The Captain reviews the fresh ti digital version of BvS:
I opted out of seeing this at the theater, I’m not the biggest fan of Man of Steel and by not the biggest fan I mean I thought it was a wretched piece of shit. So wanting to see Zack Snyder’s follow up wasn’t high on my list of priorities.
But after the success of Deadpool and the sinking ticket sales of BvS, they announced a new cut of the film. One with an R rating and like 30 more minutes added to it. Because the main complaint people had was this thing wasn’t dark enough or long enough.
But if I was going to see this, I wanted it to be as close to the director’s original vision as possible, even if it is boring, joyless, depressing and meandering. And oh boy is it all of those things.
There’s so much wrong with this film that it needs to be studied in film class. But oddly enough, I can see how fans could easily overlook the severe and glaring issues. The film isn’t unwatchable. It’s borderline incompetent sure, bloated as all hell and gloomy as fuck. But it is not unwatchable. It was a chore to sit through, now sitting at a 3 hour runtime. But still, I wasn’t angry after seeing it. Like the film, I was pretty emotionless while watching it. As soon as it was over, I just felt, yup, that’s a thing I watched. Off to bed.
One thing that’s absolutely painfully obvious is, Zack Snyder hates Superman. It’s clear he really doesn’t want anything to do with him, he’d much rather be spearheading the new Batman reboot. And with his style, that’s what he is better suited for. Who the hell thought the guy who did Watchmen would be perfect for a film franchise like Superman?
Zack Snyder basically turned Superman into Batman anyway. He darkened the suit, so it’s basically black, he made him depressed about his dead parents… He didn’t make Superman, he made Batman again who can now fly. But I’m not even sure I can blame Zack Snyder for that. Batman is the only successful franchise they have. They being DC.
So gripe number one for me, this isn’t Superman.
The only time we actually see Superman, being Superman is during a montage of him saving people. But the way they present it it’s like some big chore for him. Like having to take the garbage out or clean the dishes. Jeez, I gotta save people again? You’re such a drag, mom!
I eat a lot of rice, I make a lot of Chinese and Indian dishes, at least twice a week. To get restaurant style rice, you need a rice cooker. Which I have, it’s great, only costs about $20. But cleaning the damn thing is a pain in the ass. My point is, Superman shouldn’t have the same feeling towards saving people as I have towards cleaning my damn rice cooker. He’s Superman, saving people should be like his thing. Saving people needs to be like the shit that gets him hard in the morning. I really don’t know what he has been doing for the two years that have passed since the events in Man of Steel.
They kind of make it seem like all he does is just wait around for Lois to get herself in trouble so he can swoop in to rescue her. That’s really the only time we see him doing anything heroic. The only thing he really cares about is Lois. That and his mommy. But we’ll get into that later.
And why is he so depressed all the damn time? He’s like this super serious depressed glob in the corner that you want to poke with a stick. Where’s your Zoloft, Superman? This whole film is so joyless, even during the action sequences, there’s no life in them. Everything is so flat and covered in a thick layer of CGI. Everything looks gross and fake, honestly hard to look at sometimes.
Let’s get down to it. What the hell is the plot to this 3 hour disaster? I’ll see if I can’t unravel it, because holy fuck is it filled with plot holes, at time making this feel like an incoherent mess.
First 10 minutes of the film, kind of love. It shows the events taking place from Man of Steel. The giant Mass Effect Reaper ships attacking the city and Superman punching Zod through a million different buildings, killing thousands.
Bruce Wayne is getting dropped off by helicopter to I guess help with evacuating people at one of his buildings. Why they waited for his confirmation to leave as buildings are getting destroyed is a bit strange, but I’ll look past that.
But Bruce is rushing to get to his building when Superman punches Zod into it and they have themselves an eye laser contest, knocking down the building.
While there, Bruce runs into a dude trapped under a fallen support beam, his legs crushed. Remember him because he becomes important later.
And then it’s two years later.
We are introduced to the first of many many dream sequences. Bruce is dreaming about his parents dying, then he’s dreaming about finding the batcave as a child, then he’s dreaming about being attacked by a bat monster, then he’s dreaming about the future as an evil Superman has taken over the world, then he’s dreaming about the Flash, maybe? There’s even a dream sequence that I don’t even think was a dream sequence, for all I know it was something new added to the film. You can kind of tell when something new has been added because it feels like shit that should have been cut in the first place.
While Clark is off his Zoloft, he goes on a hiking trip up a snowy mountain and finds Kevin Costner stacking rocks. What is this scene? Why is this happening? Is he hallucinating? Why is he acting nonchalantly after seeing a dead guy stacking rocks? It’s never addressed, they never show Clark waking up from a bad dream like they do with Bruce Wayne, so what is happening here?
I hate dream sequences, very rarely do you ever need them in your story and this film had an abundance of them. Felt like I was watching Sucker Punch again. God help me.
Okay, so it is two years later and Clack is just now hearing about The Batman in Gotham… wait, I skipped a bunch of plot, going back.
It is two years later and Lois is in some Arab city, about to meet their version on Bin Laden I guess. Good thing she has Jimmy Olsen by her side… and he’s immediately shot in the face. He was a CIA operative, they were using Lois to get to this guy, but she was also being used to lure in Superman. The plan I think was to make it look to the world like he slaughtered this village to help save Lois. Doing this by shooting everyone and then setting the bodies on fire. You know, the way Superman would do it.
From what I hear, a lot of the deleted scenes involved Lois investigating one of the bullets she found, taking it to an expert to be analyzed.
So let’s think this through. You’ve set up this complicated scheme, right? You’ve infiltrated this terrorist group, had him set up this meeting with a news reporter from Metropolis, with the hopes that she will unknowingly bring a CIA agent with her, so Superman can intervene, therefore giving them the opportunity to kill the villagers, making it look like Superman did it. But use bullets. And not just any kind of bullets, specially made bullets that can be easily tracked back to you, Lex Luther, the one behind all of this.
And now you must be asking yourself, why? Why go through all of that? No clue. No one in this film has motivation for doing any of the things they do. Not Even Batman, who they kind of set up having this hate towards Superman because he blew up his building. Two years ago! Even if a character does have a motivation behind their actions, it is so thin, you could see batnipples. I know that joke makes no sense, but it made me snicker in my head, so it stays!
This might be new, but they also have a woman being paid by Lex to lie about the things she saw happen in that village, pointing the blame at Superman. But that doesn’t really make sense either. Seeing as she lives in either Metropolis or Gotham, why was she in that village? A village mind you was occupied by a known terrorist. Sure, she could have been visiting family or something, but… maybe that was the reason they axed this subplot from the theatrical cut of the film. It just adds more stupid plot holes.
Holly Hunter is in charge of this committee, trying to… what is their goal exactly? Reprimand Superman? I also want to add the CIA planned on blowing up the village with a drone strike. It most likely would have wiped that place out, but Superman punched it in the air. That seems to be the only thing he does. Me punch it! Me punch it good, Lois? Yeah, me punch it good.
So they’re having a committee on Superman possibly killing a bunch of terrorists when the CIA was just going to do the same thing, but with way more collateral damage.
You know who had a great plan? Ozymandias from Watchmen. To set up Dr. Manhattan so everyone would turn on him, even pinning the destruction of New York on him and as I’m saying this Zack Snyder just reused the same damn plot to Watchmen didn’t he?
Okay, so Clark starts to get obsessed with the rumors of Batman in Gotham. He’s like this thing everyone there knows about but doesn’t really talk about. I’m not even sure what Clark’s job is at the Daily Planet. They just randomly assigned him to cover sports. I don’t think that’s how that works. You don’t just take someone who deals mostly with like say… fluff pieces about toddler fashion shows and out of nowhere assign them to now cover sports. Something they most likely have no clue about. It doesn’t really matter, seeing as Clark doesn’t do his job and just stalks Batman for no real reason.
Batman on the other hand… okay, I gotta point this out. It really sucks that the first time we really get to see Ben Affleck dressed as Batman it is in a damn dream sequence. Sure, we get glimpses of him in the suit beforehand, but you don’t really see him until he’s having an apocalyptic dream. That’s kind of bullshit.
Bruce is a man on a mission. He’s going through these low level drug dealers or arms dealers, something criminally. To get to the man in charge of things, rumored to possibly be planning to smuggle a nuke into the city.
Meanwhile, Alfred is working on Batman’s Ironman suit. Alfred by the way is way too young. They’re basically the same age now. Alfred is meant to be the one who looked after Bruce as a kid when his parents died. But Alfred must have been a teenager or something at the time. A teen, looking after a slighter younger teen.
You know what this movie needed? At least three more movies before it. It needed a Man of Steel sequel. It needed a Batman movie to introduce us to this new version of Batman and it needed a Wonder Woman solo film. Because her being in this has no goddamn point to it.
Every time she is on screen I keep asking myself, why is she in this? Why are you here! And of course her outfit is also void of any color. Just this brown colored gladiator cheerleader outfit. Does anyone really give a damn about Wonder Woman? The lasso thing is hilariously stupid, so is her banging her metal gaudy bracelets together to release a tiny little shockwave that even Batman could brush off.
DC wants a Justice League movie so bad. The only reason Marvel was able to pull off an Avengers film is because they worked up to it. They took their time to introduce those characters. They didn’t just dump a bunch of them together and expect you to automatically know their backstory.
So the reason Wonder Woman is even in this is because Lex has a picture of her taken years and years ago. How she knows he has this is a mystery. So is how Lex knows about her and the other metahumans is also a bit of a head scratcher. But we gotta get to that Justice League movie somehow, right?!
Where was I on the plot again?
A giant chunk of kryptonite was found and now Lex can make his Superman killing… it’s actually never clear what he plans on doing with it. He knows he can hurt Superman with it, but he is never clear about how he plans on implementing it.
He takes his plan to Holly Hunter, the senator leading the Superman hearings. But I’m trying to remember why. I thought it was to help cut some of the red tape stopping him from shipping in the kryptonite, but he gets that anyways from another senator or someone with power. He is also granted Zod’s body and access to the fallen Reaper ship. Which seems like his true goal, not the kryptonite.
But he also seems to have a thing against Holly Hunter’s character for rejecting his Superman deterrent. If you have what you think is an unstoppable killing machine like Superman, which Holly Hunter’s character obviously thinks, why not have something in place that could stop him? See what I mean about character motivations? Everything is all over the place.
During a party I guess thrown by Lex, Bruce and Clark are both invited. Bruce is there because he plans of sneaking away to hack Lex’s servers. Clark is there because the plot needs him to be. Then there is this awkward meetings between the two with Lex introducing them. It seems that Lex already knows Clark is Superman and Bruce is Batman. Later Lex kidnaps Martha, Clark’s mom. How he figured this out, I have no clue. Sorry, no deleted scenes or new footage to help solve that little plot hole.
Also at this party is Wonder Woman, she also wants into the servers. Remember, Lex has that old picture of her, that’s how important her role in the film is. He has my picture, better go get it or he’ll post it on Facebook or something.
I guess Bruce’s real goal was to track the kryptonite because he wants it, so he can kill Superman. He’s still really angry about that building falling down TWO YEARS AGO! It isn’t like this is taking place a month after the events of Man of Steel. This is 2 years. They should know who Superman is by now, what kind of person he is. They should know he isn’t some killer. I mean, yeah he is. But so is Batman. Them hating each other makes no fucking sense. It makes about as much sense as them immediately becoming best friends at the end.
And how does Bruce even know what kryptonite does? How does he know it can kill Superman? Was that in the files he stole from Lex’s servers? You’d think so, but before he even stole that info, he was after this shipment.
Of course while Batman is chasing after the shipment, Superman just suddenly shows up and warns him to stop being Batman. Forget the other cars he was chasing that were firing rocket launchers and firing machines in the streets. Gotta threaten Batman for no real reason. Good job, Superman.
Good thing Batman shot a tracer on the shipment. Turns out the shipment that Lex Luther wanted, now get this. It went to Lex Luther. I know, shocker. Making everything before that with Batman chasing after them completely pointless. But we needed some kind of action sequence because before that there is nothing going on.
And then later to speed things up, off screen he breaks into the labs and steals the kryptonite. We never see this of course, just the aftermath. Like the end of No Country for Old Men.
Meanwhile, Lex uses that legless guy that was crushed during the events at the beginning of the film to help discredit Superman on Holly Hunter’s witch hunt committee. But of course this is just another set up by Lex, planting a bomb in the guy’s wheelchair, blowing everyone up while Superman is testifying.
I’m not completely sure of the goal here. Lex even kills his hot assistant for no real reason. Who I swear to god I thought was Olivia Munn for a minute. Was the goal to blame Superman for the bombing? They even say in news reports how they don’t know if Superman was involved yet. Why would he be involved? The guy who blew himself up had earlier been arrested for vandalism of this giant Superman statue the city built for him.
Was it to kill Holly Hunter’s character? Why? By this point Lex has everything he wanted. He has his kryptonite, he got Zod’s body, even full access to the Reaper ship. Motivation! Who needs it!
Okay, so now Bruce has his kryptonite weapons ready and his ironman suit on, ready to kick some ass. He lights up his batsignal and waits. But what’s funny is before Lex blackmails Superman, he really couldn’t care less that the batsignal is on. If not for Lex would Batman just be waiting all night for Superman to show up? Just awkwardly pacing around in his dumb metal suit.
To get Superman to fight Batman, he kidnaps Martha, his mom. He has a group of guys that will kill her in like an hour. But was this Lex’s plan all along? Or was this something he just made up at the spot? Also, how did he know who Superman was again? I know it took Lois like 5 minutes for her to figure it out, but… Clark Kent wears glasses and Superman doesn’t. Obviously two different people. Yes, I know I’m making a Mystery Men reference.
And to end this fight, Superman grunts out Martha. Bruce’s mother’s name. A lot of people found this stupid. And it is. But the way they set this up, for the movie, it made sense. Then they become like best pals immediately after. Sorry, I almost killed you, bro. It’s all cool, bro. Two bros hugging it out.
Then Lex’s true plan comes together. He wanted access to Zod and the ship so he could make a monster clone. How did he know he could do this? I guess the ship told him everything the ship knew, so I guess he learned it there. But again, just what was Lex’s original plan? Did it go as far as discrediting Superman and then maybe forge a weapon out of kryptonite? Did he plan on Bruce Wayne wanting to steal the kryptonite so he could kill Superman? I don’t… I’m so confused.
So anyway, he creates Doomsday. A villain that they really should have spent 5 fucking movies to lead up to, they do in their second DC universe film. Wow, just wow. And then Superman dies.
This review has done of way too long, I still have soooo much to cover but I’m spent.
If you liked the theatrical cut, I guess you might as well check this one out. I have no idea if it will convert anyone. All they really managed was to make it longer, making the plot holes even deeper. The R rating is just a gimmick. There’s no reason why it is rated R. They added a few more CGI blood bursts when people get shot, but that is about it.
For some, a lot of what I’ve pointed out might be considered minor issues. Maybe you can look past them and still enjoy yourself. And that’s great. But this is a film fans have been waiting for for years. And this is the best they could do? This is the best they had to offer? Seriously? Call it bad choice for a director or too much studio interference, or the fact DC is playing catchup with Marvel, I don’t know. But this film was a giant disappointment. A borderline disaster. But, I am looking forward to more Ben Affleck as Batman, which I think was the only takeaway from this film.
Maybe when Superman returns, he’ll be on his antidepressants and we can get an actual Superman movie. Fingers crossed.
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