The Knight is Darkest before the Dawn... of Justice. And during. And after.

Sometimes things just need to be said. Sometimes a quiet word will suffice. A brief moment, a friendly aside and everyone can move on with their days. This sadly, is not one of those times. This is one of those times where only a two-parter with a juicy cliffhanger will do.

I have, at various times in my life been accused of hating everything. I can’t legitimately be too offended by that, because I’ve not exactly discouraged people of that opinion. The opposite in fact. Mea Culpa.

So when I say I was actually looking forward to seeing Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, you can rest assured that a number of jaws dropped, gasping sounds were made and the wan faces of my shell-shocked associates exchanged concerned glances. I even considered going to the cinema.

On paper, there was a ton of potential in this movie. Man of Steel was good I thought and a decent franchise-starter. There’s a certain amount of pedigree in the storyline; Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns is a classic, so cribbing heavily from that was always going to be a good starting point.

I’m not sure exactly where the wheels came off. They came off alright though; a ‘strips of Bat-radial strewn across the tarmac, picking shards of glass out of your hair, tinfoil blankets for all’ kind of four-tyre blowout.

Ben Affleck caused a bit of concern. Batman movies have variously suffered and prospered on some odd casting choices in their time (Keaton and Ledger were winners, Tommy Lee Jones sadly wasn’t) so this could have gone either way. Ultimately I think he did alright. I’m not going to gush over it at all, but he didn’t screw it up and that goes a long way with me. His Bat-voice was better than Bale’s, I’ll certainly give him that. No, I think what torpedoed this movie was everything else. Not hyperbole, literally everything else about this movie made me weep softly inside, as well occasionally those deep, gulping sobs that kids make when they realise they can’t breathe and cry at the same time but something has to give.

Where to start? Let’s go with Superman because I think I’ve have Pavlovian conditioning that makes me froth at the gums whenever I see all three primary colours next to each other on screen at the same time. Man of Steel put a lot of legwork into making Superman palatable to me but apparently that was just a giant tease because we’re straight back to simpering, pompous, self-aggrandising douchebaggery.  Disappointed, but unwavering I plodded on through the dullest opening 30 minutes of an action blockbuster I have witnessed possibly ever; I won't dwell on that though, because I still have a character assassination to perform and I’m on a roll. Pivotal to the whole versus caveat of this movie is that there needs to be some sort of reason for our heroes to clash. Superman blows up a Wayne Enterprises building fighting Zod it would seem and the loss of his favourite building was clearly too much for Bruce to bear. Or the loss of life I guess, depends on how sentimental you think he is. That’s that side dealt with. Obviously the only logical way to give Superman similar beef is for Lex Luthor to kidnap his Mum and force him to fight. It’s not obvious, you say? It’s convoluted, contrived and beggars belief you say? It’s not even the worst bit.

Established early on, we know that the Big Blue Douche can hear Lois Lane in trouble anywhere in the world and arrive with split second timing et voila! day saved. And boy, does she manage to get into some pickles. I can only imagine there’s an alternate universe where Superman just gives up and lets the Terrorist-by-Numbers bad guys gun her down while he breathes a huge sigh of relief. He can hear Bruce Wayne’s heartbeat, put two and two together and come up Bats. However, he fails to hear his own adoptive Mother be kidnapped, assaulted and imprisoned somewhere in Metropolis. His own Mother. In his home city. Probably not more than a 45 minute drive away. So he’s apt to jet half way across the globe for the constantly distressed damsel he met about a fortnight ago, but the woman who raised his ungrateful alien ass to manhood can sit and swivel? For shame. Overly complicated set-ups aside, after what feels like about a fortnight we actually get to the titular confrontation people have been desperately keeping themselves awake for. A battle for the ages, DC Titan versus Titan, the pinnacle of… sorry. I just can’t.

Awful. Turgid, mystifying dross. What makes it worse is that arguably, it’s not all Superman's fault.

It's Batman's.

Now there’s dramatic tension for you. To be continued…