Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice Review - I Told You It Was Going To Be Rubbish

For a teenager, Batman V Superman may be the greatest film ever, but only because it has been directed by someone with a cinematic mental age of sixteen. Zack Snyder couldn't direct traffic away from the Battle of Metropolis (which, hilariously, he thinks only killed thousands), yet here he is helming another major DC tentpole and cocking it up to an extreme level.

Everything wrong with this movie is at his feet. There are glimmers of smart ideas in here - in a speech Lex Luthor makes a derogatory comment about Zeus and Diana Prince winces, then later on Bruce Wayne laments how he is now older than his father ever was yet still feels empty - but they're crushed under a complete misunderstanding of structure, tone and basic filmmaking. For f*ck's sake, there are hackneyed nods to both The Wizard Of Oz and Alice In Wonderland, points of references so overdone no one can take them seriously any more.

Oh, but the visuals. Zack Snyder's a visual director. Visual is like visionary, so he's that too, right? Oh, shut up. Snyder has proven he can frame an individual shot, but he cannot make them work within a cohesive whole. Hitchcock's Vertigo dolly zoom was so incredible that Tim Burton chose to replicate it in 1989's Batman, but it became iconic in the first place because it fit into this wider picture. Any nice image that Zack creates is a fleeting glimpse of smarts that's lucky if it can make a kid say "Oh, that's cool, I guess".

Snyder got away with this approach with Watchmen because it was rooted in a seminal comic book. You could simply appreciate the visuals and ignore the hackneyed retelling of the plot because there was always the graphic novel to fall back on. Here, despite casual liftings from The Dark Knight Returns and other assorted comics, you have something with no real point or focus that doesn't elaborate on anything it raises and simply hopes you're giddy enough by the title to buy into everything else.

I worry for the DC movie universe (I'm not using that forced Extended Universe term after this). If this is them upping their game by showing an understanding of how to have characters interact and build a wider world, they have failed in spectacular fashion. But because Warners' already announced nine more movies (with a Batfleck film all but confirmed) and have failed twice at it before (Green Lantern was an overt case, but you can bet everyone at Warner wanted The Dark Knight Trilogy to spin off into something bigger) they have no choice but to solider on. No matter how you define God, be it an alien being or crazy human, he better help us all.

I had a pretty low bar for Batman V Superman, and yet it still managed to fall below it. If it wasn't for last year's Fant4stic, this would be a widely touted disaster.

Click next for my (rather personal) conclusion.