Batman v. Superman VI, why was it sooo bad?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

My son and I finally watched "Batman v. Superman" last night and agreed it was just terrible.  It was too long (ironically).  Had too much story packed in into to short a time span for the story to be fully developed.  We enjoyed the acting by Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot.  

We hated Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor.  He was just terrible and was hamming it up the whole time.  It felt like he was playing an itteration of the Joker or something.  He was just terrible. 

What is frustrating to me about his film is that it really did have the potential to be a couple of good films.  Why did they need to have Batman and Superman do a version of their fight from the Dark Knight Returns... have Lex Luthor as a villan... Give us another version of Batman's origin story... and have the "Death of Superman" story all crammed into the same film.  It was waaaaaaaaaay too much.  I enjoyed "Man of Steel" and I don't mind darker tones in superhero films so I don't think the tone of the film is what made it bad.  It was the incredibly scattered and almost schiztophrenic story.    

This one was just... terrible.
 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

43 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

You basically hit the nail on the head. They tried to cram too much into one movie. We didn't need Wonder Woman, Doomsday, the Death of Superman, the Justice League setup, the foreshadowing of Darkseid, Batman's origins, etc etc etc.

Zach Snyder is really good at bringing comic book panels to life for cool action shots... but that's where most of his talent as a director ends. I think that, artistically speaking, more studios should do what Warner Bros. did by giving a director full creative control over a project, but unfortunately they chose the wrong director to do so in this situation. I'll remind you that this is the man who, referring to Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, said that his version would have had Batman being raped in prison. Like a greedy child at a sundae bar, he tried to grab too much too fast, cramming everything that looked good into one tiny little plastic bowl, and wound up with a sloppy, congealing mess of ingredients that did absolutely nothing to compliment each other.

I think it was very interesting that Civil War came out within a few months of BvS, because it shows the correct way of handling a very similar plot. You give the characters time to breathe and develop for a few films, and when you finally set them against each other the audience will actually care about what happens. You also don't have to spend half of your film shoehorning nonsensical plot points in to explain the conflict, and you might have more than 8 minutes of to portray the titular fight of your fucking movie.

They should have done a solo Batman film, and probably another Superman film, before tackling this movie, and then Doomsday should have been in a third, separate, Superman solo film.

My son, who is 10, was just groaning at the simultaneously glacial pace and thin plot of this film.  What is really sad to me is that Ben Affleck really did a very credible job as both Bruce Wayne and Batman.  Henry Cavill is not great but not awful at Kent/Superman.  

That said, he looked very different in this film from the way he looked in "Man of Steel".  Why were they slicking back Supe's spitcurl, it made Superman look evil and was a weird stylistic choice.    

It would have made more sense to just call the three Dark Night films the set up for the Batman in this film and pretend it was Affleck that portrayed Batman in those other films.  Have directors not learned from films like "Spiderman 3" that cramming as many villians as possible into a superhero film is usually a bad idea?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Leap said:

I have to agree on all counts, although I didn't mind Jesse Eisenberg too much. There's a lot that frustrates me about this film, mostly the fact that it manages to waste three potentially awesome storylines at once. It just tries to do too much. Hopefully [insert next DCEU film] is better.

Did you watch the Ultimate Cut or the Theatrical Cut? The former is marginally better, though not to the extent that it saves the film. 

 

I checked it out of the local library so I suspect it was the Theatrical Cut. What is different in the "ultimate Cut"?

I do have high hopes for Wonder Woman.  It looks really quite good.  It sucks that my wife is such a fangirl of the Linda Carter Wonder Woman that she is refusing to see this film as she claims it will ruin that part of her childhood. 

[aceluby]

I enjoyed it and have re-watched it multiple times.  Neither my fiance, nor myself thought it was significantly better or worse than any other superhero movie.  We've never left one disappointed because we get pretty much what we expect.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

That was kind of what I wanted them to do at first too, but looking back I think it would have been the wrong move. Nolan's Batman was grounded in realism, and he wouldn't have really fit in with a universe full of super beings. I liked that teh Dark Knight trilogy had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I don't think linking it to the DCCU would make made the current movies better, so much as dragged the trilogy through the mud. I think that Ben Affleck's Batman was really the best part of the movie (ironic given that it was what everyone whined about when the casting was first announced).

How do you feel about Joss Whedon directing a Batgirl movie?

I hadn't heard about that.  Barbara Gordan as "Batgirl".  Why not "Batwoman"?

[Rhom]

17 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

That was kind of what I wanted them to do at first too, but looking back I think it would have been the wrong move. Nolan's Batman was grounded in realism, and he wouldn't have really fit in with a universe full of super beings. I liked that teh Dark Knight trilogy had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I don't think linking it to the DCCU would make made the current movies better, so much as dragged the trilogy through the mud. I think that Ben Affleck's Batman was really the best part of the movie (ironic given that it was what everyone whined about when the casting was first announced).

How do you feel about Joss Whedon directing a Batgirl movie?

But isn't that kind of the whole point?  Batman doesn't feel like the super being can be trusted? 

Overall, I tend to agree.  But moreso because of the ties with Suicide Squad than BvS.  Batfleck had been putting away super villains for years.  The Nolan bats had not.

[Jace, Extat]

Fiancé and I never finished this lobotomy of a film. Never even saw the fight, don't care.

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I checked it out of the local library so I suspect it was the Theatrical Cut. What is different in the "ultimate Cut"?

The extended version does try to fill in some of the plot holes in the film, but doesn't really help the biggest problems. It does provide a bit more background for why Superman was getting blamed for the African massacre, and has quite a bit of Lois trying to investigate Lex Luthor's plotting. I think it does improve the film, but it's not a bit enough improvement to really make up for the film's many flaws.

[drawkcabi]

I still feel I have never seen a live-action movie with Batman and Superman in it. I'll give Affleck credit that he portrayed a credible Batman/Bruce Wayne, but Cavil's character did not feel like Superman and never has to me. So the movie leaves with a feeling of being cheated.

 

 

[James Arryn]

To me the whole problem was that you needed to accept Batman's motivation, and it just didn't sell. I thought it generally ticked the boxes ok outside of that, but it all seemed like a conceit because of it. I thought the acting was pretty good, the villain was ~ but better films have had worse. Afleck was better than expected (granted my expectations were very low)...it was all okayish but built on quicksand. I'm kind of amazed that part got past first draft.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

I still feel I have never seen a live-action movie with Batman and Superman in it. I'll give Affleck credit that he portrayed a credible Batman/Bruce Wayne, but Cavil's character did not feel like Superman and never has to me. So the movie leaves with a feeling of being cheated.

 

 

Cavil got so little screen time in this film I don't see how he could have given a credible performance.  He also looked strange.  Superman without the spitcurl looks wrong.  It was obviously a deliberate stylistic choice but it was a poor one.  Superman (the government agent) in TDKR still looked like "Superman".  Cavil, with his hair slicked back looks sinister and it changes the tone in a bad way in my opinion.

[The BlackBear]

Mark Kermode had a pretty good line about it, Zak Snyder confuses Murkiness for Darkness. There's little to latch onto to bring you into this world, if you're going to do a world populated with arseholes, you at least need them to be charismatic arseholes. Affleck bless him got the closest, but his central motivation never truly made sense for me.

The storytelling is both trying to do too much, and telling it incoherently. And the dialogue is across the board doom laden portentous nonsense. It didn't need any of the Darkseid Justice League stuff. The fight it builds towards, the one references by the title takes forever to arrive and it isn't good enough to have waited so long, and it's resolution... Even now, even now, I just can't.

Also at some point you have to wonder if Batman is having visions, or if he just has a brain tumour.

The casting I think was more or less ok (with one glaring exception,) Affleck is a great Batman (him murdering people doesn't massively bother me,) Cavill sadly didn't have much to do, but hey he looks good, Wonder Woman is pretty cool when she's around, and the satellite actors all do pretty good work with often very little. The exception is of course, Eisenberg's Lex Luthor. He's irritating from the first second, his motivation is never explained, and he has all of these characters around him cowering in terror despite not being the slightest bit intimidating.

[Liver and Onions]

I actually enjoyed watching this movie in theaters to an extent- I went in ready to criticize. I knew it was going to be a confusing mess and I was determined to riff it internally. I did enjoy Wonder Woman, hated this version of Luther, and wasn't too keen on whatever the heck the movie wanted to say about Superman.

Superman is not a character who does "dark" well, with the exception of deconstructed Superman expo characters. It just always feels like the creators are trying too hard. Superman can have dark story lines, but the character just doesn't adapt well to grim n' gritty. 

I am looking forward to the Wonder Woman movie, regardless of how it relates to the DCCU. I'm actually one of the few who doesn't care for the direction the MCU is going, so it's nice to have a superhero movie for a long-deserving character to look forward to. Now where's my Nightwing movie?

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

I think it was during the fourth dream sequence that I thought to myself while sitting in the cinema, "This movie suuuucks".

They spent loads of time trying to give Superman an ideological reason to fight Batman, only to throw it away and have him do it to save his mum.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 4/7/2017 at 1:32 PM, aceluby said:

I enjoyed it and have re-watched it multiple times.  Neither my fiance, nor myself thought it was significantly better or worse than any other superhero movie.  We've never left one disappointed because we get pretty much what we expect.

I agree. I've seen the theatrical version twice and the blu-ray/ultimate/director's cut once. The latter, as I recall, didn't really add anything significantly tot he film. I enjoyed the heck out of Batfleck and the arc he had in the film. It's clear the Frank Miller comic The Dark Knight Returns was a major influence on the Batfleck character in this film. I'm okay with them combining some of the darkest stories for Bats and Supes into one film (TDKR & Death of Superman). I liked Eisenberg's Luthor, but the whole "Trial of Superman" subplot fell flat for me. I know why they felt they had to include it, but I feel there could've been better, more streamlined ways they could've done it.

The Wonder Woman stuff was a real surprise for me in how much I dug Gal Gadot's performance. When she was first cast I was all eye-roll city. Now, after seeing her in BvS, I'd say Wonder Woman is probably the superhero movie I'm most looking forward to seeing this summer in 2017. Guardians v2 and Spidey Homecoming look really fun, but if it's done right WW could be a game changer for the genre.

On 4/7/2017 at 1:38 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I hadn't heard about that.  Barbara Gordan as "Batgirl".  Why not "Batwoman"?

I think it's a syllables thing. Batman and Batgirl both have two syllables. It just sounds better. (They sort of addressed this in the Lego Batman movie, too.)

Plus, if you want to get nerdy about it, the character of Batgirl  took up the mantle as a teen, kind of like a female Robin before there actually was a female Robin. So if it's going to be a DCEU Barbra Gordon movie, I'm 100% behind that. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

PP,

My frustration with that film is that it had so much potential, again I don't mind the darker tone and actually enjoy it.  The Story was just so happenstance.  None of the multiple stories was properly developed.  They were all crammed in and then truncated to give the film a decent run time, and ironically, the film still felt too long.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

The problems of this movie IMO came about before it was even made. I'm pretty sure they were planning a MoS sequel somewhere along the line, probably before this.. but they panicked and jumped straight into Batman vs Superman instead, thinking they could make their money on the strength of that title (they were right )

None of it made any sense, they hadn't established any real relationship between the two of them, and worse it was never really obvious how they could all exist in the same universe. 

So then they had to come with some tenuous reason why Batman would want to kill Superman (which I think was actually almost well done, but still didn't really have that much weight)

You can see the bones of a good story there. Dark Knight Returns, the comic that it was loosely based off of is a great story. If they'd stuck to it, then maybe it could have worked. But the desire to mutate that tale into something that serves a number of other commercial priorities, meant you ended up with a bit of a mutated 'Brundlefly' mess.

 

[The King in Black]

Why was it bad ? Because the writer had literally no knowledge whatsoever about these characters as was demonstrated by the pathetic excuse of a Lex Luthor. What was even going on with that ? Who the hell thought Granny's Peach Tea would turn out to be a good idea ? 

 

It was bad because WB was so damn desperate they inserted jpegs of the Justice League via Lex Luthor of all people as 'world building'. 

 

But most importantly, it was bad because Zack Snyder apparently has never seen a single episode of any of the DCAU shows

[red snow]

For me it was largely the characters that ruined it. It just felt like they were all a bit empty. We rarely had any scenes where Batman or Superman interacted with anyone and when they did (eg albert and lois) they briefly came to life. Otherwise it was like there was a void between all the characters making it hard to connect. It may have even been intentional as a way of making the characters seem mythical but it worked too well for me in that case.

The fight between Batman and Superman felt like it didn't need to happen. All they needed to do was talk but both of them conveniently behaved in a way that allowed the fight to occur. If a fight can end over shared names then it would never have started if they'd spoken to one another. But again it fits with my perceived distance between the characters and myself as a viewer.

Superman was a beaten man. The world hated him and I almost felt sorry for the guy. There was a distinct feeling the world was trying to turn him into something he's not. If not for the metropolis massacre in MoS - which the makes things a bit more easy to understand. Again, this could all have been intentional but it didn't work for me. I like some of the heroes to have fun and not be so depressed all the time. It's probably why the brief appearance of Wonder Woman was a shining light in it all. She was happy in herself and that smile when she got to fight Doomsday was great.

[Relic]

Why was it bad?

Shitty script. Shitty director. Shitty cinematography. Shitty score. Shitty acting. And cuz it was made purely to make money.