Although Warner Bros. showed off a lot of footage at this year’s Comic-Con—including footage of Pan, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and the first official Suicide Squad trailer—the headliner was always going to be its upcoming battle royale, Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. And the studio didn’t disappoint, dropping a three-minute trailer, featuring almost entirely new footage, on the attendees at the convention’s fabled Hall H.
There’s a lot to unpack in the new trailer, but here are a few highlights: Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne was apparently in Metropolis during the climactic fight against Zod in Man Of Steel, and the death of Wayne Enterprise employees during the battle appears to be his primary motivation for suiting up to take on Earth’s new alien protector. (There’s a lot of emphasis in the trailer on how terrifying it would actually be to have an unstoppable alien descend on the earth, benevolent intentions or not.) Meanwhile, Jeremy Irons’ Alfred is doing the usual Alfred thing, trying to be the voice of reason for his obsessive master.
On the Superman side of things, Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) is apparently going after the vigilante who’s carving bat shapes into criminal’s chests, despite what his editor, Lawrence Fishburne’s Perry White, has to say about it. And Diane Lane is on hand again as Ma Kent, giving a terrifying speech in which she tells her god-like son “You don’t owe this world a thing.” And though it isn’t clear what side she’ll fall on in the conflict, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman makes her first live-action appearance, apparently unleashing some sort of massive shockwave with her magical bracelets.
Meanwhile, real threats abound: Holly Hunter’s Superman-hating senator character turns for help to a stringy-haired Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), shown lusting after a piece of glowing green rock. And, most interestingly, we see Affleck’s Batman walking through a version of the Batcave, looking mournfully at what looks to be a Robin costume with the words “HAHAHA! Joke’s on you, Batman!” scrawled on it in yellow paint. (In what’s probably not a coincidence, the aforementioned Suicide Squad trailer gave attendees their first look at Jared Leto’s interpretation of The Joker.)