Batman v Superman

I can't believe they had Luthor attempt to nail Superman to a Kryptonite cross near the end. That was even hokier than all the Christ analogues in the first movie combined.

The more I think about Man of Steel and this sequel of it, the more I am reminded of these two films.

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Mortal Kombat the movie in its time of release and with its limited budget, managed to deliver something memorable to a good number of fans, good action, fun moments, more balance to the characters screen time, and memorable soundtrack.

Man of Steel has a nice number of cast members, cool music, nice action scenes, and nicer imagery, particularly for the budget and time of release.

Then come: THE SEQUELS

Mortal Kombat Annihilation has this line on its cover; "Destroy All Expectations". What I expected before watching it was something awesome, something cool, with one annoying thing, but mostly it was a sequel worth celebrating. Those were my naive expectations back then for MKA, and boy did the movie live up to the tagline on posters and VHS tape covers, it destroyed my expectations, and we ended up with something completely lacking, very stupid, a chaotic mess, characters with moments of brief appearances then gone, an early and unpleasant death of who should be one of the best characters (Johnny Cage is one of the best characters in both games and first film to me), a dream sequence the protagonist has, seeing someone he never saw unmasked before, talking to him directly, a lackluster villain for a final fight, a lackluster father, a semi-useless mentor, a girlfriend who is mostly just there. The more I watched that sequel, the more flaws I found in it.

Batman V Superman is the Mortal Kombat Annihilation of DCEU, main differences are:

• It's an hour longer.
  
• It's ambitious, with a bigger budget, and better effects.
  
• It tries to be smarter than what the end result is, it tried to be the Dark Knight of the DCEU, while the team behind MK Annihilation had no intention of making their movie the next Blade Runner.
  
• No change in the cast.
  

The movie has the death of Jimmy Olsen, who is to me, a good mix between Peter Parker and Johnny Cage, he is the Rick Jones of the Superman lore, but we did not even get a reason to see him in the previous movie, he's killed early in the movie, and then he's forgotten for the rest of it, so in that regard, he is treated worse than how Johnny Cage was treated in MKA, at least Johnny had Sonya Blade thinking of him, Jimmy on the other hand, was forgotten, and never referenced to again.
At least he wasn't named in the movie, I think that was a good thing, I mean I wouldn't be this frustrated if Zack Snyder did not go on record and say he thought the idea of killing Jimmy was fun.

Lex Luthor and Doomsday are a bad mix of Shao Kahn, Shinnok, and Sindel.
The senate hall may have been supposed to be like the death of the judge in TDK, but it was mostly random, her sudden silence was random, looking at the jar of peach tea was random, and the after effect was dumb.

Aquaman scene was very reminiscent of Nightwolf's, just there to show off for a moment, then disappear for the rest of the movie. Sure his presence was supposed to build for Justice League movie, something Nightwolf was not there for, so you might say that is one up for Aquaman over Nightwolf, right? I say no, Nightwolf's very brief cameo was supposed to help Liu Kang learn a lesson for the movie at hand, (a useless lesson leading to a money wasting shot, that Mortal Kombat film has a number of those) not to exist for a sequel.

Superman's brief appearance every now and then is similar to half of the too many characters popping up in MKA, the other half is the characters who are there for a brief appearance like that politician Alexander kills for no reason, or Mercy Graves.

Perry White is worse than Raiden, Perry White is the Jim Gordon or the Ben Urich of the Superman lore, but in this movie he was useless, annoying, and just there, with a meaningless existence for no reason other than Clark and Lois having a boss.

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What makes Batman V Superman far worse than Mortal Kombat Annihilation (a movie so absurd I pop it in every now and then to watch a conclusion of the MK film story, and have a good laugh at the absurdity of it) is that BVS was supposed to be the big hit, the thing many, MANY comic book and cartoon fans were waiting to see realized on the big screen, some of us waited for that to happen even before the first Iron Man movie was released, but instead of hitting the right notes, instead of being the excellent central nerve of the DCEU, the pinnacle of CBM progress, we had a mountain of hot mess, that did not live to anyone's positive expectations, and shatters our excitement.