<Review by: Daylynn DeSouza>

Directed by Zack Snyder. Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter

Running Time: 2 hours 31 minutes

Being a fan of DC Comics when the movie was first announced, I was thrilled. When the title of the movie was announced, I was disappointed and after seeing the first trailer, my expectations and hopes were dashed. Is it a bad movie? No. Is it a good movie? No. It’s just a movie that leaves you unsatisfied and confused.

At its best, you could say the story seems to be a subtle, philosophical multi-layered story, At its worst the plot seems to be a contrived, lazily written, poorly executed mash-up of many popular story arcs that are just crammed, full set-ups for future movies in the franchise. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, except that one of them is a Time-Travel Dream Sequence that won’t pay off for a while.

The pacing of the movie is similar to Man of Steel; the first two acts of the movie are very slow and the third act is full of action and gets your adrenalin pumping. I will say this, Zack Snyder asked us to not to spoil the plot of the movie for you so I won’t. I’ll just tell you that it’s a loose adaption of Dan Jurgens, Louise Simonson and Roger Stern’s ‘The Death and Return of Superman’; Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and Tom Taylor’s ‘Injustice: Gods Among Us’, among some others. It’s not all that important though because until the third act you won’t really care a lot about anything because of the poorly executed and highly confusing dream sequences/hallucinations/internal struggles.

As well as Batman being irrational, out of character and having a seemingly unjustified/irrational hatred of Superman. It’s implied that his hatred for Superman could stem from the fact that he couldn’t save his parents and a little girl lost her parents in Superman’s fight against Zod, which he then associates with his own parents. Based on some of the Easter Eggs I’d guess the Batman solo movie would be based on Judd Winick’s ‘Batman: Under The Hood’ story arc.

As far as the acting is concerned, the supporting cast steals the show. Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Lex Luthor is enjoyable and Jeremy Irons’ is as good an Alfred as anybody else. Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck do a good job acting, but their roles in the movie and the script are what hurt them. Gal Gadot barely has any lines in the movie but the ones she does have are quite good and she has one of the best action sequences in the film. When she shows up as Wonder Woman is when the fun begins and she makes Batman and Superman seem like a bunch of whiny bickering idiots.

To conclude, it’s a mediocre movie that’ll trick you into thinking it’s brilliant because it got your adrenaline pumping in the 3rd act. A movie can be dark and still be enjoyable throughout, the best example being 2008’s The Dark Knight. This is just dark and tries to be pseudo intellectual at times and even has Batman learn a lesson from Superman at the end of the movie like an after school special. Watch it just for Wonder Woman.