Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

The film ended up being a little better than the trailers. Still, the plot was a bit too chaotic. I think they chose the actors well, but they kept it pretty tame with the Superman character. Batman was a little more fleshed out, but they could have pushed harder with him too. Or maybe they didn't push on purpose, so that one of them wouldn't be more sympathetic to the audience. Still, we've all got our favorite, haven't we. I have no major problem with Lex Luthor as he was introduced here, and I'm quite interested in his future development. I just hope they realize that if they want to make a Joker out of him, it's going to be rather awkward. Oh, and the music was really good. 3 stars. (04/02/2016)

A film so dark that you can’t see anything in most of the actions scenes, and to such extent that it looks as if the cinema was showing a low quality bootleg. The long expected duel between two of the most famous comic book characters unfortunately ends up in a rather uneventful scene (I counted only one interesting moment) where Batman and Superman beat the crap out of each other, only for their conflict to end with an incredibly cheap script cop-out so they can fight together some sort of big-eyed, digital extraterrestrial monkey, created in a weird way for weird reasons (the motivations of the lead villain, hello? Are you there?). Incidentally, you have to wait an ungodly long time for any action to happen, and when it finally happens, either you can’t see anything (as I’ve already said), or it is a confusing digital mess where lightning flashes around the aforementioned monkey, explosions are followed by explosions, and the experience equals zero. And on top of that, Lois Lane gives the right answer to a question form Batman she didn’t hear, or throws a spear into the water so she can dive for it later and almost die, without any dialogue that would reveal its importance or enough information to allow her to figure it out for herself. Disappointment. Probably the only positive thing in the end was Affleck as a grumpy Batman, I would love to see him in another film. PS: I gave Man of Steel 5*) (03/23/2016)

What could Batman vs Superman possibly have offered? Most of all, a stupid story full of nonsense and nothing the viewer could grasp onto. Be ready for the fact that there is and there always will be just one Batman – Christian Bale. Also, Henry Cavill will never be a successful Superman no matter how hard he tries. I feel as if DC had already combined two very different worlds back then in the comic simply because they didn’t know what to do anymore. Personally, I think it doesn’t make sense at all and I pity all the people involved in the movie, because it’s a completely pointless comic-based piece that came out during a time when the whole world is already full of those and a mediocre one simply won’t do anymore. (08/27/2016)

Basically, everything that was true about the first movie applies perfectly this time as well, but it is more chaotic and noticeably less tight thanks to the number of characters and story lines that are only started but not developed properly. The main distinguishing features are contradiction that goes hand-to-hand with divisiveness, where every fifteen minutes of footage include five minutes of enthusiasm (some performances, storylines, specific scenes), for five minutes you look at your watch (the amount of ballast around the lengthy building of the fictional world, which is not properly used, there are unnatural story lines packed with troubles of Lois or a too complicated dull phase of Luthor's plan) and five minutes of desperate beating of the head on a seat (bloated pomp, dream sequences of Clark and Bruce, Eisenberg's childish play, confusing action culminating in a half-hour digital mess like "skyscrapers" are falling again dull finale scene, absent tension between the central duo and especially "Marta"). And the whole movie consists of ten consecutive 15 mins sequences. This is best illustrated by Affleck/Batman. The role of the weary aging Bruce fits him perfectly, but the script makes him a stale naive puppet in the game of smarter people. Like Batman, he is also excellent, but he is useless, because during the final settlement he just dodges the falling building while the super (men / women / mutants) are fighting. So, you have everything in one basket: good intentions and ideas, the realization of which is often not very smooth and sometimes becomes almost an unwanted self-parody. The Ultimate edition montage is then smoother, despite the length. You feel that everything is running more smoothly but nothing more. Yes, it's good for the first two hours, Clark and Bruce's motivations are more elaborate, Lois suddenly has something to do. It all represents Snyder's gloomy vision better. But what's the point of all this if the functional stress is ruined in the last third of the movie (which is still an hour of footage) during "we fight a monster in a CGI way" which is both silly and boring. And it does not fit into the atmosphere set by the first two thirds. Not at all. Which, this montage surprisingly makes even stronger. (03/23/2016)

Except for the fact that for the first hour they talk with the attention and style as if someone ate the Bible and drank it down with horse sedatives, except that for almost two hours one tries to understand why those two hate each other so much that in a few seconds they began to love each other, except that almost all dynamic shifts are done by gossip and dream sequences, except that the motivation and actions of the characters follow the logic of the perverted screenwriting god of lobotomy, except that it (again) does not have full-fledged characters, but only square voices, except that Jesse Eisenberg plays a very low-cost version of Heath Ledger, except... what did I want? I don't know anymore. Actually, I do. Nice pictures for comic fanboys and excellent directing of contact events. I think. I have a dull feeling that Man of Steel pissed me off more than this Dawn of Randomness. If DC has chosen to make their films as a genetic conglomeration of highly comic stylization and very rhetorical references to serious topics, they are going to have to find a director who will be able to keep it all together. But it's not Snyder, especially when he is working with a screenplay that is more like a set of unrelated ideas for further elaboration. (03/24/2016)