Godzilla sequels are good examples of the post-disaster sub-genre since Godzilla films take place in a universe where a singular, personified threat exists, and must be dealt with—even if that threat (ie: Godzilla) is inevitably the only thing standing between one major disaster and the next disaster. "Dawn of Justice"'s fears of a post-9/11 landscape are palpable, and they tend to make the film's more generic disaster movie elements a joyless slog: disaster is a certainty, an unavoidable reality that has happened, and therefore can—and perhaps inevitably must—happen again. They also make the film an unusual, conceptually intriguing anomaly. This really isn't your daddy's superhero movie ... it's much more depressing than that.

Superman in "Dawn of Justice" is like Godzilla in "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster:" People in the film fear him, but viewers know he's not the real threat. In the film's introductory sequence, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) relives General Zod's near destruction of Metropolis, Superman's home. We have presumably seen these events from a different perspective, but many "Man of Steel" viewers came away from that film with the same point-of-view as Wayne in "Dawn of Justice": Superman (Henry Cavill) is responsible. You can't help but come to that conclusion after you see what Wayne sees: a colleague destroyed in a wantonly razed office building; traumatized, maimed innocents threatened by crumbling debris; space invaders so unconcerned with property damage that they plow through buildings, shearing off the sides of parallel skyscrapers. Why didn't the government—I mean Superman—stop this? Who's to blame?

Not Superman, actually. In fact, if anyone can be blamed for the precipitation of the film's new apocalyptic threat, Doomsday, it's Wayne and/or his villainous foil Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). Which is interesting because Wayne is a hero. Mostly.

We begin with the assumption that both Luthor and Wayne want to do the same thing: prevent the next disaster. But nobody listens to these guys, especially not Senator Finch (Holly Hunter). This is a typical power dynamic at the start of disaster movies like "Meteor," "Earthquake," and "The Towering Inferno": the writing is on the proverbial wall, but no authority figure notices or cares. Think of "Jaws"—nobody with power listens to Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss's Nostradamus-like doomsayers when they suggest that Amity's beach must be evacuated.

