'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' - Review

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

On December 2^nd, 2015, the second trailer for DC Comics’ smackdown was released, and flippant jokes were thrown around concerning it’s less than frugal attitude to plot details. Sadly, there’s little humour to be had as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice now tramples its way onto screens worldwide, unbuttoning a pec-hugging shirt to reveal an incomprehensibly told, clumsily paced and jack booted effort that derails the good work done by the much under-appreciated and comparatively delicate Man of Steel: in short, nothing we shouldn’t have seen coming.

We open towards the tail end of Zack Snyder’s previous film and – in quite possibly the most exciting and promising scene in the entire film –Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne is caught up in the destruction of Metropolis. The subsequent political furore sees Superman (Henry Cavill) held accountable for his actions by humanity, whilst billionaire whizz-kid Lex Luthor (a painfully annoying Jesse Eisenberg) attempts to bring the two caped vigilantes head-to-head as part of a grander scheme: the search for other meta-humans like Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot).

With Batman now in tow, we of course get a customary re-tread of his origins story. A near beat-by-beat version of Christopher Nolan’s cave discovery in Batman Begins is cross-cut with a further flashback detailing the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents in full Snyder-vision: slow-motion, a Watchmen cameo, stylised murder, macro depth of field, you know the drill.

Affleck makes a considerable impression as the brutish bulk of a bat, though the character’s customary ‘no killing’ mantra seems to have fallen by the wayside with car-flattening, machine gun-toting abandon. Cavill does admirably with poor material that effectively shunts Superman into a dour courtroom drama for ninety minutes, and small vignettes that recall Man of Steel’s quieter moments are a much-needed reprieve: the gentle Hans Zimmer magic shines through when it can, but the elegiac main theme is often suffocated by Junkie XL’s messy, replaceable clout of a score.

The titular titan’s punch-up would make for a jaw-dropping wallop of a spectacle, but the damage done by Goyer and Terrio’s screenplay ensures the reasoning behind the fight is ludicrous, the payoff equally as weak. Eisenberg slowly devolves into sporadic yelping and sqwuaking as the endgame approaches, and Amy Adams' Lois Lane is once again bandied about as a plot mechanic, the film dropping all pretence of narrative coherence in a desperate sprint to show our central trio banded together ready for Justice League.

Comparisons to the universe-building of Marvel are being made left, right and centre, and there’s a very important reason why: in the run-up to the first Avengers piece, each character (regardless of film quality) was allowed breathing space in which to endear themselves to audiences. Snyder has Wonder Woman (a character audiences have waited 75 years to see on the big screen) sit at a laptop to watch a teaser montage for films to come. Though her eventual appearance as the Amazonian warrior and accompanying guitar riff delivers the one crowd-pleasing smile, her character is yet another wasted element in the cinematic equivalent of black treacle: it’s murky, stodgy, and there’s more of it than anyone needs or wants.