Holy shit, this movie. I was expecting terrible but my goodness it managed to exceed my expectations. Much like Darniaq's damning testament to Indy: Alien Unknown, I wouldn't bother watching this on TV and I was bored.
So goddamn many problem with this thing. It's obviously a movie blockbuster by committee, trying to hit "key notes" while trying to create a world out of separate franchises and introducing new ones. It failed at doing both. It was a sepia-toned, emotionless, low-stakes garbage fest of "Hey this would look cool as a poster/ in the trailer/ as a GIF on the internet clips loosely strung together by the thinnest shoestring of a plot.
Every scene was filmed to be as dramatic and heavy as possible. One point Lois digs a bullet from a Lexcorp merc out of a journal and it has a dramatic score. Why? I don't fucking know, but it's all srs bzns so clearly this must be too. The need to over-damaticize meant that in the end nothing had weight.
Aflek was actually pretty good at acting. I was surprised he did so well with the garbage he was given. Lois Lane was terrible and I didn't believe she felt a single emotion the entire movie. Which is sad because she was in it far too much. Cavil was ok, giving the same performance as MOS and Gadot was a reasonable WW. Again, given the garbage she was thrown.
I'm not going to bother with spoilers. Fuck this movie it doesn't deserve them. If you guys want to bitch about it, then I'll put them in.
Yes, we rehash Batman's origin. Thankfully it's done as the opening credits roll, it's a nightmare Bruce is reliving. I don't know that it was totally needed, but hey, at least you didn't waste tons of run time on it. However once it's over and Bruce wakes up we're flung into a rehash of MOS from Bruce's perspective. He's landing in a helicopter as the final fight goes down. He's rushing through the WAAYYY too-empty streets of Metropolis in an SUV with emergency lights (privileges of being rich?) until he is stopped by a crowd, just in time to see the shuttle with SVU-guy crash into the world-destroyer and take it out.
He then runs to Wayne tower just in time to see Zod and Supes carve it up and send it tumbling-down. Personally pulling a guy who's obviously going to lose his legs from the wreckage and then saving the little girl from the trailer scene. We get the first impact of the death toll as Bruce asks where her mom is and she points to the destroyed building. Brucflek does his angry grimace and we snap-scene to a card that says 18-months-later.
The scene is labeled "somewhere in the Indian ocean." Somewhere? WTF? You don't know where this is at? Is the location important for us to keep hidden? Or is this just lazy and bad writing and you couldn't bother with a better descriptor? We see native divers outside of a wreck of another of the world destroyers, so how about "Indian Ocean, near one of the downed world destroyers" as the scene title. That might have worked better if you massaged it through the committee a bit.
Anyway, they go down and pull up a big black lump of what looks like whale shit. No, seriously, it doesn't look like melted ore it looks like lumpy shit. They give it to a white guy who breaks it open so easily that the kid pulling it from the bottom would ALSO have broken it open. It's green and glowy. Oooh Kryptonite.
Quick-cut to "<location>,afghanistan" What? This gets a specific location, not the previous scene? Nice consistency, guys. Lois arrives in a to do her usual derpy, "I'm looking for a reason for my boyfriend to fuck people up because it makes me hot" damsel in distress routine. This time it's going to some warlord or another for an interview. Her camera guy and she are pulled out of a truck with bags on their head, clearly to keep the location secret. It's not Jimmy Olson, cue disposable camera guy protocol.
While she begins the interview, camera guy goes to snap a photo and paramilitary guy takes the camera from him. He then opens the camera, despite camera-guys protests and exposes the film. Wait.. film? Wtf year is this that an international reporter is using FILM? Maybe that's why the paramilitary was gets so suspicious and pulls the canister out then crushes it to reveal, OoOh a CIA tracker! CIA guy says "let her go, she knew nothing" as they off him in front of Lois.
The next scene is Lois failing to act scared because she's a terrible actress while she tells the warlord she knew nothing. He makes a quip about ignorance not being the same as innocence as we get a shot of paramilitary dude nodding to his crew. They then take out the warlord's crew in a "wtf is happening here?" moment then ride off. Warlord has pulled a gun and is using Lois as a shield while this is going on and Supes arrives. Clearly blind as a bat because he didn't see the 6 guys on motorcycles and SUVs bugging out 10 seconds earlier. He confronts the Warlord and Lois relaxes her grip on the guy so Supes can punch him through a wall. All done, next scene!
A capitol hill hearing about the fallout of, "The Superman Incident." White lady (D) Kentucky Senator (hahah) is hearing testimony from the village whose warlord Supes just turned into paste. Another warlord came in and killed all the men and families because the bad guy who was keeping them safe was dead. Lots of bleeding heart nonsense about this and that and Supe's unchecked power.
Fuck, at this point I wanted to leave. It was only about 45 mins in, but I'd read the reviews that said the final fights were worth it. I turned off my brain and really don't remember much other than similar jumps point to point that made little narrative sense in the moment. Sure, afterwards you can piece it all together but during you're just confused and wondering why the fuck you're sitting there watching things.
As to be expected by the Modern DC cinematic universe, characterizations are all garbage.
Superman is the same one from MOS. Terrible as it is, all the missed notes are still there. We even get a reappearance from Kevin Kostner to reaffirm he's the same idiot who can't make up his mind about how to do good. Martha at one point tells Supes tha he owes the world nothing and implies that she wouldn't care if he just stopped saving people. Yay Randian Superman!
Lex is behind it all but he has no motivation other than, "ooh I hate Superman. He's powerful and so we should kill him." There's no history the ramblings they stuffed into Eisenberg's mouth make little sense and for a guy whose supposed motivation is saving the world from Superman he kills a LOT of people. Like just tons of them, including Mercy. He's randomly insane with no insight to why other than daddy issues. What's his ultimate endgame here? No idea, especially since he's used at the very end to foreshadow the Justice League movie.
After he's arrested we get a nice 5 minute scene of him being shaved bald and then jailed. Batman shows-up one day and tells him that he's lost, but Luthor says you can't unring a bell. "He's heard it. Ding, dong the god is dead, and he's coming!" Anyone familiar with DC knows it can only be Darkseid, but goddamn, really? If Luthor was so concerned about Supes power, why kill him knowing DS is out there. Fucking 'plot' reasons that's why.
Batman, when you look at it, was inept and incompetent in the whole movie. First off he uses guns, regularly. Second off he kills people without remorse. At one point he brands a guy and justifies it to Alfred with, "We're criminals Alfred, we've always been criminals." I see, so that justifies everything you do now? Batman's never been ends justify the means, or else he'd have been killing people for years.
Lots of references to him being old, too, and having done this for 20+ years. Explains why he fails to see Lex manipulating him into killing Supes in one of the most obvious ploys ever. Fuck, Lex is the guy importing the Kryptonite from earlier, why wouldn't you say, "Huh, why would he want that at all" Oh right, rage about all those dead people in the Wayne Financial tower was blinding him. Must also explain why when he decides to steal the Kryptonite he goes about it in the most brazen and uncovert way possible. A Batmobile chase with guns and explosions ending with Superman stopping him and telling him "The Bat is dead, next time your signal shows, don't answer it." OOOoh.
Good thing Batman put a tracker on the truck! Wait... he put a tracker on the truck. Why the fuck we go through the chase scene if he was.. ok nevermind.
WW shows up trying to 'find a picture of hers' that Lex has. She lets Bruce in on this only when he confronts her about stealing the data sniffer he'd planted. She's just a Mediterranean black-widow in this universe, albeit one who doesn't age. Once Bruce gets the sniffer back he finds her picture (because it was encrypted and she couldn't decrypt it) and he finds Lex has been gathering data on "Metahumans."
You see the WW, Cyborg, Flash, and Aquaman symbols on the OS folders. He opens the WW folder, which is first, (hey what luck that's the woman he ran into good thing LexOS does things in reverse alphabetical order!) and finds the tracking data and photo she's looking for. It's a photo from WW1 with her in full regalia in Belgium. Why Wonder Woman posed for a post-battle photo in 1918, but hey, what the fuck ever, right? good thing the camera they used looked to take a photo as high-quality as modern equipment, because it scanned beautifully!
He mails this to her, which you discover later, along with all of the metahuman data. Why? I dunno, just cuz. Clearly she needed info on the other three rather than just the data she was looking for. No way at all it was conceived as a set-up to a tense scene of her clicking on all the folders and watching 15-30 second clips of the other metahumans, because that would be incredibly stupid. Even though that's what actually happened.
You'll notice at no point have I mentioned actual fights. Outside of the terribly-conceived Batmobile scene there were none, or any other action. You sit through two hours of set-up for the fights. It's a LONG two hours and in the end the final fights weren't worth it.
They were quick-cut and janky-cammed as much as the MOS fights but with more darkness to hide the terrible CGI Doomsday who Lex creates. (Having manipulated his way into the downed ship and possession of Zod's body earlier. I didn't mention that because it was dumb.)
Bats vs. Supes happens because Lex kidnaps Martha Kent. He uses Lois as bait and after Supes saves her from being pushed off the Lexcorp tower he reveals that his men have her hidden somewhere he doesn't know. That way Supes can't torture it out of him, I guess? Whatever. Anyway, Lex sets a kitchen timer and says he has an Hour, Batman's waiting for you (having done the setup previously) go kill him and bring me his head or we'll burn your mom alive.
So Supes goes to Gotham, which is apparently only across a bay from Metropolis. I mean you can SEE the Bat-signal Batflek turned-on from Lexcorp tower. WTF how are the two cities so different and why does Supes never clean up crime there? Ok whatever, hurting my brain now trying to create this world. Supes tries to convince Batman to help him save mommy, Batman keeps trying to kill Supes. The cloud of kryptonite weapon was pretty effective but the fight worked ONLY because Supes didn't really want to kill him.
Batflek is blind and dumb, not realizing this until he's got Supes down and has a Kryptonite spear ready to impale him and Supes gasps, "Save martha!" Oh no, that name. It's Mommy's name. Batman pauses long enough for Lois to arrive and say that's Supe's mom's name. Batflek realizes he's made a mistake NOW and agrees to help Supes save mommy. Hey, conviently Batflek had put a tracker on Lex's #1 henchman earlier. This is where we see the warehouse scene from the trailer. Why did Supes not help save mommy? IDK, long flight and he has to go get Lex I guess.
Batflek is NOT as badass as the trailer makes him look. he gets stabbed/ shot/ overpowered a few times and is saved only by his special plot-level armor in the Batflek suit. Seriously, the guy takes a .45 to the back of the head and doesn't even get ringing ears. For a company that wants gritty realism they relied on a LOT of comic-book physics for fights. I won't go into detail on the Batmobile that was dragging a car like a tin-can with no skidding or traction loss earlier in the movie.
Anyway, Batflek saves Martha Kent, because badguys who are on the last 10 mins of a 60-minute "kill her if I don't call before the beep" timer are nothing if not sticklers for the rules. No way they would have BBQd her once they started hearing all of the commotion from the 6 minute fight Batflek just went through outside the door. Just like there's no way Batflek could have done something simple like come up through the floor in the room the hostage actually WAS in instead of running the badguy gauntlet beforehand. Because Batflek is an idiot.
Sometime between this scene and the next Lois throws the Kryptonite spear into a deep pool of water in a collapsed building. Because reasons. Supes is gone, it's no danger to him and throwing it down there means nobody keeps track of it. This is the second dumbest thing Lois has done in the movie and for less reason.
Now Supes confronts Lex inside of the Kryptonian ship. Lex reveals he'd been gestating an abomination to kill Supes and we get Doomsday birthed from the wreckage of a world-destroyer. Why did this destroyer have the capability to do this sort of genetic manipulation which the Krypton-OS pointed out was forbidden? I don't know this is a comic book movie, you're not supposed to ask questions. Who do you think we are, Marvel or competent scriptwriters?
Anyway, the fight starts and Doomsday and Supes destroy a portion of Metropolis. They have Anderson Cooper throw a cursory, "the downdown core is thankfully mostly-empty dut to it being.." in. I suppose as an attempt to handwave casualties of this early Doomsday. Supes tackles DD from behind and takes him in to outerspace. The President orders a nuke strike on them both and we get a reenactment of Frank Miller's "supes gets nuked" scene. Doomstay falls to earth, Supes is overhead, KO'd and withered.
Batflek returns and sees DD is up and active. He's gotten more powerful from the energy. OOoh, ahh. Wonderwoman has seen this fight covered on the airplane she's boarding for no particular reason. I want to know what airline she's flying because none of them ever run local news on the plane screens when I fly. Good thing this one did, because we see her exit and a confused flight attendant yelling, "Miss Prince" after her. Because white ladies can do this without being tackled by Homeland Security and detained.
Batflek figures out - somehow - that DD is Kryptonian. I guess because of the eye-lasers so that makes some sense, but given his deductive powers up to this point he'd have needed a goddamn neon sign. He rationalizes that only Kryptonite weapons will work and he only has one round of the gas-gun left. He must get the creature to chase him back to Gotham where the spear is. A chase ensuses.. wait, no, it's a quick-cut where he lures DD and then is in Gotham and gets shot-down. DD crashes the Bat-plane and we get an "Oh, shit" right as DD does the eye-lasers. WW shows-up and uses her bracers to save Batflek. Hooray!
At this point, Lois decides to get the spear. Why? I don't know, man, she must have psychic powers or is better at deduction than Batflek. She jumps into the pool of water she'd thrown the spear in at just the wrong moment. Typical Lois, ha ha. Right as she's swimming about and energy blast from DD collapses the rest of the building on top of her swimmin' hole. Oops, hope there's an air pocket!
Supes wakes up as he orbits into the sunlight. He recovers and we go from Skull-man to Superman again and he rushes to aid WW and Batflek. Well, WW. She's kicking ass in the quick-cuts. Batflek is being inept because what the fuck is he going to do against DD anyway. Not like he still has the powersuit he nearly killed Supes with.
I don't remember how it happens, but there's a pause in the action. DD must've been buried but Supes asks Bats if he's found the spear. Batflek gives a sardonic, "I've been a bit busy" response. We then get the "I thought she was with you" scene after WW makes some forgettable quip. (I know it's forgettable because I forgot it.) DD starts his assault anew and Batflek does the dodge from laser eyes we saw in the trailer, awesome! Wait, no after that leap he crashes into a wall and fall down. Oh, Batlflek.
Supes and WW do a tagteam on DD until Supes on high hears Lois pounding on the wall as she drowns. He goes to save his woman because clearly WW has this. He pulles a just-drowned Lois out and with no rescue breathing she's alive again! Woo, good timing! Supes dives down to get the spear. Wait, how did he know that's where it was or why Lois was down there? Shut up, and just let it roll, ok.
So Lois gets to drag Supes out of the drink because he's clutching Kryptonite while WW cuts off DD's hand. Awesome! Wait it grows back into a bone spear. Why? You know why already.
Lois tosses the spear aside so Supes can recover and he says he loves her. She says, "Oh no, don't do it." I'm thinking the same thing. Hey you idiot, WW is kicking ass and not affected by the spear how about you let HER take it up and you go give her a breather.
No, of course not. Supes picks up the spear and charges DD while WW has him tied up in her lariat. Batflek suddenly remembers he has the kyptonite gun and shoots him. I guess the writers would say this is why the lariat works on him, I say it's Batflek still being incompetent because shooting him while WW was kicking his ass earlier would have been more helpful. Thanks, Batflek.
Supes spears DD who in turn spears him. They both die and we get a long melodramatic funeral for Supes and Clark split between D.C. and the farm. This part drags on about as long as the goddamn Return of the King ending and is where the Lutor scene foreshadowing Darkseid happens. It's just as terrible and drawn out as it could possibly be.
The end has Bruce at Clark's graveside talking with WW and telling her he was wrong and, "failed him in life." He asks her to help him track-down the other metahumans like her, because they'll have to fight. Why would they have to fight, she asks. Just a feeling, he replies. Good thing your feelings weren't 100% off the mark the whole movie, Batflek, otherwise one might question your decision making.
It ends with Lois dumping a handful of dirt on Clark's grave which starts floating. Roll Credits.
Fuck. This. Shit.