Legendary superheroes wasted on a messy mediocre script with over the top effects

Rating: 5/10 (31 March 2016)

Last night it was finally time for it. In the words of Lex Luthor "The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world". I don't think an aggressive meeting between the two probably most famous superheroes of all time, can be described in any other way. So what did I expect from this film? I wanted a deep film about how Batman and Superman's paths cross and explode into a fantastic fight. Then they have to unite against a common enemy and form the foundation of Justice League. Henry Cavill returns as the man of steel and Ben Affleck takes on the part of the dark knight. Jessie Eisneberg plays the mad millionaire Lex Luthor, who's main goal has always been to destroy Superman.
The truth is that Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is one big mess. My expectations about a deep fight between Batman and Superman went quickly down the toilet when a lot of other stuff took up space. It was Wonder Woman, Lois Lane the damsel in need, some sort of senator and of course a couple of weird dreams about the future, or was it the past? I didn't quite get that. Already there is an obvious lack of focus in the script. How hard can it be? Batman vs Superman and one enemy to fight. If you try anything else with more characters, you better know what you are doing because very few succeed when they try. Even Christopher Nolan didn't succeed in his last Batman film The Dark Knight Rises.
In Batman V Superman it always feels as if they know that they are building it all up for the next great film with more heroes and greater conflicts. The result is that this film takes a beat, becomes unfocused and because of that, even worse. It contains a lot of small details that just went wrong. Tiny details usually shouldn't do that much harm to a film, but when we don't even know why Superman is angry with Batman or why Wonder Woman doesn't do anything besides stealing technical stuff from Batman, you are approaching deep water and playing with huge parts of the plot that because of that doesn't work.
Lex Luthor is a good enemy. He is young, smart, a millionaire, a little sick in the head and not a strong man. Yet he can do so much harm and be very disturbing. The film scrapes on the shell of this character but we never understand why he is the way he is, or why he does certain things. Why does he hate Superman? Beats me. The film has strong parts that at times, lift it. Jeremy Irons as Alfred, stabs and quarrel quite humorously with Batman. I also personally as a journalist student, think that it is incredibly fun to watch Laurence Fishbourne as a crazy newspaper editor obsessed with coming up with good headlines for his stories. Very entertaining.
Well to summarize, I will admit that it is a superhero film and it shouldn't be taken too seriously and most of all not immediately be compared to Nolan's Batman films. It is an entertaining film with nice computer effects and great acting. Perhaps at times too much computer effects, but I can look past it because after all it is Superman. However, I still feel that a more clear and simple idea back in the process of writing the screenplay, would have given the film a more deep focus and the result of that would have been us understanding the characters and their actions. There are more to wish for, come on Warner Bros.
David Lindahl www.filmografen.se