Ah the trump card in the DC universe, the main player, the saviour, the movie to bring everything together and utterly destroy Marvel once and for all (well that was the idea anyway). First we got 'Man of Steel', the reboot Superman flick that was supposed to herald a new dawn (no pun intended) for Supes. Alas it was a polarising movie and divided audiences everywhere. OK no worries DC thought, lets press forward with a sequel and make it better. That's where this movie comes in, the supposed original sequel to 'Man of Steel'. But as we all know that soon changed, the Superman sequel quickly became a slightly different beast with the inclusion of Batman, so now we had a vs flick. Even though it was still a Superman sequel, Superman himself had suddenly taken the backseat to Batman. But just when you thought Superman couldn't get screwed over any further, the studio (and DC) then threw in other characters like Wonder Woman and other cameos. So the once Superman sequel was now a full blown franchise kick starter/prequel for the proposed Justice League movie. Just a glance at the movies title hints at how overblown this film could be.
So at first this movie goes to some lengths to try and show the devastation we saw in MoS (Supes fighting Zod) from the human perspective. Snyder clearly took on board all the negativity he got from MoS and tried to rectify it somewhat. Does he achieve this?? well to some degree I guess. OK he clearly shows us the collateral damage caused and how people suffered, so I guess that helps. It also showed us Bruce Wayne amongst the people and how his building gets destroyed killing one of his work colleagues. Didn't quite get why that guy died really, Bruce clearly tells him to get out of the building at one point. Cut back a little later and the guy is still in the building, for some reason, as it starts to come down. The guy is literally in the same office that Bruce had told him to leave, what an idiot. Did those people actually need Wayne to tell them to leave the friggin' building?!
So basically Superman destroyed tonnes of property, inadvertently killed innocents and racked up massive bills for...everything! Because of this Superman has become a controversial figure, people are not sure if he's a force for good or a force to put humans at deadly risk. Bruce Wayne doesn't like Supes, he destroyed his building, killed his work mate and he's stealing his thunder essentially. Bruce thinks Supes needs to be controlled, killed or exiled, and he's the man to do just that. In the mean time Lex Luthor is after Kryptonite and is basically using the whole situation to try and rid the world of both Supes and Batman whilst gaining total power. Wonder Woman merely floats around turning up at places to simply show she's in the movie. Important characters like Lois Lane, Alfred, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Martha Kent etc...are now secondary (or defunct) because there are simply too many characters here and compared to the likes of Superman, Batman, Lex, Wonder Woman etc...they're pretty much boring and no longer of importance.
So lets look at some of the big hitters here, the main protagonists and antagonists (except for Supes played by Henry Cavill because we know him from MoS. He's still boring, can't act and always uses the same facial expression). Lex Luthor played by Jess Eisenberg, easily the most annoyingly stupid portrayal in the movie because of everything he does. His voice is annoying, he has hair, his facial expressions and body movements are annoying, he is annoying. Not only that but its clear to see he's merely phoning in a Jim Carrey-esque Riddler impersonation, or just another take on the Joker (or to some degree, a Max Landis impression). Oh and he also has an Asian female sidekick because of course he does. All supervillains have a female sidekick it seems. Suffice to say Eisenberg's Lex is horrible and doesn't fit the character or movie, the hell was all that 'ding ding ding ding' about?
Wonder Woman played by Gal Gadot...badly, because she can't act (yes I said it). Bottom line, the f*ck is this character doing here?! She wants a file, spends the entire run time looking for this file because she wants a picture or something (the pic showing her and the characters from the, as yet unreleased, Wonder Woman movie). She gets the file and the picture, discovers the other Justice League members and decides to help Batman and Superman fight whatever, for some reason...wut?? She literally pops up in this movie for no reason whatsoever, she fights alongside Batman and Supes for no reason whatsoever. Who is she? what does she do? why is she here? where did she come from? why does she have super powers? why does she drive a super car? Like literally what the literal fuck is this all about? This movie is meaningless to someone not in the know and this characters vapid inclusion sums that up perfectly. Anyway we all know she's only in this movie to help set up the Justice League flick and make the BvS trailers look more attractive to the juveniles and female audience.
We do get some laughably bad snippets showing other future DC characters which are all planned for the upcoming Justice League movie. When I say laughably bad, I mean it; the small cameo for Aquaman shows us said underwater hero in his full tattooed glory. Was that wise? I know we all know what he looks like but surely a bit of mystery for his first time on the big screen (plus he looks stupid). And what happens in that snippet anyway? An underwater probe just happens to find Aquaman who totally reveals himself straight away, not too clever methinks. The Cyborg snippet was a horrific, obvious looking CGI mess whilst The Flash snippet didn't really show anything, literally. And why do all these characters have their own logos in the movie? Duh??!
Lois Lane played by Amy Adams, again, why is she here? Her role? to merely try and prove that Superman didn't kill all those people in the opening desert scene where she and Olsen are sent to interview ISIS or whatever. Why was she even sent there? she's a reporter. Why would everyone think Superman killed those people who were killed with bullets, Supes doesn't use guns. Notice Supes doesn't save poor old Olsen or those blokes that were shot, but manages to save Lane...again, ugh! Lane is only used in this pointless sub plot just so she can point out that Superman didn't kill those blokes in the desert, and prove that they were killed by Luthor's men. By which point, it doesn't even matter anyway, the main plot had moved well past all that crap and no one cared. Just stick Lane in a tub, naked and have her kiss a topless Superman because cheap sex appeal.
Doomsday, a big invincible CGI turd with spikes coming out of it...great. Created by Luthor using his own blood and the dead General Zod's DNA (still not really sure how Kryptonian technology does that but whatever). Yeah this thing is so flippin' powerful it should have killed everyone and wiped out America with ease, the end. But no, instead it just throws everyone around a bit, you know, into buildings, debris whatever just happens to be there...blah blah blah. Good job Wonder Woman turns up with her glowing whip and powerful gauntlets...meh who cares.
Lets look at the dream sequence in the movie, the main one, you know, Batman Fury Road. This entire sequence made no sense, no sense! Why is it in here? what's going on exactly? who are the human fly type characters? I understand what the gist is don't get me wrong, Batman is basically afraid of Superman taking control, he's afraid at the fact he's essentially powerless against him, OK fine. Did we need a big long dream sequence on the set of Fury Road? Why do I get the impression this is yet another set up for another possible movie, a stupid movie where Batman looks stupid in the daytime and in the desert. Then you have the Flash moment. The Flash seems to enter Wayne's dream and warn him of something, a future premonition if you will. But how could The Flash enter Wayne's dream? was this visual image a dream itself? had Wayne woken up prior to The Flash coming through? Does The Flash have the power to do this??
Then you have one of the cheapest, lowest moments in this movie, if not the entire DC universe so far. The death of Superman, yes they actually managed to squeeze the death of Superman into this movie, on top of everything else. Here's my problem with this (and surely its bloody obvious), this is the kick starter movie for the entire Justice League franchise, the acorn that will presumably grow into the massive oak. There is obviously going to be quite a few movies after this that will obviously include Superman because he's one of the main team members. There is no way in hell they are obviously gonna kill off Superman right now, in this movie, before the Justice League comes out. Like seriously! how fucking stupid do these studios think we are?? So what you have here is a ridiculously pointless and inane mini plot where Superman gets killed, gets buried, and we're all supposed to take this as a high emotional moment, a tear-jerker. As if we're supposed to be worried about Superman. No DC, no Warner, we're not worried about Superman, we're not crying because we all know he's gonna come back. Quite literally, fuck you Snyder, fuck you for allowing this tacky shit.
Honesty, as I watched this I was actually kinda OK with it, to a degree. But after completion, some thinking, some research and obviously going back over the movie, it basically kinda sucks. Despite the huge budget, numerous people involved and the fact that both DC and Warner have had previous chances to get this stuff right, they still haven't! The film is all over the place, its messy as hell, this cut is about three hours long (or whatever) and there's only actually about ten minutes of Batman vs Superman in it! Bruce Wayne doesn't live in Wayne Manor anymore but instead lives in some underground modern art pad. The batmobile seems to be utterly invincible and can smash through anything whilst the bad guys never seem to learn that shooting it doesn't do anything (the obligatory car chase sequence with a gazillion explosions, car wrecks, mini guns, expendable goons galore etc...).
Product placement is through the roof as is the use of present-day media presenters and various media outlets. This is supposed to be a comicbook world, not our real present-day world. Why are you trying to make out that these characters exist in our reality? that's not the idea. There are too many characters, too many mini plots, choppy editing and pacing and nothing really seems to add up. But at the end of the day, no matter how much they try, Batman had no real motivation to kill (or even fight) Superman and Superman had no real motivation to kill Batman (outside of his kidnapped mother whom he could and should of saved himself easily at any point). Although, we do learn that Batman can be stopped dead in his tracks simply by uttering the name Martha. Lets hope future villains don't pick up on that huh.
I guess my main question is...how did they manage to fuck this up so badly? How, yet again, did DC, Warner and Snyder manage to get this wrong? It just defies believe frankly. I still stand by my opinion that if you were to show this to someone who had little to no knowledge of these characters, this comicbook world as a whole, they would be completely lost watching this movie, totally lost. Is that how a movie should play out? is that the aim? To only cater to the (hardcore) fanboys and fanbase who just wanna see snippets from their favourite comics recreated on the big screen. Of course not! every movie should be able to stand alone and not rely on future instalments to help it out or back it up. A studio should focus on one movie at a time and try to assure that movie is the best it can be. Put simply, this just isn't happening anymore and it certainly didn't happen here. This movie is an outright failure on all counts as a stand alone movie.
4.5/10
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