Zack Synder's Dark Materials.

Rating: 4/10 (29 March 2016)

Those of you taking in babies and young children to this movie then really need to take note of the warnings about the film's content. If you don't, you may well end up having to explain to your young child exactly what a sex trafficker does and what happened when a gun is discharged in a person's face because that is the grim material that constitutes this movies opening scenes. And you may be paying out for years of therapy for your baby when he or she is fully grown after subjecting the infant to the violent bangs, crashes explosions and monstrous roars in an environment that otherwise resembles a return to the womb.
As for the film itself, oh dear, what a lumbering monstrosity it is. The film's title spells out the various transformations that the script has undergone as it moved from being a sequel to Man of Steel to a prelude to a Justice League movie.
It is to director Zack Snyder's credit that he has treated the project with a degree of intelligence and has actually tried to work a subtext into the film.
Sadly, the potentially fertile ground of exploring different notions of justice, including the place of vigilante-ism and the Rule of law, is racked over by incoherent muttering about gods and monsters largely in service of a sequel which, if Batman's vision of the future and Lex Luthor's final words are anything to go by, will introduce DC's 'New Gods' in the form of Darkseid (a Thanos look-a- likee created by Jack Kirby for DC comics in the Seventies) and his para-demons.
The eventual fight between Batman and Superman is a long time coming, over too soon and not at all made more interesting by the arrival of Wonder Woman who is heralded by drum beats and a poodle rock guitar rift. For me, the scenes of her fighting alongside Batman and Superman, far from stealing the show, are an unwelcome distraction from the central thrust of the titular conflict but have a special thrill for many for whom this film's status as a prequel is an especially thrilling ingredient.
The actual fight between Batman and Superman is massively over motivated. Superman fights Batman because he hates Batman's brand of justice, Batman fights Superman because he shares people's fear of an omnipotent alien lording it over Earth. But it doesn't end there. Superman and Batman fight each other because they have been laboriously set up to misunderstand each other by Lex Luthor – although how a village gunned down by militia is thought to be the work of Superman is anyone's guess.
But wait! Batman also fights Superman because he has seen a future where Superman operates in the service of evil New Gods and cuts him in half with his heat vision. But, no! Scrap all that. In the end, Superman fights Batman because if he doesn't Lex Luthor will kill Superman's Mom. This final twist pretty much negates all previous motivations.
But why does Lex Luthor want Superman dead? And, more to the point, why does he want the two heroes to fight each other? I haven't got a clue, other than that Luthor is a joker style psychopath and just, well, does things like that. In any case, the fights resolution hinging on the 'fact' that Batman's and Superman's mums have the same name is laugh out loud terrible.
By the time a dodgy CGI Doomsday turns up, I just didn't care anymore. Doomsday's final moments are beautifully shot, like an Alex Ross cover brought to life, but most of the CGI scenes including those of the Batmobile and Batplane are hurried and edited in a way that seems to cover up a low budget. The Batmobile chase is barely 'readable'. And none of the technology receives an heroic treatment. The film draws on post 9/11 material to dramatize a world in which 'everything has changed'.
9/11 certainly did change the nature of comic book heroes, as Captain America: Civil War will no doubt further explore. After an Amazing Spider-Man black cover, a scene with Magneto mawkishly shedding a tear for the dead and superheroes prostrating themselves at the feet of police, the fire brigade and the everyday heroism of man-in-the- street, Marvel found a firmer footing by militarizing the superhero genre so that mobsters became terrorists and vigilantes became traitors.
These themes were explored in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns where Batman personified the travails of America itself. Here, opening scenes see Bruce Wayne wandering among the cloud produced by collapsing towers, one of which belongs to the Wayne foundation. Stirring stuff but, personally, the continual evocation of 9/11 in superhero blockbusters is becoming tasteless. Let's respect the dead by not resurrecting them in the name of profit making. And it is beginning to remind me of Susan Sontag's critique of disaster movies in which she argues that such films justify irresponsibility.
Superheroes are becoming a response to audiences' feelings of powerlessness in the face of global conflict. And young men, as in the Eighties, seem to be using the gym as a way of addressing unemployment, underemployment or employment in occupations that are far removed from heroic ideals of masculinity.
As men retreat behind armored, muscled bodies, they can communicate their anxiety only through tightly clenched teeth or punching each other out. It is no coincidence that in the UK needle exchanges are hosting more steroid users than heroin addicts. As much as I enjoy the superhero genre, in Superman Vs Batman it has taken a dark wrong turn that isn't even enjoyable anymore.