Brandon at Random Reviews

This one’s gonna be a doozy.

I can remember the months leading up to March 25, 2016 vividly. My heart was full of hope, my mind was full of wonder. My biggest hope was that we would finally see some version of Frank Miller’s epic story “The Dark Knight Returns”, come to the big screen. TDKR is a tale of an aging Batman coming out of retirement to take down a gang that has overrun the city, then he eventually fights Superman who was tasked by the president with taking down the increasingly dangerous Batman. The movie I went to see that March, BVS, with a couple friends, proved to execute that pretty poorly considering that was at least somewhat the mission at hand.

This movie takes the liberty of cramming several elements from multiple comic book stories into one, but proceeds to attempt to tell its own tale instead of just doing more of a true adaptation of a comic book. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that a lot of different parts of this movie have a lot to enjoy about them, so I don’t want to oversell the film as a whole as terrible or completely unwatchable, which is a temptation I’ve been wrestling with. A lot of what I see here is just heavy-handed over-the-topness. But not completely.

Take Ben Affleck as Batman. The guy who got the most shit for being cast and he did, in my opinion, a remarkable job playing both Bruce Wayne and Batman, albeit in a not great story. Henry “stupid sexy” Cavill is not a bad actor at all, they just don’t have him doing jack shit to show any range or personality here. Gal Gadot is pretty decent as Wonder Woman, but her character inclusion feels like an afterthought. Amy Adams as Lois Lane is spectacular and committed to the role as always (also, check out “Arrival” with her). Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor is quite possibly the worst take on a character I’ve seen in a comic book movie and that’s really saying something. He seems high-pitched, flustered, and flummoxed when speaking, and I get trying to do your own take, but this doesn’t even really resemble the character.#NotMyLex

This movie has more arcs going than I can honestly remember between times I watch it. I highly recommend watching the Honest Trailer for a somewhat comprehensive list of Lex’s absurdly complicated plan, but suffice it to say things could’ve been simplified a bit to make it more digestible overall. There is shit like Lex somehow presumably putting a jar of pee on a senator’s desk in advance of a hearing because she made some weird comment about calling a bucket of piss “Granny’s Peach Tea”. Why are these things in here? Who are they for? Could they not omit this from the final cut? Fuck.

Some of the best scenes are Batman breaking into the warehouse, the titular fight is okay I guess, the Batmobile chase scene is pretty good, Wonder Woman is good but feels entirely tacked on…the worst scenes though? “GOT TO SAVE MARTHA”, Lex Luthor kind of force-feeding someone a Jolly Rancher, the aforementioned “peach tea” scenes, that scene where Lex is in the water with Zod, Batman having old Robin suit with Joker writing on it prominently displayed the Batcave, which just feels like it wasn’t earned.

All in all I would say that despite this movie generally sucking at storytelling, etc. it does still manage to pop a couple over the fence. I can’t truly recommend this movie, either in the theatrical or extended cut (but if you decide to watch, go extended to make sure you are disappointed by something that is 3 hours long instead of 2.5) but I do watch this movie more than I should considering I’ve rated it this low. But hey, it’s Batman and that’s how I roll.

Sorry if this felt rambly and nonsensical and overly bloated but I like to think that’s fair in the spirit of this whole thing.

⭐️⭐️1/2

“I bet your parents taught you that you mean something, that you’re here for a reason. My parents taught me a different lesson, dying in the gutter for no reason at all… They taught me the world only makes sense if you force it to.”