That Trailer...

No! Not THAT one. Jeez, that's everywhere - what could I possibly add to all that? Nice trailer. Very exciting. There, done.

No, I mean this one . Here's the earlier-than-planned teaser for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice,

I really hope you didn't actually look at the teaser in my small window and instead checked it out in HD with fullscreen loaded up, because visually it really is rather lovely to look at - especially now that we have the real deal and not some Brazillian shaky sneaky cinemacam (boo!)

So anyway, yep, it's a teaser and we're still over a year out from the movie. I say this because my first reaction was a quiet "uh-oh"  - to be honest, it looks like it plays directly into the hands and mouths of the vocal crowd who hoot the usual mantra about DC being "dark and gritty" and therefore not fun. Well, what did you expect?

The central premise of the movie is the first-ever cinematic head-to-head between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight. It's happened in comics and in animated adaptations, but here it is in live action - a big deal, so of course you put it in the teaser.

Some positives, then: Affleck looks pretty good in the Bat-suit, and there's an obvious study of Frank Millar's Dark Knight comics in Zack Snyder's direction. Crikey - Henry Cavill looks like a TITAN in his costume (and most of it is him!), and the recognisable voices - Holly Hunter, Jeremy Irons, Jesse Eisenberg - Neil Degrasse Tyson, are really intriguing. Props for what looks to be Mexico in one crowd scene (the Day of the Dead one). If so, it's good to see some other non-US locations in a superhero movie these days.

And it's dark. Of course it's dark. It's always darkest before the Dawn - and guess what this movie's subtitle is? I think far from this being a hasty attempt to build a Justice League franchise inside a Superman movie, or a misguided muddying of a Superman sequel putting Batman front and centre, this looks to me more assured than that. Superman is front and centre here - the teaser is a direct callback to Jonathan Kent's warning to Clark in the first movie, so this story can only be a logical sequel, even if the first movie suggested a more optimistic ending. Millar's The Dark Knight has been shipped in, but it's intriguing to see the roles of the combatants reversed here - instead of Kal El being the government stooge sent to wipe out the renegade Batman, here we seem to have a Batman brought out of retirement and into some very heavy armour to neutralise the new Public Enemy Number One.

 And of course there are some notable omissions - no Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman and (maybe) Flash; Lex and Alfred are there in voice only. I can't wait to see them, but that's obviously being saved for further down the line. Really, if you're going to set up your stall around one of the biggest stand-offs in comic history, then this is a pretty good way of setting the scene. Roll on teaser number two!