Wednesday 9 November 2016

Batman vs Superman: Ultimate Edition

While I do swear more than I should in real life, I try to avoid it here. I mention this because I want you to appreciate how sincere I am when I say: This film is fucking awful.
It's really, unbelievably bad.

During the events of Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne (played by Ben Affleck) was rescuing his employees from collapsing buildings in Metropolis, which has planted a seed of fear and hate for Superman in his mind.
Lex Luthor has found some Kryptonite off the coast of some tropical location, and is shipping it to himself in Metropolis.

Bruce Wayne, somehow knows this (but, hey, Batman is meant to be the worlds greatest detective, who avoids killing his opponents as much as possible) so goes to a party at Luthor's mansion, and hacks into his computer to find out when the shipment is (keep in mind, he's hacking into the computer of a private citizen who has, as far as he knows, committed no crimes)

What follows is an exceedingly long sequence of Batman trying to get the Kryptonite, only to find it was a trap, and Superman kills him.
Turns it was all a dream, and he wakes up to the Flash talking to him through a portal, saying "You were right, don't trust him!"
Not only is this a missed opportunity to inject some humour, by making the Flash pretend to be a ghost, but that is also a dream.
Batman later tells Alfred (Jeremy Irons) about how he fears and hates Superman. This renders the preceding two dream sequences completely and utterly pointless.

Not only that, but if the Flash's warning was meant to be real, then who does it refer to? Certainly not actually Superman, as he is a hero throughout the film.

Anyway, Batman then tracks the Kryptonite shipment to the docks and plants a tracker on the truck, Rather than tracking it, he chases it in the Batmobile, and outright murders several people (who, as I said before, as far as he knows have committed no crimes) including actual innocent civilians. Not only that, but he doesn't get the Kryptonite from the chase, instead using the tracker to get it. Off screen.

So eventually Batman fights Superman, they bond over their mothers having the same name, and unite to fight against Doomsday. Doomsday was created by Lex Luthor using some machine in a Kryptonian space ship to resurrect Zod's corpse. You know, at least Marvel actually try to keep the origins of their characters true to the comics.

They fight him with the help of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot - I hear the shooting took so long because she was often late. They kept waiting for Gadot) in the most boring climactic fight sequence of a comic book film ever.

There is some foreshadowing for the Justice League, in the form of Aquaman and Cyborg (as well as the characters I've already mentioned)

Overall this film is incredibly long, with a lot of the run time being completely wasted on scenes that go nowhere or serve absolutely no purpose. Meanwhile, things which should have been developed are rushed or ignored. The characters have the bare minimum resemblance to their comic equivalents, and I would challenge anyone to find a likeable one in the bunch (apart from Alfred).
The writing is so poor that it can only be described as amateurish, and the action is ridiculously boring.
If I hadn't seen Suicide Squad first, I think this would have made me swear off DC films altogether.

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