Why does Warner have so much trouble making a good superhero movie?

Rating: 6/10 (31 March 2016)

I'm certain there must be some senior managers at Warner Bros who look at the success of the Marvel movies and wonder why they can't match it. And so they should - in Batman and Superman, DC have characters with more worldwide brand recognition than anyone in the Marvel Universe, including Spiderman. Part of the reason is that they don't seem to work at it - they don't seem to have anyone who is overseeing the whole franchise and guiding its direction. They do with the DC Universe TV shows, and they are doing a great job of universe building, but that is apparently a completely separate continuity.
This isn't a complete failure - it is better than Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, but there is still a lot wrong with it. Wonder Woman is great, and should have featured more prominently in the film - I assume she will be a major player in the Justice League movies. Lex Luthor wasn't bad, but channelled the Joker a bit too much at times. Henry Cavill is much better as Superman than he was in Man of Steel.
The film is way too long - it could have been 45 mins shorter and still told the story. The first hour and a half meanders and drops in and out of dream sequences without warning. And there are many plot points that don't make sense. Batman wants to kill Superman because he is too powerful and can just kill people if he feels like it, yet Batman kills dozens of people during the movie without any regrets. As other reviewers have pointed out, Lex gives Superman an hour to kill Batman or Martha Kent will die - that is more than enough time for Superman to scour both Metropolis and Gothan with his X-Ray vision to find where she is being held.
Superman is supposed to be super-intelligent as well as his other powers, yet it never occurred to him to give the kryptonite spear to the other super-powered person there - Wonder Woman? And it didn't occur to Wonder Woman to toss Superman's body back into space where it could get the full effect of solar radiation? After all, he recovered from a nuclear explosion as soon as he was exposed to sunlight.
And finally, the death of Clark Kent. It's not going to be hard to explain Superman coming back from the dead, and in the comics Clark was buried under rubble and presumed dead, so his resurrection was explainable. But in this film, Clark's body is on display and he has a very public funeral. I'm not sure how they will plausibly bring Clark back for the Justice League movie.