There have been so many thinkpieces written about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at this point (most terrible, by the way) that it may seem everything has been said about the film that possibly can be. But Zack Snyder continues to give us more to think about, and in recent conversations with IGN and Empire he talks about a couple of key scenes that will be fleshed out at a later time.
Snyder addressed the scene in the film that saw Ben Affleck's Batman brooding over the costume of his former sidekick, Robin, who had clearly been murdered by the Joker (played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad) years earlier.
"In my mind, it was that Robin had died 10 years earlier, during some run in with a young Joker. To me, it was a fun backstory there to play with. The whole idea was that there had been loss and sacrifice. In a weird way, he sacrificed everything to be Batman, right? He doesn’t really have a life outside of the cave. I thought by including Robin — a dead Robin — it would help us understand he’s been on quite a little journey."
Will that story be revealed any further in Suicide Squad? Or perhaps on the 'Batman v Superman' Ultimate Cut? It's possible, but that seems like something that could be held for a solo Batman movie, which we know Affleck has already written.
There's also the matter of those foreboding dream sequences plaguing Batman throughout, both appearing to tease Snyder's upcoming Justice League films. In fact, Snyder has admitted the scene with The Flash (Ezra Miller) warning Batman about the future had been added later into production as a setup for future stories.
"Let’s just say this, I think it’s OK to look at the extended dream sequence as an impressionistic view of a possible future. And that’s not hard to—I mean that’s in the sequence; I’m not spoiling anything or making up anything that you should see. So the connection with The Flash part of that sequence, you can speculate whether he’s coming from that reality or another one. That’s the fun stuff to try and figure out exactly what Flash is saying to Bruce and what it means. We know, so we’re not making it up."
And what about that other dream with the not-so-subtle tease for the villain Darkseid? What's that all about? Snyder, ever the comic book fanboy, quipped...
"Maybe he exists out there in the universe. Maybe he’s looking for something. Something that is against life?”
He's talking about the Anti-Life Equation, a weapon that would give Darkseid the ability to remove all free will from the universe. Sounds like this is what he'll be searching for in Justice League, and that's a story worthy of being a two-parter.
