Review Detail

Batman v. Superman is one of the most gratuitously violent movies that I have seen. The botched up pacing, plot, and narrative paired with out of character moments cannot be briefly summarized in order to describe how bad it is. However, I would even argue it is one of the most beautifully filmed movies I have seen. I do also enjoy all of the excellent visual artistic and biblical references are in the movie (I would love to see more movies do that). I can appreciate The Ultimate Cut trying to compensate for many things, but it still wasn't enough.

All I can begin to say about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Part 2 is, "Wow!". It makes me so angry and frustrated... that this isn't the final cut we got. This fan created edit of a big budget superhero movie is the pinnacle of fan editing as a whole. This is, without a doubt, my go-to version of Batman v. Superman. To start with the small things, I love the cutting of Zack Snyder's over-the-top edginess. The film now is more in tone with the Christopher Nolan films of yore (feeling a little more tight, grounded, and subdued with spectacle in between). The choice to create a proper suit reveal was amazing, and the approach to a mystery angle (in the cave) will always be appreciated by me. The added Joker laugh when showing Robin's suit was also a neat addition (even if it's a grim reminder of Jared Leto's god awful Joker).

We are now going to the real meat and potatoes of the edit as a whole. Superman's character is considerably improved, this edit makes me interoperate him as a hero suffering depression due to some of the people rejecting him. All of the Lex Luthor scenes are also successfully trimmed in the sense now they do not drag on to hell and back. The restructuring of every scene was done masterfully (example being the Lois x Superman conversation and Bruce's training happening in between) doing well at fixing the pacing. The core focus is now on Batman, Superman, and Wonder-Woman keeping the grand Justice League setup at a minimum. On the subject of Superman, this felt like a proper sequel to Man of Steel thanks to a lot of bloat being cut and now can remember the good scenes that do happen (my brain would zone out during a lot of aforementioned bloat *looking at you Africa scenes*). There are a ton of things done right in this edit that I could go for hours on, but I want to skip to the best edit that I believe we can all agree on. The deletion of the Martha motivation. Removing it in favor of creating a guilty "What am I doing?" kind of moment makes Batman's attempted murder much more impactful (even if there is a scene ripped from Batman Begins).

Nothing wrong with this edit what so ever, this replaces the original and Ultimate Cut without question. I highly recommend this triumph of fan editing. Well done Wakeupkeo, this is a well deserved winner of Fanedit of the Month.