This movie is miserable

Rating: 3/10 (6 August 2016)

This movie was miserable. It starts at a funeral and gets more depressing from there. There are very few moments of levity, hopefulness or even purpose. Now I like dark and depressing movies with a point, but this one just doesn't work. Superman, despite having all the power in the world and the ability to completely hide from his responsibilities if he wants, has no joy in his life. Even his relationship with Lois is tortured for no real reason. It leads to a very one dimensional character that is hard to like. No one wants to see a Superman that is a dour jerk that begrudgingly saves people. The interesting conflict between Batman and Superman is that they both want the same thing but have very different methods, moralities, and abilities to be heroes while sharing a common background in some ways. This movie doesn't explore that at all. Exploring new avenues with characters is definitely a good thing but in this case it doesn't work. Lex's motives are muddy at best, apart from his relationship with his father which seems pretty weak for the extremes he goes to. Oh and the big turning point between our protagonists hinges on something incredibly petty and stupid. BvS is beautiful and filled with masterful visual craftsmanship; par for the course for Zack Snyder. The actors, for the most part, do a good job. Afleck is great and will, I believe, make and awesome Bruce Wayne and Batman going forward. But it all goes to waste in this film due to Snyder's tone deaf story telling and the WB execs caving to marketing pressure and forcing another gritty, Dark Knight style movie to counter the fun, and highly successfully, Marvel adventures. This movie could have been great, and made all the money in the world, if they just respected and understood their characters a bit more and invested in making anyone in the film even slightly likable.