I think the same thing would have happened. He would have needed four hours to tell that story, Warner Bros would have told him to trim it, the trimmed version would have released, people would not have liked it, and they would have asked for the extended cut all over again. Ten years ago was also the last time Snyder had a movie get a wide theatrical release. He then moved to streaming, where there are no limits on runtime, and even there he still needed two movies plus an extended cut to tell the story of Rebel Moon. Snyder is a victim of the studio system in some ways, but he holds significant blame for why his DC movies did not appeal to the masses.

My Own Two Viewings Years Apart Led Me to What I Call the DDEQ Fallacy

I have a lot of thoughts on this movie. I remember rewatching it right before the Snyder Cut came out and hating it. I was confused through most of it, and by the end I just did not care. Afterward I read a lot of posts and watched plenty of long analyses from people who loved the film, and they made some good points that helped explain my confusion, though I did not think too critically about it at the time since I was not making DC content yet.

Three years later I rewatched it again ahead of the Snyder Cut, but this time I reread those same posts and analyses first, so I went in with a decent understanding of what other people saw that I had missed. I liked it a bit more on that second watch, since I understood the character arcs better. But I was still left a bit confused, wondering whether I had just been having a bad day the first time, or whether my media literacy was worse back then. It is possible, but I also realized a lot of people shared my original confusion and dislike, and I do not think a movie's quality is decided by majority opinion, though when so many people ask the same questions, something is usually off.

That led me to a conclusion I first raised in an earlier piece I made about the Snyderverse, which I believe later got demonetized because of an issue with Warner Bros. I call it the DDEQ fallacy, or the depth doesn't equal quality fallacy. Someone watches a movie, does not like it, feels confused and disengaged, and goes looking online for answers. They find long explanations of the deeper meaning, hear the director talk about the themes and symbolism, and start to feel like they missed something because the film clearly has a lot going on. So they talk themselves into liking it, rewatch it, and realize it still is not very good. "Depth doesn't equal quality. Execution equals quality." I think that applies most strongly to Lex Luthor and to Batman in this movie.

Lex Luthor's God Complex Gives Him Depth, but I Still Cannot Answer My Own Four Questions

It does not matter how many times people explain Lex Luthor's motivation to me. One line about him being abused by his father is not enough on its own to convey an entire motivation. I use the same analogy here that I used in that Snyderverse piece: solving a maze is easy from a bird's eye view, where you can look at the end and work backward. It is much harder solving it the way Harry Potter has to in the Goblet of Fire maze, walking through blind and hoping you reach the end. When a director spells out a character's motivation in an interview, watching the movie afterward is like solving the maze from above. Without that, you are solving it blind, and that is exactly what happened to me the first time I saw this film.

I do not think I should have to read interviews, forum posts, or essays to understand a movie. So here is a test: grab someone who has never seen Batman v Superman or Man of Steel, do not explain anything, and afterward ask them why Lex hates Superman, why he blew up the Capitol, why he created Doomsday, and why he needed Batman to fight Superman when he could have killed him with Kryptonite or Doomsday directly. If anyone who has not heard Snyder's interviews can answer even one of those four questions, I will admit I am wrong, because I could not answer a single one myself the first time I saw this movie.

Here is what I believe Lex's motivation actually is, based on those interviews. He was abused as a kid by his father, who made him feel powerless, and he hates that feeling. That has led him to hate God, since if God is all powerful and all good, he should not have let Lex suffer, which to Lex proves the Bible is a lie either way you look at the problem of evil. He says something close to this to Clark on the rooftop. Superman, a figure people treat like a god with total power, triggers that same hatred, so Lex wants to discredit him. If Superman dies, he is proven not to be a god because gods cannot die. If Superman is forced to kill, he is proven not to be a god because a god would not do that, which is why Lex wants him to fight Batman in the first place.

The Movie's Own Setup Undercuts Lex Luthor's Entire Plan

Even granting that Lex's motivation has real depth, questions keep piling up. If the goal was killing Superman, why bother with Batman at all rather than going straight to Doomsday? I would guess Batman was plan A and Doomsday was the backup, meant to double down on discrediting Superman either way. How did Lex even know how to create Doomsday in the first place, beyond apparently guessing that mixing his blood with Zod's dead body would work? That felt contrived to me. As for blowing up the Capitol, if the goal was making people suspect Superman, it barely worked, since people on television speculated and then the police concluded it was the man in the wheelchair, and I do not think anyone really believed Superman did it either.

I did like one explanation from a forum post, which argued the explosion was meant to prove Superman is either not all powerful, because he could not stop it, or not all good, because he could have and did not. It turned out true that he was not powerful enough, since he never saw it coming, but I do not think the movie conveys that idea well at all. And even if all of Lex's motivations hold up, there is still a bigger problem. Batman v Superman opens with people already reflecting on Superman as flawed and reckless after Man of Steel, including the fact that he killed Zod. Everything Lex supposedly wants to prove about Superman not being a perfect god has already happened before this movie even starts, which makes me wonder why his elaborate plan was necessary at all. No one was this confused about Zod's motivation in the previous movie, so I have to ask whether Lex's motivation here needed to be this complicated in the first place.

Superman's Communication Problem Made Him Impossible to Root For

Of the big three characters, I would argue Superman is the least important here, since he barely has his own arc and matters mainly through how he affects everyone else. My biggest issue with Snyder's version of the character is that this whole plot could have been avoided if Clark simply held a press conference explaining what happened in Man of Steel. If Bruce knew Superman had just stopped an apocalyptic event rather than assuming he was some power hungry threat, a huge chunk of Lex's plan falls apart before it starts. If the public knew the truth, maybe fewer people would have turned against him in the first place.

Yes, the Capitol scene exists precisely so Superman can address the public, but it takes him two years to even attempt that, and afterward he never holds another press conference to explain what happened there either. He also just seems to give up once Batman starts attacking him, when in my view he could easily have flown Batman thousands of feet in the air and forced him to listen. Snyder's Clark seems to believe he does not owe the world anything, which is a frustrating way to write the character, especially compared to how differently the newest take on Superman handles similar events.

What bothers me most is the ending. From an in-universe perspective, the endings of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman are basically identical: a Kryptonian threat appears, and Superman defeats it to save the world. Yet people were furious and suspicious of him after the first movie, and by the end of the second they are mourning him as a hero at a government funeral. The only real difference is that Superman died this time. All the legitimate questions raised at the start of Batman v Superman are never actually answered, they are just replaced by grief. "That's shallow. That's not deep."

Batman's Willingness to Kill Broke His Defining Rule Without Earning It

Batman's portrayal might be the most discussed part of this entire movie. The most notable element of his story here is that he kills people, and not only that, he seems to make sure the people he fights end up dead, whether by his own hand or by others in prison. Batman not killing is one of the character's most defining traits, so this is a sensitive change for a lot of fans, though taken purely within this film's own story, given his backstory and headspace at this point, it is not surprising he behaves this way.

Every adaptation of an existing character changes something, and studios lean on adaptations because they come with a built in audience. Snyder kept the Batmobile, the suit, and the batarangs, but he did not stay faithful to the core of who Batman is, and changes like that tend to upset a lot of people. Snyder later spoke about this on The Joe Rogan Experience and said he found it important to put Batman into situations where he has to kill, and I actually agree that challenging a character's beliefs is good storytelling. My problem is that for most of the movie, that is not really what happens. Batman kills or arranges the deaths of people he did not have to, and branding his enemies specifically so they will be killed in prison feels like an unnecessary escalation rather than a challenge to his beliefs.

Part of the issue is that we are handed this darker Bruce Wayne too quickly. The movie references stories about Batman from before Man of Steel, but we never actually see them, and I think most people agree Warner Bros rushed into its own version of Civil War before giving this Batman a solo movie first. If we had seen Bruce with the no kill rule intact, watched his relationships play out, and understood who he lost in the Metropolis attack at the start of Batman v Superman, his turn afterward would land so much harder. Instead we are just told he hates Superman and kills people now, rather than shown the change.

The Martha Scene's Idea Works, the Dialogue Does Not

This brings me to the most talked about moment in the movie, the Martha scene. I actually like the underlying idea: Bruce realizing Superman has a mother in danger is a compelling reason to change course, and Clark thinking of someone else in what he believes are his final moments says something real about the character. The problem is entirely in the dialogue. Superman shouting "You need to save Martha" is weak writing, since nobody refers to their mother by first name to someone who has no idea who that person is.

If Clark's mother happened to be named Christine instead and he shouted the same line, Bruce would have no reason to stop and would likely have just killed him. It only works here because the names happen to line up. If the line had instead been something like "They have my mother. Her name is Martha. Please save her," the whole scene would land so much better, since it is really just a presentation problem with the dialogue rather than the concept. I do not mind Bruce's sudden willingness to work with Superman once he hears it, that part works for me. It's specifically the way Clark says his mother's name that breaks the scene.

The Numbers Confirm the Divide, and Justice League Sealed the DCEU's Fate

Batman v Superman ended up scoring 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a 63 percent audience score, and a 6.4 out of 10 on IMDb, all lower than Man of Steel. It grossed 874 million dollars worldwide, making it an unquestionable financial success even as it was a critical disaster for DC and Warner Bros. Snyder moved on to begin work on Justice League, but there was turmoil behind the scenes, with Warner Bros wanting him gone after this movie's reception and wanting a lighter, more Avengers style follow up.

Before the studio could remove him, Snyder stepped away himself following a family tragedy, and Joss Whedon came in to finish the film, leading to one of the most disastrous productions I have seen behind a blockbuster. The result was Justice League, which I also consider one of the worst movies I have seen, and it all but killed the DCEU outright, though it still took nearly six years before Warner Bros finally pulled the plug on that universe altogether. Whoever ends up more at fault, it all traces back to how divisive this movie was in the first place, which is why I think it is fair to call Batman v Superman a failure.

What do you think, does Batman v Superman hold up better than its reputation suggests, or does it deserve the blame for derailing the DCEU?