I hate the rhetoric about what 'true' comic book characters are.
Here's the truth: These characters are story mechanics, like any other characters. What they are....what they truly are, is whatever the story has them be. If a story had Batman be a russian ballerina dancer, then that would be a true batman story, by the virtue of the fact that Batman is in it.
I don't even think about the comics when I watch comic book movies, because they're not relevant. The movies are judged by their own merits. I don't hate batman because he isn't being 'true' to his comic book origins.
I hate him because he's sadistic and cowardly and paranoid and fearful and, and I want to emphasize this, not compelling. He's not an interesting character on any level for me. His motivation is poorly justified, his interactions with other characters are hollow and unnatural, he comes off as insecure with how he regards superman....
He is the worst Batman I've ever seen, and if he wasn't batman, if he was an original character in an original IP, he'd still be a scumbag character I'd never want to see in any other story again.
Yah. Not that I hate anything in the movie (I don't hate stuff I just dislike it or find it poor) but this s a terrific point I'd like to second. Critics and most posters I believe are judging the film on its own merits and on that basis it's simply not very good.
I'd add I also find it eye rolling annoying when people also use the narrative "but he couldn't do X because the bad guys did Y" as if the film is a documentary of actual events. It's an artificial construct and the only reason anyone behaves in it is because it was written that way. as written thus far Superman is more or less an abject failure, he's not particularly heroic nor does he seem to be a shining moral and ethical beacon. He's just a guy who's overly clingy who happens to be strong. He's clearly not particularly bright. Batman as written is a bitter, radicalised individual who pursues deadly acts driven by his own twisted logic and who ignores common sense a number of times.
Ultimately this has to be the most joyless and overly mechanical comic book movie n a long time. It's like a poorly constructed automation lumber through its preset moves while creaking and clanking at the seams.
It's sucks as a film and it's because of all the poor creative choices made by its creators.
Now I get some will still enjoy it, possibly a lot. Which s fine. People enjoy films that are bad quite often for personal reasons. Maybe they just so want to see these characters on the screen vs not at all. Maybe they really wanted to see a BvS narrative in a film.
All well and good. But that doesn't change the movie from being bad. For personal reasons they just didn't care.
Reminds me of my first trip to Australia. I went to see a game of Oz rules football and really enjoyed it. My friends who I was visiting were very polite about my enjoyment. I did notice crowd was a little subdued and my friends hadn't seemed nearly as in invested as me.
I asked why and they politely informed me it hadn't been a good game. Not if you knew the rules of the sport. Merely average with some poor plays. I had no idea and my own reasons to enjoy it overrode that. Fair enough. But I realised it clearly hadn't been the best example of the sport.
BvS s like that. My you understand the "rules" of films BvS is really poor, worse than average in fact. Hence the reviews. Of course for personal reasons one might enjoy it on different criteria: but that doesn't stop the film actually being bad vs criteria of its medium and other examples of the medium.