Initial thoughts from the first half of the film:
This is a dumpster fire in virtually every sense of the term. I'm not even sure I know where to begin with this, but I'll try.
Man of Steel. I know it has its flaws (and there are quite a few - it's oddly-paced at times, leaves that dangling destruction question unanswered and has a few bizarre character moments), but I enjoyed it just the same. Hell, I've defended it at points, and I've always pointed out that Clark was just starting out and doing the best he can to contain the situation that occurs during the film's climax. I considered it to be a decent starting point for a sequel or further adventures.
But this? Oh, Christ...
Let me start with the obvious. The film is badly edited. It might be the most poorly-edited theatrical cut of a film I've seen since Kingdom of Heaven. It's even worse than I thought it would be going in. There is no cohesiveness or interconnectivity with any of these scenes. No establishing shots. Just a series of rapid-fire setpieces that continues through the first half of the film. One minute, we're at a lab in the middle of Metropolis. The next, a fight club in Gotham. Then, to the Daily Planet offices. Then Luthor's study. Then we launch into a dream sequence that segues into Bruce in the present, and then onto Lois out somewhere interviewing the general from the first movie. If there's one element above all else that kills the flow of the film, it's the editing.
Tonally, it's all over the place. I'm not just talking about the "darker and edgier" look, but it veers from cartoony to ultra-serious in the span of minutes. We're asked to believe that the world that was slowly built up in MoS is now not only filled with meta-humans, but has a vigilante who's introduced hanging on a wall near a guy he's branded, said vigilante having a dream that rolls right from apocalyptic to campy science-fiction, and sandwiched in-between all this is a weird antagonist who's deliberately over-the-top(?) and espionage/journalism subplots.
The first twenty minutes are admittedly pretty damn good, and the film feels like a logical follow-up to the previous installment. Then, things start getting weird - we see Bruce stuck on the wall in the background while a police officer is investigating a crime scene. Lois somehow found a bullet that got... lodged in the journal she was carrying. Luthor has the capability to carry out a hit in Africa using private contractors/terrorists, but gets so incensed about not getting a permit to obtain Kryptonite that he decides to bomb a Senate hearing.
Most damning of all is Clark. What happened to
this guy? The man who said, "I've gotta find a job where I can keep my ear to the ground, where people won't look twice when I want to go somewhere dangerous, and ask questions." This time around, Clark has turned into Mr. Downer. A guy who walks around with a perpetual frown on his face, who has apparently become obsessed with promoting his alter-ego in the Daily Planet and gets into arguments with Perry White over it. It's not even clear why White hasn't fired him yet, as they're constantly arguing about whether Clark should cover sports or Superman.
Affleck as Bruce Wayne is fine. Nothing spectacular and nothing that really sets him apart from Bale's version, but the way his Batman is introduced and is characterized is fucking bizarre. As said before, he's first seen hanging off a wall at a crime scene, and the next time we see him is in his future/dream incarnation where he demonstrates his moves. His Batmobile just seems to come out of nowhere, with no setup or reveal. He straight-up mows a guy in the back of a vehicle down with a minigun at one point. There's hardly anything about his character that feels organic. It feels like a screenwriter had a bunch of boxes they had to check on a list to establish the character, but they forgot about making it believable or well-integrated in the plot.
Every few minutes, there was something pulling me out of the film. FutureFlash and his fucking ridiculous spacesuit. The whole Knightmare scene. Cavill looking nonplussed as the Senate room burns down around him. Perry's rants on the media being irrelevant and "looking on Dropbox" for Clark's copy (and probably written by a screenwriter who has a superficial understanding of journalism). The giant bat dream (shades of Batman Forever's notable deleted scene). The musical beats that kick in when Lex is walking into the crashed Kryptonian ship and Bruce sees the old photo of Diana. That goofy fucking haircut on the General Zod corpse.
I could see this working as an AU/Flashpoint-type film, but the way the film is presented and plotted out is all over the place. I'll give my thoughts on the actual Bat/Supes fight and last half sometime later.
