Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Movie Review!!!

BvS or just plain BS?? Read our review to find out!!!

After about a year I’ve been forced to break my online silence with a new movie review.

But what movie could bring me out of retirement, what movie critically shunned by the world, did I enjoy so much that I felt compelled to write again??

Answer: London Has Fallen!!

No joke, it’s a damn fine action movie with some solid set pieces!

The one-take firefight sequence towards the end is pretty damn awesome, like something out of Gears of War and easily puts to shame the now famous one-take sequences from both Daredevil seasons 1 and 2.

What did you think I was gonna say? Batman v Superman?? Haha!!! I don’t think so!

But that’s the movie that’s getting people talking right now, so here ya go! Batman v Superman reviewed!!!

The story takes place eighteen months after all the destruction seen in Man of Steel.

Metropolis and the world at large are still reeling from the attempted alien invasion helmed by General Zod, struggling to come to terms with the discovery of aliens and a guy in our midst with enough power to destroy the entire world if he wanted to.

Having witnessed the destruction and chaos first hand, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is none too pleased. He thinks that Superman (Henry Cavill) is a threat to the world and feels that only he can redress the power balance and sets out on a crazy mission to do so.

Supes on the other hand is not too pleased either, keen to expose Batman as nothing more than a two-bit vigilante in the neighbouring city of Gotham.

However, it turns out Luthor is plotting to finish them both off and unleashes a foe on the world that both Bat and Supes combined might not be able to take care of without a certain woman’s touch! Hint hint..

Anyone who’s seen the trailer should be familiar with at least this much.

So is it a good movie?

Sadly, not really.

Even in a superhero movie about people with unbelievable powers, I need there to be some kind of coherence in terms of story and plot to believe what’s actually going on.

BvS frequently made leaps in terms of story and narrative that left me scratching my head (more of that later).

Despite Director Zack Synder’s best efforts to make an uber serious, dark and gritty superhero movie, lots of scenes just came across as plain silly.  It feels almost as if the filmmakers have deliberately gone out of their way to be anti-Marvel, not for the sake of better filmmaking, but just for the sake of being anti-Marvel.  It just reeks of trying too hard.

So as you can imagine, the entire movie is shrouded in darkness, ominous undertones of music and very strange pseudo-religious imagery.

If Superman is the misunderstood Jesus figure, what does that make Batman?  Is that what Snyder wants us to ask?

The actual showdown between Superman and Batman is criminally brief with a literal laugh out loud conclusion that essentially undercuts the gravity of what’s at risk and what the entire movie has been trying so hard to portray.

I was also pretty disappointed at how pro-Batman this movie is.  It’s really a disservice to Supes and kind of trashes his image as well as his abilities.

Their final, yet brief, showdown is no different.  Very one sided and kinda lame.  It would have been much cooler had the fight been more even in tone with no clear winner, so that fans could continue to debate who their favourite was and who would win.

I couldn’t help but think of the awesome fight between Jackie Chan and Jet Li in The Forbidden Kingdom, it’s so balanced that fans can continue to argue their favourites and enjoy what’s going on long after the movie is finished.

The only real saving grace for this movie was Wonder Woman. 

Anyone who was worried Gal Gadot wouldn’t be up to the task can rest assured.  Having spent two years serving in the Israeli Military Defense Forces, this ‘Gal’ is definitely qualified!

The moment she blasts onto the screen is when this movie finally starts to feel like a superhero movie. 

A badass guitar riff starts screaming (a bit of a rip-off of the intro of Immigrant by Led Zeppelin but pretty awesome nonetheless) and gone are the crappy ominous undertones that plague the rest of the movie.

The action ramps up, lasers are flying out of everyone’s face, epic destruction everywhere, it all starts flying off the hook!

But it’s all just too little too late and after waiting two hours to see the obvious unfold, the payoff was still not good enough.

Cavill, Affleck and Gal Gadot do the best they can with the lackluster material they’ve been given, playing their respective roles with conviction, but although they might be able to save Metropolis together they sure can’t save this movie!

I haven’t mentioned Lois Lane and Lex Luthor and that’s probably doing the movie a favour.

Sure it sets up future Justice League movies but we still haven’t been given a good enough reason to care.

I’m not a professional movie critic, I’m just a guy that likes decent movies and this just didn’t hit the spot by a long way!

Disappointing and depressing, literally!

This concludes the spoiler free part of the review.  Anyone interested in a more detailed breakdown, keep reading below!

Rating 2 out of 5.

***WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD***

Ok, now we can have some fun.

Let’s face it, these two characters simply don’t hold up that well from when they were created a million years ago.

It doesn’t matter how dark you make these movies, how much thick black paint you splash over everything, you can’t hide the core weaknesses of these characters.

I’m not a hardcore DC fan but I know enough to have some expectations about these characters.

Unfortunately, DC fanboys and their Bats and Supes facts are part of the reason I found so many elements in this movie laughable, especially when they comment that this is the truest and most accurate representation of Batman that we’ve seen on screen thus far.

Really??

Batman is supposedly one of the smartest characters in the DC universe, so smart he can allegedly defeat anyone in the DC universe if he’s given enough time to prepare.

I think I’m pretty average in terms of smarts but even I reckon I could have outsmarted most of the characters in this movie.

Watching Batman and his children’s detective level sleuthing skills was indeed quite amusing.  He's definitely no Sherlock!

Let’s start with the party hosted by Luthor.

So billionaire Bruce Wayne is there at the party trying to find out what Luthor is up to, pops down in the middle of a huge party in plain sight to Luthor’s computer room, attaches a dongle to clone info and uses the old ‘I was looking for the toilet’ routine to explain why he’s down there when he’s caught, yes you heard right, the super sleuth gets caught! Genius!

I imagine everyone would be watching Wayne’s every move at the party seeing as he’s supposed to be a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. 

The whole party scene is rather bizarre.  Fair enough Lex knows Wayne but why would he know who small time news reporter Clark Kent is? 

Was it perhaps because at this point he already knew that they’re actually Superman and Batman? 

Agreed Clark’s glasses were never a good disguise anyway but now it seems as if he’s stopped trying completely!  Clark is living with Lois Lane, yet Superman will fly down and kiss Lois Lane on the streets in full view!  Seems the only person who hadn’t figured out that Superman’s alter ego was genius Bruce Wayne.

Or perhaps Bruce has prosopagnosia?  Which would explain the following:

Bruce meets Wonder Woman for the first time at the same party, then sees photos of her in complete warrior gear in the meta-human files he stole from Luthor but still doesn’t know what’s going on when they’re joining forces to defeat Doomsday, asking Supes if she’s with him?  You’ve already met her multiple times dammit!  I know Doomsday is scary and all but keep it together man!  

The Doomsday showdown is proof that it's simply not possible for Batman to always have time to prepare for everything and that Batman, despite all his lame detective skills, still hadn’t figured out what Luthor had really been planning.

And why does Luthor have well designed superhero logos for each of the meta-humans? Is he designing the official clothes and outfits for the Justice League?

If Luthor is so shady in his enterprises in the underworld, why does he even need government approval to import the kryptonite from the bottom of the sea?  For that matter, why haven’t the government retrieved it themselves?

Zuckerberg, sorry, Luthor has some really ridiculous plan to frame Supes for the shooting of innocents in Africa while he was there rescuing Lois Lane (where he could’ve saved photographer friend Jimmy Olsen too if he was there like a few seconds earlier – yeah bet you didn’t know that was him).

Why would Supes need to use guns to kill people? Seems like a pretty obvious setup right?

Not to Batman it doesn’t! To him this means Superman’s even more of a threat! Then when the courthouse explodes killing more innocents, that’s the final straw.

Mr. Super-Detective gets his panties in a twist, turns on the Bat-Signal and just waits in the rain for probably several hours for Supes to turn up and fight him.  Yet another smart move.

By the way, these cities must be damn tiny – everyone can see the Bat-Signal all the way in Gotham city while stood at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. 

The main BvS fight is truly unnecessary and that’s the worst part of it.  Batman acts like a spoilt brat not even willing to let Supes speak, it’s literally like watching a pair of school kids bickering.

Batman is pretty much out for blood! For crimes against humanity, for the thousands that died in Man of Steel, Supes is gonna go bye-bye.

But wait!! Martha! That’s right!  Both Supes and Batsy’s moms have the same name, so it’s all cool, just forget that I was about to kill you like a second ago, we’re bros now - I’ll die for you man!  The scene literally flips on a dime, it’s completely unbelievable.

Subsequently Batman spends most of the time running and hiding during the Doomsday fight, which really doesn’t do much for his street cred either.

Once Wonder Woman and Supes have taken care of everything, Batman proclaims that ‘people like us’ should stick together! Haha!  Maybe he’s just too scared to be alone after seeing Doomsday.

So if this is the real, true Batman as so many fans are proclaiming, then that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

Supes doesn’t get to fare much better either unfortunately. 

If he could hear Lois Lane’s heartbeat and save her within a split second in Africa and even catch her falling off a building, why couldn’t he save all those people in the courthouse or even rescue his mom himself rather than approaching Batman and nearly getting killed.

Hell, Supes is supposed to be so crazy fast and powerful that he should’ve been able to completely disarm Batman, remove all his weapons and tools, before he’s even able to fire a round from his kryptonite-fart gun.

Thankfully we have a pretty crazy semi-enjoyable finale to the movie, not enough to save the movie, but it tries.

It’s also a shame that the Doomsday character was bastardized too. From his creation story to his appearance, he looks almost looks like they just re-hashed the CGI Kilowog character from the crappy Green Lantern movie.

Which leads me to Luthor’s ridiculous plan – creating Doomsday.  How could he have possibly known what he was creating?  There’s no way he could have known that mixing his DNA with Zod’s would create a beast and who’s to say the beast wouldn’t just kill him and everyone else?

And finally, my last point on this epic rant!

Batman’s ridiculous visions!  He keeps falling asleep and going Inception with visions within dreams and stuff.  I actually thought perhaps they were introducing some kind of mental health disorder into the characters profile.

But nope – turns out these visions were in fact related to super-villain Darkseid whom the Justice League will be facing off against in future movies and that guy with the metal bowl on his head was the Flash.

How on earth are we supposed to know this?  I have no idea!  There’s literally no explanation for any of these scenes in the movie and the only reason I even know is because of what people have been posting online.

Most moviegoers will probably think Batman is just some really sleepy guy with weird dreams.

So there you have it.

My essay on why this movie sucked!

To summarize in one line - serious but childish! Enjoy!!!

Bobby