Is 'Batman vs. Superman' really as bad as everyone said it was?

When Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice came out earlier this year, I was cautiously optimistic. Despite some reservations about the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman, and concerns that Man of Steel didn't exactly return the Superman character to its former glory, the trailer did look exciting.

But then, despite massive box office, the film was almost universally trashed -- not just by critics, but fanboys, too. And that's saying something.

Although, admittedly, Marvel has a much better track record -- especially recently -- at the movies, I grew up loving DC Comics characters more, with Superman and Batman being my two favorites. I had wanted to like this film, but the buzz was so deafeningly negative that I decided to wait for its DVD release.

I finally got to see it last night -- all 2 and 1/2 hours of it. And I can confirm that yes, it really is that terrible ... and yet it didn't need to be.

I am probably not the first person to point this out, but the whole movie essentially felt like one long trailer. There was virtually no narrative coherence. Ideas would be introduced and then abandoned with no explanation. There are dream sequences sandwiched into the action without much to differentiate them. I simply have no idea what the villain's motivation was or what he was trying to achieve.

And let's talk about that villain for a second. The casting of Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor had me intrigued at first. In his best performance to date -- in The Social Network -- he hinted at a kind of ruthlessness underneath his twitchy nerd facade. And it would have been interesting had he chosen to play Luthor fairly realistically. But instead he gives one of the worst performances I've seen this year -- a Razzie-worthy potpourri of irritating vocal tics and over the top flailing.

My thoughts exactly

In the film's finale they appear to be setting up his return for future installments, but I simply don't know how they can justify that, unless the thinking is that his take on Luthor has nowhere to go but up.

Ironically, Affleck -- who like a lot fans, I thought was all wrong for the Dark Knight -- is the best thing about this movie. He really bulked up and looks great in the batsuit. He brings a little bit more nastiness to the character than I've seen previously and he is at the center of the film's best action sequence (one that should have opened the film), a bravura fight in the desert, where clad in a badass trenchcoat, Batman dispatches an army of bad guys in what appears to be one shot.

But even that dynamite sequence is undermined by the fact that it is apparently all just a dream -- and I am still scratching my head about why that choice and so many other decisions in this film were made, other than to set up future films, which is at best shortsighted and at worst, deeply cynical.

Here are a few other things that got under my skin:

The color palette - Besides the narrative incoherence, one of the most glaring flaws of this film is its muddy and unattractive look -- which has become some of a trademark for the movie's director, Zack Snyder. Some filmmakers have decided that the literal darkness of a movie will connote the brooding nature of its screenplay, but they forget that Christopher Nolan's Batman films often took place in pristine daylight (think the Joker's bank heist in The Dark Knight) and for the most part, the action in those films was coherent and semi-plausible. In this film there was so much CGI, I often simply had no idea of who or what I was looking at.

The use of Wonder Woman - I rolled my eyes when I learned Wonder Woman was being shoehorned into this film, not because I have anything against the character -- I love her -- but because I anticipated that it would lead to a bloated screenplay where either she or other characters would not have enough time to really be a fully developed and realized person. Gal Gadot looks great, but doesn't get to imbue Wonder Woman with any personality whatsoever. Instead she serves to tee up future Justice League movies with the likes of Aquaman, which I will have no interest in seeing.

Henry Cavill - Here's another actor who looks the part (certainly more than Brandon Routh did) but who has no discernible appeal. I don't remember hating Man of Steel as much as many other people did, but I remember very little about it, which I think speaks volumes. Cavill is even less charismatic here, largely warbling his lines with no emotion or just grimacing a lot. At the very least, Affleck tries to sell his performance as Bruce Wayne, Cavill seems to be leaning entirely on his looks, and he winds up being forgettable in a film he's supposed to be a main attraction in.

The lack of humor - I don't need my superhero movies to be a laugh riot, but a little levity isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Marvel movies have mastered the art of being funny without being totally frivolous. Watching this bleak, overlong slog of a movie, I kept thinking about how unamusing it must have been for the kids who went to see it. Superman in particular requires a light touch, as Christopher Reeve proved, otherwise he collapses under the weight of his Christ-like characteristics.

The finale - In what has becoming an increasingly tiresome trope, the film ends with a giant CGI creature fighting our three heroes and destroying a city in the process. What is especially appalling about this ending is that is completely undercuts what is somewhat clever about the opening -- which takes place during (and appears to condemn) the damage caused by the extended fight scenes which ended Man of Steel. Clearly, I was not a fan of this movie, and therefore I am not sure what ending could have salvaged it. But this mess of explosions and smoke clouds didn't leave me wanting more.