The movie is a 7.5 for me, but more than that, it was a huge disappointment because it could have been so much more. I read some reviews before I saw the movie, I knew about the low ratings that critics have been giving it, and I had low expectations. Afterwards, I read and saw a ton more reviews that helped me crystallize my feelings on this movie. A lot of my complaints are nitpicking, I get that, that’s why the doesn’t have a lower score. But because there is just so much nit that could be picked, I cannot ignore simply ignore them like some others have been, so this rant will be a bit long, sorry
The Good
Good action
Zack Snyder is known for being more flash than substance and the flash (not THE Flash) is on full display here. Just the look of the action, the bone-crunching sounds, the screen shaking with each hit, the back-and-forth action is worth the price of admission. The titular Batman v Superman fight didn’t disappoint and when they fought Doomsday, it was pretty much as brutal as you can imagine it. The rescue of Martha Kent was also a much better fight sequence than pretty much any of the Chris Nolan Batman movies. For those of you who played it, it felt a lot like the Arkham games
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman, what little we saw of her, was mesmerizing. She was everything you expect Wonder Woman to be: elegant, mysterious, strong, commanding, smart, fearless, and beautiful. This movie got me more excited for the standalone WW movie more than any other property coming up in the DC cinematic universe. When she appeared to save Batman’s ass in the end, that was probably the best moment in the whole movie. I love that smirk she had when she got knocked back too. It was like “Oh, you think that hurt me? Guess again fucker!” Its how I imagine having angry sex with WW would be like
Overall conflict
I like the overall concept of why Batman fought Superman. Similar to Marvel’s Civil War coming up, this was ultimately about security vs. liberty. The Senate hearings felt like it could have come from the real world. We have this godlike superbeing that just trashed a whole city, killing thousands. Sure, it was in defense of the world, but its his people he was defending us from. Lots of people were affected and right or wrong, they won’t simply be placated with a “Its not my fault”. Batman is right to wonder about the danger of someone like that running around answering to no one. I think it grounds his motivations to something the audience can relate to
The Bad
Lex Luthor
I don’t like this Lex. As others have said, it looks like he’s trying to do Heath Ledger’s Joker mixed with Mark Zuckerberg. At no time did I get “evil genius supervillain” from him. It was more like “coked up trust fund fratboy”. The little tics and turns of phrases sound just so forced and artificial. The line “That’s a 3 syllable word for any idea too big for little minds poke” is destined to be remembered in the same way as “You know what happens when a toad gets hit by lightning?” and “I thought Christmas comes only once a year”. Where’s Ledger’s Joker seem to have an obsessive need to do his physical tics, Eisenberg’s Luthor seems like he wants to do them because he thinks that’s how evil people behave.
Sound
It was so. fucking. LOUD! While the main themes were decent, especially Wonder Woman’s theme, there were moments in the movie that you were distracted by the loud ass music. I can’t remember exactly when, but I think there was a moment with Lois, probably when she was looking over that bullet, where the music is just replete with drums getting louder and louder building to some kind of climax and then they immediately cut to the next scene. What could have, should have been a moment of mystery with her pondering over the object was turned into one where you expect an explosion or something big to happen any second now. More than once, the movie’s sound just get cranked up to 11 with little on screen to justify it
Too long and slow
When I first saw that this movie was going to be longer than any Marvel movie at 2h 31m, I thought that they were spending the time trying to cram every detail for future Justice League setups as possible. But instead, too much of it was spent with people slowly walking, people looking downcast and moody, and pointless shots that could have been streamlined. It reminds me of the first Hulk movie with Ang Lee where the director tried to turn what was supposed to be a fun comic book movie into some journey of self-discovery. Once scene in particular was near the beginning when Bruce Wayne is going to that party at Lex’s house. The scene starts with him in garage taking the tarp off of some expensive looking car. But for some reason the camera lingers on that scene and zooms into the front of the car to show us the logo. I mean, why the hell should we give a damn about that? What does tarp removing and the car logo have anything to do with anything? In another overly long sequence, Lois tosses the kryptonite spear into some water, then when Batman needs it, she inexplicably realizes that its the key to killing Doomsday and then goes back. Literally from her character’s point of view, she throws the spear away, runs outside, sees some fighting, and then runs back in. Also of course they have to put her in danger, she can’t simply be Lois Lane, tough female reporter doing something helpful, but she has to be Lois Lane: damsel in distress.
Lois Lane damsel in distress
Speaking of which, how many times was Lois in danger in this movie? There was the desert sequence, being tossed off a building by Lex, and trapped underwater. I mean, we get it, she’s Superman’s vulnerability, meant to humanize him and make him sympathetic. But did she really need to be in danger 3 times? Add to that, other than being the bait in the desert, she really didn’t do much did she? She spends her time either being in trouble, or trying to find info on that bullet which ultimately didn’t matter because Lex blew up the Capitol Building. And Batman was going back to retrieve the spear anyway, so if she hadn’t tossed it, they still would have gotten the spear
Dream sequences
Holy crap these were bad, even when I found out what they all were. Apparently Batman’s desert dream was of a totalitarian world ruled by Superman, but inter-spliced with a future ruled by Darkseid (see the Omega symbol in the desert and the flying Parademons). So, Batman is psychic now? What the fuck? He can dream of the future? If there was a clunkier way of foreshadowing, then I’m sure Zach Snyder is saving it for Justice League because those were stupid sequences meant to look and feel heavy but it just ended up wasting time. We didn’t need to see a world ruled by Superman, that doesn’t even make sense. Superman is a powerful being who accidentally causes damage and chaos, he’s never been someone who’s even shown that he wants to take over the government. And the warning about Darkseid just came out of nowhere. First, why combine it with a Super Totalitarian Government dream and why the fuck does Batman have that dream anyway?? As for the other sequence, apparently when Batman fell asleep decoding the stolen drive, he was visited by the Flash from the future who gave him some kind of warning. I could barely make out the dialogue, more sound issues again, and I really thought that was Robin instead. In fact, it would have made more sense if it was Robin because I thought it was a dream about when Robin died and Batman feeling guilt over it and that’s why he’s resorting to stealing from Lex and trying to kill Superman
Superman is boring
I’ve read enough review to see 2 schools of thought on this matter. First, Superman is inherently a boring character. He’s too powerful and the good old Truth, Justice, and the American Way from the 1930’s just won’t play well to modern audiences. Second is that he was boring in this movie. I’m in the latter camp. Henry Cavill barely got to do anything else in this movie other than punch and scowl. He goes through the whole movie smiling probably twice. He didn’t seem to learn anything from Man of Steel and other than dying, he really didn’t go through the type of change that Batman and Wonder Woman went through. Some of his characterization also didn’t make sense. Whereas his character was tormented by killing Zod in the last movie, here he runs a human through 4 walls and smirks about it. Instead of talking to Batman, even hanging back and letting him get bored with trying to kill him, he decides he can only tell Batman about his mom after a few punches
Pacing disjointed
This movie never feels like its going anywhere other than the next big set piece. It jumps quickly from one scene to another without giving much time for characters to reflect on what’s happened. Its too fast in some areas and too slow in others. They could have made the movie zippier by cutting out the dream sequences, shortening the parts about Lois pondering about the bullet, and that whole Senate hearings part with the wheelchair guy was just unnecessary
Missed potential
You might wonder what I mean about the Senate part being unnecessary. You might think that a huge part of the movie was about Lex trying to get the Kryptonite to the US and the whole bombing at the Capitol Building. But think back to the consequences of that. After the building was bombed, what resulted? Was there elevated terror levels in the US after that, follow up dialogue about how the president was freaking out and arming nukes, a plot about how the whole desert sequence thing was covered up by Superman by killing everyone? Hell, even by the end of the movie, did any characters mention that Superman was probably not responsible for the Capitol Building attack? None of that happened! They blew up the Capitol, Superman got out safe, and the rest of the characters simply talked about how they distrust Superman even more now. No consequences for his actions, no mobilization of the US army, no moving forward of any plot whatsoever. They could have included just one line during the Doomsday fight, before they nuked them, where the president could have said “Hey this is the guy who may have destroyed the Capitol, let’s nuke them both!”. But nothing like that happened, it was forgotten as soon as the scene was over! And the setup was stupid too. I think the news reported that the bomb was in the wheelchair, and that was being ridden by a guy who hated Superman. Why would people blame Superman for a bomb in a wheelchair used by a guy who hated him? It makes no sense at all
Superman’s Benghazi
Can anyone tell me what the point of that desert scene was at all? It was supposed to be a setup by Lex, his men were there using experimental weapons that don’t match anything else. All to get Lois in danger and get Superman to save her. Other people there were shot, and somehow, we’re supposed to believe, this will cause a domino effect of people not trusting Superman? First, why would Superman need to shoot anyone? Second, weren’t they terrorists? Lois’s first question was “Are you a terroris?” to that tribal warlord. Are we to believe that Lex believed the American people will give a damn about terrorist being shot by Superman half a world away? We don’t even care about that in the real world!
No deaths!
I think its funny how Warner Bros. must have totally overreacted to the complaints about Man of Steel’s Metropolis destroying rampage to the point where you are explicitly told “Hey, its after 6pm, there’s no people on the streets!” or “That island is deserted!” No, WB, we’re not mad because Superman caused destruction in Man of Steel, we’re mad because he acted like he didn’t want to kill anyone but killed a lot of people and made out with Lois Lane on their corpses as if he didn’t give a shit.
The Weird
Some of this stuff is nitpicky, but I’m not considering them to be that big of a deal mostly because you could imagine that there was an explanation, but either I missed it or the filmmakers didn’t really bother to explain it. They should have, sure, but given this movie’s long enough already, I can simply accept that it was a stylistic choice
Batman killing
I get that this is an older, more jaded Batman modeled after the Frank Miller series The Dark Knight Returns. Batman definitely kills, but rarely do you see it done on this scale. Even still, they should have at least made mention that after 20 years of being Batman, some of his old rules have gone out the window. He just doesn’t give a shit anymore. But that’s not how he came off as, he came off as just another costumed vigilante. I mean, why didn’t he just kill the sex trafficker in the beginning instead of brand him? Its inconsistent
Martha
I was originally going to list this in the Bad section, but I realized that even I never realized they have the same name. So I got fooled too. That’s why I’m not going to be too mad about it. However, it does seem silly that had her name been something else, Superman would have been dead and Doomsday would have run rampant over the world. And really, the scene came off as kind of silly. I know its supposed to be Batman finally seeing Superman’s humanity, but it doesn’t come off like that
Wayne Enterprises workers
Why did those people stay in the building until Bruce Wayne told them to evacuate? If he never tells them, they were just going to stay there and die? And if the kid’s mom was in the building, why was she out in the middle of the day alone in a downtown street?
Wonder Woman picture
I don’t believe some reviewer’s attempt at fanboy retconning that WW was simply bad with computers. She said Lex had a picture that she was trying to get back. Uh, first of all, taking Batman’s device isn’t going to do anything, he’s simply copying the info. Second, unless she was going to delete all instances of the picture from his entire digital cache, then simply getting a photo back, even if it was a physical photo, was going to do nothing. And third, if it was so important to get back, why did she give back Batman’s device? Now he knows her secret too
Lex’s Logos
So Lex Luthor apparently named and made logos of all the Justice League characters?
Lex’s stupid plan
So Lex had a pretty stupid plan with Doomsday. If Batman won, what was he going to do with Doomsday? He couldn’t control him, Doomsday was a second away from punching Lex into a pink mist before being saved. But more than that, the Kryptonian ship computer called the Doomsday’s condition a Kryptonia deformity? So in this movie, Doomsday is nothing more than a Kryptonian Elephant Man?
The party
Lastly, why was Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman even at Lex’s party? It was a pretty conveniently overlooked plot. Why did Lex invite Bruce, what was the point? And why did he get so excited about introducing Bruce, a billionaire, to a common reporter? Did Lex already know Superman’s identity at that point? If so, how? And since the party seems to be invite only, why would he invite Wonder Woman? Just to get a closer look at her? If so, why would Wonder Woman accept that? I don’t know what secret identity Diana Prince has in the comics, so if I were her, I’d be very suspicious why I’m suddenly getting an invite to a party by a billionaire
