This is a tough one. I’m a mark for Batman and was anxious to see this from the moment it was announced. I don’t agree with the brutal reviews, but it’s undeniable that a lot of weird choices were made to get Batman and Superman to fight. I enjoyed myself, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice could have and should have been much better. Spoilers all over the place.

I like Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne and Batman. I wasn’t up in arms when he was cast I think he’s one of the better ones we’ve had on screen. He fits both personas and this Batman is the fighter we’ve always wanted to see on film. The Arkham games come to life and all of his costumes look spot on. Most of his motivations work with Batman lore and follow many established stories (Batman has plans for every Justice League member in case they break bad. He trusts no one, it’s what he does). He kills a bunch of people, though. I can wave away throwing people into walls by saying “He’ll get out of a hospital eventually.” But when he guns down people in the Batplane? He should be firing smoke/gas canisters, not bullets. That car he dragged around and used as a projectile? They’re all dead. Change that so he just disables the cars out of the chase. It’s set up that he’s at wits end for going out as Batman every night for 20 years but it comes off as him being lazy. Batman doesn’t get lazy.

Superman isn’t Superman enough. I understand him at the start. His depression and being upset that his actions cause people to fear him. But he still goes out and helps everyone he can. For some reason, that emotion somehow gets rolled into anger on screen. He glowers a lot. That’s Batman’s thing, not Superman’s. He straight up threatens Batman and that justifies Batman to try and take him down. It’s heavy handed, weird and a shortcut on the writers part. There’s a lot of needless edges to the dialog, where there is any. That’s one of the major problems, there’s too much silent mean mugging going on. This sounds like a section from the D.A.R.E handbook, but Superman needed to take the ultimate high road with Batman and just refuse to fight him and explain what was going on. He clearly manhandles Batman so why not just hold him down and talk to him (I know why, the rest of the movie would have to be basically rewritten)? When he meets Batman at the Batsignal, he opens up to talk Batman down but gets annoyed (reads as angry) when he’s forced to defend himself from Batman’s first wave of offense. It’s a forced fight.

For the most part, I like Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. I’ve never been a hardcore fan of the character, but I like the general ideas and he does some downright devious stuff to get what he wants. As the general theme of this movie, not all of it is handled well. Not enough is given to his ego, jealousy, and motivation. His exposition when he talks to other characters gets into rough, overwritten and clumsy territory. In an effort to make Lex seem smart and witty, the writers came up with many esoteric lines that don’t work and are just confusing. It’s like Dennis Miller got a crack at the script for some reason. When he loses his train of thought and rambles like a nutter should have been taken out, that’s not Lex either.

Wonder Woman, on the other hand, they landed with both feet squarely on the ground. Love Gal Gadot in every scene she’s in, I wish there was more of her. She needs to talk to Batman and Superman way more! She’s amazing in action. Her entrance in battle got cheers from the audience and seeing her smile as she got back up after getting knocked down was perfect. I’m looking forward to her solo movie now.

Doomsday looked a lot better in the final film than the trailers. That whole sequence was a ton of fun. I don’t mind the ending and I really dug seeing the silver S, it’s a nice reference.

The way it stands BvS could use some simplification to bolster the best parts.  The easiest thing to do is to streamline the first act to cut down on the jumping around. We don’t need to see the Wayne’s get killed. It’s done, everyone knows Batman’s motivation. Dump the dreams and premonitions too, they add nothing and are confusing jumps out of the story we should be focusing on.  Tossing those dreams also means that time travel Flash in the Batcave can work better. Timing the appearance right after Bruce wakes up from a nightmare (or does he?) makes it look like another dream and you don’t know what you’re supposed to take away from it.

The moment that bonds Batman and Superman to work together doesn’t work right. The dialog just needs to be reworked (I keep coming back to this motif, don’t I?). Instead of the name “Martha” getting Bruce’s (confused) attention, doesn’t it make more sense for the downed Man of Steel to directly appeal to Bruce with “You are going to let Lex  kill my mother”? I think that’s a more elegant way to get Bruce to stop and listen.

There are big logic jumps for characters in the last act, many of which seemed like parts were edited out. Lois does things to help out that she has no way of knowing she would need to do. Lex’s less dialog does a hardcore reference to Darkseid that most people will not get. I only knew the reference because I saw an extended scene of Lex in the spaceship that was cut online. Cutting that earlier stuff could have meant having the time to leave that in. There are a lot of plot details that rely on hardcore DC comic knowledge to understand. That adds to the confusion.

Let’s lighten things up too while we’re at it. Ma Kent’s line, “I thought so. It’s the cape.” That’s great! More of that!

As much as Nolan’s movies lifted from The Dark Knight Returns, BvS went whole hog and it’s worse because of it. It uses the results of that book without the correct set up so those major themes don’t work right. An original idea could have worked much better. This should have been Batman/Superman not BvS.

As messy as it is, I did like quite a bit of this. I liked it more than Dark Knight Rises which had more than a few ponderous decisions in it.  Despite the dark pallet, a lot of this movie looks fantastic. I don’t understand why they put a dark filter over all the day scenes but that’s what they did. There are some striking comic book panels captured to film and Zack Snyder didn’t go overboard with the CG. I dig the main character themes (WW’s is amazing) by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL too.  Sure there’s wasted potential here, but there’s a lot set up by the end that I’m looking forward to. I liked seeing the introduction of the Justice League members and I’m optimistic they’ll get those solo movies right. Make these characters live and work together like they do on the page and these DC movies will take flight.