The movie opens with perhaps the most uninspired retelling of Batman's origin with the death of his parents and him falling into a cave and being swarmed by bats. It then jumps many many years into the future with Bruce Wayne bearing witness to Superman's battle with Zod that lays waste to much of Metropolis. This, I assume, is meant to indicate the erecting hate boner Batman has for supes.
They spend a lot of time in this movie painting a love/hate relationship the world has with Superman. Sure he saves people, but he can't be everywhere at once, and oftentimes there's a lot of destruction involved.
The rest of the build up to the climatic battle as referenced into the title is building up loosely why these two would fight. Batman hates Superman because he's an alien who's own people tried to take over the world. Superman hates Batman because this version of the Dark Knight likes to brand people with a bat logo and is kind of a prick. And then there's Mark Zuckerbergs take on Lex Luthor...
...you could have replaced Lex Luthor with the Joker, and his motivations would have made way more sense. They turned who, in the comics is a very smooth, very intelligent man into a babbling psychopath who's only real motivation seems to be a burgeoning God Complex against Superman.
Plot points are brought up and abandoned, others are used and go nowhere. Lois Lane discovers bullets made by Lex Corp that are there because...it somehow makes Superman look guilty? Oh and there's the scene where Batman receives a message from the future from The Flash, but it's unintelligible at best and is never brought up again. Bruce doesn't even freak out he just sits there like "well that happened".
Wonder Woman is kept very low key until it's revealed that it's even her. When she first shows up, I thought she was Zack Snyder's Cat Woman. Granted, our patience is rewarded by a very badass performance in the final act.
The rest of the Justice League are teased. But I am stretching at even calling it a tease. I wouldn't even call it a fondle or a tickle. They didn't even make the smart decision to cast the Barry Allen from the TV version of the Flash, because according to producers, it didn't fit the edgelord image DC wanted with their cinematic universe. Poor decision, in my opinion.
If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil the ending. But I will stress the amount I face palmed at them stuffing a historical Superman story line into the movie at the end, coming from nowhere and serving no purpose.
In all the movie tries too hard to get you invested in what DC is trying to do. And it falls flat on it's face with poor plot pacing and wayyyy too much of people staring off into the distance and looking very unhappy.
You could not pay me to sit through this a second time.
