A new, full-length trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice debuted at Comic Con this weekend and has now hit the web. Here are a few takeaways from our first real look at the upcoming epic tussle between the two DC Comics titans.
Saving mankind from extinction was never going to be enough
One of the biggest criticisms of Man of Steel was the film’s blitzkrieg denouement, in which Superman battled General Zod against a backdrop of Metropolis’s near-destruction by the Kryptonian villain’s brutal “world engine”. In many ways, the epic conclusion felt like a hamfisted attempt to go one step further than the dramatic finale of rival Marvel’s The Avengers a year earlier, in which New York was partly destroyed by an alien invasion. But at least director Zack Snyder has seen fit to use the devastation of the great city as a springboard for the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, even if the introduction of a hearing featuring Holly Hunter’s supercilious senator feels a little too close to similar scenes in Iron Man 2 for comfort. What’s clear is that not everyone sees Superman as a hero, given the appalling fallout of the Earth’s latest extraterrestrial invasion, and some are out for blood.
This could be the nastiest big-screen Batman
The new trailer shows a caped crusader who appears to have lost his way, even before the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and who adopts a ruthless and vindictive approach to vigilante activities in his home city of Gotham that attracts the attention of crusading Daily Planet journo Clark Kent, even before the pair’s costumed battles. This unhinged Batman is the perfect opponent for Superman, a symbol of mankind’s blind rage in the face of its devastating first contact with intelligent alien life. He’s a superhero with a tabloid mentality: he sees only the vivid, garish headlines – the destruction of his own Wayne Financial tower in Metropolis and the deaths of people he loved – and ignores the story’s fine detail.
Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is a weakling master-manipulator
The new Luthor is neither the clownish figure of the later Christopher Reeve-era movies, nor the powerfully built, bald-headed villain often seen in the comic books. Instead, Eisenberg seems to be playing him as a nasty little trust-fund playboy, a villain educated enough to reference the folk hero of the American revolution Paul Revere (“the redcoats are coming”) but, presumably, dumb enough not to realise that getting in the middle of a fight between the big boys is only ever going to end badly.
The phrase appears to combine the expression, “the British are coming”, for which Revere is known, but probably never uttered, with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s reference to the invading force of British loyalists by their scarlet uniforms in his famous patriotic poem Paul Revere’s Ride. But what Luthor means here is another matter: are the redcoats the “greater threat” that is expected to unite Batman and Superman as the Justice League, after they’ve resolved their superhero spat? Might they be the “S”-sporting soldiers seen bowing to the man of steel in the trailer? Or is Luther referring to the sudden arrival of an assortment of real-life superheroes, from Wonder Woman to Aquaman and Cyborg, in the brave new Warner Bros/DC Comics “cinematic universe”?
Frank Miller’s influence is beginning to manifest
The parallels with Miller’s 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, which also depicted a Batman jaded from decades battling crime, are clear – even if Snyder appears to be cherrypicking motifs rather than plumping for a direct adaptation. A well as a caped crusader who’s closer to full-on villain than antihero, those super-soldiers explicitly recall the episode in Miller’s famous comic book in which Bruce Wayne reluctantly accepts the fealty of a ragtag group of vigilantes, known as the Sons of Batman, who have sprung from the detritus of a horrific, murderous Gotham subculture known as the Mutants. Have these new members of Superman’s personal protection force independently decided to form a militia in support of their hero? Or are they a distraction concocted by Luthor to discredit the man of steel by painting him as a threat to democracy and the rule of law?
Wonder Woman risks playing gooseberry in this superhero bro-down
We’ve already heard that the first big-screen take on the best-known female hero in the DC Comics canon will have a significantly upgraded backstory in Dawn of Justice, which should afford her the stature to take on Bats and Supes. But the new trailer doesn’t explain what part Gal Gadot’s battling interloper has to play in the events of the new film, nor why she has suddenly decided to reveal herself to the world. Batman v Superman, as the movie’s not-so-subtle title more than hints, needs to serve both as an epic superhero face-off and as an introduction to DC’s own version of The Avengers. The worry is that Warner is trying to build its universe too quickly because it fears following the model adopted by rival Marvel – a standalone movie to introduce each individual hero, followed by an epic ensemble flick – too closely. Fulfilling this new blueprint for developing a fully formed superhero universe will be Snyder’s greatest challenge.
