Theatrical and Ultimate Edition

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 2016)

I've been putting off this review ever since the movie was released, as i knew that there was an Ultimate Edition for it. Having seen both versions, this review comes in two parts.
THEATRICAL VERSION: I am sure by now, all the things that made this film divisive has been said by both camps, so i won't really go into it.
As for me, i had always like the tone that they had given, aka. dark, serious, and to some "humorless". Seeing how it is at an end of a spectrum that is not found in any superhero genre ever since Watchmen, and The Nolan Trilogy; I found this tone refreshing to continue what Man Of Steel had set up.
However that is not to say that i don't recognize it's flaws. There were many (that "M incident" included) and yet i found myself being interested and intrigue throughout its run-time. I enjoyed the film too. There were interesting story elements to me, unfortunately, the bad does weigh in on my experiences too.
My main disgruntled judgment for the theatrical version was that it was edited so poorly that i found myself being very frustrated. Every time the scene changes, it created such a bad pacing for its storytelling.
Just when one scene was about to get interesting, they cut it off. Just as one scene had finished its purpose and message, it abruptly changes. Transitioning from scenes to scenes felt so jumpy. It was as if they had no confidence to let a scene breathe a little longer.
It reminded me so much of the "Godzilla" cuts that were in that film. Using it to tease, that got way too repetitive that it frustrated me as a viewer then. Same thing happened here. However this wasn't teasing. It was just a very horrendous editing that made the film a real mess.
The other major negativity i had was that the trailers basically had shown way too much. It seemed to me that every scene was represented in the trailers in one form or another. Making the film felt like a checklist at the back of my mind instead of a journey. I guess they exposed like 80%-90% of Alfred's lines in the trailer. So much so, that there was nothing left for me to be surprised by. What an unfortunate marketing it had. sigh...
I felt that the movie's positivity outweighs the negativity, and it was to me a 6.5/10 for the theatrical version. Since there were no decimals in IMDb, i had rated it as 7/10.
ULTIMATE EDITION VERSION: Having just seen this, if you had any liking to the movie before, this will definitely make the experience much better. If you were the ones that hated it before, because of tone and lack of humor, this version is definitely going to make you hate it more.
The main gripe i had about its editing in theatrical version is so much better in ultimate edition, when they added back that few minutes of time that they had taken out. The few extra scenes that were missing then made the film so much more coherent.
I felt that this should be the version to be released. But i can understand that it wasn't. Obviously the studio's original vision for the film was definitely not 3 hours and definitely not R rated. But i appreciate that they released this publicly to us viewers.
Overall, i feel it rates comfortably as a 7/10.