Hack Snyder Strikes Again

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2016)

First of all, if you saw it and enjoyed it, good for you. Don't let me ruin your enjoyment of the film with the extremely negative review I'm about to lay down. If you're one of the lucky few who haven't seen it by now, I'm telling you, it's a trap. There are lots of better movies out right now that deserve your attention more than this title
I'm gonna try to avoid major spoilers, but I'll likely get into some minor spoilers just so I can talk about a few specific scenes that truly irked my soul. So if you're actually still reading this then consider this your spoiler warning.
Let's get some positives out of the way first and foremost. I really enjoyed the first 10-ish minutes of the film. The opening scene was beautifully shot and edited, and would've been a lot more effective had we not seen the death of Batman's parents (spoiler?) in like, a hundred movies before this. That being said, this sequence on its own, was excellent. Simple, effective visual storytelling, with a beautiful score to back it up. I was instantly reminded of the opening credits sequence from Zack Snyder's Watchmen, which was the best part of that film too. Maybe he should just stick to making title sequences.
We then move to the climax of Man of Steel, but from the perspective of all of the helpless people on the ground while these two all- powerful aliens destroy the entire city of Metropolis. Bruce Wayne shows up to check out the scene, and to try to save some dude named Jack (who might be the most oblivious character in cinematic history, as he fails to notice the giant alien spacecraft blasting a hole into the middle of Metropolis until Bruce Wayne mentions said spacecraft). Look at that, I'm trying to talk about the positives and I keep running into negatives. Jack's stupidity aside, this scene was well-executed. It felt grounded and had some legitimate emotional weight to it, making it more than just a loud, obnoxious action setpiece for the sake of having one. It does a nice job of setting up Batman's motivation to go kick Superman's ass.
The performances across the board were pretty solid. Ben Affleck completely proved the nay-sayers wrong and delivered a terrific Bruce Wayne/Batman performance. Surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg's take on Lex Luthor. I've noticed most people giving him flak for his work here, but he seemed like the only one who was actually having fun in this movie. He played a fun, over-the-top, comic book villain, and that was enough for me. I understand if it rubs people the wrong way, but I quite liked it.
Finally, I dug the music. The score was probably the best part of this whole thing (and the entire soundtrack is available for free on YouTube so check that out if you're interested). There was a specific piece that played during some of the Batman sequences that felt like a mix of Fury Road's drums with an awesome synth sample that felt like it was right out of a cheesy 80s action movie, and I adored it.
Okay so the rest of it was garbage. I feel bad for the thousands of people who worked hard on this film, ultimately for jerks on the internet like me to crap all over their final product. The fact is, the man in charge, Zack Snyder, is the one who must take most of the blame. Now, I understand he had a lot on his plate, he had to include all the Justice League tie-ins and balance like a thousand different plot lines that were all going on in this overcrowded mess. At the end of the day, Snyder and Warner Bros. should've focused on making ONE good, coherent film, rather than a thousand short films stuffed into an awful one.
I have to talk about the scene where I pretty much gave up. Lois Lane (who is legitimately the stupidest person of all time next to that Jack dude) decides to go up to a man cleaning the floors of the Daily Planet, because she thinks they've met. Well, they have, because he was a terrorist at the beginning of the film who nearly killed her. WHY? Why did she go up to a man who reminded her of a terrorist who almost killed her a few months prior? Why didn't they just have a bunch of goons grab her and take her to Luthor? This isn't rocket science, this is screen writing 101.
The last act of the movie seemed to go on forever. The actual fight that literally ALL of the marketing for this film is built around is pretty entertaining while it lasts, but is cut short when the screenwriters decide they need to team up now (and it's very fortunate that Bruce and Clark's moms shared the same name, otherwise Supes would've found out the answer to #WhoWillWin). This climax just goes on and on and on. At this point, I'm not convinced of anything I'm seeing on the screen, all I can see is hundreds of computer animators working away; a fireball here, a laser beam there, etc. Then all the mind-numbing action finally ends, and we get what feels like another two hours of boring, drawn-out, depressing epilogue. Not depressing in the way that the film intends to be (it's supposed to have a "tragic" ending that is ruined by the fact that everyone knows which movies they have coming up on their slate, so no one is buying this one specific character's "death"), but depressing because the audience is just sitting there regretting their recent life choices.