When Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (I'm not going to bother typing the full title again) was released to a critical savaging, my interest level in it leapt dramatically upwards. I wasn't a huge fan of Man of Steel, and I don't know that I've seen a Zack Snyder film that I thought was particularly good (though Watchmen probably comes closest), but there's something much more compelling to me about a grand, glorious catastrophe.
But as the venom for Dawn of Justice faded, so, too, did my urge to see it, and I ultimately never got around to watching the thing theatrically. But now the alleged Ultimate Edition is out, and the talk online was that it actually wasn't bad - so, I figured, why not.
Now, I've still not seen the theatrical cut, so comparisons aren't possible - but I figured that it'd be interesting going into the "director's cut" without any baggage (well, aside from the trailers, and the aforementioned critical mauling)... but I can easily see how a hacked-down version of this could have been terrible.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition... is.
It is. It is a thing that people made.
And that's kind of the biggest disappointment of all - that it's not the glorious disaster I wanted, or the triumph it sold itself as, or even just a half-decent superhero movie.
It just... is.
It's just overlong, self-indulgent, self-important, inconsistent, occasionally confusing, regularly confused, almost entirely nonsensical, and despite all its flaws, it doesn't really add up to anything but three hours and two minutes of noise.
Okay, so there are two actually-good things in the movie. One is Ben Affleck, whose Batman is as good as you've heard. I'd put a large part of that success down to the fact that he spends most of his time as Bruce Wayne, doing actual detective stuff, rather than just moping about in the suit. The anti-Superman power armour kind of comes out of nowhere, though - there's no buildup or reveal, he literally just appears wearing it without any comment.
Oh, and he might be psychic, or see the future, or something? That's not clear.
The other good thing is Jeremy Irons' Alfred. Batfleck got a lot of column inches about how he's older, more cynical, but so is Alfred - he's a slightly weary, ascerbic conscience for Wayne, trying to keep his master on the moral path, but not above needling him, or making muttered complaints about Master Bruce's lack of progeny. He's hands-on, too, a proper partner - not just acting as mechanic for the Batmobile but even taking remote control of the Batwing.
The Superman stuff is... less good.
And it's a shame, because there's a germ of a good idea buried in there, and I don't think it's the same question of accountability that Civil War dealt with. It's about fallibility, and how Superman decides who to save and who not to save. It's his known (somehow) affection for Lois Lane that kicks off events, and his affection for his mother that ultimately drives him into the titular fight with Batman.
It's that, for all the Super, he's still, at his core, a man.
Which, I think, was the muddled intention behind the colossally stupid "Save Martha" bit. It's not that their mothers have the same name, it's that they both had mothers, that they both would do anything to save them, and that Batman finally realises that Superman isn't the cold, aloof, alien would-be god - he's just a guy, trying to do the right thing.
The problem is that the script just isn't good enough to get that across.
And that's not the only place where the script doesn't hold up; the movie opens with a piece of narration by Bruce Wayne that wouldn't be out of place scrawled in the back of a particularly angsty 14-year-old's biology notebook, but the pacing and tone are all over the place throughout: the buildup to the Batman v Superman fight is interrupted a five-minute scene of Gal Gadot's Diana Prince checking her email; the final fight with the spoiled-by-trailers Doomsday is interrupted by an overlong interlude between Clark and Lois; and the heartfelt epilogue is interrupted by Batman threatening Lex Luthor in prison. It seems terrified that the audience might get bored, so can't settle do just doing what it's doing.
Oh, yeah, Lex... yeah. He's weird. I don't know if it's that they just wanted to do something different to the versions that had gone before, but the forgetful, schizophrenic, pseudo-Joker here doesn't really work. He's got the money to be an evil genius, sure, but I don't think they ever really sell the genius part; it's just angsty theology 101, coupled with more daddy issues than Spielberg's entire back catalogue.
I really, really wanted to enjoy this. I wanted it to be surprisingly good, like the Ultimate Edition buzz suggested, or at least be full-on, hilariously stupid-bad - like, Street Fighter: The Ultimate Battle bad.
Instead, it just... is.
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