HOLY 'needless face-off', Batman! Having apparently run out of bankable villains for their two biggest box-office-busting superheroes to take down, the kingpins of the DC movie universe have decided that it's high time Gotham City's favourite violent vigilante should get all bent out of shape over the fact that the Metropolis-based Man of Steel puts lives at risk while doing good deeds in heavily populated areas.
Holy hypocrisy, Batman!
Moviegoers may remember how at the climax of director Zach Snyder's flick Man of Steel, poor old Supes (Henry Cavill) became embroiled in a downtown destruction derby while battling to ensure the world would never have to kneel before Kryptonian outcast turned would-be evil overlord, General Zod.
As fate would have it, billionaire Chiroptera fetishist Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) was in Metropolis that day (Gotham being just across the river, 'twin cities' style, we learn): Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – henceforth to be referred to as BvSDOJ – opens with a flashback to Bruce bravely racing through increasingly rubble-ised city streets in his blacked-out Range Rover equipped with flashing amber lights (presumably the Batmobile had a flat tyre that day) in a vain attempt to reach and evacuate the Wayne Financial tower located at Superman v Zod ground zero.
Snyder also gets his shot at showing us the now familiar Batman 'genesis' tale, flashing us even further back to yet another set of Thomas and Martha Waynes being slain in an alley and their traumatised for life son falling down ye olde bat-infested well.
Take note that the late Martha W actually has huge, laugh-out-loud significance to the plot of BvSDoJ.
Anyway, in the wake of the Supes v Zod devastation, the fact that Krypton's favourite son is an alien beyond human control has become a hot button issue in the US, where collateral damage incurred while battling evil supervillains in downtown areas is no longer regarded as an acceptable trade-off for the whole 'selfless saviour' thing.
So says Batman/Bruce Wayne and indeed US Senator Finch (Holly Hunter): the latter is keen to bring Superman before a government committee, while the former hatches a plan to get hold of some Kryptonite to help knock Supes down a peg or two.
It's art imitating life: there was something on an outcry over the CGI-carnage wreaked upon Metropolis at the climax of Man of Steel – tellingly, in BvSDoJ, the film-makers go to wince-inducing lengths to ensure audiences know that the fireball-strewn super skirmishes takes place in unpopulated areas.
Meanwhile, ace Daily Planet hack Lois Lane (Amy Adams) falls foul of an African dictator and his gun-toting cronies. Guess Who flies in to save the day, further de-stabilising the region and throwing yet more fuel on the whole 'he can't just be allowed to run amok'-based fire?
And while all that is happening, millionaire, scientist and supervillain-in-waiting Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) is hatching his own evil ideas about ridding the world of superheroes by inventive, highly dangerous alien DNA-splicing means.
While everyone was getting frothed up into a frenzy over whether Ben Affleck should be allowed to don the Batsuit – 'absolutely', as it turns out – few were worried about the new Lex Luthor.
Yet Eisenberg's twitchy, manic turn is one of the weakest links in BvSDoJ. More Joker than Luthor, his take on Superman's human arch enemy comes across like a long-haired version of The Social Network's Mark Zuckerberg hopped-up on crazy pills.
Eventually, Batman's anti-Superman crusade and Luthor's scheming intersect, with disastrous CGI-smeared consequences for all.
If that sounds like a complex set-up, it is: Snyder has his hands full with a film that wants to be a Man of Steel sequel, a Batman re-boot and a launch-pad for DC's upcoming League of Justice based series of films with The Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman (all of whom are afforded perfunctory cameos here).
Oh yeah, it also introduces Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to movie audiences, although she's afforded so little backstory that non nerds will surely be left wondering 'who's this hot chick with the sword?'
All in all, BvSDoJ is an oddly joyless affair, let down by contrived plotting – the reasoning for Batman's sudden anti-Superman crusade never rings true – absurd writing and uneven CGI, the best (ie, most expensive) is saved for the final battle against a giant, impressively rendered alien mutant.
3D is also an issue: at the screening I saw, anything not in the foreground of the frame suffered from extreme, highly distracting 'ghosting'.
Holy technical incompetence, Batman!
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (12, 151mins) Action/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Drama/Romance. Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane. Director: Zach Snyder
RATING: Two stars
