Terrific visuals, other great stuff, but the movie is very very flawed

Rating: 7/10 (30 March 2016)

Following the massive destruction in Metropolis during the battle between Superman and General Zod's forces, Bruce Wayne, distraught at the deaths of his employees in his office block, decides that Superman is too dangerous to exist in our world and, in his alternate identity as vigilante Batman, determines to do something about it. Squillionaire businessman / scientist / weirdo Lex Luthor comes to a similar conclusion. Probably. There is a senator who is similarly concerned. Various battles ensue.
Man Of Steel, the predecessor to this movie, polarised opinions, and its sequel looks set to do the same thing. Let me make one thing clear before going on to other matters – Zack Snyder is without equal in bringing truly eye-dazzling visuals to the big screen (albeit the 3D version of this is pointless because the 3D is unnoticeable).
I come to this with a slight change in my mindset. I loved much of Man Of Steel, but I took profound issue with its portrayal of Superman and (primarily) Pa Kent. Pa Kent (who turns up for an utterly unnecessary cameo here) was simply fundamentally misconceived – instead of giving Clark the selfless values which are Superman's watchword, he taught him to put himself before others, leaving a long way for the character to travel if he was ever going to find the inner nobility which is (or should be) his main characteristic. And Superman was written into a situation where he had no alternative but to kill, a deliberate statement by the filmmakers about the character. And guess what? I bet you thought Batman hates guns and doesn't kill, didn't you? Well, think again.
I grew up with the Silver Age iterations of these characters, albeit the movement of Batman from camp to dark was a good one. And Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne/Batman is fine work, notwithstanding his casual attitude towards the deaths of criminal henchmen and (possibly) innocent passers-by. But in oder not to despise this film and its predecessor, one has to not be imprisoned by that pre-existing view and, instead, look at these as alternate interpretations of the characters – easy in Batman's case, since he has been interpreted many ways of the years, not so easy with Superman where grim, depressing and joyless are all terms which are the antithesis of the fairly consistent interpretation of the character over its 75-year history. My son says it's a Superman for the 21st century, and maybe he is right. It's not MY Superman, that's for sure. And the single scene which tells me that is when Superman stands in the middle of a massive explosion and does nothing to minimise the explosion or save people. Instead, he just stands there rather sadly. Nope, that's not Superman.
Cavill does his best with a character who isn't written as the hero he should be. Affleck is terrific. Gal Gadot's short appearance as Wonder Women is galvanising and makes you wish her film had arrived already. Lex Luthor – well, I like Jesse Eisenberg enormously and think his talent and versatility has motored through his rather clichéd nerdy appearance very effectively, but this interpretation of Luthor isn't one which is obvious. For me, it didn't really work. Amy Adams still doesn't have any real chemistry with Henry Cavill – there is more chemistry between them when they're on chat shows. Jeremy Irons' Alfred is excellent. The action, effects, props, sets are all first rate – as noted, visuals aren't Snyder's problem.
The film itself is a problem. If you're not careful, you'll finish it with a bucketful of unanswered questions, not just those which will fall to be answered in future films, but questions about motivations, opportunities, why no-one spotted this or did nothing about that – there is a LOT of carelessness in the script, which seems engineered to always set up a cool visual rather than progress things logically. The film is over two and a half hours long, and contains little bits of plot which never really go anywhere, never get developed, and which could have been dropped with minimal re-writing, making the film tighter and with better narrative flow. In particular the lead-up to the Batman / Superman fight feels terribly artificially engineered, although the fight itself is splendid.
I enjoyed this – it's the nearest I'm going to get to a World's Finest movie in my lifetime – but to say it's flawed is an understatement. Let Snyder capture his visuals by all means, but get someone who knows what they're doing on the screen writing, please.