Frankly Speaking: Batman v. Superman Review

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, from Warner Bros. Pictures is a follow up film to Man of Steel, the 2013 Superman movie, and the second movie in the new DC Extended Universe film universe much like that of the Marvel cinematic universe. Here, we see DC’s two most iconic super heroes fight and eventually work together in an action packed film.

The movie begins with showing the battle between Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod as they destroy Metropolis, but from the perspective of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) as he races through the crumbling city toward one of the Wayne Enterprises buildings to save some of his employees before the whole city is destroyed. After his building collapses, Bruce helps to save an employee, Wallace Keef (Scott McNairy), and then saves a little girl from being crushed by some falling debris. Without actually saying anything, Bruce looks to Superman in a way that lets everyone know that Bruce blames Superman for destroying the city and for all of the casualties that were caused by the destruction. Eighteen months after the battle between Superman and Zod; Clark Kent, Superman’s alter ego, starts to hear about the Gotham Bat and his brand of justice. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), the head of LexCorp., is trying to convince U.S. Senator June Finch (Holly Hunt) to allow him to import a very large piece of kryptonite into the U.S. as a precautionary weapon in case Superman, or any other kryptonians, decided to turn on humanity. Finch later denies Luthor’s request, causing him to later retaliate in a very big way. At a party hosted by Luthor in his own home, Bruce and Clark are introduced to each other and already don’t quite see eye to eye. During the party, Bruce slips away to copy all of Luthor’s data from his computer servers in order to find out what Luthor is up to. This memory drive is then stolen by a mysterious women by the name of Diana Prince (Gal Gadot). Soon after this, Bruce tracks her down and is given his drive back. He then finds out some of what Luthor is doing and that he is keeping track of four metahumans, one of which is Diana, who is an immortal warrior. A little while later, Bruce decides that he will fight Superman, and steals and weaponizes the large piece of kryptonite from LexCorp. Meanwhile, Luthor activates his plan of getting the two heroes to fight each other to the death, hoping that one or both of them will die. And thus started the “greatest gladiator match in the history of the world.”

One aspect of the movie that was good were the CGI effects and consequently, the fight scenes. All of the CGI effects in the film were fantastic and exactly what was needed to show all of the destruction and fighting expected of a superhero movie. And thanks to that great CGI, the fight between Superman and Batman, and the fight between Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman against Doomsday were absolutely fantastic to watch.

Unfortunately, this super-hyped movie had more negatives than positives to it. One of those biggest negatives is the plot of the movie, and by that I mean that there was too much of it in the movie. There was so much plot loaded into the story that it started to become confusing on where something ended and something else began. It ended up being as if they put a full Batman movie and a full Superman movie into one and kept all of the content, making the actual film feel longer than it should have. To put it into perspective, the very large synopsis I gave above only covers some of the main parts of the movie and covers less than half of the actual movie.

Still going with the plots of the movie, the directors introduced a plot line for the upcoming Justice League movie where several of the heroes come together to make a team, including Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. The introduction of this plot didn’t really fit or make any sense with the rest of the movie. There was also no explanation of why Wonder Woman was trying to find information on Luthor or why she was really in Metropolis or Gotham (as it isn’t explained at some points) at all. A few other unfinished mini plots were also in the movie that just made everything even more confusing.

Overall, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ended up being a super flop of a super hero movie. The only really good parts about it were the CGI and the fight scenes. The plot was confusing at parts, with unneeded mini plots making it worse, and the length of the movie being too long because of how much was packed into it. I give this movie a 2.5 out of 4 stars and really hope that DC gets everything together if they want their next movies to do well.