Batman vs Superman ― who wins?

MARCH 26 ― Whatever you may think of Batman vs Superman ― Dawn of Justice, you can blame both its glories and its crimes on Christopher Nolan, or at least partly on Christopher Nolan.

Thanks to the intellectual pretensions that he brought to his Dark Knight films, all other superhero flicks afterwards felt compelled to follow along the same path, taking out most of the juvenile fun of reading the source comic books and replacing it with deadly seriousness.

Unless you’re Ant-Man or Deadpool of course, because they’re both just a bunch of jokers anyway.

But I digress. Is the movie as bad as critics have made it out to be? To be really honest, I didn’t hate it. I might even like quite a few things in it.

It’s definitely much better than Zack Snyder’s previous film, Man Of Steel, and undoubtedly even better than Nolan’s bloated misfire The Dark Knight Rises.

For one, I think the casting and overall acting by everyone here is great, despite a weak script that’s ridden with problems like believable character motivation and of course coherent storytelling.

No matter how annoying the brooding and tortured-soul competition that goes on between Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent throughout the movie may be, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill did a great job of what was asked of them. And whether you’re a guy or a girl, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman just feels like a refreshing splash of joy in what really is two and a half hours of joyless and humourless seriousness.

The biggest surprise, however, especially after the really annoying glimpses we got in the trailers, is Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Lex Luthor; a wonderfully neurotic and slightly psychotic update on Gene Hackman’s take in the original Superman films to reflect this generation where the tech geeks and the nerds have inherited the Earth.

And sure to be everyone’s new favourite is Jeremy Irons’ take on the Alfred character, full of one-liners and witty barbs directed at his beloved Bruce Wayne.

And then we have the movie’s pretty obvious and weighty subtext. After opening with yet another scene showing the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents (making us realise that there really has been that many Batman movies already), the movie then drops us and the adult Bruce Wayne into the climactic battle between Superman and General Zod that ends Man Of Steel, with Wayne witnessing the destruction of Metropolis and the collapse of one of his buildings (along with innocent people, of course), making the battle the movie’s own 9/11 and Wayne the movie’s own personal version of the “vengeance” side of America’s War On Terror, as he blames Superman for bringing the battle and destruction to Metropolis and vows to stop Superman before something like that happens again.

Superman or Clark Kent, on the other hand, is torn about whether he should help people or not, especially when certain quarters of the population (and Congress) have been questioning whether he has the right to decide when and where he should intervene, in other words unilaterally choose when to do so, or that some form of check and balance should exist before he makes that choice, which more or less makes Superman the movie’s version of the “conscience” side of America’s War On Terror. The allegory here is irresistible, really. There’s even a “terrorist” bomb attack later on in the movie in case you’ve still missed the allegory.

With all that meat ready to be cooked, along with some great casting and acting as ingredients to cook it with, it’s a real shame that Batman vs Superman ― Dawn Of Justice again fell into the same old Zack Snyder movie trap ― all action and not much of a coherent story.

Unlike the indecipherable mess that was Man Of Steel’s climactic battle between Superman and General Zod, the two climactic battles here are thankfully decipherable, as you can actually make out what happens and who’s doing what to who.

And these two battles, especially the first big one, is everything that anyone could reasonably expect from a movie calling itself Batman vs Superman. But there’s more to staging battles than showing great destruction.

Watching a battle and rooting for people doing the battle are two very different things. It’s still fun watching the battle (which is why I said I didn’t hate the movie), but it’d be even better if I was provided good reasons to root for the people doing the battle.

So we’ve got the requisite big battles, a weighty enough plot to even have some allegorical weight thrown into it as well and a bunch of spiky performances compensating for the overly solemn top-billed characters, which makes it reason enough to part with your money and see it on the big screen and reasonably enjoy the experience.

But in the pantheon of superhero flicks, especially ones with intellectual heft and allegorical ambitions, Batman vs Superman ― Dawn Of Justice is a long, long way from catching up with the sheer allegorical brilliance of Captain America ― The Winter Soldier.

Even for entertainment value, it is nowhere near the likes of Guardians Of The Galaxy or The Avengers, and is most definitely miles away from the unbridled old school joy of Captain America ― The First Avenger, still my most beloved superhero flick.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.