What Batman Vs Superman missed out?

In all of the DC,few storylines can capture the morbid nature of the universe with more accuracy than the caped crusader vs. the man of steel. WB always had its hands full when they were dealing with these guys so my expectation from the movies was always low. Yet DCEU is going to continue and us, fans will be watching this with a lot of hope. Or maybe hope is not the best word.

Having said that we all have our own criticisms of the movie and what we feel Batman vs.Superman should have been about.

The problem is not that Batman got swayed by the mention of his mother’s name or that Superman was too brooding in this : because Superman vs. Batman has always been an ethos even within the Justice League. Batman has always been wary about Superman and other heroes.

This was the first thing that the movies needed to capture and win well: that Batman was not a man caved into full paranoia but a man who was tactically aware of what he has to do or not do to ensure that Superman must never be corrupted. Because the movie is showing pre-justice League times, we could expect Batman to be paranoid but not as hung up onSupes with a grudge as he was.

Batman believes in his ego; he believes absolutely that what he is doing is right, and every DC animated movie or comic shows that. In Doom, he almost becomes single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the entire league because his contingency plans get stolen by the Mirrormaster. The Justice League contains some of the most overpowered superheroes on this side of the fictional landscape and Batman is at least conceptually able to take them out. It’s a scary thought, but he takes them out tactically not whilst being an edgy teenager which Affleck often came out as.

Now Superman, on the other hand, had way too much of a burden in this movie because not only did he have to get his boy scout act straight but also bring his dark side out when Bruce confronts him. In every storyline where Superman goes berserk, there is always a philosophical standoff between him and Batman.

What DCEU got right was the fact that Superman’s sense of altruism is too dependent on how he reacts to the threats in his life, what they got wrong was how Superman is also only blinded by what he believes. In truth, he is a rival to Bruce, but their rivalry is far eclipsed by their friendship in most DC canons. The only possible exception to that can be seen in Injustice perhaps, but that is one story where things go way too far so we can choose not to include that in our stories and that it is non-canon.

You see, Superman is a limitless being whose abilities make him way above the morality of humans, except the fact that he is raised amongst people and thus thinks like them. Thus for him it is always a sense of how much restraint should he employ in dealing with his adversaries or how much of a burden his powers put on him. Clark mostly wants to be normal and wants to belong so he at times feels better in giving that control away to humans and letting them direct his actions whether it is to bring peace by force or sometimes even to kill if necessary.

Batman, on the other hand, follows his moral code far too rigidly, no matter how many times tough choice appear in front of him: he would rather let himself be torn by them than do the bit that he does not believe in. In Dark Knight Returns, there is no logical sense in taking on Superman for him, but he still does in an attempt to show him how ruling through fear and changing through awill are different in nature. This was something the movie needed. The movie needed to show Batman being a mere man trying to do the impossible whilst Superman being almost godlike wants to make himself more human. The movie got things right and had some great scenes along the way, but the ethos of what makes this colossal fight so iconic in the first place is the perspective behind it. In that aspect, it made no sense to be starved: still, now the premise has been set so dare we say? We hope for the best?