Explosive dumptruck of justice

Rating: 4/10 (26 August 2016)

About 30 minutes into Batman v. Superman, I was thinking "Oh, come on, this isn't that bad. Maybe a 5 or a 6." Forty minutes later, it was definitely not a six, and near the end of the movie, I weighed whether it was a 3 or a 4.
The biggest problem is that the most critical part of the film, the conflict between Batman and Superman, was desperately contrived and clumsily engineered. To be fair, hero v. hero plots in comic books are typically weak, but the final product in BvS is an especially shoddy job. The core plot is convoluted and incoherent (see the Honest Trailers plot cliffnotes on youtube for an accurate description of the ludicrous plot).
The pacing is horrendous. Cuts are poorly managed, and there are simply way too many useless scenes. The tie-ins to future movies are too frequent and too long. Also, Snyder needs to work on sustaining a simple linear plot. Get that down, and then maybe he can try more "advanced" techniques like dreams and flashbacks.
The movie is oppressively dark and grim, even unnecessarily gory at times. The script is flat and lifeless; jokes are not readily identifiable as jokes.
Batman is a murderous psychopath. But I'm okay with that. Snyder and Affleck can make their own version of Batman. But unfortunately that's not the worst of it: Batman is also a complete idiot in this movie, which is unforgivable. There are a lot of idiots in this movie. Which is usually a sign of a lazy script.
The final fight with the ultimate badguy ("DD") feels empty and tedious because there was, once again, no development. The DD comic book was pretty simplistic in its build-up to the final battle, but BvS doesn't even come close to achieving that. Really this entire plot line should have been saved for one or two movies down the road.
As for Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, a villain's quirkiness can work on screen, as we saw with Heath Ledger, but only if there is substantive character development that the oddness builds on. There was no development at all of Lex Luthor, so Eisenberg's twitches and mumbles came off as slapped on and gimmicky.
Ultimately, I give BvS a 4 out of 10. I think that's a bit generous. But I recently gave Transformers Age of Extinction a 3 out of 10, and I don't think BvS was quite that bad.