It's just okay. And for this movie, that's not okay. (major spoilers)

Rating: 4/10 (21 April 2016)

This is the big one. This is the match-up for which comic book fans have been waiting and waiting and waiting. Superman has had 6 movies prior to this (the 4 Christopher Reeve movies plus Superman Returns and Man of Steel) and Batman has had 7 (2 by Tim Burton, 2 by Joel Schumacher and the Nolan trilogy). Everyone wanted to see these 2 in movie together. Hell, it was teased in the Will Smith vehicle "I Am Legend". And what was the end result? "Meh". At best.
At worst, this movie is what people were beginning to worry about as rumors spread about all the various D.C. characters joining the cast. Nightwing (an early but ultimately false rumor). Wonder Woman. Flash. Cyborg. Aquaman. It was hard to keep up with all the names getting thrown out there. The fear became that D.C. was just desperately trying to play catch up to Marvel Studios and none of these characters would get adequate development time. Well, the "good" news is that we don't have a lot of characters running around without development. The bad news is ....what we do have, has a lot of problems.
One of the main problems with this movie, which a lot of people have pointed out, is just that Batman and Superman are portrayed as too similar of characters. Why are they fighting? Well, Batman's upset that Superman was careless with his fight with Zod, which resulted in the death of a lot of people and the fact that he has the power to end all human life on the planet as we know it and there is no power great enough to counter him. Okay, that's reasonable. Why does Superman want to fight Batman? ....Because he puts himself above the law and acts as a vigilante. ..... ....Are you like a vampire, Supes? When you look in a mirror, do you lack a reflection? Because, ummmm.......
There really doesn't seem to be a great reason driving these 2 to dislike each other. Batman has his reasons to mistrust Superman but it's not like Superman goes out of his way to kill people. He's reckless and probably could benefit from hearing Batman's side of the argument but the idea that Batman has reached the conclusion that "I have to kill Superman because he could kill everyone even though he only caused a lot of death once and that's when he was fighting another alien and there's no reason to suspect there's another one out there so it might not happen again and he's also tried to save people who were shipwrecked and lost in mines so clearly, his main objective is not just to kill all people of Earth"....it just doesn't seem to add up.
Let's move on to Lois Lane in this movie: POINTLESS. She has no real reason to be there other then "it's a Superman movie and she has to be". She is the classic, cliché damsel in distress in this movie. It's really obvious director Zack Snyder and writer David Goyer didn't know what to do with her. Plus, I'm more then a little upset that she just "happened" to know where Batman and Superman got to at the end of their fight and just "happened" to be able to get there, just in the nick of time to stop Batman from using the Kryptonite spear to kill Superman. Convenient timing much? And then in the final fight with Doomsday, how exactly is she able to come to realization that Doomsday is a creature made up of partially Kryptonian DNA and thus, the spear (which she threw away in a pool of water for no reason.... I mean, Superman wasn't in danger at that point...) was the only capable of killing him? Batman, the world's greatest detective, says it to Superman and Wonder Woman on the battlefield but Lois isn't there to hear that. How does she know?
On to the next point: Lex Luthor Jr. (destined to be one of the most despised casting choices in the history of comic book movies; seriously, I have not heard anyone try to defend Jesse Eisenberg's performance) and General Zodd both have their weaknesses as characters but they were both intelligent, reasonable "human" (Kryptonian, in Zodd's case) beings. So, how exactly does combining the DNA of 2 intelligent, sentient beings result in a mindless, mass of muscle aka Doomsday? Doomsday is just shoehorned in there, in the 11th hour, so there's someone there that Superman and Wonder Woman can hit with all their muscle. That's it. "Just give me a villain who can stand up to those 2 hitting him with all their might because we need an action sequence where all 3 heroes are united". Plus, what exactly was Lex's plan for dealing with Doomsday AFTER he killed Superman? He's unleashed this unstoppable monster on the world--how was he going to rein it in? Was he really willing to gamble that Batman and Wonder Woman would find a way to kill it, after it had killed Superman? That's quite a lot to assume, a heavy wager to possibly lose. If this was the Joker, who just worships death and chaos, maybe that might be possible but Lex Luthor is supposed to be a rationale, if corrupt, business man.
So what DID I like about this movie? Well, Ben Affleck as Batman, Jeremy Irons as Alfred and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Those 3 are the strongest components of the movie. Well acted, very interesting characters. Wonder Woman's music theme is very good. Zack Snyder does know how to frame some nice comic-book-panel shots. There's some really good stuff in this movie but there's a lot of stuff that doesn't work. There are some good scenes but the movie is less then the some of its parts. It just wasn't the home run D.C. needed it to be.