Kevin Smith threw his support behind Zack Snyder‘s “Batman v Superman” while the film was in production, but after seeing it in theaters, he appears have joined the chorus of critics who were not impressed.
During his “Hollywood Babble-On” podcast with co-host Ralph Garman, Smith praised the performance of his friend Ben Affleck, but took issue with the characterization of the Dark Knight.
“That didn’t seem like Batman,” he said. “Certainly not the world’s greatest Detective. More like Bat-Trump… Batman’s never like, ‘If there’s a one percent chance shit could go wrong, let’s f–king stab people.”
Smith at least praised the visual style of director Zack Snyder, but also was unimpressed with how Superman played out onscreen in this outing.
“You can’t take that away from Snyder,” he said. “Boy, he knows how to compose a frame and set up a shot. Beautiful visual stylist. But you need more than just the pictures. You need characterization and these characters seemed off.”
“Particularly Superman,” he continued. “I mean, Batman’s whole, ‘I f–king hate him! I’m gonna f–king stab him in the f–king heart!,’ that seemed way off, but they played Superman as dark as they played Batman.”
Smith went on to say that unlike films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Batman v Superman” seemed to lack “joy.”
“The Marvel movies have a lot of joy in them and I realize as I was watching [‘Batman v Superman’] and here’s the weirdest way to sum it up: I thought it was really dark, I don’t know that I would take a kid to this, it’s kinda bleak,” he said.
“It’s been 72 hours since I’ve seen it and I don’t know what the moral of the ‘Batman v Superman’ movie is other than, maybe, maybe, if you stretch it real thin, ‘Hey kids, don’t judge a book by its cover,’” he continued.
“Honestly, what was the moral of that story?” Smith asked. “Everyone was shitty to everybody and in the end Batman was like, ‘I failed him in life.’ It’s like, f–k yeah, you did! You tried to end his life!”
Smith is well known for his love of all things comic book, and often incorporates discussions of comic book characters into his own films. Recently, he directed an episode of “The Flash” for CW.