After leaving the theater witnessing the great money-making hope of Warner Bros., the franchise DCEU launcher "Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice", I felt compelled to write my thoughts about this very hyped feature film.
The biggest question a friend asked me is why did i go, knowing it would probably be bad. With the vast majority of reviewers finding director's Zack Snyder's latest effort unworthy.. and the vast majority of the scarce positive reviews out there also recognizing major problems with the film regardless of their affirmation for it, this film is truly NOT a divisive film like "Man Of Steel" (where opinions broke relatively close to a 50/50 split.) The general consensus is "BvS" is just not a good movie.. however I still wanted to make up my own mind. You see, there are plenty of movies that are deemed "bad" that are actually enjoyable to me personally... but I still remain intellectually honest about it... and understand why it's considered bad (and would never resort to accusations of critcs lying, being paid off, or having axes to grind just because I personally enjoy an unpopular movie).
So how did I feel about "Batman V Superman"? Yeah, it wasn't very good sadly. Even with my lowered expectations I couldn't ignore the elephant in the room that this movie was another "Amazing Spider-Man 2" but sometimes worse because there was less to enjoy. It was so concerned with world-building rapidly in one single movie that it bypassed telling a comprehensive narrative structure and gave audiences a jumbled, dull mess of a movie. It's sad because there was some good stuff in there.
Containing enough material for several individual quality movies, it was all jammed together in what feels a rush to get to the "Justice League". It reminded me of "The Phanton Menace".. a film with lots of set-up with various alien factions and trade agreements, along with some great action pieces like the pod race and lightsaber duel with Darth Maul.. but truly a mess of a story with thin characters, unclear motivations and nothing to make you care about them. And like with "The Phanton Menace", there will be fans that will blindly ignore the bad and focus only on the good and convince themselves that this is a better film than it is (which will likely take years to reconcile). You can almost sympathize with them too, considering how long they have waited for this film to come out. I even found myself trying to convince myself it was better than it is. Very heartbreaking indeed.
So let's finish this with some "what was true and what wasn't":
BEN AFFLECK WAS A HORRIBLE CASTING CHOICE : Not true. Ben Affleck turned out to be fantastic as Bruce Wayne, maybe the best yet, and was the one true shining light of this film.
JESSE EISENBERG WAS A HORRIBLE CASTING CHOICE : True. Jesse as Lex is one of the worst or maybe thee worst CBM villians of all time. His character was not realistic or fleshed out, his motivations were unclear, and his performance was a combination of himself hyped up on caffeine and Jim Carrey resulting in an awkward, unbelievable performance. Just bad.
GAL GADOT WAS TOO SKINNY TO BE WONDER WOMAN : False. She filled out her costume nicely and looked believable & fantastic in her action scene, albeit it was brief. She was a highlight.
GAL GADOT CAN'T ACT WELL ENOUGH TO BE WONDER WOMAN : Undecided. Some of her few lines just came out stiff. We'll have to wait until her standalone film to decide on that one.
Other thoughts? The new Alfred is great. I wish he had more scenes. The way the BvS fight ended was so ridiculous and unbelievably written. Doomsday was nothing special and was dispatched too quickly. The second trailer gave away exactly what we thought it gave away. Some things Batman and Superman did were out of character which was disappointing. It feels like the film doesn't understand how to handle it's own characters.
4.5 out of 10 -
Sorry guys. I know I'm going to get the hate now from the DC hardcore