A large amount of new Batman v Superman footage and promo material was released today, and strangely all it includes some major new information on the heroes who will be v-ing each other in the film. Here are four things we gleaned from the new trailer, TV spot, and images.
1) Batman wants to kill Superman just in case.
We don’t know if Ben Affleck’s interpretation of the Dark Knight will follow his famous “no killing” policy from the comics. But if he does, he’s clearly going to make an exception for Superman—even if there’s only a 1-in-100 chance of Superman turning evil. Now, I find it strange that Batman would be so determined to “destroy” Superman when he is presumably putting his supervillains in Arkham Asylum instead of killing them. So it’s okay to kill the Man of Steel if he has a one percent chance of killing more people, but the Joker, who has a 99.9 percent chance of killing more people, is allowed to live? That’s messed up.
3) Bruce Wayne is basically Lex Luthor.
Obviously, Jesse Eisenberg is actually playing Lex Luthor in the movie, but he’s portraying Lex as a sort of elfin, non-superpowered Mr. Mxylzptlk, looking to cause trouble for the heroes. Affleck’s Bruce Wayne is much more like the comic Luthor, the brilliant billionaire who distrusts Superman and his powers, and wants to stop him by any means necessary. Given how much Batman hates Superman in all the BvS footage so far—here, Batman literally wants to murder him on the 1-in-100 chance he turns bad—I have no idea how what’s going to make him set aside his anger and partner up with Supes.
3) Darkseid is coming.
Here’s the biggie: This new photo (the upper-left pic in the Tweet above), revealed in Empire magazine, shows a moment in the much-vaunted dream sequence from BvS where a giant Mega symbol can be seen on the ground. Comic fans know that “omega” is Darkseid’s symbol, seeing as he wants to end basically everything. There’s literally no other reason for this than as a prelude to the arrival of the DC’s universe’s biggest, baddest villain.
Now, some people have interpreted this as meaning Darkseid will be in Batman v Superman; this is absolutely not (necessarily) true. It’s infinitely more likely that the dystopian nightmare is a prelude to the Justice League movies, where Darkseid will be the main villain.
I have also seen that the existence of Darkseid means that the New Gods are “confirmed” to exist in the DC movie-verse, but unfortunately that’s not necessarily true either. It would be extremely easy for Darkseid to show up and no one ever mention the other New Gods. In fact, it would likely be preferable not to bring them up. I imagine even DC/WB isn’t insane enough to try to convince mass audiences to get interested in Mister Miracle, divine alien escape artist extraordinaire. (I’m not knocking the beautiful insanity of Jack Kirby’s work, but I’m also not sure it would translate into 21st-century box office success.)
4) Wonder Woman flies commercial.
Last and somehow least, this fourth official trailer for the film is basically the footage revealed at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, with a few brief new shots, the biggest of which is... uh... Wonder Woman storing her luggage in a plane? It seems kind of weird to me to include footage of Diana that features her doing something so mundane, especially when all the other footage is about Bats and Supes glowering, sulking and/or fighting. Is the luggage-putting-up scene really worth including in a trailer? Do they not have other Wonder Woman footage that they can use that hasn’t been in all the other trailers? Hmm...