“… sad to see DC jump the gun and try to catch up with Marvel.”

Yesterday I saw Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and it made me sad. I wasn’t really disappointed that the movie wasn’t very good, because the days leading up to me seeing it I was accosted with people on the internet declaring their hatred for Zack Snyder. Batman v Superman is a movie about, you guessed it, Batman and Superman. Specifically the movie is about the world being mad at Superman, and Batman is also mad at Superman, and then the two fight. The movie made me sad more than anything because I am much more of a fan of DC than I am of Marvel, and it makes me disappointed that all of the DC movies fall so short. My initial review will be brief because I have a lot of spoilers to discuss, but I will give fair warning before I start spouting them out.

The first thing I want to talk about is the story. In my Man of Steel Review I mentioned that the story was very all over the place, and the pacing was terrible. Batman v Superman takes this to a whole other level. Of course, we have already been introduced to Superman in Man of Steel, but we have not been introduced to Ben Affleck’s Batman. This movie takes it upon itself to give us Batman’s origin story which takes out a huge chunk of what could otherwise be a good story about the showdown of the century. Not only does the movie reserve chunks for Batman’s origin, it also reserves chunks that show Lois Lane just being a reporter which serve no purpose to the story. Honestly this movie is all over the place. It jumps from scene to scene, and with that come drastic shifts in time and tone of the film. I honestly believe this movie is so bad because DC is trying to play catch up with Marvel and its ‘money well’ called the Avengers. That’s not a bad thing that they too want a profitable franchise, they just need to take their time to do it. Batman v Superman would have worked so much better had we gotten a bridge movie involving only Batman. That would have allowed the character to be more fleshed out, and his motivations would have made a lot more sense. All we really got in this movie is a scene where Bruce Wayne repeatedly hits a large tire with a sledge hammer. To go hand-in hand with the story, the score for the film was also all over the place. I confessed my love for the Man of Steel score in my last review, but this one seems very generic for lack of a better term. The only highlights were when the score from Man of Steel was used in the film, but that does’t really help its case. There would be really intense, bass heavy soundtracks, and then it would cut to a scene with Superman and it would be the light instrumental opening from Man of Steel. It was very jarring to witness honestly. But a score should compliment what you are seeing on screen, and in that sense the score did it’s job because it made me very confused.

Unfortunately, this is all I can really say without getting into spoiler territory so I am going to call it. Everything from this point forward will be filled with spoilers for Batman v Superman. If you just want to know my rating scroll to the bottom of the page. You have been warned.

One thing about the story that really bothered me was the dream sequences. Half of the time they were confusing because I didn’t know that they were a dream. They were thrown into the story at random points and it just felt really rushed. I feel like I tackled why exactly the story was bad, but the characters were also terrible. I want to start with the man of the hour, Batman. Everybody, myself included, was excited to see Ben Affleck’s take on Batman but the Batman we saw was not the one we were used to. And this isn’t a good change like Superman in Man of Steel, this is a terrible change. All of Batman’s morals were thrown out of the fucking window in Batman v Superman. In almost every scene Batman was in, he was killing dudes. Even if you know nothing about Batman, you should know that BATMAN DOESN”T KILL PEOPLE! Batman has Morals in place that will not allow him to kill people. This is what makes Batman better than the criminals he fights. In this movie, he is no different than any one of those criminals. Batman also had a really fucking stupid voice. Everybody makes fun of Christian Bale’s performance as Batman because of the raspy voice, but Ben Affleck’s Batman voice sounds like a robot being throat-fucked. He uses a voice changer that makes him sound like a prank caller from the early 2000’s. Honestly, what is wrong With Batman using his real voice? Every superhero does it, it’s not like they get found out. Honestly everything About the character of Batman was less than ideal in this movie, and that makes me sad. The next person I want to talk about is Superman, the other half of the title. Superman was set up in Man of Steel to be a man that wanted to help, but he was conditioned to think the people of Earth didn’t want him to. In this movie, they throw that out the window and make him a complete fucking asshole. Honestly, the scene where Superman first meets Batman and says something along the lines of “this ends tonight or I will kill you” is the least Superman thing anyone could have said. Superman would have realized that Batman is trying to help and would have said something along the lines of “hey man, I know you’re cool but a lot of people are dying. You can just let me take control of Gotham and I’ll keep it safe” instead of “make yourself scarce or I will fucking obliterate you”. This is another reason a Batman movie would have been better than Batman v Superman, because you could chalk that up to Batman being an unreliable narrator. Not only is the character of Superman fucked in this movie, but his powers are all over the place. Superman is one of those superheroes that a lot of people think is overrated because he has all of the super powers. Zack Snyder made sure that Batman would have a chance in their shitty fight by literally making Superman not use the powers he has. Toward the beginning of the movie, we see Superman use his “faster than a speeding bullet” power to save Lois Lane from a hostage situation. But when the same scenario comes up later, but this time it’s Batman pointing a Kryptonite gun at Superman, Superman just saunters toward Batman and lets himself get shot in the face. And don’t say that it was because Superman was still recovering from the first Kryptonite blast because that is not rue, we literally saw him fully recover and throw Batman through a wall. Batman v Superman also has a skewed sense of Superman’s powers, specifically when he flies while holding Kryptonite. Kryptonite makes Superman very weak. It takes the ‘super’ out of his name. In the scene directly before he flies, the Kryptonite even made him pass out. But regardless of that, Superman was able to fly the Kryptonite spear directly into Doomsday’s heart. Now I want to talk about this titular “fight” between Batman and Superman. It was the weakest shit I have ever seen. This is because of DC wanting to rush to Justice League. The movie should have been about Batman and Superman fighting and then coming to terms, instead it was about a 5 minute slap fight, and then a fight with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman against Doomsday. And the Batman v Superman fight had the shittiest ending ever. Batman literally stopped kicking Superman’s ass because Superman’s mother has the same name as Batman’s mother? What the fuck is that shit? The fight could have come to an end by Batman realizing that Superman is only trying to help. The fight could have come to an end because Doomsday attacked. But instead, the fight came to an end because Superman revealed that his mother is named Martha. WHO THE FUCK COMES UP WITH THIS SHIT?!

Before I get to the ending I want to talk about Lex Luthor, or should I say the Joker. Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman is the worst version of Lex Luthor I have ever seen in my life. When Jessie Eisenberg was cast, I was skeptical. It turns out I was skeptical for good reason. Jessie Eisenberg gave the worst performance I have ever seen of his. It’s like nobody attached to this movie had ever read a Superman Comic, or watched a cartoon, or watched the original movies for god’s sake. Eisenberg overacts his way through Batman v Superman and plays Lex Luthor as more of a petulant child than a force to be reckoned with. When I said I should call him the Joker, that wasn’t a compliment. I literally meant that Jessie Eisenberg plays Lex Luthor more like the Joker than Lex Luthor. It was honestly painful to sit through. And I’m disappointed that they made Lex Luthor bald because they shaved his head in prison. What the fuck prison makes you shave your head? Was he admitted to a concentration camp? and why did they shave his head with an actual razor? Does the prison have a rule that every prisoner has to have a head that can reflect light? It was stupid. Now I want to talk about Wonder Woman. Talk about a shoe-horned in character. She was just kind of there throughout the movie. I will admit during the ending fight she was cool, but throughout the rest of the movie she is just eye candy I guess. And I disliked how blatant the “references” to other Justice League characters were. It would have been nice just to have their superhero logos as the files when Batman is browsing Lex Luthor’s computer, but they took it a step further. They had to show stupid little clips of each hero doing their thing. And that was all there was for The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman. Stupid little short films. Another thing about Wonder Woman that pissed me off is why did the movie make a sound when Batman saw the picture of her form World War 1. By that I mean, the movie made a sound as if we, as an audience, were supposed to have just figured out that the lady that Bruce Wayne has been following is Wonder Woman. We all saw the trailer, it was not a surprise but yet it was treated like the biggest reveal in the movie. The funny part is, after the movie my mom (who i saw the movie with) didn’t even know that the girl was Wonder Woman. So I guess that realization was needed for some, but my mom is a special case. Anyway, I got really sidetracked. The fight with Doomsday was one of the only good things about the movie. It was nice seeing the trio fight a greater foe, and like I said earlier Wonder Woman was absolutely kick ass. I did have some problems with the fight like Superman flying with Kryptonite and the look of Doomsday, but other than that it was really fun to see. Actually, during the fight there was a plot point that confused me to no end. How did Lois Lane, after throwing the Kryptonite spear in the water, know to retrieve the spear? Batman was the only one who realized that Doomsday could be harmed with Kryptonite, so how did Lois Lane know? Did Batman call her? Why would Batman have her number if they just met? Was Lois Lane cheating on Superman with Batman? I think I just wrote the plot for Batman v Superman part II. Alright, I’ve talked a lot about the movie, and if anyone is still reading this, thank you, but now I will wrap it up. I’m at last going to discuss the ending. Of course, I told you that I love Superman dearly in my last review, so I was sad to see him die. In fact, I almost teared up during the funeral scenes. I knew that of course Superman wouldn’t stay dead, but both of the funeral scenes (both Clark Kent’s and Superman’s) were very, very well done. The movie then had to once again, kick me in the balls. Batman v Superman pulled a Return of the King, not because it was a great movie, but because it had 10 fucking endings. The movie should have ended with Batman saying “…I’m not going to wrong him in death”, but instead it then shows Batman going to intimidate Lex Luthor (which added nothing to the plot), and then Batman somehow makes it back to graveyard in time to see Lois Lane still crying and throwing dirt in the hole where Clark Kent lay dead. The movie then does the thing that hurts the most, it shows the dirt on Clark’s coffin vibrate. This of course hints that Superman is not dead after all, but it also RUINS THE ENTIRE FUCKING IMPACT OF THE FUNERAL SCENES. That is honestly what pissed me off the most. Nobody in their right mind would believe that Superman, one of the most profitable superheroes ever, would be killed off in the second movie in his franchise. That wasn’t going to happen, but instead of letting people figure that out themselves, they fucking slap you in the face with it. The ending was the last nail in the coffin for Batman v Superman. Hopefully, unlike Superman, it stays dead.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Overall Batman v Superman was disappointing. It was honestly sad to see DC jump the gun and try to catch up with Marvel. There were a couple of cool things in the movie, but overall it just made me sad.

I give Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a D