Batman V Superman Moments We Didn't See Coming

For astute viewers, the trailers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice left very little to the imagination compared to the actual movie. Regardless of the fact that most of the plot had already been revealed by a few minutes of trailers, there were still a few moments that we completely didn't anticipate. Let's hit the streets of Gotham and Metropolis to find some scenes from Batman v Superman we weren't expecting. As you'd expect, there are major spoilers ahead.

Told succinctly in the first few minutes of the film, we see why Bruce Wayne became Batman, more or less. We all know about the murder of Batman's parents. This time, little Bruce has a weird dream where the circling swarm of cave bats levitates him out of a hole he fell through near Wayne Manor, all without messing up his hair. Zack Snyder didn't have to include these all-too-familiar origins in a film that already runs for two hours and 33 minutes, but he did. He liked his work so much, he included it twice. Do we really need to see Thomas and Martha Wayne gunned down each time we get a new Batman actor?

After 18 months, the crashed Kryptonian ship is still in the middle of Metropolis, presumably because no one can get inside, and no one can really move it anywhere (mind you this is pretty much Superman's city). It's a logical conclusion that the area might still be a focal point of the city after the disastrous Kryptonian tussle. Even though the thing is constantly covered and obscured by an inflatable sports dome, presumably to keep the special effects budget within reason, it's still nice to see one thing that the trailers didn't blurt out already.

It's apparent that no one has been able to get into the alien ship, even though it has a very obviously-marked fingerprint access panel, and they have the pilot's dead hand at their disposal. We can presume that the ship would only respond to a living alien hand, and no one could figure out how to make Zod's hand do the job. Luthor's solution is deviously and stupidly simple: use kryptonite to slice off Zod's fingertips and glue them onto his own little hands. Lo and behold, it works—and the ship has no problem handing over the keys to whoever comes through the front door, which is also unexpected. Nice security system, guys.

Batman v Superman's trailers make Lex Luthor seem like a cross between The Riddler and a Red Bull-addled kid whose second language is English. The calm, collected, and elegant Lex we saw during the BvS Super Bowl commercial gave us hope that we'd be getting the Luthor that we're accustomed to in the books, cartoons, animated features, and previous Superman movies. Alas, this would not be the case, as airplane Lex was anomalous to the personality that Lex displayed, both publicly and privately, throughout the film. Lex Luthor is not the brilliant tactician that we're used to, or even a dual identity like Batman or Superman; he's just a crazy jerk.

The turning point in the battle between Batman and Superman isn't the arrival of Doomsday, forcing them to come together to fight a common foe, but instead the fact that both of their moms are named Martha. After hearing Superman ask him to save Martha before the dealing the killing blow, Batman starts connecting the dots between their brands of heroism. More importantly, he remembers why he wanted to become Batman: not to hurt criminals and keep them off the streets, but to prevent tragedies like what happened to his parents. Because Batman v Superman would be nothing without a big, destructive fight between Batman and Superman, Supes keeps the ol' Martha bomb quiet until he's about to die.

Fans had been led to believe that Aquaman, Cyborg, and The Flash would be making an appearance in Dawn of Justice, with Aquaman even appearing on promotional images for the film, under the tagline "Unite the Seven." What we didn't see coming is that the seven would not actually be united in any way, even for a moment. Instead, all we got to see were brief snippets of security footage depicting each new hero. The reveals themselves weren't so bad, but certainly not the caliber that we were led to believe.

It's really dangerous to welcome time travel into any fictional universe, because once someone can hop through time, actions stop having real consequences unless a very careful set of rules is built around the concept. No one foresaw The Flash tearing through time to warn Bruce Wayne about the future. Likewise, no one could have guessed that the warnings wouldn't even be related to this film, but presumably one in the distant future, when the Justice League already knows Bruce Wayne's identity. Maybe it was just a dream, but maybe it wasn't.

DC Comics sometimes seems shy about incorporating a lot of the awesome, fun, and ridiculous stuff from their printed history, so Wonder Woman displaying some of her comic-accurate superpowers is a surprising move. She was fighting with swords, using bracelets that can deflect anything, and actually using the Lasso of Truth to harness Doomsday long enough for Batman and Superman to deliver the final blows. If DC allows magical stuff like that into their cinematic universe, they're already years ahead of Marvel in making things weird (until Doctor Strange debuts), which is always fun.

Movie Doomsday doesn't have a lot in common with comic Doomsday. Comic Doomsday is a kinda big guy who's covered in bony protuberances whose offensive powers are limited to punching things and being really tough. Movie Doomsday absorbs energy from his surroundings and releases crazy pulse waves as he grows in size and fires lasers from his whole face. The sheer size of the villainous beast by the end of the fight is pretty surprising, since it's so off-model, but fortunately, it's also kinda cool to see a bad guy who gets bigger as you punch them.

Dawn of Justice was basically a prolonged buildup to a relatively brief Doomsday battle, but comic fans knew that there was a fifty-fifty chance that Superman would bite the dust by the end of the film. You simply can't have Doomsday without a dead Superman, bearing in mind that Superman is totally DC's next big cash cow after the Caped Crusader. Fear not, however, because DC isn't interested in building any suspense whatsoever. By the end of the film, Superman's powers were manifesting over his casket, indicating that he's still alive—which shouldn't be a surprise since he survived a nuclear blast a few minutes prior.