Hey there, superhero movie fans! With the jumbled, confused and generally rather messy Suicide Squad just hitting theaters, and with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice topping the video sales charts, it only seemed right and timely that I should take a quick look at the “Ultimate Edition” of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that just came out and let you know what it has up its muscle-stuffed sleeves. (Hey what’s a little more messiness among friends, right?)
Let me start off at the top here and admit that as a DC comics fan from way back, I was pretty disappointed with the Bat v Sup movie. Not only was it dour, humorless and a little too bone-crunching, it just didn’t ever seem to catch the true character of those well-defined and much admired titular heroes themselves.
But what about this new three-hour, R-rated, Blu-ray version that’s being touted as director Zack Snyder’s intended movie-house release? Why, we wonder, would it be rated R? Violence? Language? What? And what about the story? Does it clear up all the confusion the theater version left viewers with? Does it give the supers a real reason to mix-it-up other than that paper-thin Lex Luthor manipulation? Does it make the good guys a little less brainless and bull-headed?
Well, I can say this definitively: It’s longer. And bloodier.
The 30 extra minutes of screen time give us a few new storylines. For instance, we watch Lois Lane investigate an evidence thread that tells us why Superman didn’t catch a certain Senate house bomb. We see Clark Kent investigate and grow angry over a certain masked vigilante’s savage ways. We witness “The World’s Greatest Detective” numbly ignore a certain set of clues, over and over. And we get a better sense of just how certain-sure crazy Lex Luther is.
Other than that, the additions depict more blood, more bat-brutality and more profanities (including an f-bomb).
More heroism? More goodness? More happy endings? More sense? Well, I guess that’ll all have to wait for the movie remake.
(We’ve added an addendum to Paul Asay’s full movie review that you can check out for specific problematic content additions.)
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