Your preconceived view of Batman is stopping you for looking at the evidence presented on screen.
Firstly, to think Batman is "smarter" than Lex is fanciful. Lex manipulates Batman at every turn in this movie, and that makes sense. For Lex to even be a force in a universe where you have the JL he must not only have resources at his disposable but must be able to manipulate to achieve goals, and that includes manipulating and deceiving Batman. So I'm sorry, but your fanciful version of Batman as the best and brightest can not be true. He is not as smart as Lex or Lex becomes irrelevant.
As for Batman he is purposely portrayed as a man who has lost his touch with humanity after doing this for so long and seen so much go wrong and achieved nothing as a result (criminals are like weeds.) This is for the purpose of having Superman redeem the humanity he has lost and returned him back to the Batman that we know. That in my book is bold and a really beautiful arc for Bruce. Instead of trying to force your Batman into this story, maybe look at it from the view that Batman has returned to your Batman by the end due to the acts of Superman, which again, is incredibly faithful to who Superman is to everyone.
This is your main error in judgement - you base your claims and disagreements with other interpretations on the fact that the characters behaviours have to be as they are to make sense for this story. The problem is firstly, that many of these scenes simply don't make sense logically, but where it falls over completely is that this story doesn't make sense for these characters at all.
It's not about "My" Batman. It's "The" Batman. My "fanciful version of Batman" has been around far longer than this movie version has or will be. By your own admission, the version that most fans took exception to is presumed to be gone and replaced by "my" version by the end of the movie!
That fact alone seems to more than enough vindication for "my" version.
If you think a 2.5hr movie deserves to supplant the weight of almost a century of history and far better, more insightful and more popular incarnations of the character, across a range of media, then you're never going to understand the nature of this films failure to be an unqualified smash hit and why your defenses don't convince the majority on this board.
Rightly or wrongly, these type of films, especially this one in particular, will never be judged solely on their own in isolation.
They will always be held up against the standards set in canon. And justifiably found wanting.
The best test for whether these IP movies stand on their own merits or not would be the GA reception, represented by it's legs.
In terms of legs, it looks like an I-beam may have been knocked onto those, presumably during the battle between Superman and Zod.
Those things are stumps.
So the GA, unencumbered by preconceptions from comic history, didn't like it much either.
That says the story, irrespective of the revision or deconstruction of the iconic heroes, was not good enough for people to recommend it to their friends or family.
That's a simple fact of the BO.
For example, I actually loved Watchmen. But it's very apparent that I am in the minority and I can clearly see and understand why.
Just as I, and many others who don't like BvS, can clearly see what they're going for here; Broken Bat, turned around by poor unappreciated, burdened Superman, hope returned to both and the world at large when he commits attention-seeking petulant suicide, I mean of course noble sacrifice (completely unnecessary, preventable sacrifice) etc etc.
I just find it very poorly conceived and poorly executed.
What they are really trying to do (I hope) is set the end of this movie up as a justifiable turning point to ditch the unpopular, non-canonical versions of the Snyder Murderverse and go more mainstream.
I get it.
I'm not actually convinced that "JL will be lighter in tone, much more of a crowd pleaser, more suited to Snyder's talents as a filmaker". Said WB PR, who have clearly never watched Zack Snyders previous movies.
If the Knightmare scene was an allusion to what's planned for JL, yeah, that's clearly MUCH lighter in tone.
Your assertion that Batman has to be dumbed down or Lex becomes irrelevant and can only function as a character if he can manipulate Batman?
That's demonstrably ridiculous, except perhaps in this incompetent example of one-dimensional characterisation and poor storytelling.
Examine the works of Loeb, Morrison, Johns, and many others who have and continue to create best-selling, critically acclaimed fan favourite story arcs around the very premise you claim cannot work.
Having Batman be smarter than Lex certainly hasn't hurt the comics.
But then, they don't confuse the symbolic use of jars of piss with competent or complex narrative either.
Some of the few highlights of DC's new 52 have been the interactions between the almost equal yet opposites of Batman and Lex.
This is what accomplished writers familiar with these characters can achieve.
Stupid as a plot device is only required if the writer isn't smart enough to deal with numerous smart characters at once. Not that there was any real evidence of that in the film, just over-use of Deus Ex Machina moments in lieu of intelligent storytelling or consistent characterisation.
The director's cut may change my mind but I doubt it.
Attempting to divorce these characterisations from the comic source also ignores the fact that Snyder keeps referring to his Batman as Miller's Batman.
Who is the smartest man on the planet. Smarter than Lex. Who is also a genius.
Of course, Miller's portrayal of Superman in TDKR was also the most insulting I'd seen at that point.
Yet Snyder demonstrably doesn't understand Miller's Batman as he misquotes and misrepresents both the character and the events in Millers work during interviews.
The idea that Batman needs to be portrayed as Rorschach first just so Superman can redeem him from being a murderous psychopath is nonsensical, when there was absolutely no need to present him that way in the first place.
"Criminals like weeds" doesn't substantiate your claims to me, which aren't on screen, but mostly are taken from comments Affleck made during pre-release interviews about Batman's motivations for fighting Superman.
"Criminals are like Weeds" is a quote used repeatedly in comics, by heroes and other characters that are yet to turn into murderous psychopaths (except when used by the Punisher), or become so overwhelmed at their relative ineffectuality that they obsessively plan the murder of their more powerful peers. Sounds like a plot point for a sequel to Glengarry Glenn Ross.
There simply isn't enough dialogue in the film to establish any of the characters motivations coherently without relying on these external sources, including one shot comics that actually attempt to provide the missing detail required to make sense of the characters in the movie.
Or, in the case where the film actually takes the time to establish Batman's motives pretty definitively, you come up and claim that the one time the film had a coherent narrative it was actually saying something else.
That is either a terrible creative decision on WB's part, a massively cynical one, or a fast-tracked attempt at damage control after the execs saw the finished product.
You can't rely on people picking up external material required to make more sense of your movie.
Or rely on the creative imagination of their viewers.
Maybe they'll be fleshed out in the DC, maybe the missing dialogue and scenes that could redeem this amateurishly tacked together offering are in the 90 minutes of footage WB left on the cutting room floor, but I doubt it.
We'll find out in a few weeks.
