Review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) by Kuzdiyen — 27 Mar 2016

After only four years since The Dark Knight trilogy ended, Warner Brothers decided to reboot the character and instantly put it against the Superman we saw in Man of Steel. When the movie was first announced I was super excited just like everybody else in the world was, then Ben Affleck was announced as Batman and we all started to have doubts. When the trailers came out I started thinking that my doubts would come alive, but did they?

As a huge fan of Batman and DC, I desperately wanted this movie to be amazing but after seeing Man of Steel and the trailers, my expectations were instantly lowered. Even with my low expectations, I was disappointed by this movie. What disappointed me the most was the potential that I saw in this movie that was wasted thanks to Warner Bros. and the director Zack Snyder, who I believe is the man to blame for the failure of this movie.

I may have been disappointed by the movie but I have to say that it still has some positive factors in it. First of all, the movie did a great job with showing the consequences of the events of Man of Steel and the destruction it created. This also meant that it did a great job with explaining the Batman and Superman conflict. Everything about Batman vs Superman was so awesome that its awesomeness only made my disappointment bigger. If these two conflicts were all this movie was about, I can assure you that it would have been a spectacular film. We also got to see a new Batman with his new suit and a slightly different personality. This new Batman is played by Ben Affleck, who I thought was the best part of the movie. I would say that he is the best Bruce Wayne we had so far in cinema and also a pretty good Batman. He brought something new to the bat-vigilante, with his new cool armor and a new Alfred. His servant Alfred was also something that the movie did well with. Jeremy Irons was very suitable casting for Alfred and he showed it with his performance in the movie, I loved him. This new Batman has a lot of promise and I love it already. Another casting choice that proved the doubters wrong was Gal Gadot, as I thought she did a really good job as Wonder Woman and her character looks very promising. The only problem with Wonder Woman was that her role was too unnecessarily big in Batman V Superman. The action and cinematography in this film was mind-blowing, hence why it gets the adjective beautiful. Especially the Batman-Superman fight scene was one of the best fight scenes I saw in my life. Zack Snyder might not be the best storyteller but it has to be said that he knows how to make a fantastic looking movie. I also really liked how the soundtrack portrayed all the different characters in the movie. The last positive of this movie is the way Justice League was set up in the very end of the film, but only the very end!

After I took the pros off my chest, I can finally talk about the cons. To pick off where I left off, Warner Bros. trying to set-up the Justice League movie degraded this movie as a whole. This made a movie that was supposed to be the biggest fight of the century, only a set-up for Justice League. The fundamental issue of this film was how overcrowded it was. It had too many stories in it: a Batman vs Superman fight, the consequences of Man of Steel, a Justice League set-up and Lex Luthor’s huge evil plan. Because it had too many storylines, none of them could be given adequate time and all of them fell flat other than the Justice League set-up, which didn’t need to be there at all. Lex Luthor’s evil plan should have been saved for the Justice League movie, so should have been Doomsday who was totally wasted in this story. A movie like this shouldn’t have had a real villain. It was the two biggest titans of the superhero genre fighting each other and there were already comic books about it that could have easily been implemented to the silver screen. Speaking of a villain, Lex Luthor was by far the worst character in the movie. In hindsight, his presence should have been kept to a minimum and only as a setup for the future. What really happened was that they made him a character as important as both Batman and Superman, and it was extremely annoying. Jesse Eisenberg’s casting as Lex Luthor was another controversial casting choice, and this one proved the doubters right. Luthor was totally out of character and it seemed as though Jesse Eisenberg was playing the supervillain version of Mark Zuckerberg. Everything about Lex Luthor in this movie was the true description of disappointing. Another extremely annoying character was Lois Lane. Her contributions to this movie were far exceeded by the annoyance she created. It is obvious that Superman needs Lois Lane, however this movie made her the girl that constantly created unnecessary drama and got herself in peril every single second. She shouldn’t have had so much screen time if she wasn’t going to have any real contribution to the story.