'Batman v Superman' Is A Blockbuster For The Trump Era

The verdict on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice? Depends on who you ask. Image courtesy WB Entertainment.

The weekend results have been tallied: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: $425 million, critics: zip. Despite garnering a putrid 29% Rotten Tomatoes score from nearly 300 reviews, DC and Warner Brothers’ high-stakes franchise launcher scored big at the global box office.
Did I say big? I meant “Yuge.” It’s on track for one of the biggest global movie opening weekends in history and will almost certainly finish above a billion worldwide when all is said and done.
That’s kind of remarkable, because the critical response to BvS has been brutal. Here are a few sample review headlines:
And that’s just for starters. It seems like nearly everyone with a professional opinion emptied the thesaurus to find new words for “suck.”

Recommended by Forbes

Not only did this not hurt BVS’s opening, it may have even helped in certain ways. There was always a fanbase ready to see this movie regardless. Plus we’ve gotten to a point with superhero blockbusters where it’s foolish to argue about aesthetics. Is there really that big a difference between this movie and classics of the genre like Iron Man or The Dark Knight?
But there is something about the market’s utter indifference to the profound shortcomings of this particular film, combined with fans’ angry rejection of the critical response, that echoes some of the other trends going on in American politics and society at this moment.
In other words, forget quality: It may be that a defiantly awful Batman movie is just the ticket make a billion in the age of Trump.
“F the Critics!” For the record, I saw BVS on Friday in an afternoon matinee at a half-full theatre in North Seattle. To temper my inherent elitism, I brought a pal, the manager of Seattle’s best comic store, whose work puts him in daily contact with mainstream fans.
Neither of us liked it much. Even putting aside our ideological grievances with the way the characters were handled and DC’s overall strategy of trying to make its universe happen, the movie itself just didn’t impress. Affleck did better than we expected and parts of the movie definitely looked cool, but we both agreed the plot was nonsense, the conflicts poorly motivated and, unforgivably, the big action scenes were boring and tedious. I was most surprised that it doesn’t really move the needle in terms of action or special effects: even as a popcorn movie, it under-delivered. Much of it just seemed unnecessary.
 The people sitting down the row from us had a different reaction. They whooped and cheered, and at the end, the guy said to his companion, “that just shows the critics can suck it!” This specific rejection of critics is fairly common among the fans who gave the film 4.5 or 5-star ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, where its audience score has hovered in the low 70s through the weekend – more than double its critics’ rating.
“You should ignore the critics and go watch this movie, it IS entertaining in its own way and saying that it was dull or a disaster is just plain bias,” says reviewer Ahmed B, who gave it five stars. “I loved it, f the critics,” said Rene L. “Best film about the true dawn of the justice, the only injustices is the arrogance of the critics [sic],” wrote Efraim S.