A disappointing mess that even Batman can't save

Rating: 4/10 (14 August 2016)

The only ample word to sum up this movie is 'disappointing'. This is an extremely overstuffed and convoluted movie with many flaws and not much to make up for them. It is probably fair to mention that the huge expectations for this movie were never realistically going to be fulfilled - however nobody really expected this to be as bad as it was.
There are firstly a few overlaying problems that are prominent throughout the movie. For one, Zack Snyder's directing. Most people seem to lay most of the blame for the failure of this movie on Zack Snyder himself. As a director, he does not find any ways to grip the audience with any of the characters or story. This became a large problem with the movie as the lack of intensity made it all quite boring. There is no fun or humour in this movie, the whole atmosphere is pretentiously dark and depressing to the point of absurdity. The whole movie takes itself far too seriously and becomes almost laughable by the end. Another prominent issue is the script. Every character, whether interesting or not, is hugely let down by the poor and sometimes laughable dialogue that infects every scene. Without any decent writing or directing, is it really a surprise this movie didn't work?
Unfortunately the issues do not stop there. Many of the characters and castings are less than mediocre. This movie is overstuffed with so many characters and subplots that it all becomes very convoluted and distorted. The villains are beyond bad: Jesse Eisenberg gives the worst performance of his career (and the year?), in a character that could be perhaps branded as the worst comic book movie villain to date. His mannerisms, idiosyncrasies and dialogue are hugely misguided and make his character very painful to watch. His plan is simple and the conclusion to his storyline laughably silly. The other villain is shoehorned into the end of the movie with the lack of necessity and poor CGI that one might expect from a Zack Snyder movie. As far as villains go, these are as bad as they get.
There is also a far too large cast of superheros in this movie. Wonder Woman serves absolutely no purpose - she is shoehorned in as a kind of Justice League tie-in but ultimately is redundant. You could remove her from every scene in the movie, and nothing would change. Gal Gadot does a mediocre job at playing her, but lacks the enthusiasm or charisma to make any lasting affect on the audience. One of the title characters, Superman, is also poorly used. Henry Cavill's acting is stiff and wooden once again, to the point where watching him try to act becomes genuinely painful. Superman is portrayed as an imprudent, egotistical and delusion fool who seems to believe the only way to settle something is by fighting. However, thankfully there is a silver linings in the cast: Ben Affleck's Batman/Bruce Wayne. By far the best character in the movie, Ben Affleck carries the character with the intensity and suave that such a character needs. His scenes were, to put it bluntly, the only interesting ones, which were also made better by Jeremy Iron's enjoyable Alfred.
Another problem with the movie is it ultimately relies on action and explosions rather than anything else. There is nothing intellectual about it - every character wants to fight his way out of everything and nothing is resolved with any intelligence. The ending and conclusion, without spoiling it, to the Batman v Superman storyline is almost offensively bad. Which just serves as proof that no actual thought or good writing went into this movie.