Batman v Superman - Dawn of Justice

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Thursday, April 7, 2016 04:30
VIEWED: 4393
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AURAPTOR

Saturday, March 26, 2016 7:31 PM

Far better than I was expecting, I'll say that right off. Save for Jessie Eisnberg as Lex Luthor , I thought the cast was spot on.

The story was well done, though I did think it kinda faltered towards the end.

It wasn't The Avengers, nor was it trying to be, though I still couldn't help but notice some basic similarities between the two.

Very watchable. I dunno why the reviews are so bad, but I liked it.

Select to view spoiler:

Bruce Wayne = Tony Stark. Both are obsessed with keeping the Earth safe from " them ", the visitors from outside our world.

Superman = Thor. Both represent " alien " powers, which despite vowing to protect the Earth, could also pose as a threat. Superman is more of a direct threat, as seen by Batman, where as Tony sees Thor as symbol for alien oppression. Which is kinda funny, as Tony was at first at odds w/ Nick Fury and the plan to weaponize the Tesseract. Tony then goes and does same thing, with the Mind Stone....

Captain America = Wonder Woman ? Well, sorta. Both play sort of a 3rd wheel to the main characters ( Thor v Ironman / Superman v Batman ) , and carry a shield that can withstand damn near anything. WW has more 'accessories', like her bracelets and lasso, but she is a woman, after all.

Lex, imo, was simply written poorly, no matter who played the part. After such legends as Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey... I think the writers tried to get too cute, and it failed. Jessie didn't, but the part sure did. I wasn't sure if he was auditioning for Lex Luthor or The Joker. Seemed like a hybrid of the two.

What kinda annoyed me was the level of destruction and over the top displays of energy /power / explosions that are seen through the movie, but mainly in the final battle. Reminded me of those silly Transformer movies.

ZEEK

Monday, March 28, 2016 10:11 PM

We had a movie day at work and that was the chosen movie. I'm so glad I was paid to see it. Otherwise I'd be even more upset. I really can't think of any redeeming qualities for the movie. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't funny. It wasn't thought provoking. It wasn't suspenseful. The best thing I can call it is CGI garbage.

Select to view spoiler:

Where to begin? Well for starters Batman isn't Batman. He's emotionally unstable moron man. None of those are qualities of comic Batman. He ends up having to steal everything from Lex Luthor who was by far the better detective. That's so very very wrong. To top it off he pulls an Anakin and goes from one extreme (hating superman) to the other (besties) in the blink of an eye due to one word. Simply awful. Not Afleck's fault. Though he also didn't seem like much of a Bruce Wayne.

Superman was angsty but not horrible. He was a bit stupid in the way he walked into an obvious trap of Luthor's and later deciding that he should be the one to wield a kryptonite weapon instead of say handing it off to Wonder Woman. All for the sake of plot, but it usually helps when the plot flows naturally rather than needing characters to be stupid.

Wonder Woman was shoe horned into the movie so that they would have someone to stand toe to toe with Doomsday while Superman was off saving Lois. That's literally the only reason they crammed her into the movie. They gave her some convoluted mission of retrieving a digital photo from a server farm. She's oddly extremely proficient with technology yet doesn't understand that having a copy of a digital photo doesn't mean it's the only one. I hear people saying she was the best character and that's sad because she only had like 4 lines. Which probably means she didn't say enough to let the bad writing taint her.

Luthor had some really bad lines. Not cheesey just bad. He was also an incredibly poor scientist. He didn't bother with clean suits or testing strange alien liquids before swimming in them. He created a monster that didn't seem to have any purpose if his initial scheme worked, but luckily for him it failed so the monster had a reason to exist.

As for the story they could have cut everything with the senator and the movie would have been much more streamlined. It's basically 2 hours of shoddy setup followed by 30 minutes of CGI action.

If you thought Gods of Egypt was amazing then this one is probably right up your alley.

WHOZIT

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 3:50 AM

I haven't see yet because I keep hearing mixed reviews, plus I hate Ben Afleck and thought he was a bad pick for Batman. This flick is to launch the up coming "Wonder Woman" and "Justice League" films coming out over the next few years, if it takes a dive in the box office in the next couple of weeks they may have a problem. Maybe Wonder Woman can save the day?

AURAPTOR

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 8:09 AM

I get that Ben Affleck isn't Christian Bale. That alone is enough to rub many fans the wrong way. Me? I got over it. No fan of Ben , as a rule, but I for one didn't hate the combo of he and Jeremy Irons.

Select to view spoiler:

This version of Batman is suppose to be older. I suppose Bale ( one year younger than Affleck ) could have done the role, but is Michael (83) really up for another bit part ? As I recall, he was 'retired' and the original Batman was presumed dead. That's part of the problem w/ so many damn reboots and actor changes for the same character. It really does mess things up.

I suppose if you're a DC purist , or more 'into' the recent movies, this may not be so very fine viewing for you. I enjoyed it though. Not as much as I enjoyed Deadpool, nor do I suspect the upcoming Captain America movie.

SHINYGOODGUY

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 2:41 PM

Hey Zeek, I really appreciate your straight-forward review, I was thinking of maybe paying to see this mess, but once I saw the trailer with Jesse Eisenberg hamming it up as Lex Luthor - I tapped out (ya know, like the Black Jack dealers do at the casino).

Anyway, I read a handful of reviews (because I had this feeling of utter disdain for the movie, confirmed by the trailers) and I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth the price of admission. Zack Snyder has gone from near genius (Watchmen) to total disaster (B vs S) $250M down the drain. I recently re-watched Batman Begins and thought, they shouldn't give movies to poor directors - Man of Steel showed some promise, until the battle scenes and that was all she wrote.

I'm guessing that this was more of the same. Thanks again!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
We had a movie day at work and that was the chosen movie. I'm so glad I was paid to see it. Otherwise I'd be even more upset. I really can't think of any redeeming qualities for the movie. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't funny. It wasn't thought provoking. It wasn't suspenseful. The best thing I can call it is CGI garbage.

Select to view spoiler:

Where to begin? Well for starters Batman isn't Batman. He's emotionally unstable moron man. None of those are qualities of comic Batman. He ends up having to steal everything from Lex Luthor who was by far the better detective. That's so very very wrong. To top it off he pulls an Anakin and goes from one extreme (hating superman) to the other (besties) in the blink of an eye due to one word. Simply awful. Not Afleck's fault. Though he also didn't seem like much of a Bruce Wayne.

Superman was angsty but not horrible. He was a bit stupid in the way he walked into an obvious trap of Luthor's and later deciding that he should be the one to wield a kryptonite weapon instead of say handing it off to Wonder Woman. All for the sake of plot, but it usually helps when the plot flows naturally rather than needing characters to be stupid.

Wonder Woman was shoe horned into the movie so that they would have someone to stand toe to toe with Doomsday while Superman was off saving Lois. That's literally the only reason they crammed her into the movie. They gave her some convoluted mission of retrieving a digital photo from a server farm. She's oddly extremely proficient with technology yet doesn't understand that having a copy of a digital photo doesn't mean it's the only one. I hear people saying she was the best character and that's sad because she only had like 4 lines. Which probably means she didn't say enough to let the bad writing taint her.

Luthor had some really bad lines. Not cheesey just bad. He was also an incredibly poor scientist. He didn't bother with clean suits or testing strange alien liquids before swimming in them. He created a monster that didn't seem to have any purpose if his initial scheme worked, but luckily for him it failed so the monster had a reason to exist.

As for the story they could have cut everything with the senator and the movie would have been much more streamlined. It's basically 2 hours of shoddy setup followed by 30 minutes of CGI action.

If you thought Gods of Egypt was amazing then this one is probably right up your alley.

ZEEK

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 9:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Zack Snyder has gone from near genius (Watchmen) to total disaster (B vs S) $250M down the drain.

That's a great way to sum up how I feel about it. I was pretty amazed by Watchmen. The music, the visuals, the dialog, the way the scenes flowed. Everything was so well done. It seems like he's lost all of that in Batman vs Superman.

Select to view spoiler:

Here's a great article about how botched this Batman is compared to his more standard representation: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/5-Major-Problems-I-Had-With-Batman-Dawn
-Justice-121157.html

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 5:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
I get that Ben Affleck isn't Christian Bale. That alone is enough to rub many fans the wrong way. Me? I got over it. No fan of Ben , as a rule, but I for one didn't hate the combo of he and Jeremy Irons.

Select to view spoiler:
This version of Batman is suppose to be older. I suppose Bale ( one year younger than Affleck ) could have done the role, but is Michael (83) really up for another bit part ? As I recall, he was 'retired' and the original Batman was presumed dead. That's part of the problem w/ so many damn reboots and actor changes for the same character. It really does mess things up.

I suppose if you're a DC purist , or more 'into' the recent movies, this may not be so very fine viewing for you. I enjoyed it though. Not as much as I enjoyed Deadpool, nor do I suspect the upcoming Captain America movie.

Who is Michael(83)?

AURAPTOR

Thursday, March 31, 2016 6:44 AM

Sorry, Michael Caine, who is 83 yrs old.

ECGORDON

Thursday, March 31, 2016 8:00 AM

I saw it today. Not great, but not as bad as reviews led me to believe. My rating would definitely be higher than the 29% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but below the 72% audience rating. At most a 6/10.

I don't have a problem with the dark and gritty story, but I do have a problem with the washed out color palette they chose for this and Man of Steel. Plus it was entirely too long. Not a comic reader but I know there have been B v S story lines before, just don't know how this compares. Also, they fell into the pattern of Spider-Man 3, at least one villain too many, should have left the last one for another movie. Also, the sound balance was off. Deafening during the action scenes, could hardly hear some dialog in the quieter scenes.

Anyone who was already disinclined to see it for reasons of either casting or the director's track record, just wait for something else to come along. Everyone else lower your expectations and watch it for the explosions. I'll likely never feel the need to watch it again, but look forward to WW and Justice League.

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Friday, April 1, 2016 4:29 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Sorry, Michael Caine, who is 83 yrs old.

OK.
Yeah, Alan Napier did pass at 85, 20 years after the series.

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