Around two and a quarter hours into Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, even Batman (Ben Affleck) has no idea what’s going on. A giant horned creature has hatched from an amniotic sac and is swinging from a Metropolis skyscraper. A kryptonite spear is lying at the bottom of a flooded stairwell. Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) is playing with a kitchen timer. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is flying to Gotham City, premium economy. Superman (Henry Cavill)…well, let’s say he's temporarily indisposed.

“What’s happening, Alfred?” our hero barks at his faithful butler (Jeremy Irons) via the intercom on his Batwing fighter jet. There’s a brief pause, then Alfred’s voice comes crackling back, reedy and sardonic. “How best to describe it?”

Under the circumstances, it’s a reasonable question. The best I can do is apocalyptic sneezing fit: largely because whenever you think it’s dying down, its nostrils start fluttering again.

No major blockbuster in years has been this incoherently structured, this seemingly uninterested in telling a story with clarity and purpose. It grumbles along for what feels like forever, jinking from subplot to subplot, until two shatteringly expensive-looking fights happen back to back, and the whole thing crunches to a halt.