If you went to the movies at all this week, you only probably went to see one very, very specific movie: this son of a bitch, which I very strongly did not like. You could even say I hated it. If you walked up to me and said, “Man, Andy, you sure hated that movie,” I don’t think I’d put up much of a fight arguing the opposite. It’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad movie, and the review I coughed up for Paste Magazine reflects the many and varied levels of disdain I feel toward it.
But – but! – I will tell you this: my contempt for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice comes from a place of absolute ambivalence, not just toward the film itself but toward superhero movies in general; Warner Bros. and DC movies in the specific; slapdash product manufacturing at large; Zack Snyder and the vast majority of his goddamn filmography; the “gritty” trend in comic book films; and so much more. It’s hard for me to care about this stuff, which I think says a lot about my personal reaction toward Batman v Superman. I don’t care, but this movie made me care, and not on any positive level.
I assume that lots of you went out and paid for a ticket to this thing. I also assume that a decent percentage of you all enjoyed it, if only because the scathing advanced reviews made it sound so bad that what you saw on screen looked kinda decent by consequence. What did you think? Did you dig it? Did you loathe it? Did my review force you to calibrate your expectations in a way that wound up making the experience satisfying? Am I just a total jerk idiot who hates movies and doesn’t get comics? (I can answer both of those preemptively: no and no.) Let me have it, or don’t, in the comments.
A Constant Visual Feast 