150 Minutes of my life I'll never get back!

Rating: 2/10 (2 May 2016)

I've never seen a Superman movie. I never saw Man of Steel, I never saw Superman Returns, I never saw The Quest for Peace (thankfully), but I know enough about Superman's backstory to get a feel for the character. I absolutely love Batman, I've seen all of the 80/90s film and I love them all, with one obvious exception. After seeing a pretty impressive trailer for the film, I decided to head up to the local cinema to see the latest work of DC Comics, I really wish I hadn't bothered.
I don't understand who looked at this script and said, "yeah, that's a good idea". Batman vs Superman for me was 150 minutes of guessing the plot, cringing at the horrible CGI, shaking my head at the terrible dialogue and waiting impatiently for that beautiful moment where the list of names began scrolling up on the screen.
So, the big spectacle we all wanted to see, the rivalry between Batman and Superman, is only there because the name of the film is Batman vs. Superman. I have no idea exactly why these guys have a disliking of each other, but at some point within the first 15 minutes of the film Superman effectively says "I'm gonna fight Batman", 80 minutes later they fight, that's it.
As well as this we have a ridiculous amount of other sub-plots that aren't even remotely coherent, such as a character called Diana Prince who we never learn anything about until the final 40 minutes at which point she turns into a main character, doing some kind of spy work which we never really learn about, we're just meant to accept that she's a spy doing secret things that we're not meant to care about.
We also have Lex Luther who is trying to get his hands on some Kryptonite so he can do... something. I'm actually not sure, I think it has something to do with his dislike of Superman, which I don't understand because we're never given any clear explanation as to why he hates him, and then he decides to send Superman to kill Batman, for some other reason we're never given an answer too.
For most of the film, every character goes on about how Superman is a menace and should be tried for what he has done, and the first scene of this film shows him killing a terrorist threatening Lois Lane's life in Africa. I'm honestly sure not many people would care about this death, but they keep going on about other things he has supposedly done that are never shown or even explained in the film, so what exactly did he do to make the world hate him so much?
This film is meant to be a launch-pad movie for a new series of super-hero movies, and yet nothing is ever expanded on. What does Lex Luther's company actually do? What exactly is Wayne Industries? What happened in the 18 months between this film and Man of Steel? No-one ever bothers to answer these simple questions that could've been cleared up in a single line, which is irritating because we're supposed to care about this world that will be the base of a new universe.
Lex Luther kidnaps Superman's mother and uses her as a threat to force him to fight Batman, this is where we get the long awaited fight between Batman and Superman, and it's OK, but it's nothing spectacular. It goes on for a while until Superman reveals his mother's name is Martha, and as Batman's mother's name is Martha they decide to become friends, you know, after knocking the hell out of each other.
Batman goes to save Superman's mother, and Superman goes to stop Lex Luther, this is where we get a pretty awesome fight scene. Batman's attack on Lex Luther's guards is really cool, it's an exciting a fast paced scene that provides one of the few thrills of the film.
Meanwhile, Superman confronts Lex Luther who retaliates by unleashing a giant freaking monster, what the hell? This monster comes out of nowhere just to extend the movie out for another 30 minutes. The monster itself looks absolutely dreadful, a horrible looking CGI creation that rips the awesome from the film.
During this fight scene, Wonder Woman shows up out of absolutely nowhere to join the fight. At this point, I had lost the will to live, I just wanted the film to end. The action scenes here were mindless and uninteresting, and I couldn't care less about what was going to happen.
As for the acting, Ben Affleck is great a Batman and Henry Cavill is brilliant as Superman so no complaints there, Amy Adams makes the best of Lois Lane and Jesse Eisenberg is superbly crazy as Lex Luther, at least we have a good cast.
I think I'll just sum up here. Batman vs. Superman is a mess, a mess on every creative level, which is a shame because trailers made this film look really good, I saw the first trailer for this film in the previews for 10 Cloverfield Lane, and it looked awesome, when I saw the film, I just didn't understand what the hell the aim of this film was. The plot was incoherent, it was far too long, there was never any consistency with the narrative, it just didn't work.
Batman vs. Superman is one of DC Comics biggest failures, and a big misstep for the start of this new series.
There's 150 Minutes of my life I'll never get back!