I saw it. It's not very good. Ridiculously bad pacing and editing. No establishing shots and the narrative, or lack thereof, is all over the place. It's 2.5 hours of characters doing things without any real explanation as to why. Luthor especially. His motives are non existent.
I will say, the cast did a tremendous job with what they were given, but I'm tired of mopey woe is me Superman. The guy should be a beacon of hope, not questioning his purpose in life for 2 straight films.
Batman is also really unlikable in the movie. He's increasingly irrational, and makes decisions that aren't entirely thought through until the end. And even then, his third act 180 on Superman after hating the guy for 2 hours is completely out of nowhere. It's literally "arrrrg I hate you and you need to die. Oh wait. Nevermind. My bad. Now we're buds".
I hated that he killed all fucking wily nilly. The knightmare scene is one thing, but he had an otherwise pretty neat car chase scene that saw him just slaughter guys. Then he saves Martha Kent and blows KG Beast up using a gun. Blows a bunch of guys up using the Batwing as well. It was infuriating to watch. Especially because I feel like it was only done to show how "extreme" and "brutal" and "edgy" this new Batman was, and because Snyder is an idiot who doesn't get you can accomplish all of those things without sacrificing a key character trait that was hammered the fuck home in the last trilogy. It's like he is incapable of setting his version of the characters he writes apart without taking it to unnecessary extremes
Wonder Woman was cool. I actually enjoyed her screen time however she was largely underdeveloped. The cramming of the Justice League roster was completely useless. And incredibly forced. They could've been left out of the film and it would not have hurt it one bit.
Eisenberg did well with what he was given and I liked him, but he's another character that had no clear motive as to why he was doing the things he was, which is a shame seeing as he could've been a definitive villain.
The ending was drawn out. A lot. And it felt really cheap.
Superman "dies", and, just like the last one, after an entire film of "is he good or bad for us" Superman is magically heralded once more as a hero despite there being no development of this throughout the film.
Overall, the movie isn't as bad as the rotten tomatoes meter would lead you to believe. But it's an absolute mess from a story telling standpoint and all the issues from Man of Steel are back and just as bad if not worse. There are very few establishing shots and the first hour plus jumps all over the fucking place. And it jumps from one half assed storyline to the next without any real, fully developed outcome for any of them. I read one critic's take that said it felt like 4 or 5 really good movies crammed into one, and that's spot on. It's like Snyder had all these really great ideas, but was too shit a filmmaker to actually realize he can only fully develop a few of them fully over 2.5 hours and said "fuck it, I don't wanna leave anything out".
To think he got this massive budget and excessive run time only to churn out a half assed film that didn't have one completely fleshed out idea, that was, to top it off, completely mismanaged in terms of time and pacing, in top of not having one likeable character or memorable scene, just solidifies to me that Snyder is no good at filmmaking and is only good at making pretty pictures that move.
I liken him as a director to a kid getting a model car kit. If the kit is already made to order, with the pieces cut, painted, and sanded, and all you have to is glue out together, the kid's gonna do a decent job just by reading the directions. But if you have him have to actually paint, sand, and build the kit with zero direction or nothing already in place and outlined for him, the process is messy and while the end result is still the model car the path to getting there was sloppy, muddled, and directionless and your end result is a model car that isn't awful but also isn't very good, but is a model car nonetheless.
This is Snyder in film to me. 300, watchmen, Dawn of the Dead, all pre-existing works that were already written for him and in turn done in his end as decent or better endeavours. Man of Steel, Sucker Punch, BvS? All movies that get to its endgame but are highly lacking on cohesiveness, purpose and structure and all suffer from the same issues of a director who seemingly needs directions on how to make a decent film.
One last thing before I wrap up, Snyder made sure to go out of his fucking way to point out that all the wanton destruction occurring at the end of the film was in abandoned areas. From the "Stryker's island is abandoned" line, to the news stating that heroes point (ground zero from the previous Zod fight and mass destruction) was pretty much empty because people were off of work, to Batman stating the port where he beat the fuck out of Superman and lured Doomsday was abandoned, Snyder really tried to throw it in his critics faces that tons of innocent people didn't die in this one. It was actually a bit pathetic and childish.
I will say that I enjoyed this film much more than MoS, even though it's not if at all much better. I take issues with how Batman was portrayed but overall it's not an awful film, it's just not very good beyond the surface.
If this is what we have to look forward to in this new, force fed universe, it's gonna be a long and semi enjoyable but not really ride.
6/10