Its really, really hard to review this movie without providing any spoilers. By now you will most likely have seen other reviews or looked at the Rotten Tomatoes system to see what’s really going on with Batfleck and the other guy. And you know as well as I do that it all boils down to one simply question…

Is it really a bad movie?

Its a simple question, but the answer isn’t quite so simple. And answering the question without giving away anything of the plot is very difficult. But I’m going to attempt it. First, I’m going to make a couple of really bold statements.

Number one is this:

I went into this movie expecting it to be nonsense.

Yes, I’d seen the reviews already. I knew what I was getting myself into. In fact, the very morning before I saw the movie I watched this amusing Youtube clip:

My second bold statement is…

I ignored the critics, just like I think everyone should.

Despite the negative reviews, I still wanted to see this movie. I missed out on Man of Steel because, frankly, the trailers made me think that the movie was incredibly boring. If there had been even a hint of the amazing Antje Traue who stole the show as the non-nonsense super-villain Faora then I’d have definitely seen this movie at the theatre. But instead every trailer seemed to show Superman struggling to get off the ground. And that’s what I thought the movie would be like. But I was wrong about that and didn’t want to make the same mistake with the sequel.

Man of Steel gave me a superman that I’d always wanted. Alright, the movie was a slow starter. But I can live with that if the payoff is right. With Man of Steel it paid off, as far as I’m concerned. So, I was willing to ignore the criticisms of Batman V Superman and go see for myself whether or not it actually was a load of old nonsense.

You may have noticed a picture of the undeniably amazing Antje Traue above. I’ll take any excuse to share a photo of Faora / Antje. Man of Steel was worth watching just for her!

Affleck as Batman? Oh, the humanity!

The first thing that I remember about this movie was everyone getting on their high horses about Ben Affleck being rumored to play Batman.

“How could they?” “He’ll ruin it!” “Affleckkkk!!!”

I remember thinking that this was all a bit much. Last night, within the first 30 minutes of the movie I knew I had been right not to jump on the bandwagon with Affleck’s detractors. I’m not a big Batman fan. I preferred the old Adam West Batman. But Affleck was the best thing in the movie. His performance as the eponymous hero was better than any other Batman I can recall. His character seemed more fleshed out and human. But that’s just my two cents.

Wait, what about Wonder Woman? Okay, full disclosure here. Even though I literally have a plastic model of Wonder Woman on my desk right now, I really didn’t think too much of the Wonder Woman character in this movie. I honestly think that she was one of the things that started to turn the movie sour. And, believe me, it goes against all my instincts to say that. I mean… Wonder Woman!!! But, sadly, this is when the movie started to turn bad.

I know this is a spoiler free review section, so its difficult for me to reveal my true opinion without saying the following. Imagine Wonder Woman was a clown. Yes, a Circus Clown. You’ve watched the rest of the circus (i.e., Batman and Superman, who can be the poor sad elephant or the trapeze act) and then the Clown appears. You accept the clown. You knew there was a clown coming. Someone warned you or you saw a trailer for the circus and the clown was all over it. But… what the Hell! The clown has brought a clown car with her! She opens the doors! Holy baloney, Batman! A whole bunch of clowns of all different shapes and sizes THAT YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED suddenly start rolling out of the clown car.

I may have said too much.

My other big gripe is that the trailers told the whole movie. And this movie lacked Antje Traue. I mean, they had Zod all over the place doing the easiest acting job of his career. Throw in some Faora. Even a damned “Hey, Lois, that kiss reminds me of when that super hot Kryptonion bitch smacked me around all over the place” flashback.

So is it bad movie?

So, to summarise… too many cooks, jumped the shark endlessly, over long but I don’t regret seeing it. Wouldn’t see it again. I have a bunch of stuff I want to gripe about with the WW character, but it would spoil the movie.

But its Batman alright, whether you like Batman or not. And its Superman. It is what it is. And every complaining about Jesse Eisenberg’s character? Nonsense. Lex Luthor was always a mad scientist, if I remember correctly. Again, this is what it is. So whether its a bad movie or not really depends on you. Personally, I left the cinema laughing inside at some of the sillier moments, somewhat drained by some of the longer sections and happy that I’d seen a big screen movie on the big screen.

For anyone slightly disappointed by a lack of Antje Traue, here’s a short clip of Faora showing her talents in Man of Steel:

Better still, here’s Deadpool’s amazing Gina Carano comprehensively destroying Michael Fassbender in the movie Haywire.

Splendid.

And that is all I have to say about that.