Review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) by Dana F — 09 Jul 2017

Okay, I know I'm late to the party on this one, and everyone already knows that this is a bad movie. But I just got around to seeing it and dammit, I'm compelled to explain why it's so bad.

Writer/director Zack Snyder has gotten the lion's share of the blame for the terribleness of this movie, but the problem is not in his directing, it's in his writing. That script is a turd that not even the most accomplished of directors could have polished.

It's all over the place and barely makes sense. I can't even count the number of times I literally said out loud "What the fuck is going on??" How can a movie that is so overstuffed still be devoid of any meaningful content? The mind boggles.

Then there is the hideously poor construction and disjointed storytelling. This movie tries to tell a Batman story and a Superman story concurrently, and the result is a jumbled mess in both narrative and tone.

There are so many scenes that should have been cut from this film, including numerous dream sequences (obviously shot for trailer bait), an origin story intro (yes, Bruce Wayne's parents were killed in front of him, he fell in a bat cave, we know we know GET ON WITH IT!!), and the finale straight out of the worst Spider-Man film you've ever seen (pick one).

The characters are bland, the dialogue cheesy, the editing poor, and the pace uneven - it's 2 1/2 hours that feels like 3 1/2. Then there's its total absence of humor, there is not one second of levity in this film (though I certainly laughed quite a bit, but that's not a good thing).

I don't really have any beef with the acting, honestly they all played the hand they were dealt to the best of their ability, and I actually really liked Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne (though not so much as the Batfleck).

So let's get back to the "story": fundamentally, this movie is about two misunderstood heroes, miscommunicating. Or not communicating at all, as it were. These guys prefer to talk with their fists.

Their reasons for fighting are totally contrived and never quite convincing, and the reason they STOP fighting is even more contrived and ridiculous. It's a real eye-roller. I can't help but compare it to Captain America: Civil War, in which the stakes were personal and thus had an impact, as to opposed to.

.. whatever the stakes are supposed to be in this movie. It's never really made clear. The saddest part is that this movie had the potential to be good. The beginning is pretty awesome, it overlaps with the end of Man of Steel, where you see the destruction of Metropolis from Bruce Wayne's perspective.

The sequence addresses my chief complaint about Man of Steel, which was the wanton death and destruction caused by Supes' fight with Zod. But it totally derails from there and continues to veer further and further from the track.

It eventually comes full circle since they obviously didn't learn a damn thing, as they only wreak more havoc with their senseless bickering. By the end, I had totally checked out. It's pretty lame that throughout this testosterone-fueled slugfest between Batman and Superman, the most badass thing about it is Wonder Woman.

Or actually, maybe that's kinda cool... we'll see if she can rescue the foundering DC Universe.