Film - Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

2 Bat 2 Steel: Dawn of the Planet of the Capes: Metropolis Drift

So, here it is at last. The epic, cinematic grudge match asking a question that surely no-one would bother to ask and yet many unaccountably do: who would win in a fight? The indestructible alien who can bench press continents, see through walls, hear a pin drop on the Moon and move faster than the speed of sound, or the rich dude with a box of parlour tricks, an overdesigned Halloween costume, and a lifetime supply of throat lozenges?

This central question, paradoxically, is both the film's greatest strength and greatest weakness. You would have to turn over a great many rocks before you found someone who didn't know that Batman and Superman are allies in DC's printed canon, with the result that we know from the start that the ultimate question of who wins is irrelevant: the pair putting aside their differences and joining forces must be the third of life's greatest inevitabilities after death and taxes. And yet, refreshingly, building the film around the rivalries (and unwitting similarities) of two future friends allows BvS to breathe and expand far more than the cookie-cutter "wisecracking hero stops the villain getting the MacGuffin" formula that Marvel have cheerfully but competently recycled in all of their efforts since the truly game-changing Winter Soldier.

And expand it does, freely and extensively, in every direction at once and with precious little regard to what its bulk either absorbs or suffocates. BvS is stuffed to the gills and beyond with characters, plots and sub-plots, references to the past and forewarnings of the future. It is absolutely crammed with images and ideas, but there is precious little judgement or restraint exercised in the execution of them. This suits the saturation-bombing, throw-everything-at-the-wall style of director Zack Snyder right down to the ground, but like 2011's Sucker Punch, the result is an incoherent mess of (admittedly stylish) images, in which the core ideas - perfectly adequate to carry the film - are spread thin and squashed under an avalanche of over-egged pudding. BvS's core ideas are stronger than SP's (in that it actually has some) and more well-developed, but they are placed in a much-longer and more stuffed film, and therefore have much more to compete with. Batman V Superman is not by any stretch of the word or the imagination a masterpiece, but nor is it irredeemable tripe either (a shame, because I do enjoy the therapeutic process of reviewing irredeemable tripe). A few judicious rewrites, some careful pruning with the editor's shears, and some sort of collar that shocks Mr Snyder everytime either the camera speed or the number of particles on screen exceeds a certain number, and I daresay the film could be really rather good. Oh, and Jesse Eisenberg would need to be fired. Ideally from a cannon.

The fault, for fault there is, must surely lie with the director. Not that David S. Goyer's script is perfect, but he is the man who provided the script for Batman Begins, and the stories for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, even if the Nolans were the ones putting words in the characters' mouths. Goyer knows, or at least should know, his stuff. When allied with the Nolans, their work is dynamite. When allied with Snyder, it's a bit of a damp squib. It's a Spot-the-Difference test, where only one of the pictures actually has a film director in it.

Just saved his girlfriend from certain death and he's still brooding. That
doesn't look like the face of a man who dresses in primary colours to me.

Snyder knows his images, yes, absolutely. 300 and Watchmen were full of visually striking images, because these are things that Snyder can work with, and because the visual source materials let him essentially recreate the comic frames in live-action. And Batman V Superman is full of images: Superman surrounded by Day of the Dead festival-goers, or rejuvenating in space in the light of the yellow sun; Wonder Woman's crossed bracers glowing red-hot after deflecting Doomsday's beam; Batman waiting at the Bat-signal with gritted teeth in his power armour. Perhaps the best is Superman floating in the sky, sun behind him in a manner reminiscent of Grant Morrison's classic All-Star Superman, about to save a flooded-out family from the roof of their home. But the things that go around these images are just as important, if not more so: for these images to truly resonate, they must be prepared, and built up to. Snyder relies far too heavily on the awe he wishes his visuals to produce. Superman inspires that awe, but it's not because there's a man floating in the sky with his underwear on the outside that he does. It's because he means something. Superman is a symbol for the potential good and enlightenment of the human race. He is an ideal to aspire to, an embodiment of our highest aspirations. Superman is hope, and, despite his godlike powers, Superman is human. More human than perhaps any of us could ever hope to be. Zack Snyder wants us to feel that awe, but he cannot deliver the hope that goes with it, because he is only interested in the image and not the structure of resonance that lies behind it and holds it up. His Superman, by and large, is as distant and inscrutable as a Greek God. He rescues people, but rarely seems to smile at them, and talks to them even less. Superman saves planets and smashes giant robots and prevents volcanic eruptions, and for this we admire him, but we love him because he talks suicidal teens off of rooftops and tells them they're important, and because he returns lost balloons to crying children and, yes, gets cats down from trees. He cares, and he helps, because he can, and being able to help is all the reason he needs. Snyder captures the trappings of Superman, and his world, with ease, but he leaves the heart behind, because all that Snyder thinks is needed for awe is the 'look'.

Snyder loves comic books, that much is clear. I think he truly does love Superman and Batman comics, for their bold imagery, and their striking colours, and their dynamic action and dramatic poses and earth-shattering battles. But, I'm not entirely sure he does a lot more than look at the pictures.

Moments like this are prime Superman material that cut right to the
core of the character's mythological appeal... it's just a pity that Snyder
likes to blow his imagery wad without having to lay the groundwork first.

Casting, casting, casting. Who hasn't read a comic book and thought "Ooh, that guy I like from that thing would be perfect in this part!" or "Yes! I was hoping they'd cast her, she looks just right!". Snyder and the screenwriters are loath to show us any of the big-hearted humour and simple humanity of Superman and his alter-ego Clark Kent that Christopher Reeve so perfectly embodied, but Cavill is so perfect a visual fit for Superman he may well have been drawn instead of born. The angsty, self-doubting Superman that we see here and in Man of Steel is at odds with the comic version's simple purity and desire to help, but it fits the darker, more cynical universe that the idealistic character has been placed into - I'd just much rather see Superman's idealism used as a counterpoint to the universe's darkness, rather than subsumed in it. As he did in MoS, Cavill inhabits the part wonderfully, equally at home as the lantern law of justice, or the simple Kansas farmboy raised to do good. So at home in the role is he, that when Superman strolls calmly into the Senate hearing designed to get him to explain himself and agree to some kind of government oversight, far from looking ridiculous he actually appears the most dignified person in the room, perhaps not least because the presiding Senator Finch has a jar of piss on her desk (don't ask). But, despite the fact that cinemas in the last decade have had enough Batman to fill twenty Comic-Cons, the Dark Knight's presence still looms large throughout the majority of the film, and the world's most powerful man feels overshadowed and underused even in a film that purports to take as its central theme his relationship with humanity at large.

It's a nice nod to the pupil-less eyes of the animated Batman, but surely
this sort of setup would completely destroy your nightvision, no?

The casting of Ben Affleck as Batman raised an understandable furore. Not only did it come far too soon after the titanic Bale/Nolan partnership that created the most consistently brilliant superhero film series ever, but Affleck had form in the genre: the simply execrable Daredevil movie. He wasn't the worst of its problems, by a long shot, but simple association with such a shambolic car crash of a film was enough to have comic fans popping aneurysms at the mere mention of his name. So how does he do as Batman? Pretty well, actually. I think. It's hard to say really. This is an older, more bitter, jaded and ruthless Batman than most of us are used to, as we expected, but it's also the case that Batman is simply out of character for most of the film. His increased brutality and even his branding of criminals are surprising but not wholly out of left field for such a dark interpretation of an already pretty dark character. But Batman goes further than that.

No guns, no killing... unless it's hilarious. Hey, has anyone
actually seen Batman and the Joker at the same time?

I don't truly, deeply mind Batman killing in the films, when there's no requirement for the villains come back next week. Surely, after the Joker's latest killing spree following his twentieth escape from Arkham, Batman might start to wonder whether continually punching him a bit and dragging him back through Arkham's revolving door is actually doing any good. He killed infrequently in the Burton films, only when forced to by an overwhelming enemy or dire circumstances - or, once or twice, if it was darkly funny. But he didn't make a habit of it, and avoided it where possible. Perhaps it's a sign of how jaded his long career and the arrival of Superman has made him, but this Batman just doesn't seem to even care anymore. Some of his kills here are on a level with the Burton films, and some are just refusing to save an enemy who is in danger, and even Nolan's Batman wasn't above that little loophole. But sometimes, he doesn't appear simply jaded and uncaring, but positively bloodthirsty, and that does not sit well with me. Not one bit. It is exemplified in his attitude to Superman: before he has even met him, he has decided to kill him. His growling eagerness to overthrow the godlike alien visitor in order to reassert humanity's self-determination is at total odds with the logical, pragmatic Bruce of the comics and previous films, waving aside Alfred's protests that Superman is not humankind's enemy with his own beliefs that though Superman may not be hostile now, one day he will reveal his true colours and he must be destroyed before he can be allowed to do so. And, quite honestly, this isn't Batman talking. This is no version of Batman talking. This is Lex Luthor talking: this has always been the philosophy for the character, and the source of his antagonism with Superman. Although his recognition of Superman's humanity after their battle seems to set him on the road back to being the Batman we know, it comes late in the film, and Affleck's Batman really does come off as the villain in his debut, and barely a Batman at all. What's really sad here, is that the effect of this is that BvS's Batman is a better Lex Luthor than its Lex Luthor is.

Starring Jesse Eisenberg as... himself, in everything else. Hope
you like it, because there's gonna be a lot of it.

Because now we come to the one part of Batman V Superman that really is irredeemable tripe. Now, I don't know if it's the actor, or the director, or the screenwriter that must bear the blame, but the end product we get that is Jesse Eisenberg's take on Lex Luthor is the most horrific mutilation of a beloved comic book character I think I've ever seen. This is on par with what Rise of the Silver Surfer did to Galactus, or what Batman & Robin did to Bane, or what X-Men Origins: Wolverine did to absolutely everything in it. Luthor calls for cool assurance, calculation, smooth-talking, visible genius, a love of wielding power but also the sense to maintain a pleasing facade. Lex Luthor must be equally convincing as a ruthless captain of industry, a mad scientist, a generous philanthropist, a xenophobic humanist, and a skilful politician. Now, he says in the film that his father founded the company, so perhaps this 'Lex' is intended to be more like the comics' Alexander Luthor, Jr, but either way we've been cheated of a superior villain.

Eisenberg's Luthor is a bratty, obnoxious iTwerp who motor-mouths and tics and twitches and spouts bizarre noises through his every disjointed, rambling metaphor and half-finished sentence like some cheap rent-a-Riddler without any of that character's amusing pettiness or endearing tendency to undermine himself in his attempts to be taken seriously. He spouts grandiose one-liners that could not have been more transparently written for trailers if 'And Starring... Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor' had flashed up on screen every time he delivered one with all the subtlety and craft of a lazy butcher slapping half a dead cow down on your kitchen table. His particular beef with Superman has none of the clarity or logic of the comics' portrayal, doubtless because the writers realised they'd accidentally given it to Batman, so instead he mumbles about Gods and Men and Power like an edgy nineteen year-old who's started quoting barely-understood passages of Nietzche under the mistaken impression that it will induce that girl in the tight sweater who sits near him in philosophy lectures to sleep with him. The character's final scene in prison, taunting Batman that "He is coming" is exceedingly annoying, and the end of it consists of him imitating a bell and saying "ding" far too many times as the camera slowly zooms out, in a moment that goes on so long I would have gladly shot myself in both kneecaps if the projectionist would just have replaced it with Man of Steel's General Zod bellowing "I will find him!" on an infinite loop. Now, perhaps Luthor has somehow communed with otherworldly beings in order to learn of Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips (worry not if these terms mean nothing to you, because the film neither uses them nor explains its references to them), and perhaps this has left him somewhat touched in the head, and perhaps that explains why he seems so odd in this film. But after being forced to witness this prancing berk for two and a half hours, even the most reasonable explanation of his antics would be as cold comfort as a friendly pat on the back to a woodwork student who's had an unwillingly intimate and prolonged session with the classroom bandfacer.

Even with super-hearing, Clark can't quite believe his ears when
Lois suggests he do some actual reporting for once in the movie.

Making up the auxiliaries are Amy Adams and Laurence Fishburne returning as Lois Lane and Perry White, and very nice it is to see both of them too, especially Fishburne's grumpy, headline-chasing newshound, who seems to have reverted a little closer to his comics portrayal since Man of Steel, and as a result drops quite a few comical lines: "Crimewave in Gotham! In other news, Water: wet".

Amy Adams is a predictably feisty and actively nosey Lois Lane, although I do miss the lightness of comic touch that Margot Kidder - and everyone involved in the first two Reeve movies, really - brought to the older films. I do not complain about Superman always being there to rescue Lois: Batman V Superman doesn't indulge in lengthy, bewildering CGI-effects scenes to show us Superman's sensory overload of super-hearing and x-ray vision, but surely we have not all forgotten that he has them? But her managing to be there to save him sticks in the craw a little bit: Lois' only role in the final battle seems to be to speak for Superman, as the writers have apparently decided to never allow the character to just explain himself to anyone properly lest his sheer goodness become so apparent that they just can't convincingly oppose him anymore - no, really, Superman gets an astoundingly pathetic number of lines in this film: mostly he broods, or grunts. No, wait, Lois does do something else in the finale: she continually gets into peril or does something foolish to force Superman away from the battle to come and help her, the crowning idiocy of which is throwing Batman's Kryptonite spear into a flooded passage, then realising they need it to kill Doomsday and swimming to get it back, then becoming trapped and needing to be rescued, then not trying again and letting Superman go and get it, then naturally having to rescue him when, surprise surprise, the Kryptonite weakens him sufficiently that he can't easily return to the surface with it. Her investigative skills early on are far more satisfying, but sadly whenever the character is introduced to any kind of action situation she becomes a damel-shaped lead weight around Superman's neck, and it's doubly annoying because there's no reason for her to be there other than to make like a butcher's forklift and raise the stakes.

I've never understood why movie characters seem to inhabit some
bizarre parallel universe where no-one ever looks at the person
they're speaking to.

Newly introduced we have Jeremy Irons as a crustier, more jaded Alfred than we're used to and Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, whose reveal as Wonder Woman is so long-delayed you start to wonder if the filmmakers actually believed we wouldn't instantly know who she was. Both of them are a delight. Irons rumbles with quiet, dryly barbed asides about Bruce's advancing age, declining personal habits and nonexistent social life, and could easily snatch the Alfred crown from Michael Caine given sufficient screentime in future outings. And Gadot is a revelation, sparking off Affleck in several scenes not with the tired and predictable badinage of sexual tension, but the electricity of uncertainty between two powerful people with tremendous secrets who don't yet know how far they can trust. She roars and yells triumphantly in battle, and grins when her foe seems worthy. I've no doubt that all involved had a whale of a time making the film, but Gadot is having one visibly, on screen, while everyone else scowls or grunts or looks earnest and very very scared, and her joy is infectious: I cannot wait to see her leading, at long last, a Wonder Woman solo movie next year. And her "war drums and electric guitar" theme is just cool.

For all Zack Snyder's total and utter cack-handedness when it comes to drawing narrative threads and scenes together in a comfortably-sized and cohesive whole, and, indeed, directing a scene where two characters talk to each other that isn't staid and lifeless, the man knows how to do his action scenes. We have all seen, repeated ad nauseum, the Waynes being gunned down outside the Monarch Theatre over the years, and the scene's use here as the credits sequence doesn't exempt it from a challenge on the grounds of repetition. There are some nice shots in it, certainly - Martha's eye view of Joe Chill's pistol caught in her pearls is wonderfully striking, and almost intimate in its cold ruthlessness - and I can't describe how nice it is to finally see a version of the murder that actually gives a crap about Martha Wayne and doesn't treat her like unfortunate collateral damage to Thomas Wayne's death. But Zack Snyder had to get his own grubby slow-motion paws all over it, and a scene that should be shocking in its sudden brutality - life *BANG* death - comes off much too overdone. The Waynes' deaths shouldn't be dramatic, because that's not the point. It's cruel, and instant, and prosaic and meaningless, and I don't think Batman would appreciate anyone trying to make high art out of it. But Snyder handles some later scenes far better. A Batmobile chase as Bruce tries to hijack Luthor's shipment of Kryptonite is fast-paced, brutal, pulse-pounding and exciting. It's not The Dark Knight's SWAT truck chase through Gotham, but it does its job in showing the power and ruthless efficiency of the new Batmobile, making it all the more potent when Superman appears in Wayne's path and deflects the car like a Dinky toy hitting a table leg.

This is what happens when you employ exactly one member of
staff to attend to your entire mansion, Bruce.

The titular throwdown is, despite its foregone conclusion, done wonderfully. It starts slow, with Batman and Superman testing each other: Batman breaks out the sonic weaponry and the turret emplacements, Superman knocks Batman back about twenty feet and puts him through a building with a light tap on the chest. It quickly becomes faster and more brutal, with Superman having the upper hand until Batman uses one of his precious few Kryptonite grenades and evens the odds. The battle tips and tilts, from breakneck speed to characterful lulls, and despite the speed and chaos Snyder expertly choreographs the scene such that there isn't a single impact or detail lost. There is a simply beautiful moment halfway through when Batman's first dose of Kryptonite begins to wear off, and we visibly see Superman's head jerking back less with every punch, until Batman's armoured gauntlet is denting and clanging uselessly against an immobile jaw, before the Big Blue picks him up like a ragdoll and throws him through the floor. Of course, Superman loses, because he must. Man of Steel was pretty on the nose with the Christ imagery, but you'll be staggering out of the theatre with concussion after this one. Superman is the martyr, and Batman is the one in the wrong, calling for his destruction. We all know that the faster, stronger, actually superpowered Superman should trash Batman all over Park Row, but that wouldn't teach Batman the error of his ways as much as seeing the defeated Superman begging, not for his life, but for his imminent killer to take up where left off and save his adopted mother Martha Kent from Luthor's thugs. This entire scene is played as though it hinges on the somewhat tenuous coincidence of Batman and Superman's mothers sharing a Christian name, and frankly doing so was an egregious misstep, but it isn't simply that which stays Bruce's hand. For the first time, he sees his foe not as an alien, or an invader, but a man. A son. Someone who will shortly be orphaned, unless Batman can stop it. The execution of the scene is heavy-handed and, frankly, pants (Zack Snyder may have the attention span of a hyperkinetic rabbit, but we don't, and we don't need to be bopped on the bonce with a flashback after every single line that calls back to earlier in the film), but the sentiment of it is undeniable, and is strong enough to mostly save it.

This is almost immediately followed by Batman's rescue operation: a cramped, brutal and lightning-fast brawl with a warehouse of Lex's mercenaries, and this too is executed flawlessly. Mixing punches, kicks, throws, grapples and gadgets, it feels like a live-action adaptation of Rocksteady's Arkham games' battles, with each section of the battle flowing into the next with incredible speed yet allowing us to take in every thud and crunch with teeth-gritting power.

As bloated and overlong a fight as it is to add to a bloated and overlong
film, this is exactly what Doomsday should be: a powerful juggernaut
who kills Superman and then has the decency to sod off and die with
his storytelling purpose fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the ball had to be dropped somewhere. The final, three-and-a-bit-way (Batman is, understandably, about as useful as Anne Frank's drum kit) showdown between Supes, Wonder Woman and Cave Troll, er, Doomsday, is an overlong, overstuffed, frenetic action splurge that bounds happily all over the place like an excitable dog, licking anything in reach, rubbing its arse all over everything and occasionally pissing itself in its sadly not-very-endearing enthusiasm, yet in all its length and breadth it only infrequently finds something properly interesting to look at. Most of them are the quieter moments - a nuked and lifeless Superman in space being revived by the yellow sun; Wonder Woman's infectious glee at being the only character in the film to enjoy combat rather than treating it like a grim punching exercise; Batman's gloomy "oh shit" as he realises he's still strapped into the Batwing and Doomsday's charging his laser - although it's nice to see the old comic standby of the eye beam tug of war between Doomsday and Superman. Battles in which great clods of earth are thrown up with each leap, in which buildings are levelled with every second sneeze, and in which each blow landed sends its receiver pinwheeling off into the middle distance may work terribly well in DC's consistently superlative animated movies, but there's a reason why they aren't done terribly often in live action, especially when a colour palette like Snyder's means the camera has to rocket around to find the bluish-and-reddish grey blob being punched backwards through a cloud of blackish-and-brownish grey blobs. The fight drags tremendously, and coupled with Doomsday's periodic tendency to unleash all the energy he's stored up in city block-clearing blasts, it's just an avalanche of largely meaningless noise and particle effects, and an unwelcome return to the spasmodic and jittery, drawn-out slugfests of Man of Steel, where we have little to no sense that any blow exchanged has any noticeable effect on any of the participants. And it's doubly disappointing after the two brilliantly-done battles before it, that had such minute attention to detail and command of focus even amongst the frantic melee, that I'm starting to wonder if Zack Snyder wasn't off sick when they were done. But there's a nice nod to Arthurian legend - and John Boorman's Excalibur - when an impaled Superman pulls himself down the length of Doomsday's spike to ensure he's close enough to ram the Kryptonite spear home and ensure he takes his mortal foe with him, although Superman's death is so monumentally unlikely to stick that they don't even bother to sustain the pretence all the way to the end, making all those slow-motion shots of dual funerals and public grief and teary hand-wringing that came before just so much pissing in the wind.

The music is Hans Zimmer's superhero score swansong, so naturally it's excellent, with every major character getting their own recognisable themes (Luthor's is almost good enough to make me forgive the hideous character. Almost.) and several stirring and blood-pumping heroic moments during the final battle that make you want to stand up and punch the air. As in Man of Steel, Zimmer leans just a little heavily on the percussion for my taste, but it isn't remotely enough to sink the soundtrack. Though entirely unnecessary, comparing DC's cinematic outings with Marvel's is so obvious a thing to do that it can't be avoided, and I will say that, wherever they might be weaker, the music in DC's films always seems to me so much more distinctive and representative of individual characters. Even as I write this, I'm trying to bring a distinctive leitmotif or bombastic battle score to mind from one of Marvel's movies and coming up blank. Zimmer ends on a high, and I hope to God that whoever replaces him is at least halfway up to it. Anyone got Henry Jackman's phone number?

I have a sneaking suspicion Wonder Woman's ensemble will look
considerably less brown without Snyder in the director's chair

The tone of the film, as with Man of Steel, is a touch self-important and dour for my tastes. Well, in fact, it's extremely both of these things, with only a few moments of levity sprinkled throughout, usually courtesy of a weary and possibly soused Alfred and grumpy headline-chaser Perry White. Superman could do with a little of the gentle big-heartedness of his print incarnation, but he is at least merely earnest rather than cruel and grim like Batman, of whom this kind of moody broodiness is to be expected. But then, tone is a difficult beast in superhero films. The bright colours, crazy powers and spandex bodysuits all carry more than a whiff of the absurd about them, and Marvel plays these aspects to the wisecracking hilt very well, but their villains Malekith, Yellowjacket and Ultron were all robbed of any dignity and effectiveness by their films' inability to take them seriously. On DC's side, we see that when gods and monsters clash, and worlds and realities are at stake, there are costs and consequences. Marvel's Earth has suffered public attacks by alien cyborgs and massed assaults by robot drones, yet the films would have us believe that there's always someone at hand to run the evacuation, and no casualties more severe than cars and masonry. Batman V Superman tackles the collateral damage of superhero conflicts head on, and the deaths and debate this causes give the film a sense of size and reality that Ultron's antics-in-a-vacuum sorely lacked. I don't criticise the darkness of DC's films: why should they do what Marvel are doing, when Marvel are already doing it? But Nolan understood that darkness and grittiness are not the same as storytelling maturity, and sadly Snyder does not, even if the script might occasionally suggest that he should try to.

When I saw the savaging Dawn of Justice was receiving at the hands of the press, I was (although sad to see the film adaptations of my preferred comic properties turn out so poorly) rubbing my hands in anticipation at being able to tear into a film I had prophesied disaster for ever since the deluge of announcements revealing the director, cast, and just how many unnecessary side characters were going to be stuffed in until the waistcoat buttons popped off. I was disappointed: what I found was merely a well-acted film with some strong ideas and competently-directed action bogged down by a lack of judgement and restraint. It's a hot mess to be sure, but it's a hot mess through which can be seen the skeleton of a good story, rather than mess all the way down. And that's one of the most annoying things about it. Batman V Superman dies the death of a thousand cuts: there is no one mortal wound that cripples it, just niggles at almost every level that could easily have been remedied with an extra line of dialogue here, or a judiciously-snipped scene there. 

The film's biggest mystery is how Lois Lane and Clark Kent are
still employed. We never see them type so much as a syllable.

The lack of explanation for why anyone thinks insurgent bodies full of bullets are the work of Superman. The Wayne Enterprises executive who waits so long to evacuate the Metropolis office that you wonder if he needs to ask Bruce permission to use the bathroom, and then stays behind to die anyway. The mineralogist who just somehow knows that an ugly grey rock will break apart to reveal pure Kryptonite if he hits it just once with a hammer. The mysterious polaroids of Batman victims sent to Clark Kent, and the angry scrawled-over cheques that Scoot McNairy's disabled Wayne Enterprises employee is supposedly returning (hint: he isn't, Luthor is behind both of these, but the film never really tries to make that clear). The lengthy dream sequence that hints at the future involvement of Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips so obliquely that only the most dedicated comic readers will have any clue what the blind blithering hell is happening for about four consecutive minutes. None of these things, and the several more irritations to be found, are capable of sinking the film, but they're unhelpful and annoying because they would have been so easy to avoid.

Perhaps the 30-extra-minutes Ultimate Cut puts a lot of this right, or perhaps it just piles on more over-egging. Personally, I rather suspect that it will do both: the new film will be just as divisive as the vanilla edition, with equal moments of power and brilliance, and frustration and stupidity; there will just be more of it.

I enjoyed the enjoyable parts of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice just enough, I would say, to give it a comparatively generous score, but I cannot avoid mentioning that this 'decent' film frequently made me angrier than some I would call merely 'bad'. Fortunately, all of the pre-release bumf we were being force-fed for over a year before release only served to make me more sceptical, rather than more hyped. It's not worse than Sucker Punch - I'd like to see a film that is, if only out of morbid curiosity - but if I'd actually gone into the cinema expecting it to be good, the sheer level of disappointment might well have resulted in a negative score. After how well-written and executed The Dark Knight Trilogy was, it pains me to have to say that the best way to enjoy Batman's latest big screen outing is to switch your brain resolutely to the 'Off' position (and throw the key away just in case), but that I fear is what you will have to do, because if BvS is just one thing, then it is a film that does not come off well when thought too much about. Too much genuine love, though sometimes misdirected, has been poured into this film by its stars and its crew and its technicians and designers and, yes, its oft-misguided director, for the end product to be bad. But it is much less than it could have been, and in some ways that kind of disappointment is worse than disaster.

And I still think the title is stupid.

6/10 - Worse than the film we needed, better than the film Snyder deserved.