I have to say.... I don't see why people say pacing is a problem, but like I've said, I was familiar with the plot long before the movie was released, so that maybe helped.
Is it too fast? Too jumpy? I thought the editing was fine, the pacing was a bit slow at first and a bit fast at the end, nothing dizzying. I do think they should've shown Batman seeing the metahuman files instead of showing WW, but that's about it.
The movie simply didn't have an effective narrative flow. The story didn't progress in a logical and compelling way. Fury Road was intense as ****, but it worked marvelously for that movie. Something like Room has a much more methodical, deliberate pace. But again, it works extremely well for that movie, because it reflected the narrative (shifting into a faster gear for scenes where it made sense to do so, like the escape). Here, it was frequently random scenes following random scenes, sometimes pretty unnecessary scenes, sometimes scenes that didn't make a lot of sense, sometimes scenes that did work pretty well. But again, going back to Rorywan's initial review, it was like spaghetti. Just stuff all over the place, that didn't congeal in a rewarding way to my eyes. So, pacing and editing is a shorthand to describe the way that the story was told. But you can't divorce it from the script. Some stuff needed to go, other stuff probably could have benefited from being moved around. Some stuff, like the joke coming right after Batman kills a guy, or the intense Fury Road Wonder Woman theme popping in at weird times, or Perry White's focus on the damn sports story, or the excessive use of flashbacks, could have been reeled in to help lessen the negative impact of the whole thing.
But in truth, I'm not sure editing could salvage the mess of a script.
BTW....BvS > DP by a longshot!
Despite its zaniness, Deadpool had a more straightforward and focused plot. It used the unconventional flashback approach to telling his origin, but it was still very clear and done effectively. BVS was all over the place, with many things happening that didn't make much logical sense, or that didn't flow well from established scenes or characters. The dream sequences being a good example. They could have worked well, but they weren't properly set up, so much of them just serve as baffling nonsense to the moviegoer without inside knowledge of what is going on there. Then the explosion during the hearing didn't make sense. Wonder Woman's ignoring Zod but feeling compelled to fight Doomsday makes no sense. The Middle Eastern bullet subplot didn't seem to have any bearing on the story. Etc.
Deadpool had pretty clear motivations throughout, and his relationships developed in a fairly logical way, even for someone who is very zany and "unpredictable." Superman's motivations are. . .??? Luthor's motivation is that he really wants to kill Superman, but it never makes sense why he feels that way. He makes some vague, pseudo philosophical rants about gods, but it just comes off as some random, half-baked thoughts. Not a compelling and "realistic" motivation. Batman had a well developed motivation, but then he changes his mind about it all on a whim because his mom and Superman's mom have the same name. . .???
Deadpool movie had a logical resolution to the story, and could work perfectly well as a stand-alone movie. BVS was more of a commercial for future movies than any of the Marvel movies have been, which is saying something. The ending is a total downer, and was not the necessary resolution to the story. But instead something among many other things shoehorned in as a mixture of fan-service and means of selling something else down the road.
These are just a few ways off the top of my head that Deadpool was better, as a movie. You can hate the way they handled the Deadpool story with the lewdness and 4th wall breakage and whatnot, and you can hate the character. And you can also accept that BVS may have had better stand-alone sequences, like the great Batman thug fight, and maybe even the Batman/Superman fight. But as a story told through the medium of film, or as a story period, Deadpool wins!
This movie righted the wrongs of MOS. . .
Of course, we had the requisite "Snyder compensates for fan complaints by doing X" moment, which was the opening scene showing the destruction of MOS from Wayne's perspective. But that clearly wasn't something he had in mind when filming Man of Steel, and was reactionary. Other moments of compensation were the characters going out of their way to explain how they were luring Doomsday into a deserted area, and that the buildings around the Kryptonite spear didn't have people in them, etc.
Putting that obvious stuff aside, I feel the movie was a very logical continuation of Man of Steel, in terms of tone and approach. Humor was few and far between, and usually awkward. If I'm remembering correctly, the movie opens with a funeral, then flashback to Man of Steel from Wayne's perspective, referencing 9/11, with lots of trauma and death, then we have killings in the Middle East, with Jimmy Olson being shot in the head. Movie ends with Superman's death From the get-go, this is a dour, depressing approach to a comic book movie. An appropriate sequel to Man of Steel.
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