Last week, "Batman v Superman" director Zack Snyder tweeted a monochrome picture of Ben Affleck's Batman costume from the upcoming film. Superfans questioned its uniqueness; after all, the previous cinematic iterations of the uniform going back to Tim Burton's 1989 version have been similarly monochromatic. This week on his podcast, Kevin Smith, citing intimate knowledge of the project, stepped up to assuage such weighty concerns: The suit, Smith assures us, will be more akin to the uniform that Batman wore in Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" comic book series. Translation for the non-geek: It'll have at least two colors. Smith is likely to be only the first of many experts and prognosticators on the subject.
Today Warner Bros. revealed the full title of the film -- "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" -- and its promotional logo, Supe's gilded "S" centered inside a version of the Bat's familiar icon. The details unleashed a torrent of commentary about the title and its effectiveness -- or lack thereof. Some have speculated that the use of the word "Justice" is a deliberate reference to a Justice League super-film to come soon after. (Again, translation for the non-geek: Just think "The Avengers" but with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman et al.) But other than that, there is little else that can be deduced from the title and the accompanying logo no matter how steady the trending stream of Batman v Superman and Dawn of Justice hashtags remains this afternoon. (Warner Bros. has let go info about the cast already.)
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and my favorite:
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BvS: DoJ doesn't come out until 2016, but that hasn't stopped tweeters from spitballing and riffing off the title ad nauseam. It reminds me of the sequence in Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" wherein the smartest computer ever built determines that it will take seven and a half million years to come up with the answer to life, the universe, and everything. In the meantime, says Deep Thought, the philosophical community can live multiple lifetimes of luxury making a fortune off of predicting what answer it might come up with.
Still, ever since that first brilliant marketing campaign for Burton's movie, the bat symbol and its subtle variations have always been able to create excitement and speculation among filmgoing audiences. Snyder's "Man of Steel" is the highest grossing Superman film of all time, but was less successful critically. What better way to bolster the power of the "S" than with the one logo that always keeps people guessing.
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