There have been a number of different things about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that both fans and critics, and those who are both, have taken issue with. One of the problems that many people had was the way that Superman felt like a supporting character rather than a lead in a movie that had his name in the title. Now, somebody has done something of a deep dive into the movie in order to show just how much that seemed to be the case. It turns out Superman/Clark Kent only has 43 lines of dialogue in the entire film.
The undertaking was made by Redditor coolerthanabagofice who went back to the movie and transcribed Superman’s entire script. Broken down by scene, there are 43 separate times that Henry Cavill speaks in the film, 42 if you don’t count his scream at the very end. There’s some more interesting information as well. Only the scene of the party thrown by Lex Luthor contains more than five lines of dialogue spoken by Clark Kent. Other than that, five lines is the most we hear in any single scene. And when we say "lines" of dialogue, it’s pretty accurate. Only about six of the lines are more than two sentences long. There are also multiple scenes in which Superman appears, but does not say a word.
While we don’t have Batman’s complete script to compare the number of lines, we’re fairly confident that it exceeds that of Superman. If you look at a scene like the Lex Luthor party, Clark Kent’s most verbose appearance, as far as the number of times he speaks, we know that Bruce Wayne’s responses to Clark Kent’s questions are much longer than the questions themselves. We then follow Bruce away from his conversation with Clark and more dialogue happens between Bruce and Alfred. This is about as talky as the guy gets.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice certainly felt like it was more of a Batman movie than a Superman movie, and the screenplay seems to bear that out. It would honestly be interesting to compare Superman’s total dialogue to that of Lois Lane. Many of Superman’s scenes also include her, and the two share a conversation. There are also a significant number of scenes with Lois on her own as she follows her investigation of the attack in Africa. It’s possible the two are approximately on par as far as their lines.
With a movie as long as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is, it feels like there simply wasn’t a lot of attention paid to one of the film’s major characters. Maybe there’s a treasure trove of Henry Cavill dialogue in the epic four-hour cut that the movie originally started out as. Maybe we’ll get some of it back in the three-hour extended edition.
