BvS & Suicide Squad
Meet the key players of DC’s very own cinematic universe.
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
Director Zac k Snyder St arring Henry Cavi ll, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams , Jese Eisenberg, Gal Gadot , Jason Momoa
ETA 25 March 2016
It’s long overdue
Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker first pitched the movie at the turn of the millennium but Frank Miller’s four-part The Dark Knight Returns, in which a de-retired Batman battles Superman (who’s now working for the US government), was published back in 1986. After Walker piqued interest, Akiva Goldsman was commissioned to write a script in which, against the advice of Superman, Bruce Wayne avenges the Joker’s hit on his girlfriend, but the project was shelved – but not before an Easter egg was seen in the opening moments of I Am Legend (also penned by Goldsman): a vast poster of a combined logo in Times Square. The new logo is not dissimilar.
It’s muscular
Tabloids suggest not only did Ben Affleck, 42, start training twice a day from the moment he signed on the dotted line to play Batman but he and returning Superman Henry Cavill – 10 years his junior – engaged in one-upmanship on set, trying to outlift one another between takes. Rather than suppress the posturing, director Zack Snyder was said to be glad it added tension to their scenes.
It’s not a direct adaptation
While there are elements of Miller’s Dark Knight
Returns in BvS, it’s not the only graphic novel said to be informing David S. Goyer’s screenplay as rewritten by Argo’s Chris Terrio. Also offering inspiration are Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s four-part Kingdom Come, from 1996, in which Batman resents Superman for abandoning Earth a decade earlier in our hour of need, and Batman: Noël by Lee Bermejo – a reworking of Dickens’
A Christmas Carol, with Bruce Wayne as Scrooge.
It’s the second DCU movie
Not that DC has actually adopted rival Marvel’s nomenclature but BvS is officially the second in its shared universe series, following Snyder’s Man Of
Steel. Banished are all memories of Reeve, Routh, Hackman and Spacey, not to mention the Batmen of yore – Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney and Bale – as Warner Bros readies another 11 crossing-over films, starting with Suicide Squad [ see over] then Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Shazam, Cyborg, Green Lantern, two Justice League films and stand-alone Superman and Batman sequels into 2020.
It features an awesome batsuit
Although the intel’s been disowned by supposed source Rehan Jalali, Affleck’s trainer, details emerged last year of two batsuits – one in classic rubber, another encrusted in Kryptonite with missile launchers. The trailer seems to confirm the armoured incarnation, one shot showing Batman in a battle-scarred helmet with his eyes aglow. Keen to bag himself a souvenir, Affleck asked the producers about “taking the suit home at the end... They said, ‘For $100k’. I said, ‘Well, maybe I’ll just take a picture...’”
It’ll introduce Wonder Woman
While it’s another two years ’til her stand-alone movie flies in, Amazonian goddess Diana Prince will grace screens in BvS, in the Xena: Warrior
Princess- like form of Fast & Furious regular Gal Gadot. 2011 reboot The New 52 is the basis for this Wonder Woman, indicating she’ll be seen as the daughter of Zeus and a love interest for Superman – uh-oh, Lois... How this fits the chronology of her own origin-story movie (“An Amazon princess comes to the world of Man to become the greatest of the superheroines”) remains to be seen.
It’ll be enormous
Perhaps on the advice of fan Christopher Nolan, who acted in a consulting role during development, BvS will be partly shot in IMAX format, as if 3D weren’t eye-popping enough. There are logistical issues with the size and noise of IMAX cameras, but one scene reported to have been shot using the hi-res tech is the murder of young Bruce Wayne’s parents – even though the Waynes are notably absent from the cast list.
It’ll be all one film
Inevitably, there was talk of chopping the much-anticipated release into two, with the first part to be subtitled Enter The Knight. For once, sanity prevailed and the epic will be released intact, albeit with the later of the two mooted release dates, the phantom first installment having been penciled in for this year. DC isn’t immune to eking out its material, however, and Snyder will return to direct the Justice League movies planned for 2017 and 2019.
It’ll be cameo-tastic...
...We hope. Rumours abound as to how links will be built to the Suicide Squad and Justice League titles to come, with Jared Leto’s Joker tipped to be making a post-credits appearance and talk of LexCorp reanimating a Man Of Steel adversary. We do know Holly Hunter, Scoot McNairy, Captain
America: Winter Soldier’s Callan Mulvey and Jena Malone have been cast in unspecified roles, with the latter tipped to be playing a female Robin, but Snyder’s staying suitably schtum. TF