Wow, that movie was so intense I needed an entire day to catch my breath and figure out exactly what I thought of it. I have been skeptical for a while now about how DC and Warner Bros are going to go about creating background for the characters that we have never seen in a modern DC movie. I mean, let’s face it, this is the same idea as Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War (In Theaters this May) except it only has one relevant prequel to Marvel’s 19. To add to that, introducing a new Batman so soon after the end of the best Batman trilogy ever. It was clear to me that DC was going to have a tough test in front of them. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
The Bad
Starting from the beginning, the first scene in the movie was probably as bad of an opening scene in a superhero movie as there has ever been. Seriously; I almost walked out right there. I realize the whole “young Bruce Wayne falls in a well full of bats” cliche probably had to happen but what’s with the trance-like state he goes in when the bats swarm around him? And then the levitation; like are you serious right now? Not a good way to start.
Once we got going a little bit it was clear that my view of Batman was about to change. It was obvious that this version didn’t care nearly as much about not killing anyone. Also, the couple times where we see Bruce Wayne out and about, I couldn’t help but feel that they tried to force the playboy millionaire reputation on us by having Bruce Wayne pretend to be a stuck up party-boy as opposed to Christian Bale’s version being more quiet and secluded which came across as conceited to the outsiders. I should probably clarify that some of these issues are just personal preferences for me because the previous Dark Knight Trilogy is one of my favorite movie Trilogies EVER. You may very well enjoy this depiction of Batman better than the last one. However, I doubt it.Moving away from some of my Batman preferences, I thought the movie jumped around a little bit too much at times. There were at least three different times where at a scene transition it took me quite a few minutes to figure out what just happened.
Now onto the character that nobody really cares for that much: Lois Lane. I honestly felt that for being pretty much irrelevant to the development of the plot, Lois had a ton of screen time. Really the only thing she contributed to the movie was the bullet that eventually made her realize that Lex Luthor was behind the village shooting in the desert, and a constant distraction for Superman.
Lastly, (AND HERE IS THE MAJOR SPOILER) when Superman dies at the end does DC really think that any relatively educated movie fan actually believe that he will stay dead? Just look at the title of the movie “Dawn of Justice”. Obviously an homage to the beginning of the Justice League. Well if Superman dies then there is no Justice League so for me it was just a matter of when he comes back to life. I just don’t think there was any point in trying to kill him. My only thought is that they were trying to relate it to the resurrection of Christ since he had been called a God various times throughout the movie and right before the final fight scene Lex refers to Doomsday as the Devil.
The Good
Now that all that is out of the way I should say that I actually think Warner Bros did a great job considering the adversity that they were facing from the outset. The film connected beautifully with the earlier Man of Steel on many occasions. It gave us a bunch of new characters, pretty much all of which were very likable for their role even with the little to no backstory they provided.Plus Gal Gadot is being pretty easy on the eyes didn’t hurt. Personally, I really enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg as a villain even though the villain he portrayed was probably more resembling of The Riddler than Lex Luthor. I also found it to be a pleasant surprise that the CGI was not too overbearing.
I think that the best thing this movie did was give us a little peek into the future of the Justice League. It gave us a brief look into Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg as well as the conversation between Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman where Bruce suggests that she help track down the other meta-humans like her.
The Rating
Perry The Cinema Psycho 