Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Spoiler Review)

Now I’ve taken some time to really digest Batman v Superman, and even saw it a second time to really develop my real thoughts on the movie. I stand by what I said in my non-spoiler review in that it is not a very well made movie, however with some time to think and talking about the spoilers, I might change my overall opinion for a multitude of reasons. I know I went into the movie on that Friday with really high expectations and perhaps the movie just didn’t live up to them at the time. All I’m saying is, it might seem like I didn’t not the movie as much in this review. We’ll just have to wait until the end and how I end up on it.

I’ve said it a million times, but one of the biggest things with this movie is that it is 2 and half hours long and it feels that way. Now I’m not opposed to a 2 and half hour long movie about Batman v Superman if it’s done correctly. This movie was not done correctly. I’m going to structure this review in the most coherent way I can manage to but the truth is, this movie didn’t structure itself in a coherent way so I have to figure out a way to structure the mess.

I’m going to try and give my thoughts on the two major parts of this movie that are expressed in its title. I’ll start with the struggle between Batman and Superman and their characters as a whole as well as the development they go through throughout the film. After that I will delve into the “Dawn of Justice” part. But because Dawn of Justice isn’t even a correct representation of the events in this movie, or at least it wasn’t what I think everyone thought it was.

After I talk about the movie as a whole, perhaps at the end (or in a near future post) I want to talk about where they go with the future of this franchise.

Batman v Superman – So I’m going to say right off the bat, I’ve been saying this since the beginning, but this is what the movie should have been about. This and only this. This movie should have been a war of ideology between Batman and Superman. I was okay with Lex Luthor being in this movie but I would have preferred him to be more of a set up character, conniving in the background and throwing fuel in the fire that is the struggle between Batman and Superman.

I’ll say right off the bat that when these two actually end up fighting, which is not as much as I believed it was going to be, but when they do, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a brutal fight and it really extenuates these two characters. I thought their fight wasn’t nearly as long or as of a fight as I wanted it to be but perhaps that’s because I already saw a lot of it in the trailers.

And this complaint goes for a lot of the movie. This was the exact reason I didn’t watch any trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and why I consider not watching trailers anymore because I felt like a lot of the big moments from this movie were in the trailer. I won’t say all the big scenes were in the trailers, but A LOT of them were. I think a lot of the moments from this movie would have been a lot more impactful if I not seen them already in the trailer.

Superman – Superman’s character was probably the biggest thing returning from Man of Steel that I was analyzing in watching this film. I thought Man of Steel did a good job at introducing the character of Clark Kent/ Kal El/ Superman, but I thought they needed another movie to really develop him as a character. I saw Batman v Superman as a perfect opportunity to show off Henry Cavil as the good actor I know he is, and really give Superman some internal dilemmas as well as develop him as a character.

And like most things in this movie, there are inklings of that but it’s not to the extent that I wanted it to be. I thought they did a really good job at developing his life as Clark Kent and Superman, especially in this pursuit of Batman. He doesn’t immediately go to Batman when he sees something wrong with his vigilante justice; he tries to bring it to light at the Daily Planet. I really liked that. And you can tell all Clark wants to do is the right thing. Re-watching Man of Steel after watching Batman v Superman really supports that because you saw that when Clark was growing up.

That is something that I do like about the DCU as of right now in that these movies are really dependent on one another. The events of Man of Steel are the catalyst for the events of Batman v Superman. Now the casual movie goer isn’t going to appreciate that that much, but as a huge fan of Man of Steel, Batman v Superman has made me even more of a fan of it like I thought it was going to.

The thing that didn’t really complete Superman for me was his approach to Batman. When his attempts at dealing with it at the Daily Planet don’t pan out, he messed up the Batmobile and says, “When they shine your light, don’t go to it. Consider this mercy”. This could have been a great motivation for the fight in the future. He’s not only doing what he thinks is the right thing to do, but it goes in tandem with Clark questioning his role in the world. What exactly he should be. With all the big ideas that happened in this movie, this should have been the main idea for Superman and it should have been his motivation for going to kick Batman’s ass.

The reason this didn’t work in the movie was because the movie was so muddled with so much stuff that that never really got flushed out correctly. You saw it but it felt shoe horned in. After thinking about it, they really try, but it just doesn’t land. I’ll talk more about the motivation for the final fight between Batman and Superman when I get to talking about Lex Luthor, but the more I think about this movie, the more sad I get because the inner turmoil of Clark Kent is really well done in this movie, its just not given the attention it needed.

Lois Lane – I wanna talk about Lois Lane before I get to talking about Batman because Lois is a very important part to Superman’s arc in this movie.

Now as far as characters go, Lois Lane is the most useless character and it’s a shame because Amy Adams plays a great Lois Lane. I think she was a great choice for Lois Lane and she did a good job in Man of Steel. And of course she gives a good performance, she’s just written horribly.

Lois is trying to investigate an incident that happens at the beginning of the movie where Lex Luthor’s mercenaries kill a lot of people in a village and Superman swoops in to save Lois. This event for Lois triggers thoughts of their relationship, which has really gotten serious in the two years between this movie and Man of Steel. Put aside the fact that nothing Lois does in this movie is of any consequence and she just ends up being a heel for everyone, that’s also an interesting idea. But it’s something that could have waited for a solo Superman movie.

Now going back to the incident in Africa, I get that they thought they needed some reason to trigger those Senate hearings orchestrated by Holly Hunter’s character, but didn’t we already have that with the events of Man of Steel? Furthermore, if the government did a thorough investigation, they’d know that all the people that died in that village were shot. It wasn’t like Superman killed them and that’s pretty obvious. And if they were trying to implicate that Superman beating the crap out of the mercenaries because Lois was in danger led to a bunch of people dying because of his actions, first off that wasn’t shown so its confusing, and secondly, that doesn’t really make sense at all.

Regardless of the nonsensical reasons for bringing up the question of what would humanity do if someone like Superman was a thing, it’s a great question, and something that was also a casualty of this movie just being packed with everything! But while Lois and Clark’s relationship should have waited for a different movie, this should have been at the forefront the entire time because this is at the heart of both Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor’s motivations.

Batman – And of course we need to talk about Batman because I think Batman is the saving grace of this movie. His motivations are pretty streamlined and pretty simple. He wants to make Superman pay for what he did to Metropolis. He doesn’t trust an alien that could destroy the human race with a single stroke. This is quintessential Batman.

I’ve already talked about it but I loved Ben Affleck as Batman. I see him as the Batman now above Keaton, above Christian Bale. I loved Ben Affleck as Batman.

And again, the biggest complaint I’ve heard against Batman has been his obvious disregard for human life. In the past, it has been a pretty clear line that Batman has drawn. He will not kill.

This Batman… well he definitely kills people. And I’m not talking about the Darkseid dream because that was a dream… or an alternate reality… I’m not totally sure yet. But I’m talking about the Batmobile ramming straight into a car, tow cabling that car, dragging it with people still in it, then sling shoting it at another car full of people. I’m talking about Batman throwing a guy at another guy who is pulling the pin on a grenade, having the grenade drop and kill both those guys, and Batman doesn’t really do anything about it.

The best argument I can make for this Batman is, he doesn’t kill anybody… he’ll make sure you’re eating out of a tube and are basically a vegtable from the trauma of a horrible car wreck… but he won’t kill you. He’ll let people die by their own undoing like the grenade, but he won’t throw the grenade himself. He’ll shoot someone’s flamethrower so their own tools kill them, but he won’t shoot someone in the face. And he’ll brand criminals, something that has been said to be a death sentence in prison… but he won’t be the one killing you himself.

Now I understand the complaints with this, but I see it this way. Even if you don’t buy the weak argument that he never pulled the trigger himself, the fact that Batman does everything he did this movie just says that this is a war-torn Batman. This is a cynical and this is a brutal Batman. This is a Batman that gives no quarter and gives no mercy. And that is actually really interesting to me because this Batman is dangerous. This Batman, as much of a hero as he is, he provides a perfect foil for Superman who is new to this game, he is naïve, and he is hopeful. As much as you want to say the Superman from Man of Steel is dark and gritty, he is Mother Theresa compared this Batman, and I love it.

There’s the great line from the trailer where Bruce Wayne says, “If there is a one percent chance he is our enemy we have to take that as an absolute”. That is a hardcore Batman and its not until the end when he hears you have to save Martha that it all comes to perspective. As alien as Superman is, he still has some humanity in him and he can relate to the struggles that are obvious in Batman’s life.

And one more thing I’ll say about that is the fact that the movie leans into the fact that you know Batman’s origin story. Of course they show it again at the beginning but it’s leaning into the fact that you know that that is the catalyst for Batman putting on the cowl. And when an alien can appeal to his core like that, it makes for a great scene. I loved that scene.

Overall, I think Ben Affleck as Batman is the biggest strength of Batman v Superman for sure. And this is hard for me to say because I’m a Superman fan. But I loved almost everything about him. I liked him as Bruce Wayne. I liked his relationship with Alfred (played by Jeremy Irons) and I loved him as Batman. Ben Affleck is now Batman.

Lex Luthor – So in the story line of Batman v Superman, Superman is a mixed bag of mostly good intentions but muddled execution, Batman is mostly good things, and then there’s Lex Luthor.

Once again, I have to use this meme because it really does represent my thoughts on Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor.

Now I have a theory about Lex Luthor in future movies, especially with the reactions to this movie, but I’ll hold those off until I start talking about what I want to see in the future.

I will start off with what I liked. I thought Jesse Eisenberg gives a very different interpretation of Lex Luthor. Its not what I expected and while I don’t love all of it, I do have to commend Eisenberg, and Snyder for doing something different with the character and taking a risk.

One of my favorite scenes was the scene on top of the heli-pad where Lex Luthor’s plot is finally revealed to Superman. Now I’ll talk about the parts I didn’t like because there is a lot about that scene I didn’t like, but when he says things like, God’s flaws need to be revealed (I’m paraphrasing) and why he wanted these two to fight is done really well. It taps into the fear that comes with someone like Superman appearing and Lex Luthor has that fear in him. I saw that in Eisenberg and that was one of my favorite scenes. It took a character like Lex Luthor who has usually been a calculated businessman, and made him human and tapped into his fears and what people will do if that fear is realized.

Now the unfortunate parts about that scene were the fact that it revealed to Superman that he was the one pulling the strings behind this fight we were looking forward to. I wanted Superman and Batman to start this fight on their own volition because of their ideas; I didn’t want this fight to be Superman fighting because he needed to save Ma Kent. I wanted Luthor to have a manipulating role in that fight, but at the end of the day, Lex Luthor turns that fight into a one sided fight. Batman is fighting for his ideals and he’s all in. Superman is in it because he needs to save Ma Kent. If that wasn’t on the table, that fight wouldn’t have happened. While I wanted Luthor to have a role in this fight, I wanted to be more focused on Batman and Superman, two titans, fighting for ideals.

Luthor also falls into the trap this movie makes in that his motivations and character gets swept up in the muddled mess this movie is. Manipulating Scoot McNairy’s character was good and swindling his way through the Senate were really good, but at the end of the movie, you really kind of forget all of that was a thing. Which is a shame because Scoot McNairy could have been a great face of the movement in America who question Superman’s role.

The same can be said about Holly Hunter because she’s not really an antagonist in this movie but she represents a section of humanity that would be legitimately concerned about the presence of a god.

Unfortunately, all that gets swept away after the Capital building blows up. Which is odd because that should have been a cataclysmic event. Furthermore, to see how America would react to an event like that, especially an America where Superman and Batman exist is fascinating. And we all kind of forget that happens by the end of it.

The last thing that I will say about Lex Luthor is that the circumstances we leave him in at the end of this film really kind of shows that DC shot their load too early here. Eisenberg’s performance was already a little bit different and not really what I or a lot of fans wanted, but now that he’s basically gone nuts from the things he saw in the crashed ship from Man of Steel, (which I assume was the coming of Darkseid) Lex Luthor is now a broken man and the very little intimidating factors that Eisenberg brought to the table in the first place I think are gone. Batman v Superman was supposed to be a set up movie but right off the bat, one of the main villains is pretty much out of the game, and if he’s not, he’s more of a Riddler Lex Luthor than he is the OG Lex Luthor.

And this is the start of a number of things DC shot their load too early on.

Dawn of Justice – And that’s a good transition to the Dawn of Justice portion of this movie. Now while the Batman v Superman section of this movie definitely has its flaws, especially with Lex Luthor, if that had been the main focus of the movie, a lot of the stuff I’m going to talk about was taken out, and they refined a lot of the areas that I said were lacking due to the amount of stuff they took out, this movie would have been at a B to a low A range. Again, there are a lot of things I really like about Batman v Superman. I don’t know if it was studio intervention or Zack Snyder taking on too much, but I have to say, they had a good movie here.

There are a lot of things about the Dawn of Justice pieces that I liked and probably could have been kept in to set up for the franchise. But there are a lot of things that could have been taken out.

And just for clarification, I am legitimately seeing this movie as essentially two movies. Everything that I talked about before needed to be in a movie called Batman v Superman. Everything I’m talking about from here on out, even if I liked it, didn’t necessarily need to be in this movie.

Doomsday – Lets get this one right out of the way. They blew their load with Doomsday. Its not the biggest screw up on the movie, but it’s a close second. I’m not saying Doomsday shouldn’t have been in this movie at all. I’m okay with them pointing towards him. However, Doomsday should not have been in this movie.

Now I was one of the people who didn’t totally hate the reveal of Doomsday. I thought if they did him right, allowed for him to return for future films we’d be fine. I also thought his look was something that could be a first draft or he could evolve and he wouldn’t look so stupid.

They didn’t do Doomsday correctly. He still looked stupid.

The first thing I thought of when I saw Doomsday was what everybody else thought.

But when he first appears he looks like a cross between a cavetroll and a lycan from Underworld. And the fact of the matter is, there was no purpose for Doomsday to show up. Sure he was Lex Luthor’s way to kill Superman, but there was no build up, there was no Segway to Doomsday. It just went, hey guys, remember when Lex Luthor was messing around with General Zod’s body, well, it finally finished cooking. Time for it to wreck havoc!

And it was an incredible waste because instead of doing what they should have done (and even tried to do) which was tease Doomsday and then have Superman throw him up into space and have him come back in a later film, they killed him. Straight up shoved a kryptonite spear in his chest and killed him.

Now, I’m sure they will find some way or another to bring him back, but they had a perfect opportunity here to tease the creation of Doomsday, maybe have an end credit scene where you pan to the little egg sack he’s in and then he opens his eyes. Something, but this… this was just a waste. Now Snyder or someone at DC needs to come up with some convoluted way to bring Doomsday back because they realized they shot their load with this one.

But even if they do, it doesn’t forgive the worst mistake made in this movie, and that was the use of the Death of Superman storyline.

Death of Superman – Remember how with every bit of news about Batman v Superman that came out, I always let gave a little bit of an advice to Zack Snyder.

And I’ll admit, I didn’t when I saw Doomsday. But when I saw that, I thought, no they wouldn’t mess this up that much. They wouldn’t do something as stupid as try and cram in The Death of Superman into the end of Batman v Superman. In fact it wasn't even a thought that crossed my mind. I never thought that they would even try to cram in the 

But they did…

Pretty sure this isn't from the movie

And here’s the thing, as far as interpretations of that story line go, it probably wasn’t that bad of a way to execute that storyline. This is one of those things that I need to digest a little bit because when I first saw this, which was when I checked out of this movie.

Its not because I didn’t want Superman to die, its that I knew that he wasn’t dead.

From the minute Doomsday stabs Superman in the chest, to the point where the dirt on the coffin begins to rise, this movie was ruined for me. For so many reasons, but the first reason was because of the fact that I didn’t believe for a minute that Superman was actually dead. Even if you don’t know the Death of Superman story where Doomsday kills Superman and he rises from the dead like the Jesus figure he is, you’d have to be pretty dumb to believe that at the beginning of a Justice League franchise, they would kill off Superman. Even if you’re an average movie goer and don’t know that a franchise is being started, the Death of Superman thread was shoe horned in that it was really hard to believe that Superman was actually dead.

But the worst part about it is that this scene would have worked. The Death of Superman is a film that needs to be made because it is one of DC comic’s best comic book runs and one of Superman’s best. My problem is that they something great in the Batman v Superman storyline. They were already adapting a great Superman and Batman storyline in the Dark Knight Returns. A lot of this movie is adapted from that, and from what I know about it, it’s a great story to adapt. Why would you shoe horn in The Death of Superman when you already had something great with a BATTLE BETWEEN BATMAN AND SUPERMAN. Its like the studios didn’t have confidence that would be enough so they were like, we have to find the best story line we can to tag onto the ending… Um…. THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN!

But what’s more is that it was the top crime of DC in this movie because it wasted a great storyline like The Death of Superman. That story deserved its own standalone film. This could have been the Man of Steel sequel. I wouldn’t have wanted that but it could have worked. The main point is it wasted so much potential for future movies.

It wasted Doomsday, an iconic Superman antagonist that might as well stay dead at this point. It wasted Lex Luthor who is locked in jail losing his mind when he could have been scheming for future exploits against Superman, exploits that could have included Doomsday. And it wasted the Death of Superman storyline because it revealed so quickly that Superman is alive at the end.

Even if they do bring Doomsday back, they can never make a full movie based off The Death of Superman because those iconic shots of the casket being escorted to the memorial, juxtaposed with Clark Kent’s simple funeral, have already been used. Again, the scene was done well but it didn’t have the impact it needed.

If they had waited for a future film the audience would actually believe Superman could be dead. They would feel the impact of this death and they could even leave the ending open to interpretation because that could lead to a question mark ending and the possibility of introducing the Superman imposters. It all just seemed crammed in there and a waste of a great storyline.

And the part that worries me the most about that it really makes me question DC’s plan for the future of the franchise.

DC gave out their slate for future movies a year ago and it seemed like these movies were coming out in a particular order and DC had a concrete plan for the franchise. But just throwing aside a great storyline like The Death of Superman shows that this studio just doesn’t have a concrete plan of where they’re headed.

They have all these movies set like Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad, The Flash, and others, and these movies don’t seem to be in a particular order. It makes me question if these movies are being released strategically for story purposes, or if they are just throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks.

If DC wants to be taken seriously, they need to know when to use the source material and how to use it correctly. There is a reason Marvel remains at the top and DC isn’t taken seriously.

The ending of this film brought the most concern and made me the angriest. I told a friend of mine that despite how incoherent this movie was, I still enjoyed the content of the movie and the action going on. I think if Doomsday and the last 30-minutes/ The Death of Superman storyline hadn’t been in this movie, I would have put the movie at a 70. Not a great film but entertaining enough for me to be excited for future films. But because of the Death of Superman storyline and Doomsday, I put this movie at the 50 range.

But like I said, there are still good things about this film. Since those are the biggest complaints I had with the movie, I will not be talking a lot of positive things.

And the first thing to mention that was a pretty positive element of the movie was Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman – I don’t quite know what the people were saying when they said that Wonder Woman stole the show. I’ll give it to her, when she shows up, there is this great soundtrack song going and it’s a lot of fun, but I would not say Wonder Woman stole the show by any means.

That being said, she was a lot more fun than I thought she was going to be.

I had my doubts about Gal Gadot but I always went back on the idea that perhaps she did something in that audition that made all the directors and producers say, “She is our Wonder Woman”.

And Gal Gadot has the benefit of breaking ground here. She is the first live action movie Wonder Woman. And from what we saw of her, I really liked her. I thought she was charming in the few moments she actually had lines, and she looks super bad ass in the outfit and when she’s fighting Doomsday with Batman and Superman.

She has a very limited part in the film and, the truth is, she could have not been in this movie and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, however she did impress me. And the allusions this movie made to her movie were a lot of fun. I really got psyched for Wonder Woman because of this movie. You see a picture of her in 1912 and you see Chris Pine and it was very reminiscent of a Captain America like movie that is coming our way.

While it wasn’t in the movie, a recent picture of the new Wonder Woman movie makes the Amazons look freaking amazing. So with the picture in BvS and the picture that was released a few days before the movie came out, Wonder Woman looks to be a movie I am really looking forward to because it looks like a cool combination of Captain America and Thor. And since its DC it will have its own twist on it that really has the potential to be really good.

I really hope that her part in this movie wasn’t just a way to show off her best bits and hide her faults because the reality is, she has to give a leading lady performance in two years that will blow people away, and up until now, she hasn’t impressed too many people. I was excited for Wonder Woman from BvS, but I will reserve my true judgment until I see her take on her own film.

The only reason Wonder Woman is in this movie is because she is a way to introduce meta-humans and she is essentially the Dawn of Justice part of this story.

Intro of the Justice League – It is pretty obvious after this movie that The Justice League is going to happen. As a movie fan and someone who has been glued to any information that has come out of this movie, this is not news to me. But there are people that didn’t know that was happening and this movie really had an important job of not only introducing Batman, not only introducing Lex Luthor, not only having Batman and Superman fight, not only shoe horning in The Death of Superman, not only questioning Superman’s existence as a God among men, and not only and introduction to Wonder Woman, but this movie was suppose to introduce us to the existence of other Justice League characters, most namely Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg… for now.

And on face value, I really liked how they introduced those other characters.

Opening the files to each of those characters and seeing little videos of meta-humans doing incredible things was a lot of fun. It was great to finally see Aquaman on screen. It was great seeing The Flash. It was great seeing Cyborg. I thought that whole scene of Wonder Woman opening an email with those files on it was a great way to quick give a nod to the audience that Justice League is going to happen and then carry on with our business.

However, like most things in this movie, it was just not structured well. This moment happens right at the moment where Batman gets his armor on, he turns on the Bat signal and the audience is like,

And then they cut to Wonder Woman getting an email!

This is one of the many scenes that I just wish they had structured a lot differently. This was a good way to introduce other members of the Justice League it just wasn’t the right time. This was much more of an after credits scene, or a scene near the end. It took time to flat out stop an ongoing plot to say, HEY YOU! YOU COMING TO THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?!?! CAUSE YOU SHOULD! EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT FOR ANOTHER YEAR (OR TWO) YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY COME SEE IT!

I’ve talked about this problem some comic book movies have and the truth is, comic book movies are better when they are just plain good movies and not just fan service. Fan service is fine and all and I don’t blame DC for doing something that Marvel is guilty of in a lot of their movies. But this was just at the exact wrong time and it felt awkward.

Yeah it looked cool, but as far as story structure goes, it was something that showed up out of nowhere and was never mentioned again in the entire movie. That’s not story structure, that’s advertisement. I expect advertisement before or after movies, not right in the dead center of a building climax.

And speaking of something that popped up in the middle of the movie and was never mentioned again…

The Darkseid/ Injustice Scene – Honestly, since I’ve seen this movie, I go back and forth with what I thought about this scene.

On one hand, the scene opens up like the middle of another movie suddenly turned on in the middle of this one. It’s so abrupt and such a different setting that it’s incredibly obvious that this is Batman’s dream. And when the whole sequence ends, it is really never brought up again.

I’m sure that this scene will come up again in later films and believe me, I’m excited for that, but in the context of this movie, this scene is so out of no where that its really kind of painful.

That being said… this scene is awesome!

First off you got Batman. I mean Batman was already really cool prior to this dream but he’s the leader of a rag tag group that is ambushed by soldiers wearing a Superman patch. And then Batman just goes nuts and yeah, this one there is no grey area you could say Batman is just seriously maiming people and not killing them, he straight up shoots people point blank. He straight up snaps people’s necks, he straight up murders people, and there is no question about it.

When he’s finally captured, Superman appears and this is straight up the Superman from Injustice: God’s Among Us.  This Superman just burns up Batman’s compatriots with his laser vision and says, “She was my everything!”

We assume he’s talking about Lois Lane as they pull a dream double whammy as he sees someone communicating to him through a portal. I don’t know if it was Ezra Miller as The Flash, I thought it might have been Robin or Jason Todd because it seemed like Bruce recognizes him. But he yells, Lois is the key.

The future of the Justice League is obviously going to delve into time travel and it could even delve into alternate dimensions. That’s amazing!

I don’t even care about the implication of Darkseid because all I saw was the Omega symbol on the ground and the parademons in the dream world. Sure Darkseid might be coming but what is more exciting is a real war between Batman and Superman and time/ inter-dimensional travel. That’s awesome!

But again, this scene happens and it is never spoken of again. It leaves no impact on the fight between Batman and Superman. Bruce Wayne doesn’t even say, “That was a weird dream” It’s just forgotten about.

And again it goes into the fact that I don’t want/need advertising in my movies. I am going to buy a ticket to your movie and I promise you, if you start making good movies, your audience won’t need in-movie advertising either.

What probably would have worked better would have been this scene and the email scene to be put at the end of this movie in place of the Superman funerals. Just put that scene at the end and put the idea of forming The Justice League in Bruce Wayne’s mind near the end. That way we’re focusing on the plot at hand and not interrupting an already busy movie with confusing scenes average moviegoers won’t get and would have more impact if they were at the end.

I really want to do this myself, or have someone else do it, but I want somebody to take a cut of this movie and structure it in a way that could make sense. There are parts that you could get rid of, and there are parts that you just need to put in a different place, and this movie gets fixed.

And that supports the majority of the blame going to Zack Snyder.

I have always been a fan of this guy and I really want to see him succeed. However, this movie’s largest problems were the structure. Regardless of studio influence, Zack Snyder saw the cut of this movie and said, “Meh, good enough!” I also blame David S Goyer and Chris Terrario for handing in a script with so much in it that the good parts are quickly forgotten about or made convoluted by the demands to get The Death of Superman in on this mess.

My overall feeling on Batman v Superman is a feeling of frustration. Mainly because this movie was such a mess, because it didn’t use the source material properly, and it forced me to turn my back on the decisions of Zack Snyder, someone I have defended vigorously. But the truth is, this movie was just not done well. There are other superhero movies that have come out this year that have been better (Deadpool) and there are superhero movies that are coming out that will be better (probably Civil War and X-men Apocalypse). The frustrating thing is that this movie has so many good parts about it and every time I see it, I see parts that really did work (Even parts that I didn’t get a change to talk about in this overly long post) and it makes me frustrated that the entire movie was not like those few perfect moments.  

Now that I’ve given my thoughts on Batman v Superman, stated what I think should have changed, and pointed out the good things it set up, I’m going to do a post focused on what direction I want the DCU to do in the future and what they should follow up on and how things can change to make up for the mistakes in BvS.

But for now I’m done with this thesis paper of a post. Let me know what you think? Have you seen Batman v Superman? Let me know your thoughts and you what you think could have been done better. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter we can tlak movies, and you can get updates on movie reviews and news that comes out of this blog!

I'll leave you with this. Its an oldy but a goodie. Its Badman v Superman. Enjoy!