Movie Review: Batman V Superman - Dawn of Justice

Let me preface this review by saying that I really wanted to like this movie. I wanted to watch this movie and accept it with all its flaws, if it had any, and I wanted to hail it as the next greatest movie since The Dark Knight.

Let’s just say I am sorely disappointed.

Batman V Superman:  Dawn of Justice, in all aspects should have been a great movie. It had two of the world’s most beloved heroes facing off against each other. It has a stylish director and good producers and all the money they could get from WB. Heck they also have Batfleck. And despite all this, Dawn of Justice is not a good movie. Where did it all go wrong?

Story and Writing:

The story is pretty straight forward; there is an all powerful alien on earth whose battle with another alien destroyed a city in the last movie. But he did save the earth. How do people react to his presence? A pretty simple and straightforward premise, but it is bogged down by unnecessary subplots, stupid writing decisions and god awful moments which made me cringe.

Zack Snyder is a stylish director, I’ll give him that. Some of the scenes in this movie are breathtaking. But, now that I think about it, that’s pretty much all this movie had going for it.

I have immense respect for writers, in any field in general. They have to write a story which is cohesive and appeals to audiences. I’m sure the expectations on the writers must have been sky high and I’m sure that was even more pressure on them to write a perfect script, because this was one of the most expected movies in the world.

Unfortunately, the writing in this movie is lazy as fu-- (*cough*)… sorry choked for a moment there…. Where was I?

The writing is haphazard and the movie refuses to flow from scene to scene. Some of the plot points make no sense, and cameos have been shoehorned in like nobody’s business. There is so much going on, so many branching story lines and characters, which have no need to be in the plot, and events which I can just remove in my head and make an immensely tighter and faster paced film.

The way Wonder Woman was written into the film was flimsy, and she’s supposed to be a main character. The reason why Batman and Superman fight is pretty much a misunderstanding which, I’m sure; two intellectual beings like Batman and Superman could talk over and solve.

And for a movie called Batman V Superman, they don’t really fight that much.

Honestly the only good thing I can say about story and writing is that it has been executed stylishly, for what it is.

Acting:

Here comes some of the good stuff.  The acting in the movie is pretty good overall. But the best part of the whole movie is Ben Affleck as Batman. While I wasn’t entirely happy with how this interpretation of Batman turned out, I was amazed by his performance. He captures Bruce Wayne and Batman really well. Any problems I had with Affleck were because of the writing and not in any way because of this guy’s performance.

Henry Cavill is a decent Superman. He doesn’t have any groundbreaking moments in the film, and for what it’s worth he definitely embodies the physicality of Superman. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was good, but I don’t think there is much here to judge her acting on. She does embody the role well, but being a fan of the comics, I would have preferred a, let’s just say, fuller actress in the role. But I was pumped when she showed up in the climax, so… yeah. The supporting cast is good, even if they don’t really have that much to do.

Now for the bad stuff. Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor… I’m sorry, I wasn’t really convinced when they cast him, and now I just outright hate his take on the character. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt, that it was the writers and not him that screwed up the characters, but his acting didn’t help much either. Suffice to say I was utterly disappointed.

Amy Adams as Lois Lane is just unnecessary to the plot. Completely useless, she just exists as a damsel in distress for Superman to save. The writers were struggling to make her a relevant character and you can tell.

Cinematography, Editing and Visual Effects:

The cinematography and visual effects in this movie are really good. They do have Zack Snyder’s 

visual flair of high contrast and saturation and, they look really great on the big screen. The place where the movie fails however is the editing.

The editing is just plain bad. It feels as if some scenes were missing and what’s worse is that the movie suffers a lot of pacing issues because of the way this movie is written and edited. It would have been infinitely better if some more scenes and plot lines had been cut and they had focused on the 

main characters fighting.

Music:

The Music by Hans Zimmer is incredible, but one thing which I felt was that sometimes the music didn’t fit the scene. I did discuss this with my dad, who also works in music production and he too agreed.

Final Thoughts:

This movie should have been great. I wanted it to be great. It is, at best, just decent. Some of the story lines and some of the characters were just unnecessary and inconsequential. The movie didn’t really do justice to the title and definitely didn’t live up to the hype. What’s worse, if you saw the second trailer you know the plot of the movie.

Something that I would like to mention is that the movie makes a decision in the climax, and if it had stuck to it, I probably would have forgiven half of the stuff I mentioned above. But as it stands, the movie didn’t have the balls to do it so another disappointment to the list.

Conclusion:

This movie is a testament to the fact that Zack Snyder is Style over Substance. But unfortunately, much like Sucker Punch, a stylish movie is not always a good movie.

I’ll be honest and say that I wanted to like this movie more than Captain America: Civil War. But for what this movie is, I’m not entirely sure that it is going to happen. It isn’t by any stretch a BAD movie. It’s just not a good one either.

I give Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice a 6.5 out of 10.

Check this out if you are a really big fan. If not I’m sure Star Movies will air it before the end of the year and you don’t have to waste 150 bucks.

Peace!