If you like cool action with several loose and incoherent plots, this movie is for you

Rating: 4/10 (30 March 2016)

To begin with, I'm not a fan of comic books, I don't know the DC background lore, I am however a fan of comic book movies. I felt excluded from certain sections of the plot and as a result I feel frustrated. The story seems like it needs background information, this shouldn't be the case with a big budget blockbuster aimed at the masses. The actual movie falls way below par in several key areas. Firstly, the editing is terrible. There are several story lines crammed into this movie and it constantly flits between them. As you start to feel engaged with a particular story it all of a sudden jumps off on a non-linear nor coherent tangent into a completely different story. What is even more frustrating is that several of these stories actually don't make much sense nor do they add to the overarching (and might I add, thin) plot. One of the elements which actually disappointed me the most was the Hans Zimmer score. Whilst usually Hans Zimmer is amazing, and there are several sections where the score is excellent and really adds to the movie, I was not impressed. During the movies climactic scene, his score is based around electric guitars which seem to unpleasantly clash with the scene, it is not his finest work. I felt the characters were a mix bag. I really liked Ben Affleck's take on batman. It was aggressive and dark and unlike what we are used to. But that said, I felt the character required a little bit more exposition as to why he fell into such a dark place. Gal Gadot's Wonder Women disappointed me and it was nothing to do with her performance. You can't put an actress in pretty dresses and call that character development. The writing for her character seems to spit in the faces of your Jennifer Lawrence's, your Daisy Ridley's and your Charlize Theron's of the world. For most the movie she is given very little dialogue or job to do and I truly feel her sole role was as 'eye-candy' and to make the fan boys happy that she appears in it. Would the movie have suffered had she not been in it? Henry Caville's superman, whom I liked in man of steel was agonisingly boring. All he did was mope around and look stern and brooding. The movie seemed to set up a very interesting debate as to whether the world needs him and for a bizarre directorial choice decides to include the question in lot of scenes but never actually tackle it, it should have been an interesting question in the aftermath of MoS. And finally Lex Luther, he was just plain annoying! I never understood his motivation for his actions nor really his end game, I like Jesse Eisenberg, I didn't like him here. He wanted to come across as being a smart and high brow villain but name dropping myths and philosophers and pointing at art did not strike me as being particularly intelligent, merely that the screenwriter likes wikipedia. That said, Snyder does get action scenes and there were two outstanding fights, both with marvellous choreography and cinematography. This movie promised a clash of titans, what it delivered was an incoherent mess, where the full philosophical debate between Batman and Superman was never realised. The plot requires you to abandon reality and believe that these characters would really respond to certain situations in the way the movie would have you believe. The tone of the movie was dank and lacking in fun to the point that when a joke was inserted it felt more like an accident then by design. I enjoyed the visuals, I enjoyed the fights but no I did not really enjoy the movie.