BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

“The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world. God versus Man. Day versus Night. Son of Krypton versus Bat of Gotham.”

So, um…Yeah. Turns out critics can be wrong. Sort of. Maybe. I’m…I’m still finding my place.

It began with the announcement at the 2013 comic con: “I want you to remember Clark, in all the years to come, in all your most private moments, I want you to remember my hand at you throat. I want you to remember the one man who beat you.” Followed by this logo:

Now that’s how you reveal a Batman v Superman movie. And now, it’s actually here. The two most famous superheroes ever made, going head to head on the big screen. Hell yeah.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been worried about this movie for a long time. Mainly because it seemed like having the entire Justice League in a movie called Batman v Superman ran the risk of having way too many plots going on. Actually though, they handled the Justice League characters really well. While there is one scene where some really confusing shit goes down, other than that, don’t expect them to take up much screen time.

There are only two things that don’t sit right with me about this movie. The first is Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Sorry, Lex Luthor Jr. A lot of people were not happy with his casting in the role, and now I can see why. Instead of playing the evil businessman that currently stands in the DC lore, he plays Luthor as this weird, anti-social, snivelling little brat. It really doesn’t work very well, considering the years of lore Luthor was part of in the comics.

The second thing is the pacing. For superhero movies these days, we’re used to a cool fight scene to kick things off, then the storytelling part, then the big end battle. For Batman v Superman, apart from the flashback scene at the start, the pacing for the majority of the movie is…slow, to say the least. Apart from about two minutes of awesomeness sometime around the middle of the movie, both the Batman fighting Superman scenes and the big battle at the end both take place right at the end of the movie. That includes the completely awesome and brutal Batman scene shown in the last trailer.

Small spoiler: You can forget Batman’s no killing rule.

I’m still mostly undecided on the soundtrack, but I think I’m swaying more to the ‘meh’ side of things. Yes, it’s good in places, but it’s also very repetitive. It feels like the settled with making a theme for each hero, then called it a day. Actually, scratch that. I just listened to it again, and it's pretty awesome. Especially Wonder Woman's theme 'Is She With You?'.

Ok, let’s leave the bad stuff behind and move onto the good stuff before the Marvel minions start getting ahead of themselves.

When Ben Affleck was cast as Batman, there was an ever so slight fan backlash. Just kidding. It was huge. But, having seen the film, I have to say his version of the Dark Knight, suit, Batmobile, performance, etc., is pretty much the perfect embodiment of Batman. Well, almost perfect. Affleck’s acting with Conroy’s voice would be perfect, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. I guess we'll just have to make do with awesome shots like these:

Affleck’s performance certainly stands as one of the high points of the movie. It really puts Henry Cavill’s Superman to shame, mostly because he’s still using this one facial expression all the time:

Like, all the time.

I can’t really say much for the rest of the performances in this movie, because they’re all fairly average. Well, apart from Jeremy Irons as Alfred. His one liners and typical Jeremy Irons voice make the character stand out in every scene he’s in.

Aside from Affleck’s brilliant performance of Batman, the best parts of this movie are definitely the cameo from a certain scarlet speedster and the final act of the film. And you thought Man of Steel had too much destruction. The two final fights are both pretty epic, even if the second can feel slightly shoe-horned in. Then again, who wouldn’t want to see the three biggest DC names go head to head with Doomsday?

Oh, and one last good thing, it actually has story telling. Debatably too much, but at least it's got it. It's not just another superhero movie where it's the team of good guys fighting a GCI army. I'm looking at you, Avengers. Both of you.

All in all, for a film titled Batman v Superman, I expected a bit more Batman v Superman. Yes, it’s job in the end is to lead into Justice League, but I’ve had enough of films only existing to set up the big picture. Both Amazing Spider-Man films did it, and they were both dreadful. Hunger Games did it, and those got worse with each instalment. I can see people having one of two viewpoints towards this. On the one hand, you might hate it. Probably because Marvel have force fed you so many of their movies, you're not open to admitted DC even exists anymore. In which case, I feel sorry for you. You're missing out. On the other hand, you’ll like it. I mean, come on, it’s Batman and Superman, in the same movie. Despite my ever so slight pro DC nature, I do genuinely think this movie would have benefitted from more fight time between the two heroes, or just being a team up movie instead. Or just being a solo Batman movie. That being said, I am now super pumped for the Justice League movie.

7/10