Yes, I know what you're thinking: "It's been about 3 months since Batman v Superman came out, why are you posting this now?" The same reason the makers of the movie just released the ultimate edition, I actually watched it this time. Besides, give me a break, with all the bad criticism this movie got, I wasn't in a hurry to watch it and write a review about it, so I didn't. Thing is, I've watched the ultimate edition, which came out recently, and I felt the need to post a review on Strokes of Journalism because there are just so many things about this movie that need to be said, and while most have probably already been said, my most faithful readers might still want to hear what I thought about the movie and how the ultimate edition made me feel, having not watched the theatrical version beforehand.
First of all, I want to point out I was very excited about this movie coming out. Whenit came out I had just had surgery so I couldn't go out and watch it when it was in theaters (I'm thankful for that now), but I was psyched about it coming out. I've been a fan of both Batman and Superman for a long time, and I have relatively recently become a fan of the comics, and the idea of having a movie of Batman meeting Superman (especiall knowing they're best friends and the leaders of the JLA and all) was a huge prospect for me and any other DC comics lover. All of this wait finally came to an end when the movie came out (or for me, more recently, when I actually watched the movie).
All of this waiting and expecting made it all the more painful when the critiques came out and they were so bad. I refused to read many of the reviews (good or bad), except for one or two from a site I frequent (and possibly will be writing for soon) called MoviePilot. By now I don't really remember what the article was about, but it talked about things like Doomsday not being spiky enough or us knowing Superman was going to die since the minute we heard the line "this is your Doomsday", among other things. Although I did notice these things and as a comic book nerd they bothered me a bit, I know the normal folks didn't even pay attention to those tiny details. However, there are many other reasons why Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was a disappointment, reasons we can all understand and say "yeah, it was bad", or "yeah, but I liked the movie despite those things" after hearing them. I must state that the lines that follow do contain spoilers for this movie, but I doubt that matters much anymore now that most people have watched it, even so, read at your own risk.
Plotlines, and another one, and another one... and another one.
Batman v Superman started with an interesting plotline, one I really enjoyed imagining how it would develop throughout the rest of the movie. It was basically a philosophical argument: Should superheroes be independent and not obey anybody, or should they be assigned to missions by the U.S government? We see this everywhere, Clark is feeling guilty about people seeing him as a threat and starts doing good things to right his wrongs, Bruce doesn't really care what people say but he is attacked by the media (and especially the Daily Planet in the form of Clark Kent) and feared by people everywhere (does anyone else feel this could be solved with the Sokovia Accor—? oh, yeah, never mind, we know how that turned out). If the movie had just stuck to this plotline for at least 3/4 of the movie the way Civil War did, both the critics AND the general public would have liked it a lot more, but that is too much to ask from Zack Snyder, who is a comic book fan and obviously couldn't decide which story arcs from his favorite Batman and Superman comics he would follow so he chose the ten of them he liked the most.
Besides this plotline, the movie introduces you to a roller coaster of plotlines, some of which you might miss, but it's okay because before you can complain about it, you're already watching another plotline. It goes from The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, to philosophical argument, to Batman on being the best detective in the world (props to the movie for that, by the way, it is the one that has best depicted him as that), to Lex Luthor story, to Man of Steel pt. 2, to Bruce Wayne's personal struggles, back to The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, to Superman: Injustice Version, to Flashpoint/ DC Universe Rebirth (Not really sure what that huge plothole was), to Superman #201, to Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams, to Superman v Lex Luthor, to Batman v Superman, to "did we just become best friends?", to Man of Steel pt. 2 again, to Justice League movie, to the death of Superman, to Lord of The Rings style ending (yes, that style where it's 5 minutes away from ending for like an hour). There may be even more plotlines, but those are the basic ones I identified while watching the movie. This fact leads us to another one that the director apparently couldn't notice and everyone else at the studio was an idiot who couldn't point out to the director that so many plotlines were going to make the movie too long. That, or they did tell him and he just said "To hell with movies shorter than two hours".
Are we there yet?
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure 3 hours is way too long. I mean, sure it has worked for other movies, but those movies actually had to make it that long to tell the whole story, whilst Batman v Superman made it that long to tell the story we were getting familiar with, plus 15 more. Seriously, the makers of this movie don't know it is common to make second or third parts, so they put everything they could think of that would look good in a movie and left us with a long, somewhat boring comic book collection adaptated for the big screen. Many scenes in this movie could and should have been reduced to a line or two said by one of the main characters to save time. For example, the scene where Batman goes full black market and Superman goes full Injustice, having people bow down to him and prisoners underground could have been expressed by Bruce by saying "The image of him being a danger to the world haunts me at night" or something like that. The scene where Clark sees his dead dad in his pilgrimage to the mountain could have been represented by Superman showing up and saying he returned because in the mountain he saw his dad or something, anyways, totally unnecesary. Oh, and don't even get me started on that scene where Diana opens the "metahuman" file Bruce sent her, and they casually show you the teasers for every one of the upcoming Justice League's members movies because why the heck not, right? Wrong.
I mean, seriously, whoever made the storyboard and script for this movie never considered shorter and to the point is better than long and unnecesary.
Always look on the bright side of life
Despite all the criticism this movie has gotten and all the flaws I and many others have pointed out about the film, it wasn't all bad. In fact, I enjoyed watching this movie, all the wait for it to come out and then not going to the theater to watch it had to pay off somehow, so I decided to adopt a good attitude while watching it. In my opinion it was far from being the best superhero movie of the year, but it wasn't the worst movie of the year either. It was just a movie that, handled properly, (and by someone other than Zack Snyder) could have been epic. That said, there are some salvageable parts, for example, as I mentioned before, Ben Affleck's depiction of Batman as the best detective in the world was overdue to be shown on the big screen, and I think it was done magestically. Lex Luthor, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is a true mastermind, and especially in the ultimate edition in which you understand his plan even better, you learn to respect him as a villain (one of the 4 or 5 in this movie, but pretty obviously the most important and influential one), although my all-time favorite Lex Luthor is still Michael Rosenbaum, I honestly liked Jesse Eisenberg's young Luthor more than Kevin Spacey's late 40s Luthor.
Batman v Superman was an interesting movie, and I rate it at a 6/10 as a fan, and a 5/10 as a critic. I encourage everyone, if they can survive through the 3 hours the ultimate edition lasts, to watch it and make their own ideas about it. For now, you can just comment on what you thought of my review and have a laugh with a comment I'll leave down here from a user regarding the ultimate edition of Batman v Superman . Always keep learning.
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