This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Parker Jackson’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
I saw this with a packed audience on the late thursday night screening, and while everyone else in my group was hyped, I was still excited but after the terrible reviews I didn't know what I was gonna be in for. I'm actually glad I looked at those reviews before I saw the film, because I would have been extremely disappointed otherwise.
I did have a great time watching BvS and I do like the film overall, but man did it have flaws. Before I get into those though, I'll talk about the things I liked. First off, everyone else has already said this, but Ben Affleck is fucking amazing as Batman, which was a casting choice I was never opposed to in the first place, but man did that pan out well. He might even be my new favorite Batman (and The Dark Knight is literally my second favorite film, so that means a lot) because it's a new take and there wasn't one scene with him and Alfred (Jeremy Irons was also great, by the way) or him fighting crime that I didn't enjoy.
The action is amazing, and the little that we do get to see of Batman and Superman fighting and the huge amount of Doomsday fighting was all great to me. It's also one of the most glorious looking movies I've seen in a while, every shot is like a painting, but a really badass painting with Batman and Superman on it. There are also some killer lines where Batman and Superman are just going back and forth, fighting each other not only with their fists but with some badass conversations.
Now on to the negatives. Jesse Eisenberg in my opinion is extremely underrated and COULD have worked in this. Well, that's not at all the fucking case. I really did not like him in this. Partially the writing of his character, partially because of the fact that he's just not menacing, and partially the way he delivers his lines. His whole character was played for comic relief (which really didn't work with the tone of the rest of the film) and feels like a whiny little kid the whole time. From the trailers I was thinking that maybe his scenes would work better in context and they sure as hell didn't, in fact one time I even cringed a little. It's not necessarily that he did a terrible job for the character that he was trying to play, the problem is just that he doesn't work with the tone, and doesn't even remotely feel like Lex Luthor, even when he's bald.
Also, the pacing and certain fights were kind of disappointing. For a movie that's called Batman V Superman, you'd expect them to really hate each other, go head to head multiple times and then maybe make up within the last third of the film. Instead, there's like a 7 minute fight (which was awesome) and then they team up. The whole film builds up to 7 minutes. And another thing I didn't like was that Superman didn't even really want to fight Batman, he just did to save his mom, which was so stupid, they could have literally sorted that out within a minute. If Superman would have actually had a reason to want to fight Bats then there would be emotion and stakes in the fight. There's also like a few snippets of fight scenes about a quarter way through, but then nothing until basically the last third, so the movie went from being very slow paced to extremely fast paced very quickly.
While those are definitely problems, this last thing PISSED ME OFF. Did you actually try and make me believe that Superman was killed? Maybe if I was 6 years old and had ten brain cells I would be sad and believe it. I also do realize that in the comics Doomsday kills Superman, so Zack Snyder and Chris Terrio probably thought that meant they HAD to do it. Well, you didn't, and you also dragged it out for way too long. And then you revive him with a piece of dirt? What the fuck, are you serious? He's in a coffin, surrounded by dirt already you idiots! Ugh, writing is hard, isn't it?
There's also pretty much a 2 minute break from the movie where we get a trailer for the Justice League movies, or at least that's what it feels like. This would have worked so much better as an end credits scene, which there isn't one anyways so it could have gone there.
Sorry for this 40 page-long review, but this movie is a mixed bag so there's a lot to write about. Overall I still enjoyed BvS, and I have a bunch of big problems with it and it could have been an amazing movie if just a couple of things were changed, but for me personally the good outweighed the bad. Batfleck.
7.1/10