Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

The long awaited duel of great super heroes has received very mixed reactions from the audiences, and even with me, there is no pure satisfaction, but the positives outweigh the negatives. I liked Hans Zimmer's soundtrack, the totally wacky and crazy Jesse Eisenberg, whom I could imagine as the Joker, the serious Ben Affleck, who performs surprisingly well and has a perfectly dark voice, Wonder Woman's seductive entrance on the scene, decent pacing and the action is solid, unless you count the CGI madness in the finale, that was too much even for me. The story doesn't dazzle too much, there is only one albeit very good twist, but that's something I kind of expect in a blockbuster, rather there are unnecessary mistakes in terms of character behaviour. Batman and Superman hate each other for two hours and within seconds they are best friends – I was waiting to see who would invite who first for a beer. Unfortunately there are more of these issues, so it's more up to the viewer how relevant this fact is to you and whether you can get past it. There's absolutely no comparison with The Dark Knight, but I don't regret the money, the film goes by quickly, I had fun and when you rise above the logical kinks, it's a dark enjoyable popcorn movie. 75% (25/03/2016)

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)

The film ended up being a little better than the trailers. Still, the plot was a bit too chaotic. I think they chose the actors well, but they kept it pretty tame with the Superman character. Batman was a little more fleshed out, but they could have pushed harder with him too. Or maybe they didn't push on purpose, so that one of them wouldn't be more sympathetic to the audience. Still, we've all got our favorite, haven't we. I have no major problem with Lex Luthor as he was introduced here, and I'm quite interested in his future development. I just hope they realize that if they want to make a Joker out of him, it's going to be rather awkward. Oh, and the music was really good. 3 stars. (02/04/2016)

Fans would see this as the best sex of their lives, but for casual viewers it might be a hard pill to swallow. Christopher Nolan’s Batman anchored in reality was replaced by Zack Snyder's expansive comic universe. Because of the number of characters and even more motivations, this would require a slower pace and an even longer runtime. Yet it remains an immersive experience, with familiar music from Man of Steel (there is no trace of the motifs from Nolan’s Batman trilogy). In the last third, the demands on the viewer’s attention decrease and we’re in for a nerdy climax. I enjoyed the linking to Man of Steel at the beginning. Ben Affleck’s performance is okay. (23/03/2016)

Basically, everything that was true about the first movie applies perfectly this time as well, but it is more chaotic and noticeably less tight thanks to the number of characters and story lines that are only started but not developed properly. The main distinguishing features are contradiction that goes hand-to-hand with divisiveness, where every fifteen minutes of footage include five minutes of enthusiasm (some performances, storylines, specific scenes), for five minutes you look at your watch (the amount of ballast around the lengthy building of the fictional world, which is not properly used, there are unnatural story lines packed with troubles of Lois or a too complicated dull phase of Luthor's plan) and five minutes of desperate beating of the head on a seat (bloated pomp, dream sequences of Clark and Bruce, Eisenberg's childish play, confusing action culminating in a half-hour digital mess like "skyscrapers" are falling again dull finale scene, absent tension between the central duo and especially "Marta"). And the whole movie consists of ten consecutive 15 mins sequences. This is best illustrated by Affleck/Batman. The role of the weary aging Bruce fits him perfectly, but the script makes him a stale naive puppet in the game of smarter people. Like Batman, he is also excellent, but he is useless, because during the final settlement he just dodges the falling building while the super (men / women / mutants) are fighting. So, you have everything in one basket: good intentions and ideas, the realization of which is often not very smooth and sometimes becomes almost an unwanted self-parody. The Ultimate edition montage is then smoother, despite the length. You feel that everything is running more smoothly but nothing more. Yes, it's good for the first two hours, Clark and Bruce's motivations are more elaborate, Lois suddenly has something to do. It all represents Snyder's gloomy vision better. But what's the point of all this if the functional stress is ruined in the last third of the movie (which is still an hour of footage) during "we fight a monster in a CGI way" which is both silly and boring. And it does not fit into the atmosphere set by the first two thirds. Not at all. Which, this montage surprisingly makes even stronger. (23/03/2016)