Batman V Superman: Does it deserve the shit it has received?

Just got back from seeing Batman V Superman, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on it. Spoilers ahead, not that most of you care at this point.

By far the best part of the film was Ben Affleck's portrayal of Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. He showed his inner demons well, and was by far the best actor in the film. I may have a new favourite movie Batman.

I wish I could say the same about the rest of the film. A lot of the other characters came across as a little... wooden. Wonder Woman and Superman both seemed a little stiff in their movement and speech, but overall, they were still pretty good. My big issue as far as main characters goes is Lex Luthor. This is by far the worst portrayal of Lex Luthor ever. Jesse Eisenburg said that this would be the Luthor people have waited for, the one everyone wanted. Anyone who wanted this Luthor should be banned from ever watching movies again as they clearly have no idea what they are on about. Let's talk about the problems with Lex.

NUMBER 1 - PERSONALITY
I get that you can portray characters differently in terms of personality, but they got Lex all kinds of wrong. He is normally a cool, calm and collected character, who whilst everything he does is for his own gain and along the lines of evil, comes across to the public as someone they can trust and like (hell, he even ran for the presidency in the cartoon at one point with even Shazam thinking he was a good person). The Lex in the new movie? No. He comes across as a spoilt child with multiple psychological disorders rather than a criminal mastermind. He acts more like Joker than he does Lex Luthor.

NUMBER 2 - MOTIVE
Where the fuck was his motive? This is a film all about motive. Batman's motive against Superman is that he blames Superman for causing the Kryptonians to come to Earth in the first place and thus blames all that happened in Man Of Steel, the destruction and pain, on Superman. Things happen in the film that reaffirm his beliefs too. He has motive. Superman disagrees with Batman's vigilante style of justice, and when told his Earth mother will be killed if he doesn't kill Batman, he goes and fights Batman (although he attempts to talk to him first). Superman has motive. Lex Luthor has zero motive in this film. It is clear that he hates both Superman and Batman, but the reasons why he hates the both of them are never explored or explained. Again, he acts more like Joker, creating chaos and attempting to play God just for the shits and giggles.

There are a couple of other things as well. One of the ones I have seen people talk about is the brief appearance of Flash coming through a time portal in Bruce Wayne's dream. However, this isn't a major one in my eyes because I feel they are going to come back to this. Flash says something like, "Is this too soon?" as well as something about Lois Lane being the key which might suggest that rather than a dream like the film makes it look, Flash had actually come back with Bruce falling asleep again shortly after making it seem like a dream. I really feel like this will be revisited in a later DC film, so I am going to let it slide for now.

What I won't let slide is the waste that was Doomsday. Doomsday is such a powerful villain in the DC Universe, and they used him for a 10-20 minute portion of the film before killing him off. Truly wasted. They also wasted a potentially gut wrenching use of the Death Of Superman story arch, instead opting for a seemingly meaningful death (which we know will be reversed simply due to future films in the DC lineup) right before doing the whole shifting soil on the coffin that we have never seen before, right [/sarcasm]?

All in all, it wasn't a truly terrible movie. There have been worse films with DC's most iconic heroes in, but it certainly wasn't the best. We can relax in the knowledge that we might just possibly have the best on-screen Batman ever now (Affleck seems to have been born for this role), but the fact remains that Luthor, the major plot holes and the wasted potential of Doomsday and Death Of Superman just bring the film down by quite a bit.

FINAL RATING
I liked it. I would watch it again on DVD, but there were a lot of issues with it that clearly were not thought through properly before wrapping it up.

I give Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice 5/10.

 

The actor playing Alfred in The Dark Knight trilogy is Michael Caine. The new Alfred is Jeremy Irons, also known as the voice of Scar in Disney's The Lion King. He's a good actor and I feel he will be a good Alfred over time, although Caine will be hard to beat.