Batman Vs. Superman was the worst superhero movie ever made

[Bard The 5th LW]

Just watched Batman vs. Superman and I was so disinterested in it that my soul almost left my body right there in the theatre.

Lets bitch about it on the internet so i can mentally justify having seen it.

First up: I understood absolutely no one's motivations for anything.

Batman apparently kills people now and wants to kill Superman because Superman is really really tough and Batman doesn't want to live in a world where people are stronger than him. This version of Batman apparently isn't a thinking man at all and has no interest in sparing anyone and even though he thinks Superman is a danger to everyone for destroying all of Metropolist (which is legit), he goes ahead and does the same exact thing, launching his fucking tank car wherever he pleases and also blowing things up wherever he goes.At one point he crashes his car through a building and then breaks out the other wall just to hit the car on the other side. How did he know no one was in there? How did he know the car he wanted to hit would make that turn? He is such a bad superhero its astounding. He shows no willingness to make any sort of compromise with Superman, he just wants to prove he's the biggest kid on the playground. Apparently though, after a whole movie of being on a fucking termination spree, all it takes for him to spare superman is to learn that their moms have the same name. Then their besties because that makes sense.

Then there's Lex Luther. Oh boy. Aside from making him fucking Martin Shkreli with longer hair and some sort of mental disorder, literally nothing he does makes sense. At no point did the movie ever give me a reason to think he had any motivation at all aside from like, destroying the world because he was bored? I know he's the villain, but he has nothing that made him interesting to even a little bit. Every second of the movie that no one was killing him was SO exhausting. Why did he want to kill Superman? Why did he want to kill Batman? How did he learn their secret identities? How did he somehow know everything both of them would do forever? Why? How? Uggggh.

And then they have the stupid ass edit at the end where Batman leaves the fucking funeral for the man no one in the audience believes is dead only to go NOT punch him in the face and then come BACK to the funeral which is still somehow happening because why fucking not. Sure! Don't give us any catharsis for the character we don't like at all!

What the fuck did he want out of that? To kill everyone? Because that's the only thing I can extrapolate; he just wanted to end the world because he was bored or because OH NOES THE CRAZIES which is a pretty fucked up attitude to take towards the mentally ill.

Second: I didn't like any of the characters. There was nothing in this movie to make me care for them at all.

I was emotionally numb for this entire film. Everything was nonsense and I just. couldn't. care. When the film FINALLY got to the fight it promised it still failed to make me care because it had no stakes. Batman and Superman literally did nothing to eachother. At no point did either combatant leave a significant mark or injury on one another until the very end when only the most cosmetic shit goes down. They proceed to go the rest of the movie without any consequence from that fight. They're neither tired nor injured. It was pointless as the rest of the film.

Third: It was so fucking long.

Uggggggh goddammit DC I know you want to make your own Avengers but fuuuuuuuuck just let that movie happen when it happens. Wonder Woman plays the most extraneous and stupid role possible in this film. She does nothing of value. No. Don't try to convince me she was important to that last fight or any scene at all. I could've digitally removed her from the whole movie and rewrote the fight with Doomsday in five minutes to just be Batman distracting him until Superman finished the job. Nothing she did was important enough to warrant her and the subplot about the other superheroes was also completely irrelevant to the actual conflict of the film.

You know what makes a good movie? Not setting up movies we won't see for another 2 yeas. Just make the movie you're at now and let those movies set themselves up like a GOOD film.

You can't even say that they gave people a reason to be afraid of Superman; Zod already filled that narrative purpose. He was the Boogie man that gave people a reason to fear superman and possible people like him. The Superheroes that weren't Superman or Batman contributed nothing to this movie aside from padding out its already bloated length and making me watch a dumb movie for longer than I had too.

Also they shove so many fakeout dream sequences/hallucinations into this movie that I feel like Batman and Superman shouldn't be given any responsibility at all. Also is Batman like, the Oracle at Delphi? What was even with that scene after his Mad Max styled vision of the future? It made no sense and there was no effort to explain it. And I'm still not done.

Fourth: This was perhaps the most pretentious destruction porn I've ever watched.

This movie begins by doing something ALMOST interesting by replaying the fight between Superman and Zod from a street view, using Bruce Wayne's perspective. Even though he's Batman, he's still just a dude and you get to see the impact of a mindless action film like Man of Steel from the ground level and it actually gives you a sense of context for why Batman might dislike Superman before he ends up just doing all of the exact same shit.

The movie actually opens making you think its going to own up to all the shit Superman did in the last movie instead of pretending that his Godzilla inspired rampage across the city was fine and that the whole place was fixed an afternoon later the way Man of Steel did. It does not follow through on this promise AT ALL. God forbid the hero maybe be forced to feel long term moral weight of his actions.

Like, Superman NEVER does ANYTHING to warrant legitimately changing Batman's mind about him. Nothing. He reveals he has a mom. That's it. Furthermore, the movie never comes to any sort of CONCLUSION about Superman and what it means for him to exist. Like, I don't even mean they leave it up to the audience; they just blow up more shit and forget that they asked that question.

Because the movie spends its buildup trying to pretend its going to deconstruct destructionporn action movies and then just becomes a destruction porn action movie. Legitimately, they just start destroying buildings again as though the first half of that movie never happened. Then the military gets in on it by launching a nuke over what is basically New York because that'd be fine, right? No one would get cancer from that radiation at all nu-uh. They do it in fucking seconds too. Like, there was NO waiting for them to fire that missile, its like they just wanted to do it because they were bored.

"Oh holy shit Superman is taking the monster to space as though he doesn't want to destroy the city."

"Oh okay sweet lets launch a nuclear bomb at them and fuck things up."

"Lol okay."

Its kind of a pet peeve of mine how readily the army fires nukes in both movies and videogames. As though there's like, no oversight or alternative AT ALL that ANYONE could suggest. Like, oh, I don't know, all the oversights that the USA and USSR put into place to stop themselves from pointlessly firing nukes during a little 45 year long period called the Cold War. Nah, you just got to press a few buttons. And there's not going to be ANY lasting consequences ever at all.

And the way they brush aside all the destruction is hilarious. "Oh no that building full of empty was just destroyed!" Yeah okay, no one is in a highly populated urban center at night. Everyone has gone home to their countryside haciendas for the night. There's no such thing as a graveyard shift or cleaning people at all ever. Its fine guys, its fine.

The movie's attempts to brush aside all the deaths that were surely happening in Metropolis and Gotham were so laughable that I legitimately expected Batman to say that Superman got sent to the Shadow Realm at the funeral scene.

Now someone tell me they liked it so I can tell them I hate them.

[Aerozord]

FOr point one, apparently there is a rumor the Joker was supposed to be in the movie too and they just mashed them together and thats why his personality jumps around so much. I mean thats stupid on a base level because they are VERY different characters. The whole idea of them being effective together is because they bring each other ideas that they wouldn't think of.

But I knew this would be bad the moment the called it Batman vs Superman. Thats not a plot, that isn't even a title, thats a marketing ploy. Thats someone going "hey fanboys talk about this all the time lets do that." It cant really work if for no reason but the fact they both are pretty strict on the "dont kill" thing and you have to severely gimp Superman for it to work. And I mean to the point of character destruction.

[Bard The 5th LW]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

FOr point one, apparently there is a rumor the Joker was supposed to be in the movie too and they just mashed them together and thats why his personality jumps around so much. I mean thats stupid on a base level because they are VERY different characters. The whole idea of them being effective together is because they bring each other ideas that they wouldn't think of.

My little brother theorized that in the movie itself and it seems likely. I'm not like, HUGELY familiar with the DC universe (I've only ever consistently watched the Animated shows/films), but Lex is usually like, controlled, intelligent, and at least a little bit charismatic. This Lex Luthor was just tiresome; like, he never did anything on screen to make me think he was smart. It just felt like he arbitrarily knew everything without having to do any work for that knowledge and also everyone else was really dumb at the same time.

[Nique]

Superman is a character close to my heart. That doesn't give me any special insight into the character or anything, but it made watching this film actually emotionally difficult for me.

Maybe the worst sin is the wasted potential. Affleck was good! Cavil was good! They inhabit these characters well. But the film is still awful. How do you even manage that?

Snyder also forced totally such totally uncharacteristically violent, mean-spirited, irrational bullying and also actual murder onto characters who were otherwise trying to do good both in this universe and in literally every other interpretation of the characters, I was literally in tears during the titular fight when in became clear that it was Snyder's intent that BATMAN'S intent was to actually just kill Superman. I've never seen these two characters be THIS adversarial.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I'm just sitting here wondering, how in the world did they manage to botch this movie? Especially with all the source material they have access to for reference sake. Even if they wanted to go with darker versions of Bats and Sups, they still some how end up botching it by not go through with that interpretation.

This could have been a great film... oh well looks like the DC Cinema curse continues.

[Solid Snake]

The asshole Marvel fanboy in me is excited that this means I'll get to see something I never imagined possible in my lifetime: A year in which Iron Man and Captain America kicked Superman and Batman's asses with critics and in the box office.

I mean, do you know how implausible that would've seemed like, a decade ago? Back in the height of my Avengers fan days I was just kind of like, "Yeah, they're always going to seem like the B-league to the Justice Team to most people." It was practically an act of hipster-esque contrarianism that led me to knee-jerkingly defend Captain America as a better character than Superman, or desperately trying to defend Daredevil as a character independently of Affleck's awful portrayal.

Now it's like I live in this Bizzaro-world universe where the real world's going into Donald Trump-led dystopian bullshit, while the world of comics has finally seen the light and accepted Marvel's innate superiority. Was it worth sacrificing our world to see fiction sorted out properly? Alas, probably not, but at least I'll be able to act like a pretentious douchebag about Batman and Superman being as terrible as I always envisioned them once I'm in prison after Trump locks me up as a political dissident.

[Bum Bill Bee]

Man, if this was supposed to be the launching point for about 10 films or so, they're off to a god awful start! Aside from the upcoming Wonder Woman film, which would be the first solo-woman superhero film since whenever that Supergirl one was made, I can't imagine how they could effectively promote any future films from this line, with the first two being so detested.


I mean granted, no one today really remembers much about Ironman 1, which kickstarted the MCU, and its fallen behind the other installments, but it DID have to be liked to start off the MCU, which it accomplished in its time.

[MSperoni]

Marvel isn't innately superior. Each company goes back and forth. Marvel is winning now, but it hasn't always been that way and it will change eventually. Marvel was pretty shit till the X-men saved them in the mid 70s, and then carried them into the 80s and 90s.

In my unprofessional opinion, DC's problem is they can't take a crap without stamping a Batman logo on it. They have a lot of other cool properties that aren't Batman but for some reason they won't do anything with them. I've seen them try, and when they try they make really good efforts, but then a month later there's another Big Batman Event that drowns everything else out.

Here's hoping this "Dawn of Justice" will lead to better and brighter things, but DC's gotta shake off the Bat. Not only as a character, but also as a tone. Even Superman has been swallowed up in Batman's grimdarkness.

Marvel's amazing for the risks they take and the properties they're willing to establish and dump wads of cash into. Can you imagine DC ever making a "Guardians of the Galaxy" level property into a movie?

Shit, if Avengers was B-rated then I don't even wanna think what GoG was. C-rated? D-rated?

Regardless, Marvel's willingness to establish and run with new properties allows them to have Captain America stay Captain America. They don't need him to cop an attitude to appeal to assholes, or pick up a gun to appeal to adult audiences. They have other characters for that.

DC though? It's Batman all the time. 24/7/365 Batman. Batman has the burden of appealing to everyone. Based on box-office figures, he does pretty well. However it's only Batman. Batman may be DC's ace, but that's all they got and all they're willing to play with. Yes, BvS is killing it at the box office but I'm talking long-term strategy here. DC's goal is to win against Marvel, and they can't do that with a single movie built around one character (they can say what they want, but this comes across as another Batman movie to me).

You'd like to think Superman could bring about a tonal variation that sets his movies apart from the Batman films, but not even the Man of Steel can break free from the shadow of the bat. I wish the Christopher Reeve Superman would show up and save us from what we got now. Wouldn't that be great? That classic music starts playing and he shows up and is like "Guys...just...settle down, okay?"

But I digress.

The best comics out of the New 52 that I read were Swamp Thing, Animal Man, the first 35 issues of Wonder Woman, and Aquaman. They were all Batman free, tonally different, and pretty great.

But then something happened. The creative teams shifted, Convergence started, and then...DK3.

Look, I dunno, maybe it wasn't that bad but I stepped away from DC for awhile and am only now finding my way back to them. I got absolutely zero interest in DK3 and trust Miller with Wonder Woman like I trust a doctor with razor-blades for fingers to give me a testicular examination. (though I do like the Carrie Kelley Robin)

Speaking of Frank Miller: AFIK Batman wasn't a top seller for DC till the post-Miller era. Up until then it was Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes.

And speaking of Teen Titans: The Teen Titans animated series seems to be the most universally appealing thing DC has produced in years, yet you look at the comics and the roster isn't the same and it's boring as hell and confusing. Not to mention it's way too adult. It's also stuck on Robin because...y'know...DC can't take a crap without stamping a Batman logo on it.

Mark my words: if DC ever did a TT comic that had the roster and tone of the animated series and were willing to downplay Robin (who seems to be the least favorite character of everyone I talk to who watches the show or has kids who watch the show)...they'd have 'em a hit.

Originally Posted by Bum Bill Bee

which would be the first solo-woman superhero film since whenever that Supergirl one was made

There was also Elektra and the Halle Berry Catwoman film.

Unless you're omitting those because you've blocked them from your memory.

(I actually kinda liked the Elektra movie though)

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by MSperoni

Marvel isn't innately superior.

On an objective, rational level, as a human being who is capable of reasonable and impartial thought, I agree with your statement. It would be foolish to disagree with such a statement.

On a subjective, personal level, fuck DC, always fuck DC, Marvel's always been better, I hate the Justice whatever they're called, I wish there was some DC vs. Marvel Superhero movie that I could watch where all the Marvel heroes and heroines just beat the everloving crap out of their DC counterparts, and DC fans have terrible taste in everything ever made.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Bum Bill Bee

Man, if this was supposed to be the launching point for about 10 films or so, they're off to a god awful start!

I mean, sure, as critics and fans of the genre, we can attack DC as being off to a 'god-awful start.'
But given how Batman vs. Superman is doing at the box office, I highly doubt DC gives a shit. If the crappy movie makes plenty of money, can we really say they're off to an 'awful start?' Artistically sure, but there's still every incentive to keep making Justice League movies.
You see, I was hoping for a scenario where both the critical and the financial reception would've been so astoundingly bad that DC would've just conceded outright, publicly admitted that Batman and Superman have always been atrocities against the comic book industry, and cried themselves softly to sleep each night at how Iron Man and Captain America have stolen everything they've loved and cherished.

EDIT 2: Wonder Woman and Supergirl are all right, though, and so is the Flash.
So maybe instead of being a raving fanboy frothing at the mouth at everything DC's ever done, I'm just a raving fanboy who hates everything DC's ever done that involves male characters who can't run very fast.

[Bard The 5th LW]

The trailer for the Lego Batman movie played right before this one started and I legitimately enjoyed all 2 minutes of it more than I enjoyed maybe anything in the 2 and a half hour runtime of the actual movie.

I guess Holly Hunter was okay? I liked Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne and his Batman at the start but as the movie wore on I grew to dislike him as much as everyone else.