Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Watching the extended cut reaffirms my opinion that my original judgment was correct. The extra 30 minutes are almost undetectable. The most-significant of these minutes is the expansion of Wonder Woman's conflict over getting involved. So when she shows up, it's no surprise. Most of the shortening appears to have come from trimming scenes. Returning them to their length results in a smoother, less-confusing, and less-choppy film, My home system has better sound than a THX installation. The result is more-easily understood dialog, making the Batman/Superman conflict clearer. Clark is seriously tempted to kill Batman, and tells Bruce that in encouraging The Bat merely to hang up his cape, he's going easy on him. Two major problems remain. One is the question of why the scout ship would let a non-Kryptonian enter (using fingerprints!) and perform immoral acts. The other is Zack Snyder's direction. He's hardly alone in making movies devoid of "rise and fall" -- the creation/relaxation of tension. Everything moves along at a steady, flat pace, missing real suspense or excitement. (The structure of a film is as important as its events in creating excitement.) He (and others) are clearly unfamiliar with Wagner and Beethoven -- let alone Hitchcock -- or they wouldn't make such films. Nevertheless, BvS is a serious film about the abuse of power. To over-simplify the issue, does having power give one the moral right to use it, especially for "good" ends? I especially like Luthor's observation that "If God is all good, then he can't be all-powerful, and if He's all-powerful, he can't be all good." I won't explain the metaphysical/theological illogic of this, but it draws the moral point for mortals very well. I do not understand the change of rating from PG-13 to R. The theatrical cut veered close to R as it was, and I see nothing in the quantity or character of the violence to justify changing the rating. Regardless, this is not a film for pre-teens. original review follows ----------------------------------------------------------- I expected a mostly-action film with little drama. It's quite the opposite. The action sequences take up no more than about 25% of the film, are about the "right" length, and come near the end. For most of its running time, "BvS" is a real drama, with believable human motivations and interaction. Critics object to the extremely dark tone and lack of humor. Why? This is the most-important event in Batman's and Superman's lives (to this point) -- one is trying to kill the other. How can such a story be too dark? Where does one inject "appropriate" humor?. I'd like to give it five stars, but it's a bit cool. Zack Snyder is mostly interested in excitement and spectacle. On the positive side, though BvS is a setup for Justice League films, DC handles it less clumsily than Marvel has for its Avengers series.. The 3D is of the "View-Master" type -- plenty of planes of depth, but no "roundness" within any plane. It doesn't add much. The new 3D glasses, though, are a major improvement, transmitting more light, and gray rather than "peach juice" colored. (That's a joke from the film.) This is not the dog/turkey many critics are saying it is. (Some of them just >>loved<< "Guardians of the Galaxy".) I have no hesitation recommending it. You might be interested in the New York Times article. Google "supersized box office". (If you're not a subscriber, you might not be able to read it.)