The Phantom Menace 2: This Decade's Colossal Disappointment!

Rating: 3/10 (25 March 2016)

This in a nutshell should have been the title of this ludicrous drivel. One of the most anticipated films EVER, a beyond-stellar cast, a rich comic book history to derive from, a titanic budget, a visual director, fantastic writers and music maestros galore and yet even they couldn't save this shameless mess.
Will it make money at the box office? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is that even a question? Ardent fanboys will be blinded by denial and self-delusion as with most franchises. Then of course the movie is primarily targeted at the Transformers and Fast & Furious crowd who will make anything unworthy a blockbuster. It is zero story, negligible intellect, CG overkill and explosions, people love that. Expect billions!
Do you want to know what this movie is? I'll tell you, it is a disgusting cash-grab attempt by Snyder/WB/DC to milk billions from the masses and create a universe of their own while making sub-par nonsense. Marvel created one and so DC, feeling left behind, decided to do the same. Healthy competition is brilliant but this was a self-serving attempt to advertise their upcoming slate by creating what is essentially a two and a half hour trailer for future releases.
I came out half an hour ago from the cinema and I'm still reeling and seething with anger and dismay.
This is bad movie-making period! I'll tell you why:
1) Terrible story and scripting. AWFUL! Spoilers Ahead. In fact there is no story. A silly, juvenile and imbecilic reason is the cause of the titular bout. Something that logically could have been solved pretty quickly but then there would be no fight and therefore no box-office billions and therefore no DC cinematic universe to speak of. Everything happens so that more movies can be made. A bunch of terrorists are gunned down and Superman is framed. Seriously? The guy has heat vision, he can incinerate them, why would he shoot them?? He is enemy number one especially after the events of Man of Steel. The ridiculousness continues through paper-thin reasoning and silly dream sequences that include The Flash, also marketing his movie, giving Batman another reason to kill Superman. It's a pissing contest about who is in the right while both are being manipulated. Lex Luthor hates Superman because his dad beat him as a kid and he doesn't believe in God. Superman appears as a God-figure reminding him of his father's tyranny and therefore Sups must die. Awful! Batman almost kills Superman, nay, brutally murders him in the most unfair way, only to stop when it turns out they both are essentially mamas boys. Yeah Batman finds out that Superman's mum is called Martha, just like his own, suddenly they are BFF's. Wonder Woman appears briefly, promotes her film, then a Tolkien troll from Middle Earth arrives to cause more chaos. There is so much more crap! Incoherent and juvenile, the plot, if you can even call it a plot, serves to cause a mano-a-supermano brawl so that the title is lived up to and future DC universe films get their mentions. Batman V Superman exists to mine box-office gold, story be damned.
The dialog is hackneyed, immature and lacking conviction. Meanwhile the themes aspire to greater things including intellectual and moral musings, failing miserably on both counts.
2) Character development is non-existent. Batman and Superman are turned into violent and stupid meat-heads, very arrogant and foolish, pawns who could easily through dialogue have solved their issues. All maturity flies out of the window, entire decades of character development are ruined so that a brawl can take place. The women are damsels in distress again and again. Wonder Woman only promotes her upcoming film, Perry White becomes a less vile J. Jonah Jameson and Lex Luthor as played by Jesse Eisenberg is a kiddie Joker merged with Mark Zuckerberg, a complete annihilation of the character. A ridiculously weak and irritating villain. Hasn't enough of the DC-verse been ruined thus far? NO!
3) The titular fight sucks! It is basically premature ejaculation, over before it even started. A one-sided testosterone-fest, completely unnecessary and utterly pathetic. A yawn-worthy clash through, you guessed it, the walls of a building following which a crappy-looking CG troll that even Tolkien would frown upon descends. That is not Doomsday!
4) All the shameless future film promoting and silly excuses to set- up a fight, for box office purposes and not to progress a story, are interspersed with exhausting CG. At one point the troll becomes a lightning flashing Jamie Foxx from Amazing Spider-Man 2. Another mediocre fight and it's over.
5) The movie is a snore. The first half is a convoluted moron-fest to find as many illogical reasons to create a fight, the next half a CG demolition-galore which isn't spectacular at all.
6) It is unnerving how much promotion for future films they tried to inundate this movie with. They are in such a rush to create a universe just so that they can make up for lost ground. It is one long trailer. Don't believe me? Watch it for yourself, Lex even conceived ideal logos for the posters and promotion of the forthcoming films. A giant trailer with multiple teasers.
7) A lot of ridiculousness to the point of absurdity.
8) ANOTHER Wayne family murder sequence, like we need another, done in silly stylistic fashion
9) All those ridiculous dream sequences!
10) That tediously over-drawn ending.
Kudos to WB/DC. They knew that even an awful film would be lapped up by the so-called fans! If people love this awful movie, they deserve to be swindled and milked for every cent.
Once all the dust has settled and warring factions assuaged, all will realize that this movie that had so much potential turned out to be another run-of-the mill mediocre film undeserving of the word 'blockbuster' and certainly not a film worth fighting over.