Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Three-hour Ultimate Edition; definitely a grown-up comic. This film is just like Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, it's similarly ambitious as an author, it's told on a grand epic scale, it wants to convey a lot, so the usual runtime isn't enough, it's just so sprawling that maybe it's detrimental to it and the average viewer won't appreciate it, which is a shame. Judging by the reviews, I was afraid of Eisenberg's overacted Lex Luthor, and unnecessarily so, I was also afraid Snyder would reveal his other self, again unnecessarily so (the 15 minutes or so of the fight with Doomsday were easily digestible), so my criticisms would be small, for example the reconciliation of Batman and Superman was too rushed, but otherwise it was fine and in the unedited ultimatum version everything made sense, everything fit together. The result was better (i.e. darker, more mature) than most of the overstuffed Marvel films for undemanding teenagers. And in retrospect I now appreciate the previous Man of Steel, though my complaints about the digital clutter remain. PS: A message to those who complain about the film being too dark: don't look at screen rips or low quality dvd-rips (1,5 GB and smaller), fools.... (21/07/2016)

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*) (23/03/2016)

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. (24/03/2016)

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. (27/08/2016)

Not as good as I hoped, not as bad as I feared. Excellently acting by the main heroic trio, awfully bad villains. A screenplay full of holes with illogical motivations. The action digital - as you would expect - but pretty good, even so. It should have been a little slower. The movie wants to say and show an awful lot of things. Not that today’s comic books aren’t overfull too. The intro with Affleck’s Wayne is awesome. (23/03/2016)