Batman Vs Superman

Batman v Superman Down of Justice

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has been the victim of some of the stink ingest reviews of a blockbuster in recent memory. They are enough to make a video of star Ben Affleck looking sad after being politely reminded about them become an immediate viral monster. Don’t look now, Sad Ben! Here are some of the most damning write-ups from its opening weekend.

The darkest moment of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a montage of Bruce Wayne, played by an emotive rectangle of muscle and tendons known as Ben Affleck,

 prepping for his Superman fight by doing CrossFit. The sequence takes place in the Batcave to ostensibly camouflage the sound of Wayne's weighted pullups and the percussion of steel weights dropped over and over. Wayne pushes a resistance sled — the kind you see in football movies like The Blind Side — and then swings a sledgehammer at a few tires. I don't completely understand how performing these exercises was supposed to help him defeat a bulletproof deity who can melt faces. But then again, I'm not really familiar with the latest in CrossFit trends.

Unfortunately, the scene is pretty representative of Batman v Superman's quality.

Batman vs Superman

Allow me to let you down easy: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner Bros.'s most anticipated superhero slugfest in history, is not great. The goodwill that Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, and the late Heath Ledger fostered in the studio's Dark Knight trilogy feels like a relic from eons ago. (The final movie in that trilogy, 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, isn't even five years old.) The few bright spots of 2013's Man of Steel — Kevin Costner and Diane Lane's humanizing portrayals of Pa and Ma Kent, Amy Adams's Lois Lane, the initial awe of Superman taking flight — are but a distant memory.

In their place is a stink bucket of disappointment, a sad and unnecessary PG-13 orphan fight that director Zack Snyder believes is an homage to DC Comics' most iconic heroes but is more along the lines of a home invasion perpetrated on comic book culture — save for one absolutely glorious moment that Snyder and friends may have accidentally lucked into.

Batman v Superman fails to deliver on its promise

The pathology of Batman and Superman fighting always leads back to a man named Frank Miller and his iconic comic book The Dark Knight Returns (1986). Miller, bending the comic book rules of time and space, makes Batman an older man living in dystopian Gotham City. Superman, meanwhile, is the obedient muscle of the government. Miller uses this backdrop to contrast their very different ideologies of justice and goodness, and in turn to spur their fistfight.

Though Miller's DKR isn't the only comic book story that pits the two heroes against each other (it's not even official canon), it boasts their most iconic fight. And it sets up the very real idea that two good men, perhaps the very best men, can have vastly different views of what a good world looks like.