Batman V Superman
What is this mess that I just witnessed?
As a fan of both Superman and Batman characters growing up, I really had some pretty high hopes for this movie! I mean coming off an incredible Christopher Nolan led Batman trilogy and a more than decent Zach Snyder led Man of Steel Superman film, everything seemed to be in place for a stellar film combining the two superheroes. What we get instead is an overly long, ridiculous game of rock’em sock’em robots. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that Michael Bay and his crew overthrew the folks in charge and simply had their way.(I was actually kind of shocked not to see Optimus Prime poke out his head a time or two.)
The film suffers from a non-cohesive and uninteresting storyline filled with tons of unnecessary explosions, majorly underdeveloped characters, a ridiculous Lex Luthor played by Jessie Eisenberger who comes of as a cross between the Joker and the Riddler, and way too many plot holes to count.
Without giving away spoilers, the main plot is basically that Lex Luthor convinces Superman and Batman to hate each other until they must fight to the death. Snyder tries to account for gaps in the storyline with many dream sequences…a technique that is way overused in the movie. We also get randomly introduced to new justice league characters for obvious future DC films down the road, but even that leaves you scratching your head as it really isn’t even relevant. The only exception is Wonder Woman played by Gal Gadot. Her character and story is quite interesting and she pretty much steals the show from both Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) whenever she is on screen.
Speaking of Wonder Woman, I think her first appearance during a fight sequence was the only applause I heard from a completely full theatre all night. In fact, when I heard no one applauding after the movie, it spoke volumes. Check that, I think I heard the Disney/Marvel folks laughing and applauding from afar.
5 out of 10.
