Clocking in at a bit over three hours, the Ultimate Edition of Batman V Superman adds about thirty more minutes of CGI mayhem and snappy dialogue.
We open up with Batman’s origin story, and thankfully don’t have to sit through a retelling of how Superman came into the picture or Wonder Woman or even Lex Luthor. The story is mainly from Batman’s point of view. He’s an older and sadder Batman who tends to be a bit mopey and sighs a lot. That is when he isn’t killing people left and right. Yes, the once noble Batman who would never stoop to using a gun now has no problem with firearms, rocket launchers, and I’m surprised they didn’t show him pressing the button to launch a nuke late in the story. This is odd since there is one silly fight scene where they could have easily dropped in all those BAMMs and POWs from the 60s TV Show.
On the other hand, we have a less than super Superman as well. He shows he’s all too human as he constantly falls victim to Lex using his loved ones against him. Kind of the whole point of the secret identity thing. This is all a setup for Lex to get Superman to fight Batman. I honestly have no clue as to why Lex wants this. Or why Lex, the super genius of the comic books, is portrayed as a babbling idiot.
And once again, inevitably, the Big Boss of Batman V Superman is a CGI cartoon. The Doomsday in the comics, according to Wikipedia, was an ancient Kryptonian, which makes a lot more sense than having him rise from the ashes of General Zod and a few drops of Lex’s blood. They then follow in the footsteps of the X-Men movies and show Lex talking to some Super Bad most of us don’t recognize.
Batman V Superman was not a great film, but it wasn’t as bad as, say, Godzilla or Peter Jackson’s King Kong. It was a film that could have been better, should have been better.
The bottom line is that Batman V Superman made $830 Million and the best movie I’ve seen recently, Hello My Name Is Doris, made a whopping $14 million. Batman V Superman cost $410 million to make, so it may not be the black yet. Hello My Name is Doris cost only $1 million to make. So maybe there is some hope for small, quality films after all.
