“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is a two-and-a-half hour festival of dourness to settle a debate between 9-year-olds in the lunchroom, one that older nerds dismiss as pointless. Even the movie’s title is overlong, though it is at least pithier than director Zach Snyder’s earlier effort “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.”
In the dysfunctional newsroom of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) proves to be a scandalously inattentive reporter – despite editorial hectoring, we never get closure on who won the big Metropolis State vs. Gotham football game because of Superman’s unpredictable errands to rescue a damsel, or appear before Congress.
Ben Affleck, who feels morose about being a bad actor in a way that Cavill does not, slogs along as Bruce Wayne. Where Adam West’s bat suit had the coyly arched eyebrows and Val Kilmer’s had the nipples, Affleck’s has the furrowed brow – his bat nose is knitted in disgust even as he saves a child from a crumbling skyscraper.
Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons) and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) both have frustrating roles where they hang on every word from these all-powerful and all-boring men who are furious to determine whose brand of vigilantism is best.
The superheroes are pitted against each other by Lex Luthor (twitchily inhabited by Jesse Eisenberg, who needs to turn down his tired manic act a few notches). Eisenberg models his performance on Heath Ledger’s Joker but revving his verbal engines in this thin screenplay only gets his tires more deeply stuck in the muck. His master plan for world domination is convoluted to the point of total opacity but it involves putting the V between Batman and Superman and Frankensteining his own kryptonic ubermensch from the waxen corpse of General Zod.
In the end, Luthor is a harmless terrier next to the men who really need to be stopped: Snyder and the Warner Bros. executives who approve his quarter billion dollar budgets. The lantern-jawed brawling spills across oddly adjacent Gotham and Metropolis – the cities look like nothing besides green screen vistas.
The true gobstopper of the film is not any of the conflagrations of action, but the fact that the climax is interrupted by a lengthy sequence teeing up Justice League superheroes for a sequel. Oh, and let’s not forget Wonder Woman, as the filmmakers nearly did! Gal Gadot (appearing in yet another film where she speaks no more than a few dozen words) is as inconsiderately shoehorned into the drama as she is into her bronzed dominatrix ensemble. She helps finish a fight, the origin of which you’ve long since forgotten.
In Snyder’s overwrought vision of “Batman v Superman” something always falling in slow motion: buildings, pearls, tears, rain, snow, ash, a handful of dirt – and the lids of your eyes.
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“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is at Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated PG-13. Running time 2:31. www.cinemawest.com.
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