“Batman V Superman,” one of the most hyped comic book movies of the year, was announced back in 2013 as not only a sequel to “Man of Steel” but the start of DC’s cinematic universe, as DC is currently playing catch up to Marvel. DC, unlike Marvel, still has the film rights for all of their characters, with Batman and Superman having over 20 films live and animated. They have been dominating American animation more than Marvel, so you would think the start of their cinematic universe would be great. Unfortunately, this isn’t being set up as well

This film is a paradox. I don’t know if I should be raging against it or loving it. I hadn’t seen or read anything about except for the basic trailer, making this one of the few movies I didn’t go out of my way to spoil. I was hyped for this first ever live action crossover and…I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

The movie? Was just OK. To start off with yes Batman kills people with guns and it shows characters for the upcoming films as cameos. Why, there’s one to two minute shot of a jar of Lex Luthor’s pee.

“Batman V Superman” takes place about 18 months after “Man of Steel.” The world hasn’t fully recovered from the battle with Zod and his army. The US government is trying to figure out what to do about Superman being an unstoppable force of nature. Batman, who has the fastest retelling of a superhero origin story yet, is trying to find a way to kill Superman as revenge for the death of his employees from the big fight in the last film. The government hires Lex Luthor, a Silicon Valley style businessman and scientist, who tries to get Superman and Batman to fight for reasons for reasons, ranging from screw God to daddy issues. That’s about it plotwise.

The film is about two hours long and still feels way too rushed, as the overall pace feels heavily edited. The prologue is as fast as acts one through three and it doesn’t slow down to explain itself nor speed up for the fights. This confusing pace never ends.

It’s a mess to keep up with Batman waking from nightmares and visons that are never made clear and training with fight scenes mixed in. Superman being symbolized as a Jesus figure constantly questioning if he’s doing the right thing despite all the blame being on everyone else. A man in a wheelchair whose storyline never goes anywhere except a living bomb and Wonder Woman passes in and out of the frame until the end. If the rumors of originally being a R-rate three-hour film is true, than this explains why the pace was so strange.

This film’s take on Lex Luthor, played by Jesse Eisenberg and now dubbed Lex Luthor Jr. by the web, is a mixed bag as the film’s main antagonist. The other main bad guy of the film is Doomsday who’s just a hulking rock monster. Doomsday’s sole character trait and background is being the guy who kill Superman, so there is not much you can do with him. Lex in this film is updated to be a mix of a Mark Zuckerberg dotcommer millionaire, and Steve Jobs. He comes off as socially awkward in public but smart as hell and mad off of his own ego in private, with possible psychic alien vision dreams like Batman’s, He’s immature to a whole new level. he could have been a good villain if he wasn’t so incompetent.

If anything saves this movie it’s the fight scenes, most of which are of Batman fighting criminals using gunplay mixed with martial arts. If you can get past Batman shooting and killing people and that the Batman vs Superman fight is one-sided fistfight with green smoke bombs, you might enjoy your self

This could have been a good film. Fans have been waiting for DC to do something like this for years after Marvel. But this is trying to set up too much with too little time. And it suffers for it. Let’s just hope “Justice League part 1” and “Suicide Squad” does better or this is going to be a very short cinematic universe.