Zack Snyder's currently-shooting superhero movie is fast becoming one of the most scrutinized productions in Hollywood history. After announcing that instead of a straight-up Man of Steel sequel the follow-up would be introducing Batman to the mix, the director caused quite the stir with the reveal that Ben Affleck would be playing the Caped Crusader, announced the unexpected casting of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, before revealing the biggest bombshell of all; that the movie would shoot back-to-back with a Justice League movie. And remember; this was before the movie even had an official title! The title was only announced last week, and fittingly seems as overstuffed as the production itself. Ignoring the fact that Superman only gets second billing in a sequel to his own movie, there is far too much going on in the title. The 'Batman V Superman' instead of the more standard 'vs.' makes it sounds like a legal drama as opposed to a superhero smackdown, which would make for a much different movie as well as a surprising change of pace from Zack Snyder. The 'Dawn of Justice' subtitle is nothing more than a blatant advertisement for the Justice League movie, that sees DC and Warner Bros. throw all of their eggs into one basket and go for the team-up movie just two entries into their shared cinematic universe, which is a huge risk. Is there a more cynical commercial decision that advertising your next movie in the title of your currently-shooting one? Probably, but if the recent reaction to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has proven anything its that essentially creating a two-hour trailer for the next movie hurts the reputation of your franchise. Then again, that movie has so far made almost $700m at the box office so far and given the high-profile nature of the project Dawn of Justice basically a lock to join the billion-dollar club, terrible title or not.
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