Batman v Superman is an excellent movie if you love comics. If you are a casual movie viewer, the general consensus seems to be that the movie is okay.
The bashing it gets seems to mostly come from American critics. The religious symbolism and philosophical themes seems to be off putting for them. It seems they were hoping for some mindless fun, similar to what can be found in an Avengers movie. That's not to say all Marvel properties are mindless fun; Daredevil and Jessica Jones have been well established and are excellent adaptions.
Other complaints indicate that the reviewers have the attention span of a gold fish.
If you like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, you will love this movie.
I honestly cannot stand the fanboy wars. Why can't people just accept that both Marvel and DC are both doing different things? They are both good, and they both cover different themes. Also, Batman is meant to be dark and gritty. He witnessed his parents death when he was a child, the city he lives in is overrun by corrupt companies and criminals. The city is called Gotham. Look at Tim Burton's movies even - Gotham is gothic.
DC is meant to be darker. DC means Detective Comics. They get into the more gritty side of things. Joker tortures people, Killercroc eats people alive etc. If you are going in expecting a comedy, you are ill-informed. Batman is not campy, the Adam West Batman and the awful Joel Schumacher films are terrible interpretations of Batman.
Also, since when was Christopher Nolan's Batman the only canon Batman? Hell even he killed, but people seem to be too stupid to notice. The only Nolan movie that got rave reviews was The Dark Knight. This would not have been the case if Heath Ledger was still alive. The Dark Knight Rises got negative reviews for not being funny enough, last I looked, its humour was on par with The Dark Knight, the humour was almost non-existent in both films. I can guarantee that if Tom Hardy died, the movie would have been hailed as a masterpiece.
Film critics seem to dislike DC films for the most part. They seem to have the impression that comic book movie adaptions should not have any philosophical themes. This is silly. This belittles the comics themselves. The comics tackle political agendas even. Green Arrow labels The Flash a fascist, there have been many comics reflecting upon World War II and other such events. There are comics in which the characters come to grips with death, people tearing them down, political campaigns etc.
I am by no means saying that the movie is perfect, no movie is. I am saying people should be critical based on reason. What I mean by this is, look at IGN's coverage of Kingdom Hearts. They get people to cover the games, who have no knowledge of said games. These people will then go on to review them and mark the game down because they do not know what is going on, however, if they had played the previous games, this would not be a problem. And yes, the reviewers have admitted to not playing the previous entries. This to me is not professional. If someone is unable to give an informed review on something, they should review something else that they are more better suited to.
It would be like hiring the only guy on your team to review Spiderman, you know this guy hates Spiderman, but lets get him to review it anyway. You are going to get a very biased review. That's not to say you can't review something that you don't like. For example, I like Comic books and their film adaptations, however, the Catwoman film was awful. Comicbook fans for the most part will agree. So if you like a specific genre, you are more justified in pointing out when there is a deviation within said genre that is bad. Whereas say if you do not like any drama film, you are always going to give a negative review, and your review does not offer any insight to audiences who like drama films. It just seems absurd reviewing a genre you don't like, or a specific entity that you have a bias against. It is the same if you had a videogame fanboy who bashed anything that outside of their preferred platform. Their dislike to the other platforms has no reasoning behind it, they just want to see them fail so their preferred platform 'wins'.
That is essentially what the reviews for this movie seems to be. There is a lot of comparisons being made between this and Marvel. For example: IGN even states in their review that you should just wait for the next Marvel film. Why can't people just enjoy both Marvel and DC without some sort of dick waving contest?
