Who killed the world? BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Let's just get this out of the way up front: I don't hate Zack Snyder's movies. 300 is deeply flawed, Orientalist, ableist, and many other -ists, but I also find it compellingly watchable. Snyder has a lovingly homoerotic eye for beautiful male bodies, for one thing (a trait remaining strong in BvS), and can frame a beautiful picture for another. Watchmen was about as good an adaptation of that lumbering behemoth as I think comic fans could expect. And I actually really enjoyed about 60% of Man of Steel, the first of half of which played more like a contemplative Terrence Malick film than a smash-'em-up superhero flick.

So I was enthusiastic, but a bit concerned, going into Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. For one thing, that's a stupidly long title, and the "v" in place of "vs." suggests all the action and excitement of a Supreme Court decision. For another, it seemed to signal that this movie would be even more overstuffed than the last, as it attempted to introduce the future Justice League while also being a Batman movie and possibly a Superman movie, although the order of the guys in the title is a little confusing. But hey, it promised me Jason Momoa, so I was willing to give it a shot.

All visual entertainment should contain Jason Momoa. It is known.

Spoiler alert: Jason Momoa is in this movie for about 8 seconds, and that is nowhere near enough Jason Momoa. Henry Cavill is only shirtless in one -- ONE -- scene in this movie. Ben Affleck is...kind of hot? I'm all confused and rather angry. Thanks, Zack. 

But back to the movie itself. BvS is a terrible Superman movie, mostly because everyone seems so intent on telling Clark that he should just say "fuck it all" and not be Superman, even when the world is in imminent and immense danger. It also spends essentially zero time on the Lois and Clark relationship, although it does find time for another romantic mini-moment at the scene of a citywide disaster, so I guess there's a point for continuity. On the other hand, it's a fairly decent Batman movie. I'd put it on par with The Dark Knight Rises, but on second thought that's kind of a backhanded compliment. I was often befuddled and occasionally actively angry watching that movie, and that's kind of how I felt here too.

The logic in this movie is at the level of buying a gyro at Arby's: not only is it unholy and terrible, it's not something that would even occur to the average humanoid.

These gyros aren't food. They're from Arby's.

Characters in this movie know things they really couldn't possibly know. They act in ways that living people with brains and motives would not act. I mean, two people forge an unlikely and immediate alliance based on the fact that they literally have mothers with the same name. (Spoiler: it's Bruce and Clark. You, dear reader, knew that, because you are an intelligent person who makes logical connections between concepts, unlike basically every character in this movie.) Lex Luthor appears to be a wealthy hipster on a meth bender. I think Bruce Wayne may also be on the meth or something, because he keeps having...nightmares? hallucinations? DARK KNIGHTMARES. There we go. They do not make sense, but it's okay, because nothing else really does either. There is no sense. There is only smash.

All this isn't to say there aren't bright spots in the movie, because there are. Not literally, of course. This movie is visually very dark, as in "difficult to see things because all the fights happen at night."

You basically need Knight-vision goggles to watch this movie, is what I'm saying.

But Snyder has an eye for impressive, overwhelming visuals, and I suspect if you watched this movie with the sound off, you would probably enjoy it a lot. Things go boom and smash very well here. Visually, at least, the titular "gladiator match" between Batman and Superman looks cool, even if the motivations behind it make no sense. As I mentioned earlier, Snyder also has a loving eye for the muscular male body that I'm totally down with, and he provides a Batman training montage that gives a more visceral sense of the physical effort it takes to stay Batman than anything since Nolan's Batman Begins. (In this particular respect, BvS surpasses DKR, as there is no magic knee-brace silliness here.)

This looks hard. #that'swhatshesaid

The scene revisiting the climactic battle scene from Man of Steel from the ground works very well in establishing the sense of terror that the average resident of a comic book metropolis like, uh, Metropolis would likely feel when buildings are being smashed to pieces by flying aliens. It also gives Bruce Wayne what would be a decent motivation for taking down Superman -- Supes cannot be trusted with such immense power, and he's hell on real estate values -- if it were not for the fact that the Dark Knight also smashes through buildings with abandon, just at night instead of during the workday. I guess citywide destruction doesn't matter if it's cocktail hour. But because Jeremy Irons explains Batman's motivations, I buy it, because he is gruff and authoritative and British.

The other element that works well is Diana Prince, who is called "Miss Prince" exactly once in the movie and "Diana" or "Wonder Woman" exactly zero times, but we all know who she is. Wonder Woman occupies the best four minutes of Batman v Superman. This is largely because she is neither Batman nor Superman. For one thing, she smiles, which is not an expression either of Our Heroes is allowed. For another thing, she excels at focusing on the Actual Enemy at Hand, possibly because she is not preoccupied with a dick-measuring contest. It is a sign of how underwhelming much of this movie is that 8 seconds of Aquaman and 4 minutes of Wonder Woman are the best moments of this 2.5-hour behemoth.

Her expression of irritation at the end -- I totally get it.

The final battle takes place at a deserted location in Gotham -- you know it's deserted because Bruce literally says so, so, I guess I owe Zack Snyder props for listening to the criticism of MoS's stupid ending battle? -- and there's a lot of whiz-bang smashy stuff and a villain that looks kind of like a cave troll, and then some sad things happen but they're not too sad because we all know that the stars of this movie have already been signed to multiple sequels.

At the very end of the movie, Bruce tells Diana, "We break things, tear them down, but we can rebuild. We can be better. We have to be." Here's hoping this applies to the new DC universe of movies, too.