Not As Bad Or As Good As You've Probably Heard, I'm A Little Worried About The Justice League

Rating: 6/10 (26 March 2016)

This is one of those movies that you just have to go see. If you read comic books or are a fan of super hero movies, it's almost like a rite of passage. You can't talk about it or give your opinion until you've seen it. I was definitely interested in seeing it, not only because it's the biggest movie of the year so far but because of the large disparity between the critical hatred and the fan love. I wanted to see which side I would fall on. I ended up disliking it more than I liked it but it's something that you need to see and decide for yourself.
*Minor Spoilers Ahead* The movie begins at the funeral for Thomas and Martha Wayne, their bodies are being carried to their graves. Young Bruce is being escorted by his butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) but becomes upset and runs into the woods. While he's running away, we flashback to the unfortunate mugging with Thomas (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Martha (Lauren Cohan) and Bruce leaving the theatre. The mugging happens with Thomas and Martha being shot and killed. Bruce continues to run away from the funeral and falls down a well disturbing some bats. He gets attacked by them but when it looks hopeless he starts to levitate out of the well (it's a dream sequence).
We then move years in the future when the epic battle between Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod (Michael Shannon). Entire office buildings are being destroyed and Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) lands in Metropolis via helicopter. He tries to drive to ground zero while talking to the man in charge of his building to evacuate the staff. He gets there but it's too late, the building collapses. Bruce tries to help out the victims including lifting a steel girder off an employee named Wallace Keefe (Scoot McNairy) and saving a little girl who was about to be crushed by falling concrete. He looks up to the sky, watching the battle of titans, full of rage.
Normally I start out with the positives but since most of what I didn't like was in the first half of the movie, I'll start with some negatives. I didn't like most of the plotting or characterization in Batman v Superman. There's a bunch of dream sequences put in that look cool but don't really fit (there are too many of them and they come in and out randomly). Looking past how awful Jesse Eisenberg is, there's almost no exploration of Lex's motivation for playing Batman and Superman against each other (they do say something but it's just tossed in there). There's almost no progression from Superman as a character (he now loves Lois and doesn't like Batman..... that's kind of it) and some of the dialogue is really groan worthy. Considering who this was written by, it's really disappointing (I took issue with most of Lex's dialogue, it's pretentious and besides the point). Don't take this as me just sitting there being impatient for the fight, it's just if the movie was going to take so long getting to it, I just wanted something substantial to hold my interest and I felt like I didn't get it.
Now at the same time, I thought the two standouts in the movie when it came to the characters were the new Batman and Wonder Woman. The fact that Batman is older and less restrained because of his anger is engaging and while a lot of people complained that he kills the bad guys, it fit for me considering his attitude. Wonder Woman was cool too. I wasn't sure at first but Gal Gadot was great and their inclusion of Wonder Woman was well done and well deserved. I actually enjoyed all the small clips that were there to lead up to the Justice League. They were also well done and they were a welcome distraction from other aspects of the movie.
When it comes to the acting, it's really uneven. I thought the best acting jobs from the main cast were Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot. Ben Affleck ended up being a good choice, I'm excited for his solo Batman movie and Gal Gadot was a good mix of being strong and yet mysterious enough that you wanted to know more about her character. A lot of the supporting parts were well performed and I liked Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne and Diane Lane. They're all great. Henry Cavill was decent but he's even more emotionless in this one. Jesse Eisenberg on the other hand was just terrible. He's normally a great actor (he was great in Zombieland) but he was so skittish and off key with the rest of the movie, when he appeared I was always covering my eyes or just wishing he would go away.
So I really didn't like the first half of the movie but in defense of Batman v Superman, the actual fight between them and the climactic battle with Doomsday were both pretty good. While Zack Snyder has made both good and bad movies, he does always seem to know his large scale action and this movie is no exception. Although Doomsday wasn't visually interesting and his appearance is really sudden, the actual battle is pretty sound. All the characters get something to do and while I question some things about it (how did Lois know they needed that spear again when no one told her how important it was?) it was a satisfying payoff.
I'm not a DC hater (I liked Man of Steel) but this movie was disappointing. I can see why opinions are so different from person to person. I'm still psyched for Suicide Squad but considering all the hype around this film, the fact the same people are in charge of the Justice League may not be a good thing. This movie should have been something epic but it fell short.