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This is not mine. This is a brilliant write up by r/JLVD2

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'''TL;DR: It fails on every level. It fails as a film, divorced from it's source material, thanks to being creaky, boring, and full of holes, and failing to make me care about the characters. It fails as an adaptation by utterly missing the point of the two leads, to the point where they are both idiot murderers.'''

[SPOILERS AHOY] Okay, so leaving aside its wretched, abysmal portrayal of some old and beloved characters, here are all the things I saw wrong with Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice (aka Zack Snyder’s Garbage Fire) from the point of view of someone who loves and critiques the art forms of cinema and storytelling:

First of all, from a narrative point of view, the film is a mess. The first hour or so is so convoluted and poorly explained that I have a real hard time telling you what’s going on.

Like, Amy Adam’s character is in Africa interviewing an evil general for some reason, in a camp full of bad guys. Then half of those bad guys shoot the other bad guys, and run away? Which we only find out, later, was to maybe make Amy Adams’ boyfriend, Flying Henry Cavill, mad, or something? Who knows.

Then there’s Ben Affleck, who I guess is tracking something called The White Portuguese, and he’s going about it by beating up criminals. Which is all fine and good. Except it turns out he’s actually looking for a ship, which he would have known had he used Google.

Turns out the thing on the White Portuguese is an alien rock that Ben Affleck needs to kill Henry Cavill. Which is being transported by Jesse Eisenberg?

So, that all sounds simple enough, right? Except the way it’s presented to us is so schizophrenic and convoluted that I had a really, really hard time making sense of it. And all this business takes up an hour of the film, which, by the end of that hour I had no better sense of who the main characters were, what their goals were, and what was in their way.

Gal Gadot’s character has no business being in the movie. Her character doesn’t interact with the other characters needs or wants, or advance the plot in any way at all. Her only purpose is to appear as a deus ex machine/fan service 2/3 of the way in. Which might have been surprising or exciting if it hadn’t been in the trailers six months ago.

Likewise, there is a time-travel/maybe a dream sequence that serves NO PURPOSE except to tease a bunch of other DC Universe stuff. But who gives a shit? You just threw the entire pace of your movie to a screeching halt. Oh, but your director got to shoot a gratuitous fight scene where Ben Affleck gets to shoot a bunch of guys we don’t care about.

[ I use gratuitous in its original intended sense here – completely extraneous to the story – there for its own sake, and over the top to boot.]

And then the film-makers do it AGAIN. Interrupting the pace of their big climax for a painfully long sequence of Gal Gadots character looking at footage of a bunch of other characters who have nothing to do with this movie – but are going to be in future movies! Especially if we are critiquing this from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know or care about these comic books, this entire sequence is one giant WTF.

So, Jesse Eisenberg is meant to be the villain of the piece. Except I defy you to tell me what his goal is as a villain, or what his evil plan is, exactly. Which is part of the larger problem of Jesse Eisenberg not really having a character. They just point the camera at him and say “okay, you’re mark zuckerberg but even more evil.” His characterization is goofy and nonsensical. Like, his mental breakdown at the charity dinner? Why? Why does that happen? Why do we care? Nothing like it ever happens again.

The only plot element that has any foreshadowing at all involves Jesse Eisenberg’s character peeing in a jar. This film also suffers from the problem of having a passive protagonist – Henry Cavill’s character is meant to be a superhero, but he doesn’t actually do anything heroic. Ever. All he does is react (slowly) to what other people do. According to what we know about his character, in the Capitol Hill bombing scene, he should know that bomb’s there from AT LEAST the moment he appears above the Capitol. But he doesn’t. And when he does, he doesn’t do anything about it.

All of the characters in the movie behave in ways that are characteristically stupid for the sake of advancing the plot or giving the movie the emotional beat that the film-makers want to happen. Amy Adams character goes alone to look for the Monster-Killy McGuffin, in a scary abandoned building that’s basically a war zone. Which is a dumb thing to do, but I guess it makes her look kind of brave? But then her boyfriend comes to rescue her, which is all well and good – but then he dives into the water to get the McGuffin which also kills him. Why not let Amy Adams go back for it? Now he’s there, she’s in no danger of the building collapsing on her, and she won’t get poisoned by Monster Killy McGuffin.

Then he picks up the mcguffin that is slowly killing him, and flies at the bad guy to stab the bad guy in the heart. Which would all be fine, except that we know this character could throw the mcguffin around the planet and hit himself in the back of the head. So why doesn’t he throw it at the monster?! Why? Because he’s dumb. And because the writers are dumb, and they want Henry Cavill’s character to die because they hate him. So they make him fly at the monster and then get impaled and die.

And we the audience are supposed to feel sad. Except we have been given no reason to care about Henry Cavill’s character. And he just did something that was more stupid than heroic. And of course we know he isn’t actually dead. But the movie expects us to believe that he is, and be sad about it. This movie thinks its’ audience is dumb. This movie is, to quote the Bard, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

There’s all this gratuitous, disaster-porn violence, and we are supposed to care about any of it. We’re supposed to find the chase scenes and fight scenes exciting. But we don’t. Because we don’t care about any of the characters involved. And because it all looks fake. And because the action scenes themselves have no sense of how to build a fight with tension or rising action. It’s all just – I punch him really hard and he goes really far – and now he does the same to me, ad nauseum. I have never been more bored watching a big superhero action movie. Well, okay, maybe Sucker Punch.

The aesthetics of this film are boring. Everything is dark and grim and gritty all the time. I defy you to show me a shot in this movie where the sky is blue instead of grey. Zack Snyder LOVES slow motion soooooo much. In 300 he did it to emphasize violent imagery. And there, it was kinda cool in a ridiculous way. In this movie, he uses it to emphasize what he thinks are moments of emotional pain – mostly for Ben Affleck’s character. Except they come across as ponderous and self-important, even to the point of parody. The opening sequence where Ben Affleck’s parents die was almost funny in how seriously it took itself. And also, sometimes Zack Snyder just uses slow motion when Ben Affleck is walking somewhere.

[Side note, here I will get in to an issue specific to Ben Affleck’s character – Zack Snyder knows the audience is familiar with this character, more than any other character. But instead of skipping over the stuff the audience can take as read to focus on stuff maybe the audience doesn’t know about THIS version of this character – he does exactly the opposite. I have seen the Waynes die on screen at least five different ways. We fucking get it. This version was just slower. However, I was soooo unclear on what exactly the characterization or motivations of this version of Bruce Wayne were supposed to be – he’s old, but he hasn’t retired, but he’s more pissed off, kinda, I guess?. That’s the sort of thing that could have used some fleshing out.]

The score was … fine. Like, some parts of the Man of Steel score was pretty good. I couldn’t identify a clear Batman theme. Maybe Hans Zimmer just figured he got it right the last time (which he did.) And Wonder Woman’s guitar solo theme was so over-the-top I laughed out loud. He literally introduced a character with a guitar solo EVERY TIME. But mostly it was kind of bland and forgettable.

The pacing of this movie was hugely erratic, and I feel that’s partly a problem with the editing. Some scenes ended super abruptly. There were weird cuts at weird times, shots that lingered too long for no reason ... But frankly, the biggest, most fundamental problem with this movie is that I simply. Didn’t. Care. I was bored, and I was frequently angry, but I was not invested at all in the story of this film of the characters involved in it. There were no emotional stakes. There was only the barest fragment of a plot, which never felt necessary because we, and the film-makers, all know it’s just a flimsy pretext to make Ben Affleck and Henry Cavil fight – except when they do, there’s no good reason for it, so who cares? And then their big fight isn’t even the point of the movie.

It was like watching a ten year old smash action figures together, but less fun, because at least the ten year old occasionally has some cool ideas. I am this film’s exact target audience. I love big blockbuster action movies. I love these characters. And I fucking hated every second of this movie. The opening sequence felt gratuitous and needlessly melodramatic. But it also just felt needless. We literally saw the exact same thing happen in Batman Begins, and Christopher Nolan did it 1 thousand times better.

Oh! I just thought of one thing I liked in this movie. The movie they're coming out of was Mark of Zorro. That is correct and as it should be.

One thing my rant doesnt address is that the two main characters, both of whom in nearly every legitemate incarnation have a strict code of not killing - they solve all their problems with violence. Especially Batman, who fucking SHOOTS PEOPLE WITH GUNS.

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