Director Zack Snyder has responded to the early and largely negative reviews levelled at Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, simply stating that “it is what it is.”
Based purely on aggregate scores alone, Dawn of Justice is off to a rocky start, charting at a lowly 31 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Now, that’s by no means the only barometer for success, given the film will likely do gangbusters at the weekend box office, but it’d be foolish to claim that those criticisms levelled at Snyder’s feature haven’t damaged its reputation.
Addressing the first wave of negative reviews, the filmmaker stated the following: “I’m a comic book guy and I made the movie based as much as I could on that aesthetic. And so I don’t know how else to do it 100%, so it is what it is.”
Looking further afield, Collider quizzed Snyder about the eventual Blu-ray release of Dawn of Justice, and the director spoke about how the extended, R-rated cut differs from the one that’s about to run in theaters.
“There’s a little bit of action, there’s a little bit of violence that we trimmed out for the MPAA that we put back. The Batman warehouse rescue, there’s a couple shots of Doomsday that were too intense. Then there’s a little bit longer ending, sort of the ending sequence, and the opening of the movie, the North Africa sequence is really much different.”
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice will open nationwide tomorrow, March 25. Our own review of Snyder’s Herculean feature wasn’t too kind, either, pinpointing the film’s uneven tone and bloated running time.
