Ultimately, this movie still fails. I have not actually watched the original BVS, but having just watched the Ultimate Edition I have to say sorry to anyone who watched the original. The Ultimate Edition is basically the Snyder Cut of the original Batman V Superman movie and it still has a lot of issues. The story follows Batman's distaste for Superman (Henry Cavill) and vice versa, which is enhanced by Lex Luthor’s controlling behind the scenes, and that eventually causes Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman to go to war against each other. There are a lot of things that I just did not enjoy about this movie, and the takes on these characters, but this movie still had its good moments.
First of all, I truly believe this movie could be 10x better, if Batman weren’t in it. I don’t think Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Lex Luthor was all that bad, although I don’t necessarily think it was great either. I just believe that if this movie would’ve been Man of Steel 2, with Lex deceiving Clark, making him think that the world hated Superman and that he wasn’t a symbol for hope, while Lois found the truth that the people who were speaking out against Superman were being manipulated by Lex too, and then Lex releases Doomsday once Clark gets back in action, this movie could’ve been a lot better. All of this really just says that I did not enjoy Batman in this movie.
Batman does not kill. That is like rule one when you are creating a Batman character. He doesn’t kill, he doesn’t use guns, and he doesn’t wear a silly looking coat. Ben Affleck is a good actor. I think he could have been a good Batman, but Snyder and the writers clearly just don’t understand Batman’s character. They gave us an amazing fight scene, referring to the warehouse scene, but other than that I just don’t love what they did with his character. Going back to the no killing rule Batman has, if Batman doesn’t have that then I don’t understand why he has a problem with Superman.
A huge part of the movie that just fell to the wayside for me, was Lois’s search to prove that Superman did not kill whatever people he was accused of killing. It just felt like they gave Lois (Amy Adams) something to do, but that something never had any ramifications to it. She found out Superman was being framed, but by then it didn’t matter because Batman and Superman were already fighting. And then it wasn’t even her revealing that Superman was being framed that caused them to stop. They stopped fighting because Superman and Batman have the same named mothers. I’m not mad at that, but I don’t think it was good either. They set it up through the whole movie. Superman was lying there about to die like Bruce’s father and their last words would have both been Martha. It showed Superman’s humanity to Batman, that the last thing he wanted was to save his mother. Another part of the movie that just didn’t work for me was Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. I love Gal Gadot and think her as Wonder Woman is one of the best superhero castings ever, but in this movie her character just wasn’t given much to do except be secretive about who she was and build up a faint connection with Bruce Wayne. So in the final battle she felt a little out of place as she didn’t have a big lead up into it.
A movie is only as good as its villain. Lex Luthor…I can confidently say that this is a portrayal of Lex Luthor. I can understand why people did not like Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of the character and I don’t blame them, but I just think that it was more of a writing or directing issue than it was his acting. I think he played the role of an insane madman who is trying to control everything behind the scenes pretty well, but the way his character is, it made it hard to believe that he is just going to trick Batman and Superman. The one thing that I loved that this character did is release Doomsday. The final battle scene between the three leaders of the Justice League and Doomsday was amazing to watch and felt intense. It was an amazing final battle to a lackluster movie.
Batman V Superman is not the blockbuster it should’ve been and even with Zack Snyder’s fixes I still think it falls flat of what you would expect from a movie featuring the three biggest characters in DC. Henry Cavill is still an underrated Superman, but his performance was not enough to keep this movie afloat. I would say if you want to watch a 3 hour long superhero movie, go watch Avengers: Endgame. Although this movie did fall flat in the plot department I can say that it gave us two amazing fight scenes with the warehouse fight and the final Doomsday fight. And those two scenes really carry this movie as the rest of the movie teeters on being okay to bad.
4.7/10 ☆
4/10😁
Three hours of just blah. The plot was not it and was honestly confusing at times. I am just now realizing I didn’t even give Superman his own paragraph and I think that says a lot when a person in the title of the movie is just completely forgotten in a review written about the movie. I am also a massive Batman fan, so seeing him kill just takes me out of the story and just makes me wonder if Snyder even knows anything about Batman.
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