“Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an alien demi-god fighting a masked murderer?”

I wanted this to be incredible.

Like a lot of people, when I was younger I grew up on Batman: The Animated Series, and the episode “World’s Finest” was a seminal landmark in my geek adolescent superhero history. After years of school yard arguments, the two superheros, Batman and Superman, finally fought, and eventually overcame their differences for a greater good, and then formed the Justice League. If you would have told me as a child that one day in the far future, I would be sitting down and witnessing a live action, big budget version of this, my head would’ve probably exploded. If you were able to calm me down and try to explain to me that they somehow got it all absolutely wrong, and despite a few decent moments here and there, it was absolutely awful, I  probably would have started crying.

What can be said that has not already been said about Batman v Superman? At this point it’s like making fun of someone who had already been publicly ridiculed. I could say that this movie deserves a gold star for trying, but the truth is maybe it tried too hard, and in over compensating it gave us a bizarre cluster of random plots and scenes, that allegedly are building toward a bigger picture, but ultimately was confusing and unnecessary. The most upsetting thing for me seemed to be the choice of characterizations for, well, most of the cast. Gone is the bright-eyed idealist and symbol of hope Superman is supposed to be, replaced by someone who barely speaks in this movie and through montages, is shown to seem utterly burdened by heroics and not really saving people from the good of his heart. As his counterpoint, we have a Batman who is so jaded by crime fighting at this point, he is now a vicious killer. Let me point that out again, this Batman, despite “no guns” being a severely integral part of his entire character, is shown straight up shooting and killing people.

This whole movie tried its hardest to set up a world where superheroes exist, but it seems like this world is a bleak and joyless place because these heroes exist. I have been a huge fan of superheroes my entire life, and I am honestly overjoyed I live in a time where I am never too far away from a movie or TV show based on something I love, but this one is what finally made me see what people are complaining about. Watching this movie I finally got superhero fatigue. I went into this movie expecting “Worlds Finest,” and what I got was two grown men in capes brooding for nearly two hours through a terrible browned out Instagram filter. I wanted “World’s Finest,” and got “World’s Worst.”