If you were watching Gotham last night, you saw a pretty awesome, if one-sided, fight between the main cast and a bunch of monks. You also saw the above clip from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which debuted exclusively on Gotham ahead of a new trailer arriving on Jimmy Kimmel Live tomorrow. And we’ve got a few theories about what’s going on in the above bit.
First things first: That’s most likely not Superman. Keep in mind that a previous trailer featured Luthor taking delivery of one very dead General Zod. It also contained a weird moment where Superman kneels before Luthor, who then waves his hand over the Supernoggin. In the comics, Luthor has a long, long history of attempting to clone his self-declared greatest nemesis. Of course, it never goes well, sometimes yielding a chalky, backwards-talking brute called Bizarro. Also, since when does Superman have a desert torture chamber and an army? How would he even fund a heavily armed squad of troops with his symbol on their arms, his Daily Planet expense account?
Another possibility, of course, is that Superman isn’t in his right mind. Another tried-and-true story device involves Luthor manipulating Superman’s mind. It’s a little cheesy, but this whole movie, underneath its gritty exterior, appears to be heavily inspired by Silver Age comics, in which such plot devices were common, so we won’t rule anything out.
This does, however, raise a few questions, not the least of which is what’s going to happen now that Luthor, and possibly Superman, know Batman’s secret identity. While that does eliminate one of the more glaring questions from the comics — namely why Superman doesn’t know who Batman is right away — one assumes it will have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the film. Now if we could just figure out if Michael Shannon is in the movie…