Death of Justice

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2016)

I didn't want to buy in to the negative hype surrounding this movie. While the third act of Man of Steel was disappointing, I thought it was good overall. Batman v Superman on the other hand is a complete disaster.
The story and pacing is all over the place. At times you can be really invested in sequences that are very focused, then it drags and meanders, stringing along set-ups for The Justice League films that don't contribute to the conflict at hand. Some of the choices they made are completely baffling and it's clear they didn't have a unified vision.
Due to the fact that they're rebooting Batman, Superman and he compete for screen time and the set up for their eventual confrontation is like something out of a bad fan-fiction. It isn't clever or interesting and in the end it could have been resolved if they just talked to each other.
The biggest problem is that there isn't much contrast between Batman and Superman. They're both mopey muscle men. There is no grand conflict of ideology and method. The main thing they failed to set up in Man of Steel is Superman's idealism, optimism, and patriotism. This would have clashed perfectly with Batman's jaded outlook, but they hardly ever tap in to this.
I'm sure I'll get excited for the solo Batfleck film, but I don't know if they can pull it all together for the Justice League and quite frankly I don't really care right now. The way everything has to be so interconnected in these franchise films is getting really annoying. Can't a film just be self-contained anymore?