As its title implies, "Batman v Superman" plays like a mashup of things we’ve seen before.
[Plays] less like a prequel for the JLA then a greatest-hits medley of every superhero movie ever made -- a little Dark Knight Rises here, a b...
Toronto Star March 24, 2016 If only the film actually had depth, along with a little levity to lighten the bulk in the script, the visual murk and the sonic overkill.
ScreenCrush March 22, 2016 Instead of playing up the differences between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, Batman v Superman flattens them.
The film may be imposing, but it’s not fun.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your head driven through solid rock and glass and brick walls for two and a half hours, b...
It’s freighted not so much with entertainment value as it is with enough talk of fallen gods, absent parents, and dissolute heroes to fuel&nb...
More befuddled, plot-wise, than just about any other superhero epic of the last decade, Batman v Superman nevertheless deserves points for creating...
It’s a shame that Batman v Superman is also a storytelling disgrace. It has maybe six opening scenes and jumps so incessantly from subplot to...
Blunt, humorless, and baffling, it collides the brutish directorial stamp of its director (he of 300 and Watchmen fame) with the most sha...
guidelive.com March 23, 2016 In the words of The Joker in a far better Batman movie: "Why so serious?"
Boston Globe March 23, 2016 Eventually the script’s illogic and the relentless pounding of the action scenes wear you down.
When it sings, Dawn of Justice is a wonder. When it drags, it still looks good and offers hints of a better scene just around the corner.
Overlong, underdeveloped and almost entirely humorless, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice may please die-hard fans by pitting two DC icons ag...
The Guardian March 23, 2016 I can’t lie and call Batman v Superman a great movie. Not even for us superhero fans.
Irish Times March 22, 2016 Just put a bucket of generic Batman in here and stir in a few pints of own-label Superman. That will do to be going on with.
Detroit News March 22, 2016 The heavyweight title bout between Batman and Superman is a smash to the senses, the same way being tossed around in a rollover car accid...
BvS will please those either waiting for the two main players to lock horns on a movie screen, or those who’ve just been pining for Wond...
That fight comes late in the game, and it’s so grim, humorless, and vicious, it stops being thrilling early on. It isn’t in the service...
And what of the title’s promised skirmish? That face-off between two comics legends becomes but one in a series of big things bashing in...
Although viewers may be riveted at times, the net experience isn’t much fun.
The Daily Beast March 22, 2016 Watching Batman and Superman rage at each other like little boys makes for a pretty tedious two and a half hours.
Rolling Stone March 22, 2016 Snyder, juiced up by Hans Zimmer’s caffeinated score, throws everything at the screen until resistance is futile.
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle feels like an antic 1930s screwball comedy compared to Zack Snyder’s seriously patience-try...
I wish I could tell you more, but honestly it’s all just a blur of pretentious speeches about what lurks in the hearts of men and n...
Sight & Sound March 24, 2016 This is a superhero film which opens and closes with funerals and requires the world’s finest detective and an avatar of truth and justi...
It is without question an important film today, and a quintessential product of the America we inhabit.
Empire Magazine March 22, 2016 There are moments that make the whole enterprise worthwhile, and introduces an intriguing new Batman. But it’s also cluttered and narratively...
A ponderous, smothering, over-pixelated zeppelin crash of a movie scored by a choir that sounds like it’s being drowned in lava.
New Statesman March 31, 2016 It is the job of the modern superhero movie to explore at extravagant length and in morose detail the burden rather than the bliss of being one of...
In Ben Affleck’s Batman, here at last is the sadistic, fascistic, half-crazed vigilante that comics fans have been waiting for.
Questions regarding violence and mayhem are drowned out by violence and mayhem. Such is the superhero life as directed by Zack Snyder. There is no...
The Guardian March 27, 2016 For all its overcranked spectacle, I emerged from Batman v Superman in a soporific state; foggy of head, heavy of heart, wondering if it was a...
Vanity Fair March 23, 2016 [B]efore too long, Snyder has shaken off the self-reflection and returned to … an empty seriousness where, for a few inspired scenes, some act...
If a filmmaker attempted to combine everything casual moviegoers don’t like about superhero franchises, they couldn’t come up with...
The Guardian March 22, 2016 All in all, job done, just about.
A movie that beats you into submission and makes you wonder if the sun will ever come out again.
A popcorn film – and this is a popcorn film – should never feel like Sunday night homework.
Bitch Media February 10, 2021 Let’s not make any bones about it – on any scale, Dawn of Justice is painful to watch.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice pits the two titans against each other with beautiful visuals, too many characters, and a borderline...
Toronto Sun March 22, 2016 Half of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is brilliant. Unfortunately, the other half of Zack Snyder’s epic-length superhero movie is s...
MovieFreak.com August 11, 2016 While not the worst superhero comic book adventure ever to grace the multiplex, it’s likely the most frustratingly disappointing.
Globe and Mail March 24, 2016 The film might be pretty to look at, but narratively speaking, it is a disaster.
Chicago Reader March 23, 2016 Not as bad as Bush v. Gore, but close.
DC and Snyder jammed a lot into "Batman v Superman" to get back into the game. And it often works.
Overblown and over-long as it is, the film sets up the series to come with a sure sense of its aficionados' wants and needs. It’s the pe...
Snyder sets his story within our modern world and attempts to fashion a kind of commentary on the media and the current geopolitical situation. Wha...
While the Marvel universe, now owned by Disney, is glib and sunny, it’s a nice echo of Warner’s past as a home to gangsters and gr...
filmcomment.com March 25, 2016 Yes, it’s always nice to see actors of the caliber of Holly Hunter (as a skeptical judge) and Jeremy Irons (as Alfred the butler) get to...
There’s a gravitas here that even the staleist of comic book tropes can’t diminish. Snyder, who directed Man of Steel and the fail...
Financial Times March 23, 2016 Did we need 150 minutes to watch slyly crafted revisionism turn to special-effects kitsch and rampage?
Slant Magazine March 23, 2016 A sequel that functions as origin story, apologia, and harbinger of a second expanded universe of overpopulated action bonanzas.
In a word, exhausting. In a few more, overblown, overstuffed, repetitive, bombastic, and sometimes just dumb. (Never mind dreary to look...
Chicago Tribune March 22, 2016 A near-total drag, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice plays like a loose, unofficial quarter-billion-dollar remake of The Odd Couple, in...
Independent March 22, 2016 For all the eye-popping spectacle here, the brilliance of some of the action sequences, and the full-blooded performances from Ben Affleck and Henr...
askmen.com March 24, 2016 Since the movie is opening in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis and just days after the Brussels attacks, the hostility conjured between these...
It’s another numbing smash-and-bash orgy of CGI mayhem with an ending that leaves the door open wide enough to justify the next 10 insta...
New Yorker March 25, 2016 When in doubt, [Snyder] simply slings another ingredient into the mix, be it an irradiated monster, an explosion on government premises, or the sha...
The Playlist March 25, 2016 When was it decided superhero movies shouldn’t be any fun?
Megaton fight scenes are the reason people will put up with bad dialogue or bad logic in a film, so it’s an outright tragedy when Batman...
New York Times March 23, 2016 The studio has, in the usual way, begged and bullied critics not to reveal plot points, and I wouldn’t dream of denying you the thrill of dis...
Over two-and-a-half hours, it stumbles its way through what feels like at least three different movies with clumsy tonal shifts and an entirely con...
The Australian March 25, 2016 This is a high-quality superhero movie for adults, which is a pleasant, almost superhuman, development.
Sight & Sound March 24, 2016 This is a superhero film which opens and closes with funerals and requires the world’s finest detective and an avatar of truth and justi...
Village Voice March 23, 2016 The movie’s not bad but it doubles down on its least-interesting and potent elements at the expense of those that actually work.
Filled with scenes of gloomy characters confronting their demons or wrestling with insipid moral quandaries, this joyless slog isn’t a s...
Underdeveloped, overlong and stupendously dispiriting.
Ponderous, self-important, too long by at least 45 minutes, and do we really need another scene (and then ANOTHER scene) of Bruce Wayne&r...
Not only does the storytelling feel cluttered, but the premise turns both protagonists into passive victims who only occasionally get to do anythin...
For Snyder, it’s among his better films, even though it doesn’t offer a single memorable image or idea.
Batman v Superman is kind of dopey and plays out some laborious plot twists in the DC narrative at unnecessary length, but as I’ve alrea...
Daily Telegraph March 22, 2016 No major blockbuster in years has been this incoherently structured, this seemingly uninterested in telling a story with clarity and purpose.
As a pure visual spectacle, however, Batman V Superman ably blows the hinges off the multiplex doors, and editor David Brenner does excel...
TIME Magazine March 22, 2016 As superhero spectacles go, Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a grand one, with a mondo-operatic climax and ...
New York Post March 22, 2016 Constantly threatening to collapse from self-seriousness, this epic has way too much of everything, including CGI and Oscar winners up the wazoo.
Snyder’s films are so eager to establish that "Superman was never real" that they never permit even the illusion that he ever was.
RogerEbert.com March 22, 2016 There’s enough mythic raw material sunk deep in every scene that you can piece together a classic in your mind if you’re feeling c...
The Atlantic March 25, 2016 Batman v Superman is a tiresome, ill-tempered film, and one too lazy even to earn its dismal outlook.
Shouldn’t all this geeky property colliding still at least be entertaining? Shouldn’t it play to the cheap seats instead of wallowing i...
As this uneven film grinds to an end, it sets itself up for more shenanigans in more episodes with more super heroes.
