Too much Batman back story

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 2016)

It was a two and a half hour movie and almost half an hour was devoted to the Batman back story and I don't mean half an hour of unique content I'm talking about repeating the same minute long scene 20 or 30 times with occasional changes in perspective. That's almost 20 percent of the movie. I was tempted to go see it again and bring a stopwatch with me just so I could confirm exactly how much time was wasted on repetitions of the back story. It would be one thing if the Batman back story was new but there's a new Batman story out at least every few years I'd be amazed if more than 5% of the audience hadn't seen the back story scene already in a different Batman movie. It wouldn't surprise me if Ben Affleck had demanded his character get more screen time than all the other characters combined and that was the reason for it. Also, the version of Batman in this movie simply isn't consistent with the others. It's always been emphasized that Batman doesn't kill and definitely doesn't use guns because of his parents being shot yet this Batman was shooting without hesitation at criminals and while they never showed it he must have had a decent body count by the end of the movie. Absolutely no back story whatsoever on Wonder Woman which would have been far better to have the only provided before the big final fight was them briefly showing an old picture of her in her outfit. Don't get me wrong the action scenes in the movie were amazing, the issues surrounding Superman and the way he was treated ring far truer to reality than previous portrayals and Ben Affleck certainly did a great job of portraying a homicidal version of Batman (assuming that's what he intended) but I'd have been happy for this to have been a 2 hour movie and leave out the Batman back story filler.