Lileks: Batman v. Superman v. your sense of hearing

No, I will not see "Batman v Superman." The title is two words too long, for one thing. Another Batman would be OK, but the dark 'n' gritty rain-soaked festival of misery has run its course, and when you see pictures of Batman standing alone, utterly morose, the rain running down his face like tears, you don't know if he's thinking of his parents' murder or the message he got on his phone saying he'd used up 75 percent of his data. It's his thing, I guess, but you just wish Alfred would grind up some Ambien in the morning oatmeal now and then.

Superman is boring if you're over 14. He can do anything. Fly. Turn back time. Taste Wi-Fi networks. Hear someone pop their knuckles in Thailand. Blow out volcanoes. Sharpen knives between his canines and incisors. Explain John Kasich's end game. If you have a green rock from his home planet, it makes him take PTO, but eventually he gets over it. As a sunny, can-do figure, he's endearing but ridiculous; as a serious, glowering Alien Savior with Issues, he's just an unbeatable Batman who wears his underwear on the outside.

It's the "v" part that made me wonder if Hollywood had gone daft. Here's how that would seem to work.

Batman: (growling) "This town isn't big enough for the two of us."

Superman: (glowering nobly) "I disagree. The statistical metro area encompasses 47 square miles. Besides, I spend most of my time in Metropolis. This is Gotham. You can have it."

Batman: (slight smirk; rain runs down curled lips.) "No, Clark. You can have it. And here it is."

BATMAN PUNCHES SUPERMAN

SUPERMAN VAPORIZES BATMAN WITH X-RAYS

Right? Unless Superman picks the fight first, not realizing that Batman has lured him into the old abandoned Gotham Plot-Point Factory, where the Joker was making synthetic Kryptonite. Then Superman collapses and Batman kicks him into the metal shredder. Hoorah. I guess. Dark, man. Gritty as popcorn sprinkled with sand.

Feh. Superheroes fighting is nothing new. Marvel movies do this all the time, but I hate it. Usually it's an excuse for an overlong CGI sequence that exists because it's been 13 minutes since the last eye-searing, eardrum-lancing action sequence. If "Downton Abbey" was like this they'd stop in the middle of talks about the war or the servants and just start punching each other in the face halfway through every episode. If this idea had been applied to "Saving Private Ryan," two soldiers would have had a brawl as they were slogging through the water to the breach.

If it sounded good, I'd go, but like so many movies these days, it sounds unbearably loud, constantly, pointlessly loud. Given the quality of movie-theater sound systems, it's like being stuffed into a huge timpani with a gorilla who keeps punching you while the timpani bounces down the cliff of the Grand Canyon. It's as if they fear the audience will start looking at their phones and start Snapchatting with friends unless the decibel level gives you a concussion every two minutes.

And then there's the carnage. Modern movies require excessive amounts of urban destruction, and to be honest, it's lost its appeal. I keep thinking: Who is going to pay for this? We're looking at a government bailout of the property insurance market at a minimum, and for the next 20 years my house insurance has a 3 percent Superman surcharge.

Never mind, that's not the point. All your childhood joys will be brought to life at the cost of billions of dollars, shown in 3-D on indoor screens the size of the Starlight Drive-in. You win. The kids win. All your stories become the dominant American cultural product.

I would have been ecstatic. But I wouldn't have expected that I would tire of the bombast, the unreality of the action, the feeling of leaving the theater with a lacerated spleen. I wouldn't have thought that I'd put on the earlier Michael Bay movies because now they looked like Ingmar Bergman stories of a guy playing chess for an hour.

So I'm done. Except for the next Captain America, which is a great series of movies. In the next one he fights Iron Man! Good. If anyone needs a good beatdown by a God-fearing patriotic man with a sense of decorum, it's Tony Stark. I also hope they make more Ant-Man and Thor, and hopes are high for Dr. Strange. He's a magician! And he fights a guy whose head is on fire. Awesome!

I wonder what used to keep grown-ups from being excited about such things. Besides shame, that is.