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In a few more, overblown, overstuffed, repetitive, bombastic, and sometimes just dumb. (Never mind dreary to look at and punishing to hear.) Zack Snyder follows his Superman reboot Man of Steel with a muddled meditation on man's anxiety about God walking the earth. Except of course, he's not God: Superman (Henry Cavill) demands no sacrifice, no worship, and no authority over humanity. He just wants to help out and have bathtub sex with his girlfriend Lois Lane (Amy Adams). After all, the love of a good woman worked for Dad! But who knows? The Man from Krypton might go bad someday, which is more than twitchy evil genius Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) can tolerate, seeing as how his father grew up under the boot in East Germany. Bruce Wayne's (Ben Affleck) father, meanwhile, taught him that the world only makes sense if you force it to. So he became Batman to do just that, and there's no room for God in his philosophy. Lex and Bruce both decide that Superman has to go, but while Batman chooses a single, chemical-based plan of attack, Luthor goes for a hat-trick, firing up his anti-God propaganda machine while also doing a little God-play of his own. Tired yet? Too bad! There's also a bunch of sequel-bait involving "meta-humans," a whole bunch of speechifying (Jeremy Irons as Alfred the butler gets the best of it here), and a long simmering appearance from Wonder Woman that adds precisely nothing to the proceedings. There's more, too, so much more that the strangest aspect of the film is the lingering feeling that along the way, some important bits got left out. 2016. 
 
 — Matthew Lickona ||||| Whatever qualities it may lack, Zack Snyder’s superhero blockbuster “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” — which officially recalibrates the summer movie season into early spring — does not lack texture. That’s not some fancy film-critic metaphor. If this movie is about anything (which is debatable), it is about materials and fabrics, about the way they look and feel. This obsession became apparent in Snyder’s ponderous, apocalyptic Superman picture “Man of Steel,” where I was repeatedly distracted by the close-up shots of Superman’s complicated synthetic-mesh costume. Both in this movie and that one, Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent (both played by the cartoonishly sculpted Henry Cavill) wears suspiciously nice and alarmingly tasteful suits, considering that he’s an oft-derided cub reporter for the Daily Planet. Where are the pleated Dockers we saw in “Spotlight”? 
 
 It’s less surprising that Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne dresses like the guy wearing a $10,000 watch in a magazine ad. First of all, Affleck’s entire career has been about splitting the difference between that kind of simulated masculinity and the serious filmmaking craftsman who’s not quite pretentious enough to call himself an artist. I don’t know whether “Batman v Superman” is defined as a sequel or a reboot or an alternate-universe something-something; it could, at a stretch, be located in the same world as the Christopher Nolan-Christian Bale “Dark Knight” trilogy. Batman has moved from Gotham City to Metropolis — which are like Dallas and Fort Worth or something? Council Bluffs and Omaha? — and has been driven increasingly psychotic by the arrival of Superman, godlike drone weapon from outer space. 
 
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 This movie isn’t nearly as terrible as I was expecting, largely due to Snyder’s OCD-level attention to the visual details. And, yes, due to Wonder Woman (played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot), who brings in a badly needed dose of “Dragon Tattoo”-style female energy and whose emergence herein can’t possibly be considered a spoiler at this point. But it still represents a subtle downgrade from the Nolan films on numerous levels, imperfectly concealed by doses of steroids (and amazing fabrics!). 
 
 First of all, Affleck is a major downgrade from Bale; I don’t care what anyone says. Yeah, I know people like him. He’s likable! But during Affleck’s serious scenes as Bruce Wayne, he always looks to me like he’s thinking, “I’m acting my ass off! Matt’s finally gonna see what I can do!” Whereas in his serious scenes as Batman, using the growly Batman voice-box and wearing the clanky armored RoboBatsuit with built in arched eyebrows — it’s even more homoerotic than the suit George Clooney wore in Joel Schumacher’s infamous 1997 “Batman & Robin,” if such a thing is possible — well, I’m sorry, but there aren’t any because you can't really take him seriously. 
 
 I have long been fascinated with Zack Snyder and I’m willing to defend all his films up to a certain point. (Yes, even “Watchmen.” Even “Sucker Punch”! Which I had forgotten I had described as "the Nietzschean Superman of action movies.") Snyder is devoted to a mannered, everything-on-the-surface style that is almost surrealist, almost infused with Freudian themes and 20th-century politics and almost total bullshit. I’m not as horrified as I should be, I guess, by this week’s news that Snyder is working on an adaptation of Ayn Rand magnum-bogus “The Fountainhead.” Of course he is. That’s totally perfect. It’s gonna be amazing, with or without scare quotes. So I’m kind of a Snyder defender and kind of a Nolan skeptic, but that’s me being an ass. In reality, the former is unquestionably a downgrade from the latter in terms of cinematic technique, pictorial sensibility, action choreography, thematic complexity and a bunch of other stuff. In short: I like Snyder but he seems kinda dumb, which is something no one has ever said about Chris Nolan. 
 
 As I wrote on Tuesday, it was deeply strange to go see “Batman v Superman” on the day of the Brussels attacks and walk out into a world that resembles Snyder’s paranoid fantasy universe way too much. This movie features a disastrous suicide bombing inside an iconic American institution, exactly the sort of attack Donald Trump and Ted Cruz halfway wish would happen to justify their incoherent anti-Muslim policies. It features a proxy debate on the drone wars, after Superman is accused of indiscriminately killing a bunch of African villagers while rescuing Lois Lane (Amy Adams) from some al-Shabab-style militant group. It features images of destruction in Belgium. (OK, in the form of a black-and-white photo from World War I depicting an oddly attired Amazon warrior type.) It features politicians collectively crapping their drawers over immigration and terrorism, epitomized by Holly Hunter’s enjoyable performance as a folksy but hardass Kentucky senator. (She's supposed to be a Democrat, which lets you know we're in a different universe.) 
 
 But for all the obvious attempts made by screenwriters Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer to connect “Batman v Superman” to real-world 21st-century issues, there is still way too much of the DC Comics universe that either can’t be rethought (because it’s considered integral to the franchise) or simply isn’t rethought. Do all Batman movies, forever and ever, have to be set in a steady-state version of 1989, where crime is unmanageably high, large tracts of urban real estate are abandoned or decrepit, and the cops are incompetent and corrupt bozos with bad sideburns? There’s definitely some psychological resonance to that scenario: Many Americans appear to believe all sorts of apocalyptic and impossible things, including that all big cities are like the worst parts of Detroit, that violent crime is out of control and gay Muslim killers are flooding across the border, and that since all social institutions have failed us, the only answer is to prostrate ourselves before some messianic redeemer. 
 
 Hell, at least the beleaguered populace of greater MetroGotham has awesome options when it comes to selecting a fascist overlord. Out here in the real world, we’ve got C-minus alien invaders: A lizard-man with a bad combover who has never actually accomplished anything and an individual of unknown species who claims to be “Canadian” but may be the lead singer of Stryper. In the movie, they have an actual super-being from another planet, who is undeniably handsome (if you’re an unimaginative 11-year-old girl), who saves children from burning buildings even if they happen to be Mexican, and who claims, Cincinnatus style, that he doesn’t want the job of ruling our planet. They also have a tormented, sadistic crime-fighting billionaire who dresses up in kinky costumes and lives on an isolated island with his “butler” (an underwritten role for Jeremy Irons, who is funny anyway). Seriously, guys, it’s 2016: Aren’t we beyond all this dissimulation and evasion, these semi-closeted Frodo-and-Sam relationships between man and master? Except it’s 2016 by way of 1989, so I guess we’re not. 
 
 Compared to the cardboard character of Superman and the pseudo-dark Batman — well, as I said earlier, Gadot’s international slinkster role as socialite Diana Prince and her warrioress alter ego is an enormous breath of fresh air. But if I had to choose between those two guys, I’d still go with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, an awkward zillionaire in tennis shoes and obnoxious Brooklyn-hipster outfits. It wouldn’t be fair to say that Eisenberg winks at the audience or undercuts the movie; one of the features of a Zack Snyder picture is that all possible winks are winked in advance and there’s nothing left to undercut. But in playing Luthor as a more severely disabled Mark Zuckerberg from “The Social Network,” Eisenberg at least makes himself into a locus of fun in a movie otherwise devoted to po-faced, comics-geek earnestness. When Luthor stammers out his announcements that power is never innocent and these costumed buffoons are peddling delusions — and by the way, there’s an open bar — I’m all like, finally a hero to believe in. 
 
 I couldn’t even tell you whether the story of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” makes sense, and I don’t suspect it matters. Batman and Superman are gonna fight! Because they’re both jerks. Anderson Cooper and Nancy Grace and Neil deGrasse Tyson are super-concerned about this, because it will affect the future of the human species and because ratings. (Somewhat respectable people have got to stop “playing themselves” in these shameless Hollywood spectacles. It’s not funny or cool anymore, and whatever it hypothetically does for their brand it makes me want to splatter vomit on their expensive loafers.) Then, really, really suddenly, Batman and Superman decide to join forces because Lex Luthor has a secret weapon and oh wow, except for the Wonder Woman stuff it’s really boring and predictable. 
 
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 So “Batman v Superman” is kind of dopey and plays out some laborious plot twists in the DC narrative at unnecessary length, but as I’ve already said it largely kept me entertained for two and a half hours, which is not nothing. Snyder’s intense, obsessive artificiality yields numerous striking images, and the supporting cast around the leaden central duo of Affleck and Cavill (and the dancing electricity of Eisenberg) is excellent, especially Irons, Hunter, Laurence Fishburne as the cantankerous editor of the Daily Planet and Scoot McNairy as a disabled and disgruntled Bruce Wayne employee who believes that corporate misdeeds demand public scrutiny. In the comic-book universe such an attitude is viewed as deeply uncool: Who needs bureaucrats and congressional hearings when we have Batman! Gosh, aren't we lucky to live in the real America, where democracy holds the rich and powerful to account? ||||| 1.5 out of 4 stars Title Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Written by Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer Directed by Zack Snyder Starring Henvy Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams Genre Fantasy Classification 14A Country USA Language English Year 2016 
 
 Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is many things. A clash of comic-book titans. A blockbuster decades in the making. A chance for Ben Affleck's mighty chin to one-up Henry Cavill's dimpled masterpiece. (It is not, alas, a small-claims case winding its way through Gotham's judicial system.) But more than any of those things, BvS represents the hopes and dreams of its studio Warner Bros., and even the future of Hollywood itself. 
 
 The new film is ostensibly a sequel to Snyder's 2013 epic Man of Steel, in which Cavill's Clark Kent tried to live a normal life when not inadvertently inflicting a massacre upon Metropolis during a fight with his Kryptonian nemesis. But instead of being another solo Supes adventure, BvS ups the ante to include everyone's favourite orphan vigilante, and a half-dozen other DC Comics characters who, Warner hopes, will carry their own franchises some day soon. So soon, in fact, that Warner has mapped out nine DC films until the year 2020, with one (Suicide Squad) opening this summer, and three others (Wonder Woman, Justice League: Part One and Aquaman) in various stages of production. 
 
 It's all part of a bid to compete with Disney's game-changing "Marvel Cinematic Universe," which counts the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Avengers films as part of its ridiculously successful brand – a brand that has changed the very nature of blockbuster filmmaking. You can see the ripple effects in everything from the endless Fast and Furious franchise to the rapidly expanding Star Wars galaxy. Films cannot exist on their own any more – each must instead be a marketing plank that leads to another. 
 
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 To catch up, Warner has bet half a decade worth of development and billions of dollars on the back of Snyder's vision. Well, you win some, you lose some. BvS is not only an embarrassing effort to kick-start a business plan, it is a shambolic, ill-advised, white-hot mess of a movie. During its two-and-a-half bewildering hours, BvS piles bad decision upon bad decision, as if Snyder decided to pull a Springtime for Hitler on Warner and turn in something so wrong-headed and offensive that it could only succeed by failing. 
 
 To be clear, the superhero genre is not an easy one to screw up. The Marvel films have proven time and again that even the blandest of filmmakers can succeed given a few key elements to play with: humour, sharp casting, a sense that one story affects an entire universe of others. Maybe a talking tree, we're not picky. These are lessons that Snyder must have recognized, taken a good look at, and then thrown in a dumpster – which he then promptly set on fire. 
 
 There are so many baffling elements to BvS that singling out any one is to be paralyzed by choice. Where to start? Perhaps it's with Snyder's approach to his title heroes, who he doesn't seem to like all that much. Snyder's Superman is not a paragon of virtue and selflessness so much as he is kind of a jerk. Kal-El sneers, sulks and lashes out. It's a complete mishandling of the character who, at his best, inspires hope and courage, not fear and disgust. 
 
 Perhaps, though, Superman's shabby treatment was chosen so we'd more easily identify with Bruce Wayne's bizarre determination to beat the guy up. The film's title promises a battle royale, so there's got to be something worth tussling about. In this case, Snyder torques Superman's altruistic persona by positioning him as a careless weapon of mass destruction, with Affleck's Wayne as the world's last rational man: a pessimistic pragmatist who believes that the God-like Kent must be controlled. Plus, Superman seems awfully smug, so hey, maybe Batman should just kill the guy? 
 
 This is the question that the film's first hour and a half sluggishly ponders, adding in all sorts of pointless distractions to the mix. This includes, but is not limited to: a subplot about African arms dealers; the threat of a dirty bomb; the political quest of a man who lost his legs during Superman's Man of Steel shenanigans; the nonsensical machinations of Lex Luthor, played with delirious Zuckerbergian glee by Jesse Eisenberg; newspaper editor Perry White's insane budget requests; Michael Shannon's magical General Zod corpse; a Kryptonian version of Siri that lives inside a crashed spaceship; and a U.S. senator played by Holly Hunter who may or may not have drank a bottle of Luthor's urine. 
 
 Somewhere in between all this madness – and make no mistake, very little here makes any sense, even in the context of a movie about aliens and caped men battling over green space rocks – Snyder completely diminishes every female character who wanders along. While the why-so-serious men bulk up, brood and bleed, the women are either used as props (Luthor's provocatively dressed, wordless assistant), bargaining chips (Amy Adams's Lois Lane and Diane Lane's Martha Kent are both damsels in the worst kind of repeated distress) or Easter Eggs (Gal Godot's Wonder Woman makes a hell of an entrance, but is little more than a tease for her upcoming standalone movie). 
 
 Just as with Watchmen, Sucker Punch and 300, Snyder occassionally reminds the audience – and perhaps Time Warner shareholders – that he can be an inspired visual madman, with a few shots so fantastically designed and staged that they could be freeze-framed and drooled over for hours. A cornfield-set funeral is washed out and hyper-realized that it goes past absurdity to become something close to high art. A visit to LexCorp headquarters is a trip into the extremes of millennial office-design fetishism. And a Bruce Wayne nightmare is a captivating blend of gritty dystopia wasteland and ultra-crisp colour palette. 
 
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 Yet that funeral scene is devoid of emotion. Luthor's whole reason for existing in the film is dubious. And Batman's dream sequence is so poorly conceived (why is Batman wearing a trench coat atop his suit? What's with the flying insects? Why was a dream envisioned from perspectives other than the person dreaming? Was that who I think it was during that message-from-the-future bit? If so, why? Why???) to be laughable. The film might be pretty to look at, but narratively speaking, it is a disaster. 
 
 Warner wants – no, needs – you to latch on to BvS 's versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League if the studio is going to succeed in the marketplace. By the film's end, you should – no, must – be giddy with anticipation of what big, bad threat is lurking around the corner for these super friends. But there's no purpose for this aggressive world. Instead of letting Snyder's justice dawn, his vision should simply shuffle off into the twilight.
– Everyone loves Batman and Superman, just apparently not when they’re trying to rip each other’s heads off. While audiences give Batman v Superman a 74% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, critics are hovering at the 30% mark, calling the film, well, a disaster. Here's what they're saying: "The film might be pretty to look at"—some scenes even come "close to high art"—but it's "a shambolic, ill-advised, white-hot mess of a movie," writes Barry Hertz in a 1.5-star review at the Globe and Mail. "There are so many baffling elements to BvS that singling out any one is to be paralyzed by choice." One example: Director Zack Snyder's "complete mishandling" of Superman as "kind of a jerk," Hertz says. Snyder also "diminishes every female character." "This is what happens when you give a bad director a quarter-billion or so dollars," writes Chris Klimek at NPR. He calls the film a "ponderous, smothering, over-pixelated zeppelin crash of a movie" that is "confusing before it gets boring, and boring before it gets bruising." About 23% of the film he liked. The rest, not so much. Andrew O'Hehir is a bit more forgiving, saying he was mostly entertained for all 151 minutes. "Snyder's OCD-level attention to the visual details," Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Lex Luthor, and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, "who brings in a badly needed dose of Dragon Tattoo-style female energy," rescue the film from being awful, he writes at Salon. Yet the film "is kind of dopey and plays out some laborious plot twists in the DC narrative at unnecessary length." Matthew Lickona at the San Diego Reader keeps his review short and not-so-sweet. The flick is "in a word, exhausting. In a few more, overblown, overstuffed, repetitive, bombastic, and sometimes just dumb. (Never mind dreary to look at and punishing to hear.)" Too bad there's "a bunch of sequel-bait," to boot. (But Ben Affleck says the movie is for fans, not critics.)