Positives: It's great that they are doing this movie before Justice League. I was very frustrated at the idea of doing a Justice League movie before World's Finest because you only get one chance to put Batman and Superman together on film for the first time. If they did that within a Justice League movie, Batman and Superman's interactions would have gotten lost within everything that was going on. Even if they did go back and do World's Finest some time after Justice League, it would have lost a lot of the excitement because people would have already seen the characters together before.
Negatives/Concerns: I don't believe Man of Steel laid a great foundation for this movie. (As some of you know, I've got a lot of issues with Man of Steel, but I'll ignore most of those) Superman really isn't established at the end of that movie as a public figure. A lot of fans have defended Man of Steel by suggesting that the sequel would be sort of a continuation of the origin in which the world gets to know Superman. It is possible the movie will do this. However, now the movie has to continue to establish the character while introducing the audience to a new version of Batman who we have no attachment to. I think the ideal situation is for there to be solo movies in both franchises before putting them together. That way, the movie represents the coming together of two film franchises and characters who the audience has a familiarity with.
Aside from the character work, I'm still wondering how this new interpretation of Batman will fit into the world of Man of Steel. For the most part, Nolan's Batman franchise kept the character's abilities very believably human which makes sense in a world where there are no super powered heroes. However, the Batman we see in the comics, animation, and video games is less grounded because he's dealing with threats that are a little more fantastical. I think for a movie to deliver a less grounded Batman that feels right fighting alongside Superman and eventually the Justice League, the world he lives in needs to have a stranger, less grounded feel than the Nolan world. Like many fans, I felt that the Arkham video games provided a good starting point for figuring out a new direction for Batman that would work within a DC Cinematic Universe, but after Man of Steel it seems unlikely that we'll be seeing something like that. Man of Steel felt like it was trying very hard to make every non-Kryptonian element within its world feel real, almost like the Nolan Batman world, so I'm curious to see how they will make this new Batman work.
They've suggested that the story of this movie will be inspired by The Dark Knight Returns, which would suggest that this is more of a Superman vs Batman story than a classic team-up. I'm a little bit uneasy about them taking it in this direction. I think a lot of the appeal of clashes like Batman vs Superman in Dark Knight Returns or Iron Man vs Captain America in Civil War comes from the characters having a complex relationship due to their long history together. The film versions of these characters have no history with each other right now, so I hope for their first meeting they steer it more towards an uneasy partnership in which their personalities clash and they butt heads a lot before earning each other's respect.
Overall, I am looking forward to this. I still own my vhs of the crossover movie between Batman the Animated Series and Superman the Animated Series which I watched way too many times when I was a kid. As someone who loves both these characters, I think the movie has a lot of potential but it will be difficult to pull off.
If you didn't feel like reading all that, please check out the video version of this article here!