What's the problem with Doomsday? He was a genetically engineered creature in the comics, as he was here. Superman died in this movie after one solo movie, and about half the screen time in this movie. That is MORE screen time than the MCU Spider-Man had before HE died in the MCU! Iron-Spider-Boy only had 1 movie, and small parts in Civil War and Infinity War before his death. And BVS gave a clear signal Supes was coming back, which IW didn't give. But all comic aficionados at least knew both were coming back.
There is a cut line where Lex says Doomsday will "obey only him." So it's clear he tried to engineer Doomsday to do what he wanted him to do. But they may have cut that because the scene was going to show that Luthor failed to make him obey him, which is a bit contradictory to him successfully engineering Doomsday to hate Superman.
As for the Martha scene, I thought from day one it was a brilliant idea and executed perfectly and beautifully. There are tons of comic fans who say they never realized both moms have the same name, and I was one of them! It was a brilliant analysis of the canon to come up with the idea. And the way the scene plays out with the flashback to Crime Alley and the Zimmer music is beautiful. It's also reminiscent of T2 where Sarah Connor is going to kill Miles Dyson, but backs away when she sees his family, and regains her conscience.
Superman says "Save Martha" rather than any other phrase because his identity is still secret from Batman. It would be foolish for him to reveal it to someone trying to kill him, because then Batman could track down Lois and kill her. Saying it was "his mom" would force him to eventually reveal his identity, if Batman agreed to save her. Once Lois shows up, the point becomes moot, as she reveals who Martha is, and there's no way to protect Lois anymore after she reveals herself as Superman's loved one. Also, Superman is in a freaking drugged out daze with a boot on his neck. To expect him to articulately express his thoughts at this point is a bit much to ask.
As for Jeremy Irons saying BVS was muddled, that was in reference to the theatrical cut. I know I've seen a lot of people say Luthor's plot only made sense to them in the extended cut. I felt everything made enough sense to me in the theatrical one, other than the mystery of the Knightmare scene, which I think was SUPPOSED to be a mystery. It was a mystery to Bruce, so why should the audience know more about it than he does? I'm also reminded of Roger Ebert's review of Watchmen, where he said he wasn't sure if he understood all of it and was going to rewatch it. Then he wrote another article saying it made perfect sense on the rewatch. BVS is like that, a dense, complicated story that does not repetitively spoon feed you the same plot points over and over again until they're drilled into your head. Most importantly, like a lot of intellectual, mature movies, say, 2001, you do not NEED to understand the movie in one viewing, and the director doesn't necessarily WANT you to. Tenet got knocked for this too. I am so disappointed with modern audiences who think every movie should be perfectly understood after one viewing.
That's just a recipe to get more simplistic, dumbed-down movies for little minds.
I think a lot of people involved with the movie second-guessed everything after the critics trashed it. I think the critics did it dirty as hell, partly out of an agenda against Snyder. A lot of them called 300 "fascist," then shortly before BVS' release, Snyder said he wanted to adapt Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Some critics used that announcement as another way to pigeonhole him for years as some kind of, well, fascist again. The critics also clearly have a tremendous loyalty to the MCU (borne of good faith or good "perks," I don't know). And, lastly, the critics have a certain kind of prejudice against the superhero genre. This is the prejudice that made a lot of them trash the first half of Superman 1, the serious part, and also which made them ALMOST rate Joker rotten (and the top critics actually did). They just turn their nose up when the genre tries to 'act like' it's more than disposable, flimsy entertainment. This is why Richard Lester said, when he took over directing Superman II and III, that he wasn't going to do "the David Lean stuff" anymore. And why he turned the Superman movies into light action-comedies. Very little has changed in 40 years when it comes to ALLOWING the superhero genre to be "worthy of" going into mature, highbrow places. Which is why I think Snyder's DC work is on a path towards getting a critical reevaluation, like we saw in the past for certain movies that were considered to be in "disreputable" genres, like Scarface and The Thing. If the critics think something is schlock, they HATE it when the schlock "puts on airs" that it's really something important. And they end up missing when that thing REALLY IS something important and meaningful.
Considering all of the above, we're to then believe that no one at The Daily Planet would give Clark the heads up about Batman's heroic past or that he wouldn't oh, I don't know, check their archives for info on him? Maybe google him? That he'd just get upset about him branding some thugs and ignorantly treat him as some run-of-the-mill vigilante, fly in as Superman and tell him to retire? I'm sorry, but that was beyond lame.
Sorry, I'm really confused on your point-of-view here. Since when is Batman considered a "hero" by the press? Isn't the whole point that he's a vigilante outlaw who has to hide out from the law (not to be redundant)? Wouldn't his press coverage in Gotham be akin to JJJ's coverage of Spider-Man? And, besides, the whole press take on Batman in BVS is that he's got "a new kind of mean in him." Superman is trying to stop him based on his current behavior. What he did in the past isn't relevant at this point. You act like Clark would be able to find stories where Gotham's mayor is giving Batsy the key to the city or something.
As for only making $873M, the first two Avengers movies* each made more than that WITHOUT counting their domestic takes, so I think even God would say BvS underperformed to expectations. The WB bean counters sure felt that way lol.
BVS was the SECOND movie in a shared universe, vs. Avengers, the 6th movie. I guess WB would've been happier with the DCEU if it had grossed $4.9 billion over its very first 6 movies, though, right? Oh, wait, it DID! And that was a billion more than the MCU made across its first 6 movies. And a higher per-film average than the Nolan Bat trilogy. A much greater average, even, than the Godzilla/Kong verse which WB keeps plugging away at, with Legendary producing them all consistently.
So why was the panic button on the DCEU pushed? It wasn't because of bean-counting. I'm guessing it was because someone high up at WB simply didn't like Snyder's take on the movies. There was no financial reason to force out Snyder, especially after Aquaman came out and it was clear the DCEU was not damaged in the slightest. The logical thing at that point would to be call up Snyder, apologize for the bad reshoots on SS and JL, and ask him to get working on DC movies again, because his ideas just kept paying off big. The anti-Snyder sentiment at WB is absolutely palpable, especially notable in (now former exec's) Ann Sarnoff's statements to the press, days before the Snyder cut came out on HBO Max, insisting they would never hire Snyder again. This is the same woman who said she would make ANY movie the Wachowskis wanted to make in late 2021, despite their last three movies taking massive financial losses (Speed Racer, Jupiter Ascending, Cloud Atlas). This was always about how much WB LIKES Snyder, not about money. It's clear ZSJL only got made because of a turf war with the people in charge of HBO Max. WB execs have the right to not like Snyder's work, but we have the right to tell WB to hire new execs.
So The Batman with China made 1.1 billion less than NWH without China and made less than WW1, BvS and Aquaman.
The Batman barely outgrossed Suicide Squad, which didn't release in China. And inflation would push up SS's gross above it. The Batman failed to outgross Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Joker. If you adjust for inflation, the numbers look worse, and Man of Steel likely outgrosses it too. The Batman essentially, as of now, looks to be making the same exact profit BVS did based on budget and gross. So if the panic button was pushed after Batman v Superman, I don't know why it's not being pushed now. If this had been Batfleck's movie, everyone who hates Snyder would be saying The Batman was a massive disappointment for all these reasons, and that the universe needed to be rebooted. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Heck, IIRC in BvS ZS had Bruce develop Kryptonite weapons without any real intel that they'd be effective against Superman. All he really had to go on was that Lex Luthor was collecting the meteor fragments. Did Lex experiment on Zod's body and determine Kryptonite's negative effect and did Bruce hack into Lex's system and find that out? If so I must have nodded off during that part. We knew it was lethal, but how did Bruce know?
Which is the exact same thing that happened in Superman 1. Lex Hackman deduced that kryptonite would be lethal to Superman just by seeing a picture of it. Why did no critic ever complain about that, much less use it to claim the whole movie was a disaster? There are things you just have to accept. How exactly would someone accidentally figure out kryptonite was damaging to Superman in real life? It's an almost impossible plot point to overcome with perfect logic. The stuff would have to randomly land next to Superman, and someone would have to observe him going weak from it, and the news would have to get back to the villains. Or Superman would have to admit Jor-El told him about it to the public, which would make him look foolish. You have to accept some allowances in stuff that is still fundamentally founded on pulp fantasy storytelling. Ultimately, yes, we can assume Luthor experimented with fragments of it on the ship and Bruce discovered that intel (which we know Lex wanted him to find out about). The movie said fragments had been found before.
