As a fan of blockbusters, I like to watch a lot of stuff crumble. Buildings are the most common occurrence, probably followed by spaceships, and every now and then it’ll happen to a planet (or even a timeline!)
But among my favorite things to crumble are the heroes.
Fat Thor in Avengers: Endgame is among my favorite examples of this. Seeing a god succumb to human problems like alcoholism and weight gain was a bit jarring at first, but it was eventually endearing.
Another favorite example is Batman in Batman V Superman.
It’s a scene that’s been under a great deal of scrutiny (though not great scrutiny) and has been the butt of plenty of jokes made about it (some funny, most not).
Since I’m assuming you read the article’s title or at least clicked on the previous link, I’ll assume you know the scene being referred to and I’ll stop wasting time.
Toxic Batmasculinity
An insecure billionaire who thinks he has nothing to lose is not someone whose way you want to get in. Since that fateful night when the Waynes went to see Zorro, he’s seen so much over all these years that we shouldn’t be surprised he’s lost his way.
We don’t have to be happy about it, and we don’t have to approve of it. But we shouldn’t be surprised that this old, jaded Bruce gives a death sentence to a human trafficker in his first scene in the cowl.
And we especially shouldn’t be surprised that the scene that follows up his iconic origin is mankind being introduced to the Superman, where he watches Metropolis being decimated by two gods duking it out.
That last structural decision is a significant one. Ever since the movie was announced in 2013, “too soon” criticisms permiated the discussion of the movie. It’s too soon after Christian Bale to bring in a new Batman, it’s too soon in the careers of these actors to have an iconic battle like Batman Vs. Superman, and it’s too soon in the career of the new Batman to have him at an old age.
There’s little to really say about the first criticism, but the last criticism (which is correlated with the second) seems to miss what the film is going for.
The film is, in a sense, an origin story.
Origin Through Reflection
It doesn’t do this in the exact same way Batman Begins did, with that film showing how he got the suit and so on. From a technological and formal standpoint, Affleck’s older caped crusader is as Batman as he’ll ever get. He’s got the tech, he’s got the bats, he’s got a scene that’s shot as though he’s the demon in a modern haunted house movie (good modern horror; less Jeff Wadlow and more James Wan).
Instead, the overlap between BvS and Begins, what makes them both origin stories, is their discoveries on why Batman became Batman. It’s just that BvS is a rediscovery.
Begins shows this reflection near the beginning, BvS reflects on this when he thinks this is the end. Bale’s Bruce reflects on this after he fails to kill Joe Chill, the common criminal who happened to take his parents, and Affleck’s reflects on it as he’s about to slay a god. As he’s about to do what may be the only thing he does that matters.
This is where the significance of the structure of the opening scenes comes in, as well as the genuine significance of the Martha scene. Bruce’s catharsis is not found in “our Moms have the same name, now we’re buddies.”
It’s the fact that as he’s about to kill a god, as he’s about to do the only thing that matters in honor of the death of his parents, he’s told the opposite.
He’s told he is failing them.
Because Bruce doesn’t know that Clark is talking about Martha Kent, what would have been the subtext hits him as the text, and the basic text of Clark’s words is lost on him. Hearing those five words, especially the last one, especially the last words of his father and the name of the mother he’s failing, right as he’s about to achieve his “greatest accomplishment”, all this disorients him. It breaks him. The would-be godkiller is told he’s failing the parents he thought he was honoring, and he begins to crumble.
He fights the beginnings of this crumbling with rage, as he’s taught himself to do over the years. And when he learns what Clark really meant, that a woman’s life is in danger, he falls apart. Bruce is about to kill to honor Martha, and he’s stopped by someone saying “I don’t care if you kill me, just save Martha.”
He can’t give into his rage. Clark is just a guy desperate to save his Mom the way Bruce was as a little boy.
It’s not here that Bruce effectively turns around; it’s the end of the film. Seeing Clark express indifference to his own life when his loved one is at stake, is what crumbles the pessimistic Bruce and unearths the original, hopeful foundation.
Seeing Clark actually give his life when the world is at stake rebuilds that foundation.
It’s through Clark that he learns men are still good, that we can rebuild, that we can do better.
devilsadvocritic 
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