Bull v shyt: Yawn of Scust Ish
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Dedicated to the anonymous brehs behind me in the theater who talked about the greatness of Michael Fassbender during the X-Men: Apocalypse trailer, then argued whether him or Tom Hardy is the best actor in the game right now, and at the start of the Captain America: Civil War trailer declared out loud that it was going to be better than this movie. It was as if I had entered a Twilight Zone where people actually made sense.
Rarely have I begun writing a review without knowing really where to start. There's a reason for this, and it is simple. This movie is so incoherent and all over the place that for at least a good hour and a half, it's like a shytty montage of completely random scenes skipping around without any sense of pacing or forward momentum.
The first hour especially pretty much goes like this:
Batman scene - Superman scene - Lex Luthor scene - Lois Lane scene - Clark Kent scene - Lex Luthor scene - Bruce Wayne scene - Lois Lane scene
Scenes often end abruptly without anything discussed actually being resolved, and absolutely no flow into the next. There's a particular bad moment when Lex is arguing with senator Holly Hunter about her refusal to give off a license to import Kryptonite found in the Indian Ocean. He then drops his trailer monologue about the red capes are coming and devils coming from the sky, and the scene ends with that monologue, leaving the whole argument between the two open.
Speaking of Lex Luthor, I want to openly laugh in the faces of everyone who even believed for a second Eisenberg was going to be a good Lex Luthor. He's absolutely terrible, an overly neurotic version of his Social Network performance written like a complete weirdo. It might genuinely be the worst Lex Luthor ever depicted, and yes, that includes Forty Cakes Luthor.
On the other hand I have little complaints about Affleck's Batman. Although the praise for his performance is ridiculous (there really are no stand-out moments for him whatsoever), he carries the role well enough, but the character is mostly carried by the fact he's the goddamn Batman. Oh yeah, Batman definitely kills a bunch of people in this with no fukks given. I kinda hated it but at the same time they never pretend he was on that "no killing" shyt that made all his killing in the Nolan movies so out of place, from the first moment they kinda make you accept this Batman is out of fukks to give.
Side-note: Jeremy Irons is criminally underused, the man might low-key be one of the sleeper stand-outs in this movie.
Then there's of course Supes and Lois and boy, where do I start? There's a line in here that sums it up perfectly and I can't quite remember the exact quote, but it roughly goes like:
'There's no good left in this world anymore.'
That line is said by fukking Superman.
So his whole characterization is still complete trash and really shows that despite WB heavily promoting Chris Terrio's influence, this is still largely Goyer's story. All the nihilistic defeatism, the complete and utter lack of any sort of inspiration he evokes, this is so far removed from everything Superman should be that I genuinely hope Goyer is never allowed near a comic book movie ever again. And then there's Supes' "motivation" for him fighting Batman, which I won't spoil (and won't even put in spoilers) but it's so goddamn insulting to the character and our intelligence that for me it instantly killed any hype for the fight. It's pure trash and in the legendary words of Roger Ebert in his review of
North, I hated it. Hated hated hated hated hated it! Hated it!
My favorite Superman moment of the movie though? The fact that they actually brought back Kevin Costner as a ghost vision so he could shyt on Clark again for still trying to be a hero.
Also, hero cake will never taste the same again.
But TheGodling, what about the Batman v Superman part itself? The epic battle between World's finest?
Yeah, that shyt lasts about fifteen minutes and is kinda
. I mean, it had some cool moments in it I guess but it was more Triple H v Sting than Steamboat v Savage. It was more about the moment of those two icons facing each other than it actually being good. In fact, I thought everything that happened after their fight was by far the best part of the movie, when they actually sorta team up to fight shytty looking plot device Doomsday and Wonder Woman comes in and shyt. Made me remember that back when they first announced Wonder Woman would be in this I said they should've called it Trinity: Dawn Of Justice and that actually would be a more accurate title because as said, the whole motivation for Supes confronting Bats is weak and the fight itself just doesn't live up to the potential/promise.
Also, and this will actually be my last complaint (you know, besides shytty characterizations, terrible pacing/plotting issues, no coherent storytelling and the title match being flabby and sick), there's a Batmobile chase sequence in the first half of the movie that is uncharacteristically bad for Snyder. The man usually knows his way around action but the whole chase was just a lot of shoddily edited shytty ass shaky cam visuals where half the screen was constantly obscured by lens flares. shyt was so bad it makes the Batmobile chase in The Dark Knight look like friggin' Fury Road in comparison.
I was kinda ready to finish this up and then I realized I didn't even talk about Wonder Woman all that much. Like I said, the final act is probably the most enjoyable part of the movie and they did a good job showcasing her abilities in the fight by letting her hit her five moves of doom (except it's just four, the bracelets, the shield, the sword and the whip). Also have no complaints with Gal Gadot so far, but she barely got anything to work with outside of one dialogue exchange with Bruce. Mostly she just flaunts her sexiness (hey, it worked for the Fast & Furious movies, right?) and speaks with authority.
'So what's the final verdict, my unbiased, thoughtful and knowledgeable breh?'
Thanks for asking. I actually walked out of the theater thinking that I enjoyed this more than Man Of Steel, although that might just relate to the fact that Man Of Steel is a dreadful, unbearable onslaught of mishandling my favorite superhero of all time. So yeah, not a high bar to cross really. BvS is mostly just a poorly put together movie. I doubt even 30 minutes of additional footage can restore any form of pacing or build-up to the first half, and it makes it a chore to sit through. Things sorta come together after the two titular heroes finally clash, but even that part feels like a 3.5/5 at best. So altogether I'd probably give it a 2.5 out of 5. With some luck the extended cut might pull it up to a 3 out of 5, but then those 30 minutes have to be some kind of storytelling miracle work, not just a bunch of extended fight scenes that were cut for the PG-13 rating.
Last but not least, I want to shout out the anonymous brehs I dedicated this review to once more because while the credits were rolling and lots of people stayed in their seats, one of them yelled:
'Why isn't anyone getting up? There's nothing after the end credits fools, this ain't Marvel!'
PS: to all the people who spent the past year(s) trying to paint me (and others who weren't buying the hype) as a Marvel stan, there's only truth: