It’s been three years since the Superman movie Man of Steel arrived in theaters — three years in which DC Comics has released no other superhero movies. Meanwhile, its rival, Marvel, has earned more than $9 billion from a dozen men-in-spandex films.
So the Man of Steel sequel, a ponderously overlong epic called Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (that solitary “V” being pretty much the only thing abbreviated about it) has some serious catching up to do.
Easier said than done, since it’s freighted not so much with entertainment value as it is with enough talk of fallen gods, absent parents and dissolute heroes to fuel a Greek tragedy. And for much of the film’s 2 1/2 hours, director Zack Snyder seems convinced that that’s what he’s making. Or, as bad guy Lex Luthor puts it, in an unedited stream-of-consciousness attempt at pizazz: “A battle to the death, black and blue, fight night, the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world, God versus man, day versus night, son of Krypton, versus Bat of Gotham.”
It takes a while to pit these two iconic good guys against each other, but the script gives them reasons. Straight-arrow Clark Kent goes after vigilantes both as a reporter for the Daily Planet and as a superdude in a cape, because he feels guilty that whole blocks of Metropolis got wiped out along with the bad guys at the end of his last movie.