Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice -- Pint-Sized Review

So I watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I've been... unhappy with how WB has been shoehorning their way and generally fucking things over with the people making the DC TV shows, especially when all they really have under their belt is one half-decent movie (Man of Steel, which, while I think is a decent to good movie, isn't all that) and a highly overrated trilogy (Dark Knight is undoubtedly one of the best superhero movies, but the other two are definitely subpar in my books).

But that rant about embargoes or whatever are for another day. Despite all my complaints, Batman versus Superman... how can I not watch this, I ask you? And, well, it was a good movie. Not great, mind you -- it doesn't stand up to the lofty heights of superhero goodness set by the likes of The Dark Knight or Captain America: The Winter Soldier... but it's definitely an above-average movie.

I'm tired, and I'm behind on all the manga reviews and I'd rather spend my evening watching superheroes punch each other in my Teevee shows rather than typing a big analysis. But hey, we can do it in a short form!

Slight spoilers, but I won't go into details.

The Bat Bad:
Let's criticize the movie first, because hot damn there are some really deserving criticisms that the movie has.

• Pacing is a bit choppy. It was pretty solid for the first part of the movie, and then in the last third kind of went off the rails. All the great motivations that were established in the beginning that we're hungry for some payoff ended up being resolved in one of the most 'what'-inducing ways possible. 'Why did you say that name?!' indeed.
• Naked Doomsday was stupid. (Doomsday isn't a spoiler, right? He was in every trailer). Good thing he sprouted those bone spikes and stuff, but it took five minutes before he did that.
• Introducing two important characters from the comics and then killing them off. What in the actual hell? That pissed me off more than anything.
• Superman isn't exactly bad in this movie, and I still kinda liked him a bit, but it's hard to feel sympathy for him when he bolts off to brood in the icy mountains and see visions when as the movie points out, people want some answers. He's also a lot less sympathetic and relateable than Bruce in the second half, at least until Luthor reveals his trump card.
• They tried homaging way too many important storylines and I get it... but that one bit that homages Injustice and Crisis on Infinite Earths was one homage too many. It's a brave attempt at tying in to a larger plotline spanning multiple movies, but I think they really should've just saved it since it didn't do anything this movie other than making fanboys freak out (To be fair, I did) and just leave the 'bigger universe' thing hanging around the 'there are metahumans among us' instead of making all these prophetic dreams and visions and whatnot. It's not a particularly big problem, though.
• Didn't like the Knightmare scene. It means nothing to you guys who haven't watched the movie. But I didn't like it.



Batman: Hush is one of my all-time favourite comics as a kid
solely for making this fight happen

• The ending was kind of telegraphed and honestly somewhat disappointing. No one's going to believe that SPOILER EVENT will really stick that long, but at this point in the DC universe there really isn't a really justifiable reason to reverse it.

The Good:

• Holy mother of fuck the action scenes in this movie just kind of puts practically every other superhero melee fight in movies to shame. Hell, even Michael Bay's Transformers street-battle things are put to shame with the Batmobile vehicular battle in this movie. The Batmobile scene? That is going to be rewatched a gajillion times. Batman fighting like thirty people in the factory? That was impressive as all hell and I'm surprised to be impressed by a hand-to-hand combat scene. Batman versus Superman, and the Trinity versus Doomsday, was... great, and I would watch them again, but didn't really hold a candle to Batman's Batmobile rampage or his one-man army moment against KGBeast's troops.
• Many people, including myself, was unconvinced that Ben Affleck was right for the Batman role. I was far more convinced when the first trailers showed up, but with the advent of this movie I will, with no hesitation, detract every single disparaging comment I have made about Ben Affleck's suitability as Batman. Because, mother of fucks, he is an awesome Batman. He's got a better bat-growl than Bale, he's got all the awesome action scenes, he portrays a slightly-unhinged and more violent Batman which I'm surprisingly okay with. Pretty sure like half of the goons in the batmobile battle died due to collateral damage, but damn. Ben Affleck makes a great Bruce Wayne, a great Batman, and, well, I'm already (and always will be) on #TeamBatman but Ben Affleck's performance just makes it all the more easier. 
• The Batsuit looks beautiful on-screen with the proper shadowy CGI embellishments. It looked silly in stills and whatnot, but that's why it's an unfinished product, I guess.
• Can we agree that Wonder Woman is one of the best parts of the movie? Because she is. Diana's origins is shrouded in enough mystery to make us hunger for more, but they let enough through to allow us to understand that she's not just a deus ex machina -- her immortality and awesomeness and the fact that she's a metahuman (well, demigoddess) is apparent. And, well, she kicks ass! I'm 99% sure she dealt the most damage to Doomsday in that fight.
• The DC Trinity stand together in life-action form against Doomsday. How in the fuck can I not be excited? I was excited when it was Green Arrow, the Flash and Firestorm back while watching the Flash. And being that both Bruce and Diana really sold me off on their performances... yeah. I was squeeing like a little kid. 
• Luthor! Lex Luthor was the only part of the movie that I wasn't exactly sure about. I have faith in Jesse Eisenberg as an actor, but the trailers seemed to play Luthor up as this crazy manchild. Thankfully he got to show more of his superiority complex, and again while scripting could've been better, he definitely is a proper Luthor, and far truer to the more complex character in the comics as opposed to the 'mwa ha ha ha evil mastermind megalomaniac' that he's been in most Superman movies prior to this. Shame he didn't get his hair shaved earlier in the movie for the more classic Luthor look, but there was a period (which involved the Doomsday arc, funnily enough) where Luthor had curly hair.
• Slight spoilers! The fact that Luthor takes hostages and whatnot makes Superman and Batman going for a deathmatch all the more sensible. The fact that Luthor has been subtly manipulating Bruce by guilt-tripping him and whatnot also made that far more sensible. The SPOILER EVENT also probably didn't help Bruce's mentality either, and I actually liked the rants that Bruce and Luthor makes earlier about how no one manages Superman and he answers to no one. It's a well-written bit -- shame there's a lack of payoff later on.
• The Justice League hints made me smile. All the oblique references to SPOILER also makes me happy. Obviously my favourite among the new cinematic Leaguers is Aquaman, played by Jason Momoa (a.k.a. the mighty Khal Drogo himself) which, holy shit, is just seventy balls of pure undiluted manly awesomeness in his short bit in the movie. 
• Assuming we all know Batman's origin story and just saving the big murder scene as a quick retelling in the opening is great. Showing off the scariness of Batman as this wraithlike figure seen from the eyes of scared policeman is also horrifying, up to par to the best of the Nolan movies. 
• Perry White is a jackass in this movie, and I loved it. Far truer to his comic book counterpart. 
• The opening scene with Bruce Wayne driving through Metropolis while the city is being torn apart. Seeing how the little people are running, reacting to buildings getting blown up with Kryptonian punch-impacts and eye laser blasts is just nothing short of scary. It's something that's probably given like two or three reaction shots in most superhero movies, but playing it out as a proper ten-minute sequence is pretty grand.

So yeah. I definitely enjoyed the movie. Again, the ending could've been paced better, the scripting could've been tighter and we could've had gotten some proper payoff on some of the more philosophical/political questions raised earlier in the movie. I also wished that some people like Mercy and Alfred got to do more, but damn it, this image on the right is why I watched the movie and it did not disappoint on that aspect. The rest of the movie is pretty messy, though.