We’re going to throw a Spoiler Warning up for one particular sequence for next year's DC comics movie. If you don’t want to know, then stop reading now.
While the newest trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice has made quite a bit much more clear regarding the film’s plot, there’s one thing that we’ve seen that still doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s a sequence we’ve seen that involves Batman being captured by soldiers in the desert with intriguing insignias on their arms. It also including a chilling scene where the soldiers all kneel in reverence when in the presence of The Man of Steel. Within the context of the film as we know it, this scene seemed to have no context. Now we know why. Because it doesn’t really happen.
The beans were officially spilled by the film’s costume designer Michael Wilkinson. He tells Omelete than the scene is actually a nightmare had by Bruce Wayne of what he’s afraid Superman will do to the world.
Zack had a great idea of this sort of nightmare-ish vision, almost a vision of the future, a post-apocalyptic vision. It's like a dream that Ben has, so we wanted to, it has almost a Mad Max quality to it where it's like the end of the world, trying to survive and then of course Superman and his minions come, so it's sort of a way of representing the amazing amounts of, the sort of obsessive quality that Bruce Wayne has about the threat of Superman.
The question of whether Superman is a man or a god looks to be a central point of conflict in the film. Although, Batman doesn’t seem to be the only person who doesn’t consider Superman to be a hero. The world seems to be a long way from "Superman rules the world as god-king" that Bruce Wayne apparently fears, but then that’s why it’s called an obsession. Something about this shot always made us feel weird. Now we know why.
One of the key aspects of this sequence that we saw in the preview that was teased during Gotham last week was Superman removing the mask and seeing Batman as Bruce Wayne. The fact that it’s all a nightmare now changes that as well, so whether secret identities will be revealed is now an open question once again.
Is the dream sequence good news, as it essentially throws the scene out, or were you looking forward to seeing it play out as the real thing? Is using the scene as a major part of advertising great marketing, or a bait-and-switch? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
