A jumbled mess that had so much potential...you know? Like most Zack Snyder films!

Rating: 4/10 (30 March 2016)

The film starts off with a recap of Batman's origin story as an opening credit sequence, which was fine to be honest. Well until it gets surreal having childhood Bruce Wayne being lifted up by hundreds of bats...thanks Snyder for the first of many dream sequences in this movie. After that it immediately cuts to the events that occurred at the end of "Man of Steel" with Metropolis being destroyed, only from Bruce Wayne's perspective. Nothing connecting the dots between him being a child and the attack, it just assumes that everyone knows who Batman. So anyone unfamiliar will probably think that Superman is the reason Batman probably exists...which wouldn't be too far-fetched, but still. After the pretty explosions, it cuts again a year and a half later to Lois Lane getting captured in the desert and saved by Supes...he kills a man...yeah, remember that that little thing that "Man of Steel" sprung up at the last minute with Superman being so upset that he took a life? Well now he just doesn't care. First thing he does in this movie is charges into a man at full speed and busts him through several cement walls. He's dead.
From there the story gets convoluted. There's a plot line with Lois Lane that really has no effect on the overall story, could have been cut. Lex Luthor has it out for Superman, so he gets his hands on a big rock of Kryptonite and is trying to get the approval of the government to weaponize it. That's a thing for about ten minutes until he decides to blow up congress and frame Supes for it. Batman is trying to get his hands on the Kryptonite so he can weaponize it himself because he doesn't trust Superman. While that's going on, Superman is busy with explosions and floods throughout the entire world that it just now dawned on me...how does he have any time off? Does he just ignore or the death and mayhem so that he can pretend to be a journalist? And when he's a journalist he's clearly not a very good one since his boss is constantly telling him that he's in the sports section, yet Clark keeps writing his articles about Batman in Gotham City, for no other reason than because the title is "Batman v. Superman".
I have to touch on something that will probably enrage the hardcore comic book fans of Batman...Batman kills people, and I don't mind in the slightest. And I don't mean that he does it by accident; no, I mean he straight up murders the baddies.
In the third act Superman gets his mother kidnapped by Lex Luthor. So instead of looking for her, he bows down to Luthor's orders to kill the Bat. Revealing that Luthor was behind all the letters that Wayne was getting that influence him to hate Superman more. So I guess Luthor knows who Batman is? So Superman goes to Batman for help, but of course it's a Zack Snyder film so there's not going to be any characters having a real conversation here. So they fight, for about five minutes and then they're the best of friends because their moms have the same name...yep. So they team up, fight a CGI monster and cause so much property damage with the help of Wonder Woman. Oh yeah, that was another subplot that the script was juggling so they could shoehorn in some Easter eggs for the Justice League. So they fight. And fight. Things blow up. The "epic music" is blaring. More explosions. Superman sacrifices himself in order to stop all the CGI from consuming the screen. And I have no emotional attachment to his death whatsoever. I really couldn't care less and that is probably the biggest insult this film gives. This is a guy I have watched two whole films now and I don't even know him. There is nothing more to him other than he's Superman. No personality lies beneath the suit, no life to him. Just a body to hold up fists. And we all know that he's not really dead. At the very end after giving even more crammed in exposition about forming the Justice League, it's seen that there's proof that he still lives. Pointless.
This was a huge disappointment; other than showing some potential for a solo Batman film with Ben Affleck, this was awful. I had my concerns going in, but I was still optimistic about there being a really fun and cool Superman/Batman movie again. Many people say that it's best to set your expectations and standards low so that a film may have an easier time surpassing them and the viewer may come out having a better time with the film. I don't believe in that, I feel that a person should go into a film expecting to have a good time, we should be entertained or even be made to think afterward. A movie should never get a free pass in being given a low bar to reach in order to be considered a "good" movie. A film should be good on its own merits and nothing more. This was not a good movie and I won't set my standards lower so it can be called good. This was a train wreck in almost every way that "Man of Steel" was, if not more so. I'm sure that no matter what though, everyone will go to see it and it will collect its fan base just as "Man of Steel" did. So if you walk out of this film loving it, I don't blame you and I probably get why. But for me, I need a lot more substance than style in order to have a good time.