Justice League (2017)

At least as far back as 1979, someone wondered what would happen if you put Christopher Reeve, Adam West, and Lynda Carter – give or take some substitutions in the lineup – together in one production. Somehow, thirty-eight years went by before we got this year's Justice League, which doesn't seem to have benefited nearly as much as it should have from all that time and all the intervening lessons as to what works and what doesn't.

One should note, without doubt, there is more than one way to approach the genre. Christian Bale's Dark Knight and Reeve's Superman, to note just two, took paths that both worked, in their way, but were completely, irreconcilably different. It is at the creator's peril that one would try to blend two different approaches in one work; as the saying goes, a camel is a racehorse designed by committee, offering so many improvements to the idea of a horse, you end up with something that can't race.

Justice League, with its six superheroes, is a six-humped camel – eight or nine if you count the Amazons, Mera, and the villain Steppenwolf. It's inherently a tough assignment, with the same number of superheroes that Marvel's Avengers tossed together in 2012, but without the advantage of so many solo movies to introduce the lineup.

Luckily, the three new additions benefit from wonderful performers. Ray Fisher is pitch perfect as Cyborg in a movie that shows only 5% of him and falls even shorter in giving him adequate lines to relate his existential crisis as a superhero who would really rather not be what he's become. Jason Momoa was essential casting to lend gravitas to the Aquaman character who, historically, battles unintended laughs as much as he does underwater villains: The genetic bulk and fury of Momoa immediately defuses the threat that Aquaman would come across as a lightweight. And Ezra Miller's Flash is so likeable, so fun, that nary a fan has complained that his Barry Allen is so different from the comics' version.

Justice League takes those strong performances, along with others by returners Cavill, Gadot, and even Affleck, and a dozen or more fan-pleasing moments and puts them together in almost the worst possible way. It looks as though four or so different good Justice League movies were made and then the pieces from them placed in a salad bowl and edited together without much concern. Indeed, and sadly, something like this did happen, as original director Zack Snyder was taken off the project due to a family tragedy with Joss Whedon picking up – and pasting together – the pieces. The result corrects, to its credit, the overly dark and destructive tone of the two previous Superman (and Batman) movies in the DC Extended Universe, which were seemingly hell-bent on showing collateral damage and a world that wasn't sure that having Superman was a good thing. Justice League fixes that, and undoubtedly has some fun. Most of that fun was, unfortunately, shown to us in the form of trailers over the last year, but buyer beware when it comes to watching trailers, I suppose.

In tallying Justice League's other successes, I must compliment it on melding the Amazon and Atlantean traditions, which is a bit of sense the comics rarely touched upon. And to skip ahead to the ending, it worked for me – and I think, the franchise – to have the superficial ending that the big, bad villain is beaten simply because Superman is stronger than him. People like Superman when he is strong, and here he is, and if that's too simple an ending then Superman is too simple for you.

And some subplots pull it off. When Batman tells an intimidated Flash to save just one hostage, it gives Miller's speedster the chance to gain confidence and show us the master manipulator Batman at work. When an enraged Superman manages to track an increasingly terrified Flash, we get a perfect moment where the characters and their powers interact to make a moment powerful.

And there are elements that seem like subtle nods to past comics. I would comment how like a Lazarus Pit is Superman's revival scene, and reminiscent of the Bad Batman Clone who rose from one in Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin. The need of the villain to bring together three artifacts hearkens back, whether knowingly or accidentally, to the demons Abnegazar, Rath, and Ghast who are empowered by a bell, wheel, and jar, from a JLA story way back in 1962. And the opening scene with Batman taking down a Parademon is, certainly knowingly, right out of the DCnU's premier issue of Justice League in 2011.

But here's the basic failure of Justice League: Plots and subplots work when there is a complication, a climax, and a resolution. These things need some time and investment to work for the viewer. The complication has to mean something. The resolution has to make sense. Over and over, Justice League gives us a mini-plot complete with a complication, climax, and resolution in less time than we can care about – or even understand – the situation. How does someone spend years working in the film industry without a much better sense of what is required to make a subplot pay off? It's unclear where the blame lies: screenwriter Chris Terrio (who won an Oscar for Argo), Snyder, Whedon, higher-up consultants, or some medley of all of them. Maybe too many cooks ruined the soup even though we know from Avengers that six superheroes aren’t too many for a movie.

And so, we know that Amy Adams can act the hell out of a role, but when she's given just five scenes to show Lois Lane's dark night of the soul (one each for her personal complication, climax, and resolution), there's not enough in the script for her to shine. Amber Heard looks and sounds as good as you could hope, but the rapid-fire dialogue in she and Jason Momoa serve up exposition of their characters' history and mommy issues shortchanges the matter to the point that one must ask why bother? Inescapably, I have to conclude that Justice League began with the outline of a potentially great three (or four) hour movie and the creators collectively decided to streamline, ruinously, several of the subplots while eliminating not enough of them.

And so, we have civilians who need to be rescued right before Superman deals with Steppenwolf, including a Russian family who earn more screen time than Diane Lane's Martha Kent while adding nothing but a rationale for Superman and Flash to race. And so, we have Batman knowingly insult the memory of Steve Trevor in order to shock Wonder Woman into becoming a leader in battle. And so, we have Alfred mysteriously conclude from audio alone that Batman being upset by the lack of a plan that somehow the team dynamic is working effectively. (It's not. The subsequent arrival of Superman is the only thing that prevents Steppenwolf from winning.) And so, we have Batman determined that the risk of Superman being resurrected as a monster was worth it after an entire movie was based on the premise that Batman wasn't sure if normal Superman was something we could trust. And so, the drama in many viewers' minds whether a Green Lantern would show up was executed to no payoff by showing extraterrestrial Green Lanterns during a flashback. And so, we have a villain like Steppenwolf, who lacked the slightest bit of interest in his personality.

And we have plot holes galore. Seemingly every viewer realized that Steppenwolf should have stolen the Mother Boxes before Superman came to Earth instead of waiting for his arrival and death. And that the Justice League should have guarded the Mother Box after using it to revive Superman.

If the final result of waiting thirty-eight years for a Justice League movie could come off this flawed, there was no reason for DC to wait this long – they could have squeezed Adam West and Lynda Carter into Superman III and fared little worse. But what's truly frustrating is that they didn't take a little more caution – a thirty-ninth year if it would have helped – and put all of these strong performances together to make a movie that everyone involved could be proud of.

Wonder Woman (2017 film)

Once upon a time, superhero movies came along less than once per year. Nowadays, the annual output approaches ten, and the superhero genre has gotten into somewhat of a groove – for better or for worse. The skilled creators who make these movies have learned various formulas that have been proven to succeed. One may particularly note that Marvel has a good track record over a decade of producing mainly good, and occasionally very good movies. DC has been more erratic in its offerings, and perhaps it is the resistance to mere formula that allowed DC to score an original win with 2017's headliner, Wonder Woman.

The first thing that distinguishes Wonder Woman from the vast majority of other superhero movies is apparent in the title's second word, and this word and identity also distinguished the 1941 comic hero from almost all of her dozen-and-some predecessors. The star is a woman – clearly a break from the norm for superhero movies with a single, central star – but is that all there is to it, one chromosome of difference, or does it mean something? If so, is it because she is typical in some way of real women, or because of how the character is developed?

As I recently commented, Wonder Woman has been subjected to many new origins and reboots in recent years – more than one quite good one – which makes it an immediate challenge for any added version, cinematic or otherwise, to do something new. But director Patty Jenkins and the rest of her team succeeded. Or, if they didn't do anything completely new, they did something that breaks the pattern of lots of pretty-good but increasingly formulaic superhero movies.

The need for this is apparent. Deadpool lashed out against the conventions in one way: Its (anti)hero disposes with traditional superhero virtues in exchange for cynicism, humor, self-deprecation, and selective verisimilitude. He could easily, without superpowers, star in a remake of Animal House (in fact, he did; it was called Van Wilder). Deadpool laughs at the superhero conventions of virtue while dealing up a lot of action. When he is injured – even when a limb is severed from his body – he barely flinches and plays the moment with deadpan comedy.

Wonder Woman does something almost completely opposite. She believes in her heroic destiny, completely without reservation. She is noble and idealistic and stubborn and absolutely nothing throws her off her game.

If there is one scene that stays in the viewer's memory, it is probably her initial display of power in man's world, and the script picked a hell of a place for her to show it – on a World War One battlefield. As the less popular of the world wars, its savagery is probably less in the collective mind than is that of its sequel, but the trench warfare of the First World War put human fragility on display in a definitive sense. We can picture World War Two soldiers swaggering through the European countryside during a break in hostilities, ambling through some fields on the war to the next battle, but the No Man's Land on the Western Front of the earlier war allowed no human dignity. And so, there was no better place than No Man's Land to introduce Wonder Woman. Holding her shield against a rain of hot metal, Diana was everything the rest of the moment was not. Color where there was no color, strength where there was no strength, life where there was no life, a woman where all others were men. Her steady movement forward into the firepower of the enemy is likely the film's central image.

But a series of non-action, staid, talky scenes may do more to cement the film's uniqueness. In London and in Belgium, she's in completely unfamiliar territory surrounded by Steve Trevor's team of flawed and gray-moraled men. Both as witness to and object of their moral failings, she is completely unaltered by their weakness, their avarice, and their clumsy advances on her. She is completely inflexible in her morality, but she does not use her powers to win the argument. Before the film is over, she has made each of them, in some way, a better man than he was when she met them. She easily could have picked them up and spun them over her head until they bellowed for mercy, but that was not her way. Her primary contribution to Man's World was not to serve as a human tank on a battlefield but as a messenger of purer virtues.

And the credit there goes to Gal Gadot. She gave life to those values with the power sincerity. We've heard lesser actors read similar lines off a card in a bland

and perfunctory way, but she means them, or does an impeccable job of seeming to. Gadot is a former beauty pageant winner who also served two years as a soldier. Remarkably, she seems to have brought the best of each of those identities to her performance.

Wonder Woman's – and Gadot's – unbridled idealism is not new in superhero movies. It occurs in flashes here and there in all the better movies of the genre. To make the characters more subtle, more nuanced, they are more complex than noble. In many respects, that makes them better movie characters. It makes them worse heroes.

The last time we saw an actor bring a superhero to life with such unflagging idealism was Christopher Reeve's Superman. That series, to add some complexity, spent some time in the third film showing him as a red-kryptonite-forged Bad Superman. But even the Reeve Superman (though not his Clark Kent) had a mean streak, a whisper of sadistic pleasure, directed solely at wrongdoers, as when he made a building-scaling cat burglar fear a deadly fall, when he beat up the jerk trucker who beat up Clark Kent, and when he pretended to be powerless and crushed Zod's hand in a theatrical taunt. Henry Cavill's Superman is more consistently noble than Reeve's, probably at his ugliest when he tells Jonathan Kent that he isn't his father. His decision to kill Zod is the screenwriter's decision – a decision that the 1978 Superman never had to face, though the end of Superman II ­seemed to show him allowing the deaths of the three Kryptonian villains (a shot showing their survival was cut from the theatre version). Gadot's Wonder Woman also kills, in battle, because she has to. But we never see her use her powers with glee, with pride, except when she is a small child. When she begins her career, if it were, as Wonder Woman, she's already the person she needs to be. Man's World is the place where she accepts that role, but there is, fundamentally, no "Clark Kent," no "Bruce Wayne" to muddle her identity. Whatever life she adopts as Diana Prince (currently unseen by us except in a minute or two of dialogue-free scenes), it is as the person she has always been, perhaps playing a role to hide her identity, but Wonder Woman is who she has always been, if by another name.

Like many of the better Wonder Woman stories, the 2017 film is a Greek tragedy. The brilliant choice of history as the setting for her story is that the audience already has the big ending spoiled for us, and perhaps this is why her origin was moved, relative to the comic book origin, to the earlier of the world wars. World War One will end, yes; London, of course, will not be destroyed. And what Diana considers to be her single greatest purpose will elude her. We already know that World War Two is coming, so we know that beating Ares didn't stop war as she'd hoped it would. Steve Trevor (Chris Pine, taking a break from his work as James T. Kirk) gives his life preventing a tragedy that didn't occur in the real world, and we have to presume that whatever Diana did after 1918, it failed to prevent the DC Extended Universe's version of World War Two.

One of the great challenges for the Superman film franchise was that its 1978 landmark captured the hero – and minted the genre – so perfectly that it was a hard act to follow. So seductive were its merits that Superman Returns flopped by attempting to copy Donner's 1978 work on a structural and thematic basis so closely that it lacked a life of its own. And so, Wonder Woman's greatest challenge will be to keep the character engaging in a team movie next year and a second solo feature later. It also remains to be seen how the broader superhero genre will respond to this alteration in its pattern, a hero who is completely, unblinkingly, noble – and a woman. Are you up to it, boys?

Wonder Women

One of the first comic books I owned was Secret Origins #3 (1973), featuring the origin of Wonder Woman. The art puzzled me: While the cover's Wonder Woman was lithe like a Seventies model with long, flowing hair, the interior art, a reprint of the 1941 original, gave the Amazon a boxy figure and tight curls like Betty Grable. At the time, I could barely comprehend how art could show one character in such different ways. Now, it's easy to understand: Each era portrayed Wonder Woman as the ideal of the times.

But those were not the only two visions of Wonder Woman available at the time. In the very same year, the contemporary Wonder Woman was the white-suited non-powered version who followed her mentor, I Ching. Also debuting in 1973 was the Super Friends, which showed a Wonder Woman looking like the Sixties version and superpowered, but nowhere near the levels of Superman. By 1976, Wonder Woman in the comics had regained her powers, while the TV version played by Lynda Carter was set in the Forties – prompting DC's Wonder Woman solo title to tell wartime adventures set on Earth Two (but with Seventies-style art) – until the TV show skipped ahead, without explanation, to the Seventies – and the comic version made the same jump, to contemporary stories set on Earth One. In four years, fans were given seven or eight distinct versions of Wonder Woman; trying to juggle all the various versions was probably more complicated than understanding any of the individual stories. And in that era before the Internet, there was no guide to any of this; it was simply up to the fan to make sense of it.

Four decades later, the world once again abounds in alternate versions of Wonder Woman. In 2011, the post-Crisis version of Wonder Woman gave way to the post-Flashpoint New 52 Wonder Woman. Five years later, a tremendous multiplicity of Wonder Women burst upon the scene. The DC Rebirth gave us a new "main" Wonder Woman who is still trying to unravel the secrets of her past, which involves some medley of the New 52 and other elements. Then, within just a few months, DC published two distinctly different Wonder Woman origin graphic novels – the long-awaited "Earth One" from Grant Morrison, and Jill Thompson's Wonder Woman: The True Amazon. Between the publication dates of those two works, the monthly title began running Greg Rucka's "Year One" origin story; an astounding three origin stories were published/begun in under six months! As if that weren't enough, DC's cinematic universe introduced yet another version of Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot in Batman v Superman, as yet mysterious with her story to be explained in a 2017 solo film. All of this came on the heels of superb work done in 2011-2014 by Brian Azzarello, a refreshing take on Wonder Woman and her world that deserved to serve as a foundation for a decade or more to come – like Byrne's Superman and Miller's Batman – rather than be made obsolete after only a year.

As the character turns 75, a high degree of attention is fitting; it is harder, however, to explain why multiple, conflicting origin stories make for the right kind of attention. Certainly, part of the answer is that this bouquet of origin stories was unplanned; the movies and comics are not in sync, and Morrison's story was in the works and long delayed. Rebirth, like the New 52, is obviously a creative direction driven by business considerations. And there we have it: Multiple, uncoordinated creative voices led to multiple, uncoordinated versions of one of the best-known superheroes within a very short span of time.

The rapidfire shuffle of new versions serves as a poll of how the modern comics creator perceives Wonder Woman, and in this, we see one interesting consensus: Azzarello, Morrison, Thompson, and Rucka all speak to the sexuality of the Amazons in general or Diana specifically in a way that had not – probably could not have – been seen before. Both Azzarello and Thompson describe Amazons routinely using men from the world at large as a source of fertilization, with hints and a choice image or two of a domination fantasy. Meanwhile, Morrison and Rucka both give Diana female lovers in her past but leave her open to opposite-sex attraction once Steve Trevor enters her world. These new origins variously assert that Hercules and his men raped the Amazons, a violent horror unimaginable in 1941 comics, a modern extrapolation of Moulton's 1941 panels showing Hercules and Hippolyta lying together as he betrays her.

Morrison and Azzarello also agree to make Diana not a creature made of clay, but rather the direct offspring of Zeus, though Azzarello makes her the principal god's daughter of Zeus; Morrison, his granddaughter. Azzarello modernizes his gods by showing them in Las Vegas, posing as truckers. Morrison modernizes Diana's world by making Steve Trevor the descendent of African slaves, a real people with real history spent in chains like the imaginary Amazons.

Morrison and Rucka also agree by maintaining the Steve Trevor element in Diana's origin, while Thompson diverges sharply by making the young Diana a spoiled brat whose journey to man's world is penance for the sin of hubris and the tragedy it caused; it should not be lost on the reader that in departing from Moulton's original story, Thompson's is classically Greek – character flaws determine the future. A tragedy doesn't happen to a person; a tragedy is who they are. This is the great contribution of Thompson's version, and makes it welcome despite the certain overcrowding of recent origin stories. Thompson abandons the 1941 source material to emphasize in tone the vastly earlier source material of Greek mythology.

None of these stories disagree on one thing: Wonder Woman is wonderful. Nolan's cinematic Wonder Woman immediately wows Superman and Batman by battling Doomsday energetically and somewhat enthusiastically. Rucka and Morrison show the modern world pointing its cellphone cameras at Diana and snapping away, hashtagging her into social media immortality. She glows, indifferent to the attention, like a Forties movie star sipping a milkshake while the world adores her. She's beautiful, strong, brave, and brilliant; there is no depiction of Wonder Woman that doesn't agree on this.

For all these many versions, and creators, it is Rucka and the filmmakers who get to hold serve. Rucka has suggested a multiplicity of Wonder Women in his single version, with a composite past or composite memories of various pasts, with a Multiverse backstory that may involve the overarching Rebirth plot with Dr. Manhattan at the center. Perhaps he will make these alternate memories not "lies" surrounding one true backstory but disparate elements all partly true; this is akin to what Geoff Johns did with Superman in Secret Origin and Morrison in his Batman epic that asserted that all past eras actually happened to the one and only Batman. Wonder Woman is not the first superhero to get multiple, contradictory origin stories; hopefully one of them – and it would be Rucka's – has the chance to be left uncontradicted long enough to give a generation of readers a firm legend to believe in.

However many people read DC's comics, far more will see the 2017 movie, and this will become the "real" Wonder Woman for a generation. This Wonder Woman, we know from the trailer, rescues a crashing Steve Trevor and comes to man's world to stop World War One (not Two). Until the movie debuts, we can guess the details of the content, and one clue is a canny reply to the old stories. In 1942's All Star Comics #12, as the men on the team head off to battle the Axis, Wonder Woman, one of the mightiest heroes in the story, stays home, bidding the male heroes, "Good luck, boys – and I wish I could be going with you," after having agreed off-panel to be their secretary. In 2017, Steve Trevor introduces Diana as his secretary, and after we see her perform some wonderful heroics, he adds, "She's a very good secretary." After 75 years, we can poke fun at 1942's prejudices. Maybe after another 75 years, audiences won't be expected to find that funny.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice review

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the child of two parents. On the creative side, there is a tradition of DC's two flagship superheroes who sometimes fight. On the business side, there is the invisible presence of Marvel's cinematic Avengers franchise, which has produced blockbuster after blockbuster, tying several successful sub-series together to build a massive, shared audience of devotees – and revenue. DC's superheroes have had success on the big screen only as individuals, and only occasionally. Unmistakably, Warner Brothers is now trying to build on the success of 2013's Man ofSteel as the anchor of a multi-hero megafranchise like Marvel's cinematic Avengers (and, for that matter, X-Men).

In the world of BVS, Superman's debut took place in a world where an elder Batman has been fighting crime in Gotham City for twenty years now and sociopathic businessman Luthor are already prominent, as had been hinted via allusions back in MOS.

BVS provides two strong impressions: First, it is for most of its ample running length absolutely magnificently scripted, directed, and acted. The photography is gorgeous. Characterization is well-rounded yet recognizable as versions of the archetypes from comicdom. This is a very well made movie. The second impression: This movie contains perhaps the least fun of any superhero movie ever. Astonishingly, it begins and ends with funerals.

To a considerable extent, those two outstanding aspects of the film hold most true for the first hour and a half. Then, as the careful setup turns to climactic action (there is plenty of non-climactic action earlier) the script tosses some red meat for fanboys and fangirls to cheer, and the film turns into a movie. This is perhaps a good thing, because, to fulfill the goal of launching a major cinematic universe, BVS needs to convince moviegoers that it's not going to be a bleak, depressing (albeit well-written) cinematic universe.

No one will leave the theatre complaining that there wasn't enough movie or love for DC source material. BVS covers the themes of three or four landmark DC works. It has about a half-dozen lines from The Dark Knight Returns, which is unquestionably the central source from printed media, but it also features a dream scene right out of Red Son, a massive plot to frame Superman a la Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, and then launches right into the Death of Superman story while introducing the Justice League-to-be very economically. There is even a scene where Lois Lane dives into water to recover some kryptonite just like Miss Tessmacher did in Superman: The Movie. Perry White mentions Superman's origin year of 1938 in some canny dialogue, and there's a kidnapping in Smallville reminiscent of the early Byrne issues of Superman.

Despite the heavy borrowing, the overall plot is original. About half of it had already been communicated in the trailers. The film opens with cinema's nth retelling of the Waynes' murder. At their funeral, young Bruce falls into a cave at Wayne Manor and – this part is just a dream – bats swirl around him, flying him back to the surface. Then we see a second defining trauma in Bruce Wayne's life: His physical presence in Metropolis during the Superman-Zod battle that killed some people Wayne was close to.

We flash forward 18 months: Superman has become the world's greatest hero… but nobody whatsoever seems to be happy about it. Awed, sometimes grateful, but nobody in the movie is happy, so they aren't happy when Superman saves someone's life, either. Batman, meanwhile, has become darker in his operations, branding the criminals – the news calls them his victims – with a hot bat symbol. Superman and Batman intensely dislike one another from afar – Superman loathing the cruelty that Batman shows and Batman loathing the lack of controls in place to stop Superman. This is a sentiment shared exactly by a U.S. Senator and a giggling, rich, brilliant, and mentally ill Lex Luthor. All three – Wayne, Luthor, and Senator Finch – undertake plans to take control back from Superman. As it turns out, Luthor is the master chess player directing the others like pieces on his board. Knowing that he can't hurt Superman directly, Luthor gives Wayne and the world more reasons to fear Superman, using his own gunmen to cause collateral-damage deaths during a Superman mission in Africa. When Superman arrives in Washington to testify before Congress, the film unleashes one of its biggest surprises when a massive explosion caused by Luthor kills the committee and many civilians Superman is unharmed, but the world wonders if he somehow caused it.

Batman is, in the meantime, playing the world's greatest detective, working on a case that leads towards an unknown master criminal who turns out to be Lex Luthor, importing kryptonite via ship from MOS's Indian Ocean battle site back to Gotham/Metropolis. Batman infiltrates Luthor's headquarters, stealing the kryptonite for himself, which was Luthor's plan all along. Bruce Wayne keeps catching sight of a gorgeous, elegant, and mysterious Diana Prince who is also investigating Luthor. While following the breadcrumbs that Luthor intentionally left in order to drive Batman into battle with Superman, Batman also finds Luthor's computer files indicating the existence of four meta-humans – Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Flash, and Aquaman. Batman also sees the Flash in a dream and/or interdimensional interlude reminiscent of the Flash speaking to him early in Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which Flash gives Batman a warning – one that's hard to hear, but apparently useful. Meanwhile, Clark Kent has become Batman's biggest detractor, which leads to Superman zooming down and threatening Batman, telling him to end his bat career now, or else.

Luthor plays his first plan to kill Superman just past the film's midway point. To summon Superman, he throws Lois Lane from the top of the LexCorp building. She's safe, but Luthor shows Superman photos of a bound and tortured Martha Kent. Luthor tells Superman that Martha Kent will die unless Superman kills Batman. With no choice, Superman goes to Gotham to try to talk to Batman, who is ready for him in a battle a la Dark Knight Returns. Sonics and machine guns slightly irritate Superman, but kryptonite powder/gas has its intended effect, allowing Batman to pummel Superman for a while. The gas wears off, giving Superman the upper hand, but Batman fires a second dose at him, beats him for a while, then lifts a kryptonite spear over him. Begging for his life, Superman tells Batman that he has to save Martha. Here the film catches one of the DCU's least-noticed quirks – that Martha Wayne and Martha Kent share a first name. Hearing his late mother's first name, Batman becomes insane with curiosity – why did Superman say "Martha"? Lois Lane arrives in time to tell Batman why, and this intel ends the fight, making the two men allies.

While Batman saves Martha Kent, Superman goes to corral Luthor, who unleashes his Plan B – a creature he created by combining his own DNA with that of General Zod. This is sort of a combination of the origin stories of Kon-El and Bizarro, but the result is unmistakably Doomsday.  This raging, superpowered behemoth begins to pummel Superman in a battle reminiscent of MOS's Superman-Zod battle. Suddenly, Wonder Woman shows up, and the two superpowered heroes swap blows with Doomsday while Batman manuevers around the battle scene, looking to make a blow of his own. Wonder Woman's skill and zeal in fighting Doomsday is one of the lightest moments in the film, but only manages to hold the monster off for a while. Superman retrieves the kryptonite spear that Batman crafted and, after resisting Lois Lane's pleas for him not to do so, flies in to plunge the weapon into Doomsday's heart. At the same time, the monster plunges a massive, bony spear into Superman's chest, killing him. Wonder Woman and Batman stand over the two dead combatants.

Now Superman is dead and the world knows that Clark Kent was his alter ego. Superman has a glorious funeral with, suddenly, America's gratitude. Bruce Wayne tells Diana Prince that they must find the other superheroes and prepare to fight as a team. Luthor, from a prison cell, gloats to Batman that by killing Superman, he has "rung the bell" to summon a new, dark force, which seems to introduce Darkseid as the next Justice League film's villain. Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane mourn at Superman's funeral, but in the film's final moment, we see Superman's coffin and get a sign that there will be a resurrection.

There are virtually no missteps in Batman v Superman. It's wonderfully crafted: Every scene, every shot, every line of dialogue achieves just what the creators intended. It's also relentlessly dark and brooding, with sex trafficking, child molesters, torture, and terrorism just part of the background. This cinematic DCU, even with superheroes, is worse than our own world. Warner Brothers is betting that people will enjoy visiting this dark place one or two times a summer for the next few years. I'm not sure of the audience they are hoping for, but they seem to be intent on an audience closer to that of The Godfather than Superman: The Movie. Serious comic book fans may enjoy seeing their heroes in such realistic fight scenes. Families and couples on dates may find themselves watching Avengers movies at the next movie screen over.