Batman vs. Superman vs. a Terrible Script

Rating: 5/10 (1 April 2016)

Wow. The script for "Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016) was really bad.
I hate to begin a review with a statement so negative, but it's true. I really think that I could have done better than this, and I know nothing about screen writing. Hell, parts of the movie were actually MSTy-worthy. I just can't believe that the gifted David S. Goyer had a hand in this.
Batman is flatly rendered and barely likable. Superman is capably played by Henry Cavill, but has little to say. Lex Luthor is portrayed as a cloying, verbose, flamboyant, attention-seeking manchild. He gets all the screen time in the world (and more dialogue than Superman, it seems), and he really come across as a whiny, rambling high school student playing at theologian, trying in vain to impress the girls. Luthor seems to want to ingratiate himself to every other character on screen. Strangely, this includes even those he is threatening or endeavoring to murder. He has weird vocal tics that quickly get on our nerves. "Mmm." He makes repeated references to god, who he hates, and  this makes him hate the godlike Superman, via Freudian transference. Or something.
He consequently wants to kill Superman. He has kryptonite and demonstrably capable mercenaries at his disposal. But, for some reason, he wants to employ unreliable, convoluted plans to prompt Batman to do it. His plans to motivate Batman include harassing him with newspaper clippings and nasty notes, like a deranged stalker.
He also has a photograph of Wonder Woman that she would like to keep secret. She goes ahead and mentions it to an ostensibly drunken Bruce Wayne at a party anyway.
Oh! Luthor also knows the secret identities for both Superman and Batman, and has known for some time. We don't find out how he knows, and he does far less to exploit this information than you would think. Couldn't he easily (and quite legally) cause problems for both men simply by exposing them? Superman knows Batman's identity too; I guess we can chalk that up to his x-ray vision? Batman is not in the know, and spends much of the movie trying to play catch-up, and is easily manipulated by Luthor. This is despite the fact that, in the comics, he is the world's greatest detective.
There is bad dialogue, weird science, and bad science. There are murky, vague plot points and unsupported character motivations. Some things are just plain dumb — Metropolis and Gotham City stand within sight of each other, just across a bay. Either hero could easily intervene in the other's city  but they apparently respect each other's nearly adjacent turf, even though they don't know or trust each other.
Even the premise is shaky — legions of people hate Superman because they blame him for the damage inflicted by Zod during the events of "Man of Steel" (2013). Couldn't he just exonerate himself by simply telling the truth — that Zod attacked earth and he rose to defend it? I'm willing to bet most people would get that.
There are  dream sequences  and/or visions  and/or messages from the future? And  conversations with the dead? Or  not? You tell me.
Why does Superman need a winter jacket?
Why does he refer to his mother as "Martha?" Do any of us refer to our mothers by their first name?
I could go on, but you get the idea. I actually found my attention wandering during this movie.
All of this is a shame, because there are hints of brilliance hiding among the mediocrity. The movie is ambitious. It seems to want to say a lot about weighty themes such as power, unlimited power, its ability to corrupt, and the unintended consequences of unilateral action. There seem to be visual references to real world horrors like 9/11 and ISIS' terrorism, which I found pretty bold. I've never been good with subtext. Were there allegories here that I missed, connected with U.S. foreign policy or the War on Terror?
I will say this — the film isn't quite as bad as the critics are making it out to be. It isn't all garbage, it's just a below average superhero film. And it appears worse because it's part of a genre characterized by a lot of really good films — Christopher Nolan's Batman movies were groundbreaking, and most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's titles were quite good. So this ambitious misfire seems far worse in contrast. I myself would rate this movie a 5 out of 10 — even if I might be biased here by my lifelong love for these iconic characters.