HEAVY SPOILERS: There’s a lot to unpack here, no way I’ll be able to touch on all of it so I will try to hit the highlights.
The Ultimate Edition is about 30 minutes longer than the theatrical version — it pushes the runtime with credits to over three hours but it fills in much-needed context, particularly the “Jimmy Olsen” scene in the desert.
If you ever need a writer/director for a big budget documentary about a colossal tragedy, Zack Snyder is your huckleberry. He could make getting cold French fries at the drive-through into a brutal exploration of the human condition.
I’m going to discuss my feelings about what I saw in terms of the main characters.
Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) pops up a couple of times before the big third act battle, in which she plays a key role. Gadot looks stunning as Diana Prince and you can tell she has modeled in the past. Kudos to the wardrobe department for her outfits, they are captivating. Diana really drags her feet getting involved in the big fight at the end, and she explains to Bruce she had given up on trying to be a hero…but damn, it wasn’t like her own life wasn’t going to get horribly impacted at some point. To preserve her own interests, you have to wonder about her initial reluctance.
Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) is actually driving a lot of the plot for the first half of the movie. I see BvS as first half Batman detective story, second half Superman cosmic-level fight. Affleck is really solid in both personas. And if you like your Batman killing a bunch of criminals, you’ll like this movie. Because man, he kills a bunch of bad guys. Brutally. His motivations are consistent throughout — you understand where he is coming from. He comes to see Superman as the biggest threat to the public and is willing to die to take him out. His strategy to beat Superman is superb and captured compellingly by Snyder.
Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) is…well, overpowered to begin with, so he winds up fighting an immensely powerful creature of mainly alien origin in the third act. I like Cavill as Superman. I think his look brings just enough “otherworldliness” to the role. What bothered me was his fight with Batman…I know he isn’t a genius, but it was a really knuckleheaded approach to a do or die situation. Use your superspeed! You could have grabbed Batman and stripped off his entire outfit in seconds, then explained what was going on. The Batman/Superman fight was the premise for the movie, but realistically, did it need to happen? No.
Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) was just as crazy at the beginning of the movie as he was at the end. I do not understand why he kept equating Superman and his adoring worshippers with God to the point where he lumped the two together in his self-pitying blame tirade. Superman never hurt him, but you would think from Lex’s point of view Superman had spent decades targeting Lex to humiliate and torture him. I guess it is written as Luthor is so demented going back to childhood trauma at the hands of his father that he has twisted reality to suit his revenge narrative, but it still seems so forced. Lex and Batman in the jail cell at the end of the movie, that scene needed to be cut out. It was out of place and really messed up the flow of what was otherwise an excellent conclusion. And cut the Steppenwolf with the three motherboxes Kryptonian ship archive visual as well, Zack. It looked bad and was not needed.
“Martha.” This was what so many people focused on when the movie came out. Batman is about to kill Superman and there needs to be a plot contrivance to save the man of steel. I guess Superman is so dazed that when he gasps out “save Martha” Batman will know that refers to his mom. Batman does not know who Martha is!!!! So a second plot contrivance is that Lois Lane (Amy Adams) has to show up at that exact moment to tell Batman Martha is Superman’s mom. People actually defended this, saying it wasn’t that awful. No, it absolutely was awful and dumb and clumsy. Don’t defend the undefendable, people!
Option two probably would have had to involve Wonder Woman showing up at that exact moment, or Alfred (Jeremy Irons) buzzing in with a “don’t do it” message. Maybe Lois arriving in time and pleading with Batman would have been enough on its own. I will always maintain there was a better way to handle it.
In conclusion, I can’t think of any additional scenes I would have cut out, but three hours is a long time to watch most any movie, and maybe some of the scenes could have been paced a little quicker and trimmed a bit. I liked Laurence Fishburne as Perry White but his scenes didn’t add much to the movie, maybe trimmed something there. Trimming almost 30 minutes was a mistake, but if they could have knocked about 15 minutes off, I think it would have helped.
