Well, I saw it. I'm….not really sure where I stand. It wasn't OMG horrible because I knew what to expect going in, partially due to you guys' thoughts, and partially because I was very skepetical with the casting choices and what they were crammingin…
! Disclaimer: I'm going to forget some stuff.
! So everything starts with the funeral of the Waynes. Bruce runs off in his grief, we cut to a flashback with Joe Chill….everyone knows the story of the Bats, right? But then he falls into a cave....sees bats....foreshadowing/inspiration.....and then they......carry him upward? Uhhhh....what?
! We move to the end of Man of Steel, where Bruce is seeing the destruction caused by Superman battling Zod. I really will give this movie credit for focusing on the main problem people had with Man of Steel.....collateral damage. It's serious stuff, and it should be overlooked to how easily it is for innocents to die in this warzone of a battle. Unforunately, I had to suspend my disbelief yet again - because there was one part, with the fire blasting through his car, then the sharp turn? Totally should've been more banged up on that. Or y'know, dead.
! Lois Lane's latest investigation into a terrorist cell turns deadly, but luckily Superman comes in to save the day. Which causes more casualities and brings up the (renewed) debate of how dangerous he really is.
! Then we see…...sigh Lex Luthor.
! I really could not dig this performance in the slightest. It didn't feel like Lex Luthor, it felt like Jesse Eisenburg with a wig snorting lines between takes. Why so.....energetic and hammy? It's like the psycho-ness of the Joker crossed with Mark Zuckerberg's gangly form. Oh gods....putting a candy in the senator's mouth? White sneakers with his fancy clothes? Playing ball when he gets introduced?
! Before I can continue....I can't! The movie kinda jumps around to what it wants to focus on. Bats is focusing on a Russian gangster, sexy bath time with Lois Lane???, Luthor begins his study of the dead Zod...Daily Planet stuff....I'm exaggerating slightly, but really, I felt like this could've been two stand-alone movies.
! On the plus side, Alfred was amazing!
! The fan is stroked when a disabled man is arrested on vandalizing a statue of Superman (Heroes Park? Okay, I'm gonna assume it was dedicated to war veterans before this movie, to presume some semblance of subtly). We see Batman in action against a slaver (the angle where the cop was looking for him felt like a jump scare waiting to happen), Clark Kent is more interested in covering Gotham crime than sports.
! Then we reach some of the most bizarre sequences in this damn movie.
! 1) Luthor tries to convince Senator….uh, June [last name] in his father's study….which feels really creepy, like he'd skin her alive in his basement if she said no to the weapon. Then you get the pee metaphor and.....more on that later.
! 2) Batman waiting for the encryption of Luthor's data. (which Wonder Woman stole? After an hour I forgot which side female character was which. Luthor's assistant? Wonder Woman? The dark-haired woman at the Daily Planet? Can we get some names and characterization, please?). Which leads to....
a) montage of him fighting terrorists - okay I know no gun Batman was not always there, but with a trench coat, that bulky armor, and that firearm, was I watching a deleted scene from Mad Max or something? It just felt so wrong, style-wise.
b) The. goddamn. Flash. cameo. What the hell was that? This is exactly why I was not super thrilled to see the "Dawn of Justice" angle. Snyder, Goyer, you guys can't just cram in a bunch of superhero cameos to make the fans cream themselves. This is not the Avengers! So Flash....comes back in time to warn Batman. Or not, cuz it was a dream!
- The CGI bat monster. What. Literally what.
! Let's jump back to the pee thing. Superman arrives at Washington for a hearing about the terrorist cell thing, everyone but Luthor shows up....again, I will give the movie serious credit for showing both the supreme love (the Day of the Dead fire) and supreme hate (the Congress protests) people get when a god-like figure comes and towers over the rest of society.
! .....anyways, when the senator begins her speech, she notices a literal jar of Luthor's pee, horror crosses her face when she sees him not there, and the freaking Captiol blows up. Jesus Christ that's actually pretty dark. Why use f**king pee as a "cute" callback?
! Speaking of Luthor, Batman chases down his kryptonite shipment via the Russian mobster, in the deleted scene of Fast 8. Unforunately, he falls when Superman stops his car (people DID laugh at the batmobile crashing, hand to god). Then he uses the delivered kryptonite to make his lolz evil experiment....
! .....I'm kinda confused, really. Why the hate for Superman? ...okay yes, god monster in our midst thing, but I never got that impression from Luthor at any point in time. Wasn't there supposed to be some business reason, what with a Lexicorp truck getting destroyed in MoS? It just seemed like "welp, I'm evil, and the plot demands I cause tension between these two! twirls mustache ....maybe I'm dumb and missed it, because I was trying to focus on the 100 different plotpoints of this movie! Lois Lane....y'know, tries to prove her revelancy in her investigation of the true matters of the terrorist cell, but the movie just kept jumping around to her, like they didn't know what.
! She gets kidnapped, Supes goes to Luthor, who has used Martha Kent as a hostage. Damn. He's got one hour to bring Bats' head.
! I will say that the fight between the two was pretty intense, but again, maybe it's just me, but I felt like Bruce should've been crippled/dead with a few of the impacts and throws. No blood? Cue awesome sequence where Bat wears him down to his parent's tomb and readies the spear.
! ...oh right, the mother name thing. In the context of the scene, it wasn't as bad as I thought (mother = context that Supes is human and not just a vengeful god)...maybe it would've met a lot more if we had some more scenes with each mother. As such, it feels....meh. Batman gets to be awesome and beat up a bunch of mooks to free Ma Kent, and the two head to take down Luthor (who, for some reason, is allowed to ramble on and on in his ship base, instead of Supes literally reaching out and breaking his goddamn spin so he can't do anything)
! Doomsday was one of the dumbest things about this movie. The first half could've worked fine as a standalone movie! In fact - and I will say more below - you could've cued the credits when Batman saw the Wonder Woman picture. But as for our monster....he's just a monster, "rawr Krypton"! kinda deal. CGI didn't help much. The movie seriously, could've, and should've NOT have used this thing in the last 45 minutes.
! Let's go back to Wonder Woman. Maybe I don't know much about the comics, but she seemed to be pretty active in that WW1 photo. What happened? Why didn't she have more of a presence as a superhero when she caught wind of the Krypton god fighting Zod two years ago? Let's ask that with another question - why is she even in this movie? WW is cool. She's pretty badass. But I moaned in discomfort the second I heard she was going to be crammed in, and it really didn't admit to anything more than Justice League cameos and the plot needing her help to take down Doomsday. Why didn't she have her own movie?
The final battle is pretty flashy and turns Gotham into a goddamn war zone. Like wtf, how many people died in this movie? Then we have the tedious exchange of Lois dropping the spear in the water (to protect her luv?) then trying in vain to get it back like 10 minutes later! WW ties him up, Batman throws a grenade, and Supes stabs Doomsday…..and killing himself.
! You just gotta love the second of WW falling down, spreading her legs for dat money shot, and smirking for a halfsecond in the Doomsday battle. Sexy!!!1!
! Anyways, Superman is dead, but I left in the funeral scene.
! The whole exchange of WW looking up at the other superheroes was like the Sinster Six costume outlines in Amazing Spiderman 2. Good for comic book references, sets up the hype, but is the result of an overambitious director and drags down the current movie.
! I didn't hate this movie, but it couldn't keep its focus steady and slipped on its face trying to juggle so many plot points. Batman should've had his own movie to breathe in, and so should've Wonder Woman.
! I will say I had more enjoyment than MoS, but that was mainly because I prefer Batman to Superman.