Ten Reasons to Hate Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

1. The whole damn thing is just too dark. Not a new complaint about the DC cinematic universe, to be sure, and I grant that it can't be an easy thing to balance the presence of Batman and Superman in the same universe. You don't want to change Bruce's personality or style, but as part of the Justice League, he has to interact with larger-than-life heroes on a grander scale than any of his escapades in Gotham City. The Superman of the comics has more sunshine and unfettered optimism in one pinky than Batman has in his entire Batcave. But since Batman has been the most successful DC character on film to date, board-room logic dictates that everything be dragged down to his level instead of vice versa. The end result is Superman gazing with disgust at the dreary world around him, looking more out of place than Eddie Valiant in Toontown and with far less hilarious results.

2. Superman hates himself and so does the rest of the world. How dare you save countless innocent lives, Superman, how dare you! We must hold congressional hearings about your good deeds and spend upwards of 30 minutes of screen time pondering the contradiction of an all-powerful man living in a democratic society. We also invite you, Superman, to spend another 30 minutes doing the same, looking down and complaining to Lois or your mother about how doing the right thing is so hard. You must never smile during these proceedings. The good deeds you do must all be in slow-motion montages in which you look positively miserable as you look down from the sky at those who worship you, because Bryan Singer was being too subtle when he had you stabbed in the rib with Kryptonite.

3. Most of the movie feels like a trailer. I'm not just snidely referring to its Bay-esque editing and pacing. It plays largely like just a setup for Justice League and the rest of the upcoming DCCU. Wonder Woman, whose solo movie is next in the pipe after August's Suicide Squad, gets special attention, but even fellow Leaguers Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg get snippets long enough to qualify as film teasers. One of the most grating new phenomena in movies is that trailers have become events in themselves: there are now actually premiere dates of trailers, teasers for trailers, and commercials on YouTube before the commerc-- uh, trailer starts. Now, we have the first full-on movie-length trailer.

4. The first hour is almost intolerable. The movie is so overwrought that it has to spend a full hour, at least, before any action of significance takes place. The basic premise is simple-- Lex discovers Kryptonite, Batman wants to steal the Kryptonite in order to kill Superman. But they have to give the other characters something to do in the meantime, so Clark Kent investigates Batman while Lois Lane investigates Lex Luthor, Alfred investigates stuff for Bruce, Lex investigates Superman's ship and Zod's dead body, Wonder Woman investigates everybody, and Perry White resents all of this investigation (like ya do, as a news editor). There's a lot of file hacking and downloading, so much that one character literally falls asleep on screen while the downloading is taking place. This is what happens when a movie is simultaneously trying to apologize for its own prequel, set up an entire franchise of sequels, and be entertaining in its own right at the same time-- though, that last part comes across as an afterthought.

5. The dream sequences. Oh god, the dream sequences. It's hard to describe how bad these are. It's possible they're even worse than the dreary, self-important introspection that makes up the rest of the film's first-act quagmire. They serve absolutely no purpose other than to insert action sequences where the narrative structure wouldn't otherwise allow, and to once again foreshadow future movies. But the viewer doesn't care about the outcome of a fight that it knows isn't real. Once you get fooled by the first dream (a cheap jump scare that would be better suited to the Insidious franchise), you don't get fooled again. Of course, if I were really cynical, I could also say that the dreams existed so they could sell "Desert Batman" action figures. But I would never say that.

6. Lex Luthor has no motivation other than "I'm crazy and rich." Lex is a pliable villain. He started his career in comics as a mad scientist, then became a scheming CEO under Byrne's pen in the 1980s, and later morphed into a kinda-good-guy who was actually out to help humanity but just had a personal grudge against Superman. Jesse Eisenberg plays Luthor like a mentally unstable Mark Zuckerberg (go figure) whose favorite memory of college was that Philosophy Gen Ed he had to take. I don't understand his endgame in pitting Batman against Superman, or creating Doomsday. After all, if Doomsday survived the fight against Superman, where would that leave him? Lex isn't the Joker-- he never wanted chaos for chaos' sake-- but "crazy" is a nice, lazy way to motivate your villain, and that's the road taken here.

7. Batman straight-up murders people in this movie. Has he killed people before? Sure. It's a common criticism of Tim Burton's Batman movies. There's the famous "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" line from Batman Begins. And everyone knows he's made a handful of exceptions in comics over the years. But by and large, Batman doesn't kill. And he certainly doesn't smash villains' cars into one another as their mangled corpses flail about inside, throw their own grenades back at them or use Batmobile-mounted machine guns to turn entire structures into butter. BvS' Batman is basically the Punisher with a billion dollars. If that isn't distasteful enough for you, simply from a thematic perspective it robs him of any moral high ground he would like to stand on when comparing himself to the city-leveling Big Boy Scout.

8. When it finally goes down, the big fight is anticlimactic. In a movie called Batman v Superman, the "v" part only amounts to about 15 minutes. Now, I'm not one of the fanboys who's been salivating over the prospect of a titanic clash between these two characters. Personally, I like my heroes to be on the same side, which is why I don't much care for the premise of Captain America: Civil War either (although I know how that one turns out too, and I'm sure it will run circles around this disaster). We all know these things end up with the disparate heroes coming together in common purpose, but it's clear from speaking to many fans that the Batman/Superman matchup was their primary source of anticipation. Sadly, the inevitable clash is predictable in both setup and execution, no doubt leaving many bloodthirsty viewers feeling like they just watched two hours of pre-fight for 30-second match.

9. If you saw the second trailer, you've basically seen the movie. No, really. When the second trailer hit, there was an outcry that it gave away too much, and the WB spin team quickly disavowed that notion. Turns out, the assessment was pretty dead-on. If you felt like you could safely piece together all three acts of this movie from two minutes of footage, that's because you probably did. Heroes brood and pontificate. Heroes fight each other. Heroes stop fighting each other and fight big ugly monster instead. The End. Between the trailers and the news about the Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg cameos, there's not a single surprise left in the movie, not a single story beat that a ten-year-old couldn't see coming a mile away.

10. The best thing in the movie gets maybe 20 minutes of screen time. You probably know who I'm talking about, because critics and audiences alike are hailing Wonder Woman as the sole highlight of this mess. She got the only eruption of cheers and applause in the entire screening I attended, warming the heart of this cranky feminist who resents that it will be almost 20 years since the dawn of the modern superhero film before the most iconic female comic character in history gets her own movie. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that the script doesn't allow Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer more time to potentially ruin Diana. When she takes center stage in 2017, she'll be in the hands of another director with hopefully better prospects.

Seriously, Wonder Woman's entrance was a crowd-pleasing moment that almost redeemed my evening. Almost.