IÂ hated Batman v Superman. It remains the only 1-star review that I written on the site. While I get plenty of (sometimes legitimate) criticism that I’m biased towards Marvel, I didn’t hate this movie because it didn’t live up to what we’ve come to expect from MCU stuff. I hated it because the characters of Superman and Batman deserve better than what this movie did, and fans of those characters most certainly deserve to see their characters treated better.
Batman is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, and it’s his abilities as an investigator that make him dangerous (well, that and a whole bunch of money), not his ability to punch things. Superman is defined by a moral fiber that was defined by his small-town upbringing that distilled down to “do the right thing, no matter what people say.” Wonder Woman is… well, the character they characterized pretty well, in that she is powerful on her own and will do what she thinks is right with a bit of disdain for the mortal world. Lex Luthor is brilliant and calculating, always working ten moves ahead of where his opponents thinks he really is, was turned into a caricature of a crazy young tech genius. It was a movie that took from comics while seemingly holding complete disdain for them.
I will say out of the gate that the Ultimate Edition is certainly better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Unnecessary Subtitles, was… but the fact is when you frost a turd, you still have a turd. A lot of the stuff that this version adds to the movie makes it a better movie, but the other stuff is still there. Lex is probably the biggest example of that, as almost all of the stuff that is added makes him a lot closer to the Luthor we expected… but it still has the rest which keeps knocking it off the rails. Maybe the second time through made me a bit more numb to the experience, but I didn’t have high hopes in the original movie either.
Maybe the way to look at this is to start taking this re-edit of the movie, which was announced before it even came out, is figuring out how I would re-edit it. And I invite everyone else to do the same thing, because it’s interesting to think about how we rank amateurs that are entirely unqualified for a task would try to improve it. Also, I’m certain that I’m going to confuse some of the old stuff with the new stuff, but that’s more of a testament to the fact that the re-edit actually blends quite well… a lot of it was tiny additions to existing scenes. I’ll probably also forget my re-edit plan a few times while I’m writing. That feels like a fitting tribute to this film, honestly, cause it feels like they forgot what movie they were making a few times.
Warning: While I’m going to keep the language as PG-13 as I can, we’re talking about an R-Rated movie, so there will be some screenshots or comments that may cross hop that line.