People were right to worry that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice would struggle because it tried to do too many things. This movie has so many story threads that instead of having a standard plot it is really a series of vignettes, and some of those vignettes are really good, but not enough of them. Plus they are all jumbled together so it is hard to follow.
The main plot, as best as I could discern, is that Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) can’t bring himself to trust an alien that destroyed an entire city including his Wayne Financial building, and every small incident involving Superman (Henry Cavill) only makes him angrier. Meanwhile Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is investigating one of those incidents herself trying to figure out if someone is manipulating the public’s opinion of Superman. Someone like Lex Luther (Jesse Eisenberg) perhaps?
Anyway that should get you started, I am still trying to sort out the rest. I mean this movie has three dream sequences. Three! So an already confusing movie has random stuff thrown in to boot. Then they try and shoehorn in the rest of the founding members of the Justice League. While it is great to see them on screen for the first time, they add nothing to the movie. Well, with the exception of Wonder Woman played by Gal Gadot. She is amazing. Wonder Woman by far is the best part of Batman v Superman. The movie gets better every time she shows up, which isn’t often.
Ben and Henry did a fine job as Batman and Superman, but really they weren’t given a whole lot to do but snarl at one another. I mean after filming their faces must have hurt from all the sneering. They only person that got to smile or show any range of emotion was once again Wonder Woman. She was so good you guys! Then that brings us to Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luther. Again fine, but I am still not sure what Lex’s endgame was. Not to mention I am pretty sure that Lex was insane which was an odd direction to take for the smartest man on the planet.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice needed to be longer and explain everything better, or be shorter and cut a lot of stuff out. At its long two and a half hour running time it was a pile of randomness. There were parts I liked: For instance when we finally got to see Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all fighting together I was the happiest man alive. Looking back they should have just bucked up and made the Justice League movie and forgot all about the Batman and the Superman v’ing each other. That would have been the movie the suits at Warner Brothers obviously wanted, and what the fans wanted too. Plus we would have gotten more Wonder Woman!
