Batman v Superman is a mess...but an enjoyable one.

Rating: 7/10 (28 March 2016)

Batman v Superman is perhaps the perfect microcosm of both Zack Snyder as a director and also the Warner Bros. vision for Superhero movies as a whole. The movie itself is a glorious mess. The pacing is all over the place, lagging for large portions of the movie, to a degree that threatens to lull the audience to sleep, and then suddenly ramping up to a speed that moves too fast for the plot in many places. There is little to no narrative flow as this movie more or less strings along unrelated scenes, end-to-end, which takes an already murky plot and throws it into near-indecipherable territory. This seems to be the biggest point of consternation for critics and is honestly a decent reason for Warner Bros. to consider asking Zack Snyder to take a step back from the director's chair, as these are all career-long vices of his (Watchmen, Man of Steel being past evidence of this).
And yet, despite all those fundamental mistakes, there's a lot to like here. Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot both proved to near perfect castings, despite early internet outrage directed toward both. If there's one major take away from this movie, it's that both character's solo movies in the DCEU have the ground work in place to be outstanding. Both Jeremy Irons and Laurence Fishburne were great too and hopefully as the DC Universe unfolds, we get even more of these ancillary characters. Also, as has become standard fare for Zack Snyder films, the film is beautiful. For everything he lacks as a story teller, the dude does some absolute magic with camera work.
Condensed down into the most generalized version, this film is being crucified to an unnecessary degree. Sure, the film whiffs on many fundamental check lists but at the same time, the good largely outweighs the bad. It's by no means perfect (particularly if you're not the type to jump out of your seat at tiny little easter eggs embedded specifically to tease Justice League). That being said, there's enough here to not only watch this movie, but also be optimistic about DC's cinematic universe going forward.