Batgirl

Say what you like about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or the MCU, for short) — and I do, frequently — but you can’t deny that it has a grim efficiency. The MCU impressively herds tens of millions of unsuspecting moviegoers into theaters to watch the latest incomprehensible special effects behemoth, with a wildly overqualified and suitably embarrassed cast. As I write this, the latest installment to threaten audiences is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Now I don’t know what Quantumania is, and I will be perfectly happy to never find out. But as the previous film, Ant-Man and the Wasp (the titles lack a certain finesse), made more than $600 million at the box office, I accept I might be in the minority.

Although it’s not exactly my cinematic bag, I understand why people were looking forward to Batgirl. It is a superhero film (as so many are these days), but with a potentially interesting female lead, namely Barbara Gordon, aka "Batgirl," the daughter of Commissioner Gordon, Batman’s ally. The film attracted a starry cast, including J.K. Simmons as Gordon, Brendan Fraser as the sociopathic antagonist Ted Carson, aka "Firefly," and Michael Keaton gamely reprising his Batman role. It cost $90 million, was directed by the filmmakers responsible for the surprisingly entertaining Bad Boys For Life, and might have been expected to be a modest box office hit: at the very least, it should have provided a couple hours of undemanding entertainment.