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Alright, I've seen it. It's been interesting-maybe perplexing-hearing other peoples' thoughts about this "ultimate" edition leading up to my viewing of it, because judging by what some have said, it's a completely different film and sparks a day and night change in how they perceived the theatrical cut and it over time. Well, that most certainly has not been my experience. If anything, I would barely give the movie an extra point if I was to rate it with something as arbitrary and emotionless as a number system. A 5 bumped to a 6 is far from what many fight to say is an 8 or 9, and that just hasn't happened, I'm not sorry to say.
In many ways, actually, what is added in this so-called ultimate edition serves to flesh out select parts of the movie, like the Africa sequence, Clark's reaction to Batman and Lex's plans more, but in the case of the latter two, the additional footage also endeavors to continue to punch holes in a movie already full of them like cinematic swiss cheese. The new information gained in added footage makes it even more improbable for Lex to do anything he was doing close to perfectly, because 90% of it is all based on convenience and luck, largely depending on how two vastly different men would respond to the chess pieces he had in place at exactly the right time they needed to be there. Somehow his plan to ruin Superman and possibly alert Darkseid began with torching bodies in Africa in a frame up, and were to end with him being killed by Batman, except he had Doomsday there too, for whatever reason. Insurance? Fun? Something for bad writers to waste an emotional comic arc on? All of the above, maybe.
I actually think this cut in many ways harms the film more than it does it good, beyond just the additional footage of Clark and Lex's "plan." There's so much in the ultimate cut that could've been shot much more efficiently, like all the research Lois does and reports to a bunch of people that continually ignore her, and then there's stuff we just didn't need to see at all like a full-on nude body shot of Ben Affleck taking a shower (?) and even more of the section where Clark, for whatever reason, suits up in winter gear and sees a vision of his father while hiking in mountains (?), which feels even more stupid and out of place here than in the theatrical. Lex's additional scenes serve to only make him more annoying and jittery, and really stretches the credibility of the public in Metropolis and Gotham for not realizing this bastard was a few shovels short of a tool shed all along, as everything he does signals his bonkers underbelly that isn't even an underbelly as it's always completely visible on the surface. But of course, this is also a public who hate Superman vehemently as an alien and corrupt tyrant, yet make a monument to him, then hate him again, then cry when he dies like they all cared at all to begin with.
In all honestly, if I was editing this film I'd take maybe ten minutes of the thirty minutes added, then rework all the other scenes needed in a far more sensical way, taking the run time to 2 hrs 45 minutes max, which is around TDKR's length. As it stands, over half of what's added in the ultimate cut really doesn't do much at all to show us anything new in the grand scheme of things that we already weren't aware of, nor is it impressive by any means, as it only serves to further tangle an already messy film of shoddy character motivations. What didn't work still doesn't work, though the added bits seem to continually make excuses as to why the film isn't as bad as everyone says, except for the fact that it still totally is.
All in all, Batman v Superman, in the theatrical cut or the ultimate edition, is simply not a good movie, and it's been a great mystery to me how anyone could enjoy this film. Films should never feel like a choir to watch, and this one felt like I was doing a job I wasn't even getting paid for. The three hours dragged and dragged, and throughout I never cared once about what any of the characters were going through because this wasn't Batman, it wasn't Superman, it wasn't Lois Lane, Ma or Pa Kent, and certainly not Lex Luthor. All I see when I watch this film is massively missed potential that would have been enriched and made stellar in the hands of a competent director, which Snyder quite clearly isn't. It's really a shame his destructo-porn, sadistic superhero melodrama soap fantasy got to exist when people with a greater understanding and authority on who these characters are and the themes explored would've been far more deserving than a man whose dark version of a Batman film seemingly includes the addition of a scene where Bruce gets raped in prison. And we wonder why this man can't make a film that's successful both critically and financially, or even one of those at all.
When it's said and done, this film will always been seen as a massive failure in my eyes, and it's full of such nonsensical garbage and moments empty of any emotional resonance I can't ever imagine watching it again outside of being strapped into a chair and forced into it. I don't enjoy myself, the characters I'm watching act nothing like they would or should-regardless of them being near Elseworld versions of the "heroes"-and the sum total of the experience adds up to feeling like nothing but a chore.
Batman v Superman is nothing more than a film full of bad people doing bad things to one another without any reasoning or sense to it. You have a Superman who makes a stand for justice, but murders a warlord by blasting him through the wall in the same breath. You've got a newspaper employer who keeps people on his staff around just to berate them for fun and who commands them in ways nobody in that line of work ever would, under any circumstances, and doesn't fire Clark no matter how much he avoids doing anything remotely resembling his actual job. You have a military who are ready at every hint of danger to nuke or bomb anyone or anything to death, including Superman, and then a day after Superman dies in battle due in no small part to their mindless actions, they act like they cared about him at all as some sadistic PR stunt. You have a public that follow illogical events and make perceptions about Superman they wouldn't dare to if they had actual brains or emotional intelligence, and they blame him for the deaths in Africa when their own star-spangled military force was going to bomb that same village and kill three times the number he was framed for murdering if he wasn't there to stop the drone from hitting its mark. We have a bigoted Batman who thinks that a man who continues to pose no threat to the earth beyond the natural collateral damage of world saving battle still deserves to die, because of...reasons. Batman doesn't want to make a kryptonite weapon as a safeguard or red button to hit if/when Superman decides to turn evil. No, he wants to use it to kill him immediately and with as little fuss as possible, regardless of the fact that Superman has never showed any ill will towards him or anyone else. Do people really think that Superman was just waiting to show how evil he was, two years after the battle of Metropolis? If he wanted to take control over the earth, he would have already, and he wouldn't need to work with a bomb maker to plan a Capitol building bombing to do it either, as some in this universe argue he did. Yes, the super-powered, near immortal Superman planned a bombing attack with a guy with a bomb in his wheelchair, the same guy who hated his guts for something that was out of Superman's control in the first place and would've never worked with him at all anyway. And after the bomb goes off in the attack Superman apparently had a part in planning, he stands around to help the medics because, why? In every case I've seen, when people commit crimes, they usually run in the opposite direction of a crime scene, instead of staying right freaking there. How stupid do the filmmakers think I am?
It's moments and character actions and motivations like this that make me feel BvS is insulting my intelligence, showing me "pretty" images of Batman and Superman punching stuff to appease me enough that I'll be too distracted to notice all the glaring flaws to trash it for the mess it so clearly is. Characters act like monsters without much logic in their motivations, and everybody openly screws one another in the light of day with violence and the ill-intent of words and press.
This movie universe makes the Machiavellian philosophy about the evil nature of humanity that it must've taken a garbage ton of inspiration from look rather light in comparison, and actually mirrors an even worse version of our world as we have it now. An ignorant and gullible public, false heroes like Batman and Superman, openly malicious public figures like Lex we all see as evil but follow anyway, and an incompetent, mercurial and scheming military. It's a film where Batman is actually more evil than Lex in many instances. Where Superman openly broods and moans about his place in the world and how evil people think he is on exiles in snow capped mountains (?) when he could actually be going out and helping to change peoples' perceptions by continuing to do the right thing. The issue is that instead of listening to Jor, his true father, and continuing to fight for earth until they learn his true and good nature, Clark always listens-for whatever reason-to Pa and Ma Kent, the former who tells him doing good always brings bad even when you have good intentions, and the latter who serves only to confuse him by not giving him any advice at all beyond, "do this or that, it's all okay to me."
This version of earth is full of a public who don't make any effort to understand and communicate with Superman on any level, and who mindlessly hate him until he saves them like he always has, at which point they suddenly act like he was a friend and hero to them all along as they mourn falsely at his gravesite. If this is the planet Superman hopes to become the symbol of goodness for, I'd suggest he fly off and find a better people to represent, because they are by no means worthy of his influence. Like this film, in the ultimate or theatrical cut, they are a mess of epic proportions, the only way the film is "epic" in any way.
I wanted to love this film more than every fan of it combined, and wished to march proudly for it and represent it in smart, tense debates that showcased how it stood up to the Marvel formula. But everything in me points to this film being as average as they come, a bad execution resting tortured behind a thin veil of promise, and that has quite honestly saddened me. Like an observant atheist committed to the idea that heaven can't exist, I criticize Batman v Superman not because I enjoy the exercise or relish the idea that something I wanted to believe in wasn't that good at all. I do it because it's raw honesty and I'm calling it as I see it, pulling no punches.
Nothing I see here gives me any hope for the future of the DC film universe, at least with Snyder and his team still attached, and that's a real shame.
I thought this was an interesting idea, as even Bond is coming to the end of
copyright soon ?
With that said, while there are good moments, the film is a mess that makes one wonder what George Miller's take on the DC universe would have been like.
But let's not forget what's been done to Batman. Snyder's bullshit excuse that Batman's killings are only "manslaughter" don't do a goddamn thing. Christopher Nolan understood Batman, had him go out of his way to save the Joker at the end of The Dark Knight, and he only killed Harvey Dent because there was no other way. This Batman, played as damn well as possible by Ben Affleck (the only thing keeping me from hating this Batman), casually tosses a man in a room where a grenade is about to explode, crashes into the back of a semi with the Batmobile knowing full well that there are people there he's likely about to kill by dropping a few tons of Batmobile on them, and shoots a man who has a flamethrower with an M60. His killings in the Knightmare sequence I hold aside as that's clearly a possible future where Batman could very well be forced to do these kinds of things, though why in God's name he's still wearing the Batman outfit, I don't understand.
Then we have Wonder Woman. Good thing she was in this movie. Didn't do jackshit through most of it. She was played well but feels so damn tacked on that I wonder if two versions of the script were written, the one filmed and the one where she's not there, just in case they couldn't find an actress to play her. I'll give Gal Gadot her chance when Justice League and the Wonder Woman movie roll out, because I want to see her be used well in a movie, not just thrown in so that the filmmakers could meet a superhero quota.
Lex Luthor. I can't even call him that in this movie. He's shit. Gone is everything about Lex Luthor that made me fall in love with the character in Superman: The Animated Series (my introduction to most of the Superman mythos), and it's replaced by bullshit. Ruined my love of Jolly Ranchers, the bastard has.
I'm so glad Lois Lane continues to be the spotlight hog she was in Man of Steel. I'm now almost certain that the DCEU revolves around her, she's in so many damned important places. There's being the damsel in distress (something Lois Lane should never be), and there's this universe, where a clock probably wouldn't be capable of keeping time if she didn't look at it for a minute.
Alfred. So underused. So often, I wanted to reach for the DVD remote and press fast forward to get to his scenes, he's the saving grace of this movie. I'm looking forward to Batfleck's solo films more for him than I am Batfleck, and I actually like Batfleck. If the Ultimate Edition were just 30 minutes more of Jeremy Irons' Alfred, I'd buy it immediately.
Doomsday was in the movie. If you could call him that. He looked more like The Incredible Hulk's Abomination, but comparing the two would be a disservice to The Abomination, a character who actually had proper build-up and motivations, unlike Doomsday. Was the prospect of Batman fighting (hell, meeting) Superman in live action for the first time not enough for the filmmakers, they had to throw Doomsday into the mix just to have another "Tear the shit out city property" fight?
Speaking of, let's talk about that Batman V Superman fight. All three minutes of it. Thirteen years ago, we had The Matrix Revolutions come to a climax with an epic fight scene where the audience actually gave a shit. This fight was so boring that I felt it was too long, when it only takes up 1/40th of this film's run time. You have Batman and Superman on the silver screen for the first time in history, and you take the fight that his movie was centered around and make it the most boring part of it?!
Batman V KGBeast's thugs right after that was actually entertaining.
I went into this movie knowing these flaws. I came out of this movie knowing these flaws. I'm glad I watched it, I really am. I'll even watch it again at some point. But this movie had so much going for it and they pissed it all away to satisfy Zack "I-Must-Out-Do-Michael-Bay" Snyder's stupid obsession with explosions and city destruction. After all, the fucking Kaiju in Pacific Rim are damn near mindless and they don't do as much damage to cities as Zack Snyder does.
I won't give this movie a score. This movie doesn't deserve a score. I salute you, Zack Snyder. You've managed to take a concept that would have printed itself money had it been given to anybody else and turn it into crap.
It got old in Man of Steel. It got stupid in Batman V Superman.
And you are spot on about Lois. You can tell that the studio and Amy were pulling their weight around, saying, "Ms. Adams has to be a big part of this movie, she's a big star," which forced her into every scene in the film, despite there being no reason for her to be there at all. I look forward to Lois' death in a future movie, just to be done with the ditz.
The cops enter the building with the sex slaves locked up, then you hear screaming and beatings from the next floor. One of the girls mentions there being a demon, and that "he's still here." The score, the sound, it all worked and made my heart beat fast, and then you see Batman, and in a flash he's gone. That was brilliant, straight from the comics, but the later use of Batman as a murderous bigot who instantly wants to kill Superman just erodes all that early promise for me. It could've been the best Batman we've seen yet, and they missed the mark big time.
And that Lois wasn't as insufferable, wasn't as harmful to the character's image as Amy Adams is in these films. I wanted the Margot Kidder Lois brought back to life because she and Christopher Reeve had mountains of chemistry more than Amy Adams and Henry Cavill. I will, however, say this: Give me a live action version of Dana Delany's Lois from Superman: The Animated Series and I'll be happy.
The shame is it wasn't even necessary, because they could just as easily have told essentially the same story without having him be so dismissively violent during the set pieces/chases with Lex's thugs, and almost possessed during the Supes fight.
Moreover, as I noted, Affleck is just so ripped and has bulked up so much that his Batman almost seems like a thuggish bully.
My only defense for Batfleck's immense size is that he would need to be that big to fight this Superman. Batfleck couldn't pull on this Superman what the DCAU Batman could:
I'd much prefer to see him in a stand alone Batman movie.
@bondjames, I completely agree. I'm fine with moments where Batman has to kill because there's no other way, but when he murders his way through everyone he faces, those moments lose all impact.
In the movie, Batman is very much a bigoted bully. He thinks that because Superman poses a 1% threat (like we all do, actually), he's 100% justified in completely murdering him. This is despite the fact that Superman goes out of his way to help people, has been doing that since the battle of Metropolis, and he even stays behind following the inquiry bombing to help the medics, which Batman sees. Does Bruce think Superman has just been faking being a good person for two years? Bruce seems to have more against him than Lex does at times, and he's the villain of the piece!
If so, then he should have realized that this would have made Batman (like Bush) out to be the villain of the piece, and a less sympathetic character.
Why he would do this is anybody's guess, but someone with common sense should have been able to point it out during script reads etc. Perhaps it was because it made for an interesting premise on paper and he felt it was worth sacrificing Batman's virtue (as bullet proof as you can get) for narrative conflict? Perhaps it was just a simple case of directorial hubris?
In the end I really think it could have worked if they had just made Wayne less obsessed and angry about the whole thing. I'm ok with the preemptive strike in the interests of the greater good, but there should have been some attempt to capture rather than kill Supes (use the Kryptonite to confine him for example) and he should have been just a little more temperate about the whole encounter - less emotional.
I found the Ultimate Cut to be even worse than the Theatrical Cut and this may be the first time EVER that I will re-watch a theatrical cut instead of a director's cut.
And I will re-watch Bull v Shit for sure. It's DC, it's Batman, it's in my nature to watch it regularly. Maybe one day, after 10 views I will start to like it, you never know.
Maybe next year's SnyderLeague will be so bad that I will love BvS all of a sudden. Nothing seems impossible at this moment.
Of course in my perfect parallel universe, The Justice League will be the greatest picture ever, better than Batman Begins, Star Trek First Contact and GoldenEye together. It will make history, win 11 Oscars and gross 3.1 billion worldwide and sell more tickets in Switzerland than Spectre has, which would be a new record.
(Throw in fact: Spectre sold over one million tickets in Switzerland, the second highest ticket sales were for Star Wars TFA which sold 700 thousand, ha!)
I was watching a review Kevin did of the Ultimate Cut, and he was talking about how he'd watched it three times before he did his review. Each time he put it on, his wife would pop into his room and ask, "how many times are you going to watch that movie, Kevin?" His reply was, "Until I like it!"
Sadly, I just don't think it's meant to be, buddy. If I never see it again, it'll be too soon, and no number of re-watches will make it any better; if anything, I'll find more to dislike.
It's a movie where the more you watch, the more things don't add up. Some block it out and are sold simply by Batman and Superman punching each other on screen, but that was never going to be enough for me.
Thought this might be of interest. ;)
In other continuities, that same contentious relationship exists from time to time, with Superman having to get Bruce whose being dismissive doing his own thing as a vigilante, and in notable others where Superman is taken over or being manipulated somehow, by Darkseid in some instances or Poison Ivy's pheromones in others, at which point Batman must suit up and make sure he's incapacitated and freed from the spell.
They never, and I repeat never, go into fights to kill each other, however, and that's only part of why BvS doesn't work. Superman doesn't even have a dog in the fight, nor should he, as he's done nothing wrong. Batman wants to kill him for very thin reasons, and Superman lets him almost do just that, and why? It's all just a mess.
Take it easy and enjoy that at least some people had fun watching the film ;;) .
@Risico007, I think those films represent everything Batman shouldn't be as a character, so in that respect I'm not a massive fan. Add to that an Alfred that lets anyone into the batcave and a Gordon that is barely ever there, and the films have major issues. I do respect, however, the gothic nature of Burton's Gotham and the visual aesthetic of that world, which I think is still second to none almost thirty years passed, next to the actual pages of the comics. The visuals really depict what it says in the script, of hell coming up through the pavement.
They're certainly not my favorite Batman films, and I'll never get used to seeing Batman smile after strapping a ticking bomb to a man's chest, but I've grown to be able to watch them, accepting them for what they are. It's much easier for me to judge them for what they are than it has been for BvS and I. Because I was born after Batman 89, when I grew up and watched it much later on past its original release, therefore, I didn't feel like I'd lost anything and didn't labor on how the film made me feel because what was done was done, and Burton's time with the character had long passed.
My frustration with the DCEU and BvS is that I'm living through this subpar interpretation of the character, and it will be years and years until I get a chance to see a Batman I enjoy (and even that's not guaranteed), as this slate of movies will just keep on coming, well into the 2020s. Right now I just have to accept that Affleck's Batman isn't going anywhere, and I'll just have to do my best to ignore the DCEU and watch the animated features that hit the nail of the character on the head, as well as going back to Nolan's films, which still remain as the sole live-action interpretations of the character that don't feel like a desecration of him and his world to me. It's the only way I can get my Batman fix now, aside from the Rocksteady games.
@boldfinger, hardly. If I was the Joker, I'd give into the sanity everyone else was adopting as a pathway to an escape from reality, the reality of the DCEU being a mess.
Just as Joker claims Batman dresses up as a bat on a righteous crusade to mask his madness, I think some DCEU supporters are trying their very best to repress all the voices in their head telling them the films aren't good. They only keep traveling that insane path of theirs to avoid the truth so many of us already realize about this so-called "Snyderverse." ;)
Snyder is not even in the same league as genius Tim Burton.