What the !@%$ was that?

Like what you like. If you enjoy Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, then by all means continue to love it. If the movie works for you emotionally, that's perfectly fine. I am being sincere. I do not want to yuck your yum.

But...

After watching this film in theaters and sleeping on it, I remember sitting up one day and asking myself:

What the !@%$ was that?

Let me get a few things out of the way before I dig into this film. I am generally a defender of Zack Snyder. I really enjoyed Dawn of the Dead. 300 was definitely better experienced in theaters, but it remains a solid movie. Army of the Dead is a lot of fun.

I am also a DC Comics fan. I loved Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. I read plenty of comics and watched just about every adaptation I could get my hands on growing up.

That honesty will hopefully buy me some credibility when I say that many of the superficial things people dislike about this movie are not what make it bad:

I don't care that Gotham and Metropolis are effectively twin cities.

I don't care that Lex Luthor is a patchwork of millennial tech-bro stereotypes.

I don't care that Batman kills people (and he absolutely does).

I don't care that the film telegraphs Batman and Superman's confrontation.

I don't care about Doomsday's character design.

Those things don't make this movie bad.

Let's also acknowledge the things the movie gets right. Ben Affleck is a good Bruce Wayne and does an excellent job portraying an older, worn-down Batman. There are scenes where you can genuinely feel his frustration and disappointment with how his world has turned out. Gotham looks great. The score fits the film well. Amy Adams is a strong Lois Lane. And, while this may sound like a backhanded compliment, Gal Gadot is a decent Wonder Woman as long as she doesn't talk a whole lot.

Unfortunately, what remains is a Superman who feels like he read Atlas Shrugged and never grew out of it, a version of Doomsday and Wonder Woman shoehorned into an already overcrowded story, mini-teasers for future Justice League movies, a dude-bro Batman who is essentially a killer, and a Zuckerberg-inspired Lex Luthor whose motivations are so vague that they almost defy definition.

Superman's conflict with Batman are his methods, sure is understandable, but wouldn't Metropolis being so close to Gotham shed light on to why Batman acts the way he does? Also there are more than a few times in this film when Superman is very blasé about death around him. And if willing, maybe, to kill Batman to save his own mother. Why is Superman so indifferent about death and destruction. I would argue his caring and ability to care about everything is fundamental to the character,

Does Lex hate Superman because his father abused him? Because he doesn't trust anything genuinely good in the world? Because Superman threatens his power? The film never seems interested in settling on an answer.

Meanwhile, Lex tricks Batman—a character famous for being the World's Greatest Detective—into trying to murder Superman by exploiting his PTSD and his trauma from the destruction seen in Man of Steel.

I say again:

What the !@%$ was that?

And then there is Martha.

Did you know Batman's mother and Superman's adoptive mother share the same first name?

Martha.

Batman apparently didn't know that.

At the exact moment Batman is about to stab Superman to death with a Kryptonite spear that he personally built, Superman gasps out, "Save Martha," referring to his mother in a way that no one would in that situation.

And somehow that is enough to stop Batman from killing him.

Within the next minute, they go from trying to murder each other to being allies.

I can't.

The fundamentals of characterization are all over the place, making it difficult to root for anyone. The movie is just a shade too dark visually to fully appreciate its environments. While I am in the minority that believes direct comic-book translations often make for worse films, this movie seems either to misunderstand the icons it is portraying or to hold them in contempt.

The entire film reeks of studio notes and an undercooked and also overstuffed script that needed three or four more drafts before production began. Its problems are foundational. No amount of reshoots or director's cuts can completely fix a story that never figured out what it wanted its heroes to be in the first place. Or a story that misunderstood who they were.