Review by Cole Bradley
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016 ★★
Cole Bradley's review published on Letterboxd:
Nothing in this movie makes any sense, everything's ugly as hell, it's lit like garbage, the action scenes are incomprehensible nonsense, the character design is muddled and flat, the acting is... well, pretty good (minus least charismatic human being Henry Cavill), the title remains fucking asinine, it's edited by a madman, the plot only functions if every character is a psychic, it's clearly made by people who loathe the very concept of superheroes, nobody can make up their mind about whether or not superheroes are a new concept in this world, nobody can make up their mind about whether this is hopeful or dark, nobody seems to have been able to make up their minds about anything in this damn movie.
It's too moody and character driven to work as an action film, too scattershot and lazily written to work as a character piece, too wishy-washy and haphazard to work as a Watchmen-style meditation.
This is a movie that shows up Batman's parents dying twice when it really didn't need to show it at all.
This is a movie that seems entirely rooted in audience's distaste for the level of violence in Man of Steel, but doesn't want to go all in on criticizing its ancestor so it makes up a weird, completely illogical second mass tragedy we can blame Superman for.
This is a movie that's so in love with Frank Miller's crypto-fascist interpretations of superheroics that it cribs a bit from The Spirit, which is Miller in self-parody mode, and plays it straight.
This is a movie that sits you down and makes you watch actually branded easter eggs for about five minutes.
This is a movie that randomly inserts a beloved, iconic DC Comics characters solely to kill him off a few minutes later, but only names him in the credits and never gives any clue to who he is in the moment so to even the most diehard of fans in the crowd, it's just another death.
I do not understand who this movie is for or why it exists.
And that's real.
Cole liked this review
Reviewed by John Gholson ★
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