We usually have our Community Review on a Monday, but let’s be real here: we were all too busy gorging on chocolate to be reviewing anything.
The other thing you were probably doing: going to watch Batman v Superman and having opinions about it.
I’d like to hear them.
It’s funny: Batman v Superman has pretty much been universally panned. But there is an undercurrent of people who kinda liked it. Those people are saying the hate is just an internet pile on.
Then there’s the ‘this is so bad it’s sort of entertaining’ crowd. Then there’s ‘Team I Lowered My Expectations So Much I Ended Up Enjoying It’.
I’d love to hear what the consensus is amongst you guys and girls?
Comments
49 responses to “Community Review: Batman v Superman”
The completely unnecessary Wilhelm scream made me laugh out loud, as did the hinging moment of the title fight.
The ad break for the justice league movie was spectacular in its audacity.
What a focus group tested, marketing led, money sniffing, pile of amateur hour film making.
Batfleck looked just like cartoon batman though, his jaw isn’t a real person’s. He could’ve been good in anyone else’s batman.
That wilhelm scream was probably the worst placed one I’ve ever seen in a film. Good call.
I want to think that the audio guys knew the film was a joke, so they snuck that in.
But the reality is probably that a WB executive thought that we needed to be reassured that people were in that car, and they were going to die. Because batman kills people.
Batman kills people….
*frustration intensifies…..*
I get why he was killing people, because of the “Dark Knight Returns” element but i think it was unnecessary. Have him break bones, stab, shoot, even brand, but leave the actual killing out IMO.
Wait, seriously? Batman kills people? F’n Snyder. You’d think he would learn, but I guess that only happens if your movie bombs.
It’s like he is Michael Bay Mach 2 – his movies make shitloads of money because of the franchises alone, not because their movies are any good – but because they make money they keep getting work. Vicious cycle of shitness.
At my opening day screening people scoffed or laughed (myself included) at the ‘ad break’ for Justice League. After sitting through the lumbering movie for two hours to get to that point to witness the brazenesss of WB to say ‘but wait there’s MORE!’ is just comical.
Ha! There were plenty of scoffs in the session i went to (which was opening night so absolutely packed!). But guess what the biggest cheer was for? I shit you not – the Civil War trailer.
Actually I really liked it. I thought Jesse Eisenberg did a great job and he was a fascinating villain, even if he wasn’t anything remotely similar to Lex Luthor. And Ben Affleck is easily my favourite Batman of all time, but that might be because I really like Batman as a character when he’s been in the game for years and years and it’s starting to take a toll on him, like Batman Beyond.
I saw it opening night. Here’s some dot points on what I thought.
Didn’t hate it, but didn’t much like it either. It should’ve been much better than it was.
Affleck was fucking great – which is what I had predicted from the moment he was cast.
Eissenberg tried to take Luthor in a direction that just didn’t work. Shame.
The score was terrible. It felt so off.
Galdot was great – can’t wait to see more of her.
The action scenes involving Batman were brutal and fun to watch.
The dream sequences not so much :/
The comedic elements were mostly poor – notable exception of Jeremy Irons who I feel had great chemistry with Affleck.
I hate Amy Adams.
The ending was terrible.
3 stars 🙂
These are my sentiments EXACTLY (even the opening night viewing. Weird!) Although I could have written an essay on why Eisenberg’s Luthor is the worst screen villain of all time.
My long lost brother…?
Saw it at the midnight premiere, immediately regretted it at work.
Good:
– Affleck was great. I was genuinely impressed at his old, grizzled version of both Bruce and Bats.
– The Batman fight scenes, particularly the one in the warehouse, were very well done. Straight out of the Arkham games.
– Gadot was fantastic as WW. Really good.
– Jeremy Irons played a (dare I say it) fun Alfred. I really enjoyed the sarcastic “I’m sick of your shit, Bruce” take on the character.
Bad:
– Everything else.
– God I hate Zack Snyder.
– Too many dream sequences.
– Zack Snyder.
– The soundtrack was way too overblown and cheesy.
– The whole movie felt overstuffed and messy.
– Did I mention Zack Snyder?
Jesus. Can Zack Snyder just go away? I’m so sick of hearing about how his shit movies make so much money. DC, can you not hire someone who is completely talent-less? He deserves to not be employed by anyone.
Oh, there you go, I’m really pissed off now. I’ll play some Sniper Elite and try to calm down.
I need more team Batfleck in my life. That was the best incarnation of Batman we’ve seen on screen yet. Irons was an unexpected stand-out.
I agree. And I think the script gave him enough opportunities to really play up the psychotic batman that we haven’t really seen in film yet. He’s definitely a much more ambiguous character here, and it was a good nod with the line of him agreeing they’re criminals. That for me was a good benchmark to hold the character to – whether they could really make him relatable but still clearly going off the rails a bit. In the end though, he was a bit mooted.
But then again, the ENTIRE end sucked ass. Bloody DoomsDoh.
In terms of Jesse’s performance, I thought it was interesting. I would commend them for at least trying to get inside the head of someone who’s clearly intelligent and driven, and what could possibly make someone like him want to do the things he does. Fair enough, they could have done more the make it clearer or to hit a bit harder emotionally, but from a purely character standpoint, I think it was interesting.
I actually thought Superman was effectively underused in the whole film. Yes his power and choice drives a lot of the first half, but the times when they actually spend dealing with why he feels the way he feels and chooses what he chooses are very brief, and they don’t really provide a great deal of depth in order to explore the character. They just show that he’s an average dude trying to do the right thing, but not that he’s actually conflicted, or that he suffers emotionally for being in that impossible position. Which are all really ripe areas to mine for creative storytelling. So yeah…. underused.
Amy Adams… eh. the whole sub plot for her was dull. Which was disappointing as I felt that in the end it still felt like a bit of a sausage fest (yes, even with WW).
Speaking of WW, Gal Gadot was alright. She wasn’t terrible, but since a lot of her scenes just involved her looking good and mysterious or CGI’d into oblivion, there wasn’t really much room for greatness.
Pretty much in line with the other guys:
1. I loved Affleck, not so much what Snyder did with the character of Batman though. I get he’s meant to be ‘cruel’, I just didn’t enjoy the fact they turned him into a murdering Batman.
2. Superman outright killing someone in the beginning did *nothing* for me, Snyder honestly does not understand the character. He missed an opportunity to display his speed and skill and opted to go for brute force. It reeked of missed opportunity.
3. Doomsday was awful. Truly awful for me. I loathed it. Again a missed opportunity, he should have been in one of the JLA movies as “Darkseids fallback plan” once his initial plan failed, where he could utterly wreck the JLA and kill Superman, leaving us with a death that was *earnt* rather than a death that really felt to be honest, like it had no impact.
4. I fucking *loved* the warehouse fight. Batfleck was on point and incredible. That was like it was straight out of an Arkham game. Just spot on in every way.
5. Amy Adams subplot could be removed and possibly *improve* the movie to be honest??? The whole bullet thing was a non-issue.
6. It was a whole mess of jumbled scenes that didn’t flow cohesively. You’d have one scene that could flow into the next, Plot A scene could flow logically into Plot A or pay off Plot B but illogically it skipped to subplot D and went to Subplot B then back to A then to E then to Z then to D…A total shamozzle of editing. In there, somewhere, is a structured movie waiting to be re-edited. It felt like if you trimmed out around 30 minutes you’d have a tight, incredible movie, but a few extra subplots that didn’t need to be there (Scoot McNairy, the Bullets etc) really dragged the movie backward.
7. It just…. lacked…. FUN? There was zero fun to be had in a superhero movie???
All up, I didn’t like it much honestly, I gave it around 5/10.
BUT that said… I eagerly await movies for the rest of the JLA from other directors, Suicide Squad LOOKS AWESOME and I’m interested in seeing what they do with JLA… *shrug*
EDIT:
People, we have a Prometheus issue where the cut scenes are turning out to actually add back in valuable info…
https://youtu.be/GW6WVBjqM7w
A cut scene for the Bluray with Jesse Eisenburg’s Luthor talking to an Alien on the ship, possibly what looks like Darkseids father Yuga Khan, gaining valuable information, the “Ring the bell” moment NOW makes sense. Ffs.
The trailers made it look like they’ve packed way too much stuff in, and the reviews seem to confirm that. I still want to see it because Batman, but I might just wait for the extended cut on blu ray where it will hopefully the extended time will space the story out better.
Was terribly mediocre. Affleck was actually great as Batman. But the whole pacing, and scene choice were off. The battle at the end was pretty good but i think that was only because of the Wonder woman theme music. But the lead up to it was pretty straining. I almost fell asleep in the car chase. Nothing really wrong with the cast, just the director.
I loved it. It has its problems but the good outweighs the bad with me. The ending had me balling as a die hard Superman fan.
That would’ve had more impact with me if there wasn’t a big fat ad for his next movie in the middle of this one, and if they hadn’t already “killed” him like five minutes earlier.
Originally I thought the reviews were just a bit of preciousness from the internet but to be honest I think this nailed it for me.
I found the movie to be average
I don’t think anyone told Mark Zuckerburg what role he was suppose to be playing though…
It was pretty bad. Here are some dot points (cc @saturday):
– The only thing I really liked about it was the Batman related stuff. Affleck and Irons were great. The way Batman moves is straight out of the Arkham games. It doesn’t even bother me too much that he straight out murders like 200 people.
– I liked the opening showing Bruce Wayne in Metropolis.
– If you’ve seen that trailer, you know the one I’m talking about, you’ve seen the entire movie.
– Zack Snyder is trying too hard to turn Superman into Dr. Manhattan.
– The score is woeful when used in the movie. I don’t mind the score when it’s not associated with the movie, but that Wonder Woman theme playing at stupidly loud volumes whenever her character was on screen was just awful.
– The film looks pretty, I’ll give it that. Props to Larry Fong and the visual effects teams.
– Amy Adams as Lois Lane is just awkward throughout the entire movie.
– 4! Count ’em, 4 dream sequences, including a dream within a dream.
– They accidentally put the post-credits scene awkwardly in the middle of the movie.
– Hey, don’t worry guys, this place that they’re about to destroy is totally abandoned. And so is the next place they’re going to fight. But don’t worry, we’ll put in a throw away line to remind you.
– Doomsday did exactly what Doomsday was designed to do. Only he looked like a cross between the cave troll from The Lord of the Rings and the newborn from Alien: Resurrection.
– I see what they were trying to do with Lex Luther, but it didn’t work. I will say, Eisenberg could probably play a decent Joker in some iteration of him.
– So many dumb character moments.
– Superman: Save Martha!
Batman: Why did you say her name!?
Lois: It’s his mothers name
Batman: Did we just become best friends?
Superman: Yep!
I could go on…
The cave troll for doomsday was ridiculous (among everything else). It was like they went into cgi clip art and downloaded a monster.
I loved it. I have seen it 4 times now. I really like Lex Luthor’s motivations of a revealing that ‘god’ who is all powerful and therefore cannot be all good. I like Bruce Wayne’s motivation to stand up to the impossible and take down this seemingly dangerous being before he destroys us directly or indirectly. I like Superman’s struggle with invulnerability and whether it makes him infallible and what his role should be in our/his world. I liked Clark Kent, who is stricken with guilt from killing General Zod, is investigating Batman who is branding criminals and getting them killed. Wonder Woman’s story was thin but it was enough to make her moment epic.
jumping from story to story felt like reading an issue of Detective Comics and then at the end being told to cross over to Action Comics for the continuation. The Nightmare scene felt like a post-credit scene.
BatYEAH and SuperMEH
Nailed it in three words. Are you a wizard????
I tip my hat to you sir. (or ma’am?)
Batman was awesome, the rest was meh.
I ended up really enjoying the film! Possibly due to lowered expectations, but I certainly found it more satisfying than Man of Steel. It has problems certainly, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the internet writ large thinks it is.
Put it this way – it’s better than the Transformers, maybe a hairs breadth better than Iron Man 2, in my book. Not going to blow you away, but thoroughly enjoyable as a big screen romp.
I just wished they would lighten up a little bit. I want them to have a bit more fun with it but I think I am probably in the minority there…
No you’d be in the overwhelming majority. Most reviewers seem to have been expecting it to be a snarky Marvel-style movie.
I think I’m in the minority of people who want to keep the tone the same.
After all the noise about Batman v Superman, I went and finally watched Man of Steel over the weekend to see how many of those complaints apply. Looked like most of them.
Gotta say though, seems like the work experience kid did the best he could with editing the movie together.
I suspect I’ll like it but then I liked Manof Steel for the most part, save for the overlong ending of razing Metropolis to the ground which felt out of place in a Superman story
So many pointless story line thread.
The bullet? Where did that go?
The blocking your import? Zero impact
Pretty much everything involving Lex? Why did he do things? Does he hate Superman or Batman? Why? What did he hope to gain by releasing an unkillable super mutant?
The dream sequences? Augh
The first hour and a half of that movie was just so damn dull. Wonder Woman was really underused
It was okay.
But i laughed at moments where i shouldnt have, and there is a laundry list of problems.
But i came out of absolutley hating the use of Lois near the end, The Score, and those trailers which revealed WAY WAY WAY too much.
I enjoyed it, I like the fact it wasn’t like a Marvel movie (although younger viewers/readers always compare the movies). I watch DC films for the grit and Marvel for a lighthearted laugh.
I loved it. When reviewers through around words like “humourless” it means they had false expectations of what the film was going to be. This is no fault of WB though – after the oppressively bleak Man of Steel and the unambiguously dark marketing campaign people had no reason to expect a Marvel quip-o-thon. But they still do. DC have definitely gone down a different path and they should be applauded for it.
We don’t need more witty, self-referential Marvel-style superhero movies. I have nothing against them but we’re already getting 2-3 a year. Snyder is getting a lot of criticism and I think it’s mostly because he’s refusing to follow the Marvel blueprint. It’s well within his directing ability to produce some generic, mildly entertaining but ultimately forgettable fare (see Thor 2, Age of Ultron etc.). Probably a lock for a mid-70s Metacritic but would be forgotten even by the time Civil War comes out. One way or another we’re going to be talking about BvS for a long time.
I love the marvel films and I’d love something different but to me it felt like BvS was actually trying hard to be a marvel film but they couldn’t pull it off. Eisenberg’s humor for example. Even quips like (Wonder Woman appears), Superman: “Is she with you?”, Batman: “I thought she was with you”. Which, when yopu think about it, doesnt even make sense because Bruce had already figured out who she was. It was just an attempt at humor that fell flat. Shit like that wasn’t in Man of Steel – they should’ve kept it that way. Anyway, just my opinion.
I think if they were going for a Marvel film there would’ve been a lot more lines like that. I think that it was the one token throwaway funny line. But it didn’t work given the tone of the rest of the film and I agree they should’ve left it out.
Batfleck was fantastic, and I want more. But the movie seemed to be too concerned with trying to establish the universe, as will be seen in future DC movies such as Justice League. Overall, it was kinda boring. Oh, and the music was corny to all heck.
It’s actually way better the second time. I didn’t know what to think on first viewing, the film seemed kind of broken in a fundamental way. However I really liked a lot of aspects of it. I was a bit confused as to what I thought. Being a mess was eh, but then I liked a lot.
So I saw it again, sat back and enjoyed the heck out of it.
I’m a guy that can watch the same movie a bunch of times. Most marvel films i see at the cinema more than once… GotG I saw four times (personal best). I also buy them on blu ray the day they are released and watch the shit out of them again. After i saw BvS one of my first thoughts was, “i don’t wanna invest 3 hrs of my life in that again” not because i hated it but because i just cbf’d. Maybe i will after your comment though. Thank you.
Yeah? I am under the impression the general view with Marvel films is that a lot of them you just watch once and never again. Only worth rewatching those that do something a bit more above and beyond. Like GOTG. Even things like Capt 2, good film but you don’t need to watch it again.
I do. Because i enjoy them. I liken it to listening to a song – just because you’ve heard it before doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it over and over again. Maybe I’m weird tho 🙂
im a massive fan of DC and anything they do. I loved the movie theres none of it i found boring i really enjoyed the set up for the showdown. Nobody should compare the movie to Nolans Dark Knight trilogy they are going for something totally different and saying that Ben Affleck shouldnt be compared to Mr Bale i think they are both brilliant and the Ben wouldnt of been right for the dark knight trilogy but is perfect for the Batman in this take and Bale wouldnt be good for this version.Now the movie 2h45 short i thought time flew i felt like i watched an episode of something all the little or big nods to comic books were awesome.Ill make it a bit shorter dark knight trilogy is my all time faves but Batman V Superman was the best homage and payed more respect to the comics , characters and storys created my comic book writers and artists than anything ive ever seen 10/10 haters hate critics are the slime most of em anyway think there speaking for god almighty himself. I personally cant wait to see the justice league movie and everything after that i just hope there not listening to the critics and haters and stay true to the story they are telling and keep on making the movies how they have been from the start
I for realsies walked out with 40 mins to go, decided on getting back to the door after a bathroom break that I’d be happier sitting on my phone, but here’s my FB rant
“Yeah like I was drawn in until ben said ‘lets find your mum’, I was just completely disconnected the rest of the way, the whole bat levitation thing was worse than the legolas stair run (lucky that was a dream)! Bruce and alfred were like the same age and alfred being like I’m not helping you… next scene he’s making the weapons n shit. Batman being like UGH superman kills! dude you just killed like 30 people in one car chase, you just shot those guys upset emoticon. How did they come to the conclusion that superman killed the people in the desert.. guy was shot in the head.. it was superman! Argh all the characters were over done, like was that lex or the joker?? ALSO what’s with EVERYONE having flashbacks!? Why is the flash appearin about louise, the zod water dunk scene made like no sense.. he’s not an oreo! so much overdoing with the film shots and all that, like fine here and there but why am I looking through a mailbox?? and then the almost boob but no, like come on. Batman and his one rule.. which apparently is fuck you superman until I find out our mums had the same name awwww >_____<“