The movie that we deserved but never got.

Rating: 8/10 (29 June 2016)

It has been nearly 3 months since the official release of BVS:DOJ . A movie that many people including me were excited to the brim. All the hoardings all the trailers telling one thing "The son of krypton VS The bat of Gotham". It built itself up very well. While many of the trailers like to give away too much to get people overly excited by losing its credibility,the final theatrical trailer stood back on its legs and fought its battle well , until the critics slammed it back to the grave superman was sent to by the end of the movie. I am one of the many people who loved man of steel. I have always looked up to superman as a character beyond what has been perceived by directors and previous iterations. What intrigues me about this superman is the realism , the approach to a current scenario. What man o steel did was show what would happen if gods and demons lived amongst us.
With all hopes lost about Bruce Wayne coming in and joining the roster ( way too soon i believed ) I was a bit shook. I watched BvS in the theatre when it first came out in a screening packed with people. With all the excitement inside , I really failed to realise how shallow the movie actually was until I stepped out of the theatre. Do not get me wrong. I enjoyed BvS , but it wasn't satisfying,it was an expectation that was dead on arrival.
Now with all that was set up and all the possible depth i felt with a movie , I knew that this one like every other Snyder movie will get its own directors cut. The first two acts felt like having way too many disjointed scenes and cuts it was evident that the studio had their hands in the editing process which is why i felt it was best to review the ultimate edition and not the theatrical release. But let me tell you off the bat , that the R rating for this edition is plainly for a few swears and a little bit of a blood and partial nudity , don't expect anything really gritty out of the action scenes. What really this edition of the movie did was fix the butchered story , and configure the first two acts and make it phenomenal. These are for me a few highlights that really made the,movie a 6 pointer to a 8 pointer.
1) The metropolis destruction scene at start has a few new touches to them , including a scene where a lady brings a few stranded children through the rubble while being surrounded by all the chaos. It mainly shows the kind of person that really resides inside Bruce Wayne as he pushes a girl back in line.
2) When i watched it in theatre i had absolutely no clue as to what happened in the Africa scene. I didn't know why superman was there , i didn't know that the photographer was jimmy Olson , there were way too many cuts and explosions around the scene that didn't make sense. But what really did happen was an intense military / espionage like build-up to an epic entry of superman as he stops the official army from bombing a civilian filled area. It makes sense. It shows the aftermath first hand.
3) With a lot of back-story to cover up , what this movie had to do primarily is not just build up the characters as they are but the city and the people living in it too. There are some really masterfully subtle scenes captured in this version of the movie where the movie is trying to depict the kind of society that exists between these sister states. The football matches , the hints and notes about the crime in Gotham ,etc. really push out the two cities as a character that are worthy to be credited at the end of the movie.
4) I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to cut an entire world and character building segment off a movie. There is quite literally a 10-15 minute overall segment of Clark Kent going around Gotham investigating and learning about the bat vigilante. This aspect really explains why superman would want to go against the bat himself.
5) A few prison segments that showed the corruption and deception in Gotham city.
6) The lady who had come forward to testify against superman also had a major and significant role to make absolute sense out of the capitol bombing scene. The deleted Lois lane investigation scene makes her previously inconsequential arc relevant and surprisingly intriguing. And it also explained why superman couldn't stop the bomb from being detonated.
7) For all the people who thought the movie didn't show superman the way he was meant to be , there is a scene in this movie after the bombing where he rescues a woman and leaves him with the paramedics , though small it made a difference to the way this character was lit. In fact superman is even more fleshed out than batman is unlike the theatrical release and explains that weird and absolutely oblivious mountain trekking scene. It almost had me in tears. It humanises an alien.
On an overall this fixed almost all the potholes and story bits that stood out like a sore thumb. While the ultimate edition actually fixes everything , one thing I was certain about is the fact that nothing could change the final act. it's an unfixable pretty looking mess. This movie had lacked motivation , courage and the strength of a consistent and even stronger script which I felt this ultimate edition addressed to very well. And i just hope JusticeLeague is filled with the goods of this directors cut and not the lifeless soul of the original.