Things That Will Completely Ruin Batman V Superman

Whether you like it or not, Batman will fight Superman when the ridiculously titled Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice appears on cinema screens in March of 2016. Batman V Superman is actually a direct sequel to 2013's Man of Steel, even though those three words don't appear anywhere in this new flick's title. That fact alone is enough to make us worried about 2016's first superhero throwdown. But just in case you weren't convinced, here are a few more reasons to avoid BVS: DoJ like the pop-culture disease it is.

The world of movies has a few different seasons, each with their own qualities. Summer is when big blockbusters reign, while autumn through December is when Oscar contenders (and any blockbusters that didn't hit in the summer) find their way into cinemas. And then there's post-New Year's winter, also known as the "dump months." January and February are usually when Hollywood's worst garbage stinks up the multiplex. March, meanwhile, isn't typically much better.

In March 2015, theaters ran cinematic disasters like Chappie, Adam Sandler's The Cobbler, the latest in the Divergent series, and Get Hard. In 2014, March got the first Divergent, Muppets Most Wanted, Noah, Need for Speed, and the 300 prequel. And in March 2013, it was Jack the Giant Slayer, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Olympus Has Fallen, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you actually saw any of these in theaters, you're probably in the minority. March is crappy for movies.

Director Zack Snyder's first work in film was as a commercial director and cinematographer, a fact that explains his movies' distinct emphasis on visuals...and lack of quality in any other area. His first hit movie, an adaptation of Frank Miller's 300, padded out a story that was thin to begin with. Its visual style and brutal violence were enough to make him a bankable director.

Soon it became clear that Snyder doesn't actually know the definition of the word "adaptation." His version of Alan Moore's Watchmen goes to great pains to recreate actual comic book panels on the big screen, while completely missing the point of the book itself. The fact that previews of Batman V Superman seem to show yet more images aped from comics—this time Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns—does not bode well for Snyder's grasp of the concept.

And while we're on that subject, the fight between Superman and Batman in Miller's book is the culmination of those two characters' relationships. It is a crescendo in a book that examines the adventures of a post-retirement Batman.

In Snyder's new jam, Superman and Batman are meeting for the first time, and we know that this will lead to the founding of the cinematic Justice League. In short, we know exactly what's going to happen here. They'll fight, they'll make up, they'll beat the bad guys. Unless one of them actually dies at the end of the movie, there's nothing happening here that will treat this tired super-trope with originality or ingenuity. It might've been interesting if the fight were merely a side-story to their first meeting. Instead, it's the main event: Batman V Superman is this dumb flick's title, after all.

In Man of Steel, Superman pursues General Zod and his minions with such zeal that he completely levels both his hometown of Smallville and Metropolis. At the end, Superman snaps Zod's neck, committing one final murder after destroying two American cities.

He's a joyless, two-dimensional religious symbol, and Batman has every right to think that he's here to destroy the world. When two heroes fight, it's usually because of a misunderstanding. Here, Batman is completely justified in thinking that Superman is an irresponsible, superhuman monster—because he is.

Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor was gleeful and cartoonish, and provided the perfect foil to Christopher Reeve's Superman back in the '70s and '80s. Kevin Spacey's take on Hackman's Lex brought more menace, but he still seemed to be a legitimate counterpoint to Brandon Routh's interpretation of Superman.

Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor looks like a cosplaying weirdo in a red wig.

Superhero movies tend to bite off more than they can chew. Solo-hero movies need to tell origins, adapt outdated or outlandish concepts to a more realistic medium, and still tell a satisfying story with a beginning, middle, and end. Sequels are tough, too, because even though they have the origins out of the way, they need to push the characters' stories forward without rehashing the old movies or deviating too far from what made them work in the first place. Take all that trouble, and multiply it by two or three when you throw a bunch of heroes together for a team-up movie.

While Joss Whedon's first Avengers movie managed to make all this work, his follow-up, Avengers: Age of Ultron, has been criticized for having too many characters with too little to do, a haphazard story, and generally feeling more like a placeholder to set up other forthcoming Marvel movies.

With that in mind, imagine now what we'll see in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, a movie featuring Superman fighting Batman, with planned appearances from Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Cyborg, and who-knows-who-else. DC Comics and Warner Bros. are taking this opportunity to plant several seeds for their cinematic future at once, and hoping they'll all take root. If the result is anything other than an incomprehensible, exposition-heavy, cameo-laden mess, it'll be a miracle.