With two of the biggest comic book characters of all-time appearing side-by-side in a live-action film, the second installment of the DCEU should have been a smash hit. Instead, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ultimately underperformed at the box office, failed to win over critics as well as many fans, and set the stage for a faltering comic book universe. While it certainly has its dedicated fans, Zack Snyder's film was incredibly divisive.
In the years since the film’s release, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has been torn apart many times over. The inconsistent characterization and illogical storyline have drawn the most criticism, with every major story beat either feeling far too convenient or far too convoluted to make any real sense. Meanwhile, many simply disapproved of how these iconic superheroes were portrayed in the film. It's very easy to get caught up in all the head-scratching “Martha” moments of the movie and miss the actual production mistakes that hide within the film. These include everything from simple continuity errors involve an actor's positioning between shots, to forgetting something as big as what year the events of the story were supposed to take place.
Batman v Superman has also suffered a number of errors due to subsequent DCEU installments. While movies like Justice League and Wonder Woman could have helped clarify some of the movie's more perplexing moments, they've instead added more confusion to an already inconsistent and ill-planned comic book universe.
Here are 20 Mistakes Fans Completely Missed In Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.
20. The disappearing witch
Being the tech genius that he is, one might think that Lex Luthor would instead opt for an iPhone slideshow rather than a stack of polaroids when trying to intimidate the Man of Steel. Nevertheless, Lex pulls the spread of photos from his pocket, revealing that Lois was simply a distraction while Clark’s mother was the real target.
Lex proceeds to call Martha a witch, which makes little sense, but to get his point across even more, the word is seen etched across her forehead. However, when Batman and Supes finally team up to rescue Martha, the word “witch” is nowhere in sight. There’s not even a black smudge mark where the word might have existed. Could Martha be a witch after all?
19. File size matters
After Bruce manages to break into Lex's encrypted files, he’s nice enough to forward them on to Diana, who had a vested interest in recovering the old photo of herself from World War I. Diana also discovers that there are far more “metahumans” living amongst them than just her and Superman, as she watches footage of the Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman.
However, the entire attachment size on the original message Bruce sent Diana reads just 24 MB. When Diana actually stars sifting through the folders, some of the individual videos alone have a much bigger file size than the entire attachment. If it was going to be accurate, the message should have been 761 MB or greater.
18. The Jeep Renegade from the future
At the beginning of the film, we get a flashback to the climactic events of Man of Steel — this time, from Bruce Wayne’s point of view. After taking a helicopter across the bay to help evacuate Wayne Enterprises, Bruce hops in a Jeep Renegade to make the rest of his way through the winding city streets. It’s far from the flashiest car we’ve seen Bruce drive, but it happens to be the only one that's come straight out of the future.
While this 2016 model may have been for sale at the time Batman v Superman was released, it wasn’t exactly around during the events of Man of Steel, making this a bit of an oversight on the part of the filmmakers.
17. Superman’s ever-changing hair and eyes
Superman’s hair gel may be the real hero of the DCEU, as it seems to hold everything in place even when the hero is flying at supersonic speeds. However, the hero’s hair actually does get messed up for once, while he’s taking a beating from Batman. Then, miraculously, it’s back into place throughout Superman’s entire battle with Doomsday.
Speaking of Doomsday, Superman’s eyes happen to be open when he ends up meeting his demise at the hands of the monstrous beast. They’re also open when he falls to the ground in Doomsday’s grasp. However, when Lois comes to hold his lifeless body, Clark’s eyes are suddenly closed — which may be inconsistent, but it did help make the scene a lot more heartfelt.
16. Lex Luthor’s Steppenwolf reference
Batman v Superman spent so much time trying to set up its own shared universe that many of the scenes either went over the viewer's head or straight-up didn’t make sense. For instance, after Lex is imprisoned, he foreshadows a dire threat that is currently on route to Earth. This was likely a reference to Steppenwolf, who showed up as the antagonist in Justice League the following year. How exactly did Lex know about this impending doom?
In the Ultimate Edition, Steppenwolf makes a cameo appearance while Lex is aboard the Kryptonian ship. With this scene being deleted from the theatrical cut, Lex’s premonition seemingly comes out of nowhere, making the evil genius sound like he's totally lost it.
15. Batman’s eyeshadow
To achieve a more menacing appearance, Batman has always had black makeup around his eyes throughout the live-action movies. You need not look any further than Adam West’s incarnation of the character to see how unintimidating it looks when the character goes without this eyeshadow.
Yet, throughout Batman v Superman, there are a number of instances when Bruce removes his cowl and there isn’t a hint of black makeup in sight. This is especially noticeable during the single shot where Superman rips the mask from Bruce’s head to expose his true identity. o be fair, this is an inconsistency across multiple Batman films, not just the DCEU. Apparently, the filmmakers don't want the audiences to think about Batman doing his makeup before he goes out for a night on the town.
14. The pen is blue
In the Ultimate Edition, we get a much more in-depth look at the incident that occurs in Nairomi. This includes the government's involvement and a better explanation as to why Superman is later blamed for the atrocities. At a few points during the sequence, we watch the action unfold on a number of monitors, where there are a couple of pens sitting on the desk. In one shot, both pens are blue. In the next, the one closest to the monitor is white. In the third shot, they're both blue again.
Continuity errors involving actors are fairly common and easy to explain, but it's hard to imagine why something like this would have even happened.
13. Clark Kent’s nonsensical obituary
With both Clark and Superman meeting their demise on the same day, it’s pretty hard to believe that the general public could not decipher that they're the same guy. It's even more glaringly obvious when Superman’s defeat makes the front page of The Daily Planet, while Clark’s obituary is just one page away.
While the film only focuses on the paper long enough for most people to read the headlines, if you actually pause to peruse Clark’s obituary, you’d find that it isn’t as lengthy of an article as it appears. The piece starts with “Clark Kent is one of our own, and he will be sorely missed.” This line is repeated further along in the article, along with a number of other phrases that seem to have been copied and pasted in order to fill up space.
12. Where has Wonder Woman been?
In Batman v Superman, we're led to believe that Wonder Woman is conveniently in town to track down the old photo of her that is currently in Luthor's possession. What was she up to before then?
After Clark’s funeral, Diana tells Bruce that 100 years ago she walked away from mankind and all its evils. This suggests that she left Themyscira to aid in World War I, only to return to her home island after witnessing the horrors that humans are capable of. Of course, this appears to be the opposite of what happens in Wonder Woman, where Diana is banished from ever returning to Themyscira after she leaves. We'll hopefully get a better idea of exactly what Diana has been up to in Wonder Woman 1984.
11. Crowd control
As Bruce desperately tries to make his way to Wayne Enterprises, he’s forced to take one detour after the next as the destruction in Metropolis continues to mount. He veers away from police roadblocks and crumbling building until he encounters a crowd of people which he is unable to navigate through.
Bruce gets out of the vehicle to make his way on foot, but when he does, a large part of the crowd is somehow already behind his vehicle. The entire group then becomes transfixed with the battle going on in the sky, and only just moments after Bruce parked the vehicle, there are countless people now making up the crowd behind him. The mass of horrified onlookers certainly makes for a more dramatic moment, but it's also more than a little inconsistent.
10. Batman’s costume change
Immediately after Batman and Superman make up because their mothers were both named Martha, Bruce makes a promise to Clark that his mom will not meet her demise at the hands of Luthor’s men. Despite time being very much of the essence for this mission, Bruce apparently still thought he had time to change out of his heavily-armored Batsuit and into his more traditional getup.
The costume swap happens during two back-to-back scenes — sometimes between Batman leaving the warehouse and getting into his Batwing. Even if he had the majority of his other suit on underneath, would he really have taken the time to get out of his heavy armor with someone’s life hanging in the balance?
9. The Earth isn’t rotating
Similarly to Man of Steel, Superman decided to take the fight into space during the film’s climactic battle. While he likely does this to spare as many human live’s as possible, he ends up sacrificing our understanding of physics in the process. For starters, there at least 60 miles between Earth and space — yet it seems as though Superman and Doomsday are able to breach the atmosphere in about the same amount of time as it takes for Superman to travel between Gotham and Metropolis.
The biggest problem is that when Doomsday falls out of space all the way back to Earth, he conveniently lands in between the two cities. However, the earth would have moved at least a few miles below them during the entire ordeal, which would have put them well away from Gotham and Metropolis.
8. Bruce should already know the name of Clark’s mother
Throughout the film, it’s a bit fuzzy as to when each character finds out the others’ secret identity. While Lex seems to know who Bruce and Clark are long before anyone else, it still seems like the two superheroes at least have an inkling of who they are during Lex’s party. After all, Bruce continues to hound Clark about Superman, while Clark does the same with Bruce about the Bat vigilante.
Of course, when the two come face-to-face prior to the climactic battle, there should be no more secrets. With Batman being the detective he is, it’s pretty hard to believe that he hasn’t done his homework on Clark — which would have also involved learning his parents' names. Therefore, he shouldn't have been so shaken up by the mention of the name "Martha" at all.
7. Superman’s selective hearing
Aside from Kryptonite, Superman’s only real weakness is that there’s only one of him. In other words, he can’t be in multiple places at once and bad things can still happen when he's preoccupied. In Batman v Superman, Clark can pretty much show up anywhere that's convenient for the plot. This usually occurs courtesy of his enhanced hearing, which can apparently pick up Lois Lane’s voice whenever she's in danger.
Why doesn’t Superman hear when his mother is being abducted? Or detect when a bomb is armed to go off in the U.S. Capitol? These are instances when Superman should have been on high alert. Are we're supposed to assume he was just momentarily zoning out?
6. The secret beacon that beeps out loud
Despite Clark’s days at The Daily Planet just beginning at the start of Batman v Superman, many fans were upset to find out that Jimmy Olsen would not become a recurring character in the DCEU. Though Jimmy is usually depicted as a photographer working for the Planet, he instead makes a cameo appearance as an undercover operative who uses Lois a cover to gain access to the Nairomian warlord in Africa.
Jimmy's cover is blown when one of Luthor’s men discovers a tracking beacon in the camera he's using. This tracking beacon just so happens to beep out loud, which hardly makes any sense for an undercover mission that's being carried out by the government.
5. Dust-resistant clothing
Recapping the climactic battle of Man of Steel from Bruce’s point of view was a clever way to integrate the story of these two superheroes, all while addressing the criticism launched at the first film for being carelessly destructive. Unfortunately, this sequence had a few issues of its own.
When Wayne Enterprises inevitably collapses, Bruce is seen sprinting into a cloud of its destruction. This should have covered him from head to toe in dust, making it extremely difficult for Bruce to breath as well. In the following shots, however, Bruce looks exactly the same as he did before running into the debris.
4. Perry White’s paperwork
How The Daily Planet is handled throughout Batman v Superman is poor, to say the least. We barely spend more than a few minutes inside the office throughout the two and a half hour film. When we are there, Perry White comes across as more of a bully than a boss, Clark is always going missing, and journalists are apparently supposed to hop from covering one beat to the next.
In fact, when Perry swings by Clark’s desk and tells him to focus on football rather than the Gotham Bat, the paperwork he’s holding switches from his left to right hand between shots — adding yet another inconsistency to this backwards workplace.
3. The weather in Gotham
Before the climactic battle, Lex gave us a definitive layout of Gotham and Metropolis when he takes Lois to the roof of his highrise; the cities are sitting directly across the bay from one another, mere miles apart. The two cities have been known to move locations throughout their time in the comics, but even when they’re relatively close (like New York and New Jersey), they’ve never been this close.
The real mistake is when the weather in Metropolis appears to be a mostly calm and cloudless night, while at the same time it's pouring rain in Gotham. It may have made the fight between Batman and Superman increasingly ominous, but wouldn't there at least have been a hint of inclement weather on the other side of the bay?
2. Batman’s bullet-proof, but not blade-proof
To give credit where credit is due, the warehouse battle during the third act is one of the best live-action Batman fights ever put to the big screen. If we’re going to get nit-picky, though, wthere’s one serious inconsistency that has to do with Bruce’s suit.
During the fight, the Batsuit deflects multiple bullets, fired anywhere from across the room to point blank range. Them, when Batman is pinned to the ground, a thug easily drives a knife into his shoulder. It's always possible that the thug stumbled upon a weak spot, but unfortunately, the moment only draws more attention to just how unbelievably bulletproof the Batsuit seems to be.
1. The Justice League superheroes already have names
When Bruce stumbles upon Lex’s metahuman files, he finds four separate folders that contain footage of Wonder Woman, the Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman. While this helps explain how Lex also knew about Bruce and Clark being Batman and Superman, it doesn’t explain why these other heroes already have corresponding symbols.
In Justice League, we learn that both Cyborg and the Flash are far from established heroes, and we have no reason to believe that Aquaman is well known either. Why do Luthor’s files have corresponding symbols and initials for each of these heroes? The simple answer is to get audiences excited about things to come — even if it made little sense at this point in the shared universe.
---
What other mistakes did we miss in Batman v Superman? Let us know!