I've watched Batman v Superman a couples of times now. I enjoyed the movie for the most part. It has some very serious problems with representing women that were hard to look past most of the time and made me cringe. Walking out of the cinema on premiere weekend—fittingly, the Metropolis in Frankfurt—discussing the movie with my sister, I felt that apart from aforementioned issue, something was off with the movie, that it felt like a bunch of snapshots of events put together, making it hard to find any sort of golden thread.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this interesting video review with an overly sensationalistic title, capturing this particular issue pretty well:
All in all, it was an entertaining film and the extended edition is a bit better, in my opinion. The shortest and most accurate criticism came from the inimitable @darth on Twitter tonight:
Yes, Wonder Woman was severely underrepresented in the movie but what saved it for me was the feeling that in the few moments Wonder Woman was on screen, the writers, the director, and most importantly Gal Gadot managed to capture the core of the character. She's educated, smart, more experienced and more level-headed than Batman or Superman, strong, a formidable fighter, and a true warrior.
There was a scene in the fight against Doomsday, where she was thrown back by a mighty blow of the creature but catching herself, the look on her face showed determination and the joy of battle.
It reminded me of one of my favourite moments in DC's New 52 run when Superman and Wonder Woman became a couple. Batman was explaining his misgivings about their relationship to Superman by showing Supes a number of boxes stored in a secure corner of the Bat Cave. Each of these boxes contained countermeasures for each member of the Justice League, should they ever go rogue. The only one he didn't have a countermeasure for, was Wonder Woman. He deemed her so powerful that the only way to stop her, if turned evil, would be Superman.
I sincerely hope that the 2017 Wonder Woman and the Justice League movies capture all facets of the character; the grace, the wisdom, the unshakeable belief in doing the right thing, the knowledge that sacrifices are sometimes necessary in battle, and not just the looks and fighting skills. The ComicCon trailer does look promising:
Bonus: "Everything Wrong With Batman v Superman"
