**** no. GTFOut of here with that ****.
Now that that's out of way, what's the real problem with this movie?
A combination of lackluster setup and WAY TOO MUCH PADDING (also editing that makes it look like a bunch of scenes were chopped up and mixed around).
You could sum the whole thing up as "a misappropriation of time" given the fact that a lot of this movie TEDIOUSLY drags itself out longer than necessary and then inexplicably squanders what few key scenes we need developed.
The biggest culprit here is the demonization of Superman. We get it, we saw it in the trailers, he's indestructible, he's dangerous, he's beholden to no one, and he's caused a lot of collateral damage.
It feeds into a paranoid public which then filters Batman's interpretation of his actions which are seen as catastrophic, intentionally or not.
I really like this angle and I would have been interested to see it explored beyond the obvious made-for-the-trailer scenes, but unfortunately this plotbeat is thoroughly half-baked.
Batman's suspicion turns antagonistic after an event which frames Superman as the killer of numerous terrorists.
Firstly: They're terrorists. Who cares?
Secondly: They're blaming him based on NOT an eyewitness account, but a testimony where someone walked in on the crime scene after Superman left? Dead bodies everywhere, everyone shot dead. Sounds like Superman, right? CAUSE HE REALLY NEEDS GUNS TO KILL PEOPLE.
There's this one wheelchair guy who seems to want to sue Superman because in the chaos of battle a metal beam ruined his legs. **** off, dude. I totally get that there are really people that stupid out there, but remember, this is all supposed to be informing Batman. And Batman should know better.
Speaking of Batman, might as well talk about the performances and the portrayals of each character.
Superman? Eh. Serviceable.
Batman? Eh. Serviceable. Batman's kinda weird, actually. He wears this big cybersuit that looks clunky as ****, but he mostly manages to pull it off. The more I watched, the more it seemed to make sense given how little of Superman's punches he'd actually be able to withstand besides.
I read split opinions on whether Ben Affleck made a more or less intimidating Batman than Bale or Keaton and I would have to say... Eh. Serviceable.
The REAL nitty gritty is where the reviews say that Batman is an ******* or that his hate towards Superman is entirely unjustified or that Batman doesn't kill or that Batman doesn't use guns.
Let's knock these off one by one:
1.) Guns. Bruce has one nightmare sequence in which he looks stupid and shoots a ton of people. It's not canon, whatever it is, and I admit it's jarring at the very least. Batman going all gun-fu on people is really a disservice to him as an inventive gagdet-oriented character. Following the main fight with Supes, Batman beats up a bunch of thugs and despite involving guns, it's much more the back-breaking slugout with grappling hooks, smoke bombs, and batarangs we're used to.
Frankly, I think this Batman was underwhelming compared to Nolan's Batman. Not because it's Ben Affleck, but because his suit seems to heavily compensate for his general lack of creativity. The Batmobile isn't as cool or complicated as the Tumbler, he doesn't have projectile arm spikes, and he never pulls anything really fancy out of his ass. He just sorta punches stuff... and shoots on occasion.
2.) Killing. Yes, Batman kills, that's hardly debatable. SHOULD he kill? That depends. A lot of versions of Batman never highlight his strict aversion to lethal violence and so in those incarnations, it's most important to make sure he remains consistent in that regard. In THIS version, Batman doesn't have anything against killing. In fact, this is a big issue I expected to have with a lot of interpretations of this movie.
People seem to think that Batman hates Superman because he kills people which is hypocritical because HE kills people.
That's not even remotely true and there are two huge distinctions here: One being that Superman never kills anyone intentionally, he's unquestionably involved in battles that resulted in inadvertent INNOCENT casualties, but that's it. Second being that Batman doesn't have any apparent record of collateral deaths and he only kills GUILTY people.
The argument here might be that Batman doesn't kill anyone ever, but as some fans would point out, Batman's story has expanded to the point of questioning that thick logic (if Batman would only kill Joker, many more lives would be saved) which SEEMS to be retroactively referenced in one shot of the movie implying that this is a Batman with a history we haven't seen yet. This is a CYNICAL AS **** Batman, so just because we don't know how he got that way doesn't mean he CAN'T be that way. It's not like he's evil now, he's just pessimistic to a fault.
3.) Motivation. Batman's motivation is actually pretty clear, but it's questionable primarily because of the weakass framing-Superman setup. Superman is dangerous, even when he goes to have a peace talk the place blows up around him. To Superman, there's obviously no point in walking out alone knowing what people already think about him, but to Batman it looks undeniably skeevy to see Superman walk into a building, it explodes, and then he just flies away without saying a word.
4.) Jerkass Batman. Batman doesn't come across as an ******* to me, he just comes across as slightly too antagonistic. If the setup were stronger and better portrayed Superman as a monster, it'd be easier to see why Batman thought he needed to be stopped, but it doesn't take a brainiac to figure out that when there's a city-wide smackdown in the sky going on that you should probably get more information before you assume that both involved are callous walking time bombs. If Superman were provoked and publicly portrayed on television to be unstable, that would certainly warrant Batman's fury, BUT they didn't do that and instead Superman gets a lot of glamour shots for saving people. In this regard, I don't blame a badly written Batman, I blame a badly written scenario.
Let's get back to what we were talking about before... where was I... oh yeah, wasting time. So the setup is pretty weak and as it turns out the battles are too. Mostly.
The first "encounter" between Batman and Superman occurs at the 1 hour mark when Batman, driving after some thugs, swerves around a corner and see Superman standing in the way.
That's a pretty epic OH **** moment, but the ensuing fight I expected never happened, and the claims I heard about "in the first fight, Superman kicks Batman's ass" are beyond false. There is no first fight, Batman hits Superman in the Batmobile and Superman flies away out of mercy. Pretty anticlimactic.
The actual fight is just... AVERAGE... and it's really unremarkable when compared to something like Iron-Man vs Thor in
The Avengers which was a very memorable scene in that movie (and actually more narratively justified). My biggest problem with it is with the whole gimmick itself, Superman is only vulnerable to kryptonite and Batman's got kryptonite grenades and a kryptonite spear. Any time Superman is unaffected, it's one-sided in his favor, any time he is affected, it's one-sided in Batman's favor.
That's SO BORING.
Here's how they could have done it AWESOME:
Imagine if the entire fight was built up to with a preparation montage of Batman setting up traps all over the building. He gets a badass workout, sure, but I mean let's see him set up all the cool stuff in advance and watch how and when he uses each as the fight goes on. Put a lot of emphasis on the fact that this is probably Batman's last fight, that this is suicide and he really will die.
Then, and this is the most important part, expand the effective range of kryptonite and instead of making it an on-contact debilitation, make it a gradual radius of effect. This would mean that if Superman got too close for too long he would weaken and lose his powers, and we could play with this environmentally. We could have a lot of back and forth, moving the kryptonite and dancing around it, and what we'd have is an actual fight brought down to somewhere around Batman's level entirely hinging on his technical skill where it'd be Batman's range of gadgets vs Superman's range of powers. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.
We don't get that though, unfortunately, and instead we get a lot of padding leading up to it which I largely blame on gratuitous slow-mo, real scenes that have absolutely no business delaying the fight everyone came to see, and nightmare scenes that have absolutely no business delaying the fight we came to see.
Uhhh... a few other bits and pieces...
The CG was mostly pretty good. A few shots are really obvious, especially any shot with Supes' cape dramatically flyin' in the wind, but otherwise really nice.
Lawrence Fishburne is slightly better than he should have been, and Jesse Eisenberg is slightly worse than he should have been.
I thought Eisenberg was a weird choice for Lex Luthor too, but this isn't really Lex Luthor anyway and he makes a fine over-the-top villain. My problem is he chews scenery way too much, mainly in scenes that don't warrant it. It's one thing if he's monologuing to Superman, but it's another when he's monologuing to an entire room of clapping people. This guy is just a gibbering twitchy nutjob, I have difficulty imagining him being host to such professional gatherings.
I'm never quite sure what Little Lex's relationship with Zod is either. He cries over his dead body so I guess I'm just supposed to know he meant something to him? But why? Was he even in Man of Steel?
Why was Bruce Wayne getting checks from Wheelchair Guy? Or did I completely misread that scene? I have no idea what was going on there. If he was it doesn't make any sense for Wheelchair Guy to give him grief over his family. Or was that Lex?
Why does Lex have a guy literally standing by Superman's mom with a flamethrower? I know he said he suggested fire as a means of killing her, but I didn't think they meant it that literally. It was kinda funny actually.
Why does Lois Lane trap herself in the final fight? I thought she was a fairly respectable character up until she inexplicably seals herself in a watery
tomb. That was kinda funny too.
Arguably the biggest slap in the face this movie can muster is the flippant masses. The general population revile Superman as a dangerous unstoppable X factor and he's getting ruthlessly catcalled and picketed right up until the explosion scene that they eventually pin on him too. FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES MOST PEOPLE DON'T LIKE SUPERMAN, and yet even the government, who's building and people were sacrificed because of his existence, throw him a teary-eyed respectful funeral when he dies.
Yes, he dies, and yes there's a huge city full of sad people who hated him with pretty fairly reasonable justification not a few minutes ago.
Actually, Batman's much the same. He's inches from killing Superman and you know he's gonna like it, but Superman says his mother's name which turns out to be Batman's mother's name which pacifies him. That's... oh that's not good. That's a pretty ****ing feeble reconciliation.
Mere minutes later, Batman refers to Superman as his friend as if the two have thoroughly resolved their ideological perspectives.
In regards to Superman's death, I'm in agreement that they shouldn't have done it, especially if they were going to tease his revival as they do in the last shot of the movie. It's not because Superman shouldn't be allowed to die though and it's not because it jeopardizes the stakes in further movies. It's because, once again, it wasn't set up properly. It doesn't feel earned the same way
Wreck-It Ralph doesn't feel earned.
Batman v Superman could easily be an fantastic showdown movie where Superman dies in the end, and it could even be the sequel to Man of Steel, but it has to have build up. EMOTIONAL build up. I was more emotionally invested in Batman in this movie, and he's not the one that ****ing DIED.
Ironically I'm hearing a LOT of people complaining that this movie tried to cram too much **** in to set up
Justice League simply as a means to catch up to The Avengers without putting in the effort of releasing all these interconnected movies like
Thor or
Iron-Man or
Captain America.
I STRONGLY disagree with that assessment. DC shouldn't have to play up to Marvel's standards. It doesn't have to be a comedy to work, and they don't have to spit out a million and one ****** one-off superhero origin story movies to justify axing off their most iconic character.
It could have been completely justified in this movie, but it wasted time instead of developing that emotional connection. In this regard, I can see where both comic book fans and non-comic book fans would be bothered. No one wants to be expected to care for a character that doesn't earn our concern and DC lore masters don't want to wait another several years for the inevitable Justice League movie only to know that they already played the "Superman Dies" card. They can't play it again. It won't work. Not in this context.
The movie isn't as jampacked full of references as some people may lead you believe either. We get two extremely brief bits of The Flash sequelbaiting, we see a fraction of Cyborg, and even get a long beautiful look at the ravishing shampoo commercial known as Aquaman.
But, you know what I've been putting off...
Wonder Woman.
Wonder Woman's awesome. And it's telling that her reveal was the only part of the movie that got any sort of cheers from my theater audience. She's just hovering around in the background being inoffensive for most of the movie, but when the final battle drops, she gets her digs in harder than Batman.
It really just makes me want to see that Wonder Woman movie. Not another Batman movie, not another Superman movie, not even a Justice League movie, just Wonder Woman.
And
Suicide Squad.
Please, let that be awesome...
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weakness 
House of Flying Daggers is probably the best action film I've seen, because it interweaves a terrific story in as well, effortlessly. Hero was fantastic as well. Both are huge favourites of mine 
