BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

KNIGHTMARE

POST-APOCALYPSE

Medium rear shot on Batman opening a large metal door, illuminating the darkness with the gold light outside. The aspect ratio has changed to the IMAX ratio in the darkness. Batman then steps out into the windswept and gold-tinted outdoors. @Mercuryinretro1 suggested this may be a parallel to the earlier dream sequence, Bruce opening a door into a nightmare in both. Instead of his usual suit, he is wearing a brown trench coat. He has a belt over his shoulder to carry a FN SCAR-L assault rifle on his back, which is one of the first things we see, quickly giving an indication of how things have changed. Now, Batman uses guns casually. A joker card is taped to the stock, the same the Joker uses in early Batman comics and Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995).

A brief couple seconds of silence fades into growing dissonant, swirling choral figures.

Close-up on barbed wire. The camera elevates to see Batman emerge ahead of us from the bunker door as we rack focus to him. The background sharpens, revealing the obliterated ruins of Wayne Manor in the left frame and a plume of fire in the right.

Choral figures grow.

Elevating wide establishing shot of Batman stepping onto an outcropping of dirt and concrete slabs to witness a ruined city in the distance on the far side of a drained lake, indicating the Earth’s oceans have boiled away. In the middle of the vast field is the deep indentation of the Omega symbol: the insignia of Darkseid. In the sky are larger structures, as if partially encasing the Earth in a membrane. Enormous pits of fire, scattered far off into the distance, ascend up from the ground into the sky machines. On the edge of a cliff to the right we can see the remains of Bruce’s lake house. This shot might be inspired by the painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by German artist Caspar David Friedrich, in keeping with Zack Snyder’s experience as a painter and other such references in the film.

“There’s a culture here where Batman’s running the show and defending, I would say, probably what’s underneath us. This is the lake and below us is the caverns of the Batcave that they’ve used to turn into their headquarters.”

Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Watch Party, 29 March 2020

Percussive beat to highlight the post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Shoulder shot from Batman, raising binoculars. Rack focus to see a convoy of vehicles travelling towards the bunker from the ruined city, through the Omega symbol.

The chilling, high-pitched, keening, wailing chorus reaches its peak here. These figures are likely another reference to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) through its use of the climax of the Kyrie section of Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s Requiem. It is a deeply haunting sound.

Medium close-up on Batman. He lowers the binoculars, and the lighting makes his eyes appear totally black and sinister beneath the scowling cowl. Yet again, something has clearly changed in Batman. Plus, Bruce’s continued adherence to the Batman persona at this point implies he has either succumbed to the Batman identity fully or is using the identity as a symbol to boost the morale of his soldiers.

Low-angle shot of a school bus, modified with plates of armour for cover, possibly referencing the armoured school buses from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004). Indicative of a loss of innocence, it rumbles by us.

Percussive elements are introduced resembling a slow-motion march.

Interior side shot on two people aiming machine guns through slits in the armour, their faces covered.

Low-angle exterior shot of the bus clearing the frame to reveal the compound entrance. The armoured convoy rolls in.

Top-down shot of a truck driving through the concrete entrance and its barbed wire lining.

Ascending wide shot of the compound from a guard position to watch the vehicles pile in.

Medium side shot on the truck driver in sun glass, shifting gears.

Low-angle shot on an armed guard above a bunker entrance. Pan down to see Batman emerge, now carrying the assault rifle in his hands.

Keening, unnerving choral figures return to accompany the marching.

Ground-level shot under the truck to see the driver’s feet land on the sand, exiting the vehicle.

Return to Batman, coming up to a shoulder shot as he observes the truck, the driver up ahead walking to the rear of the trailer, giving Batman a glance while he approaches.

Medium backwards tracking shot on Batman, heading the trailer.

Ground-level rear tracking shot on Batman, his coat trailing against the ground, possibly referencing a similar shot in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) and Man of Steel.

Side shot of the trailer entrance. The driver climbs in while another opens the other half of the door. Batman walks into view from around the trailer. “Did you get it?” he asks, still using his electronic voice. “The rock?”

The percussive elements and keening cease as dialogue enters.

Sunglasses off and standing in the open trailer doors, the driver nods and responds, “Yeah, we got it.” Zack Snyder said this line, dubbing over the actor — a verbal cameo in addition to his hand cameos. The driver turns and heads deeper into the trailer.

What sounds like modulated low strings and synthesizer adds another eerie element foreshadowing the imminent danger.

Cut to the resistance soldiers observing the offloading, faces partially concealed by masks and goggles. We move right to look between them, racking focus to a hooded character standing behind them.

Low-angle shot from beside a crate inside the trailer, the entrance up ahead, where Batman climbs in and steps towards us. “LexCorp” is written on the crate. Towards the end of the shot, note the fighter who climbs into the trailer behind Batman, setting up the Superman soldier preparing to apprehend him from the rear.

High-angle shot of the crate from Batman’s perspective as the driver opens the lid. A green light glows out from within as we get nearer, and we immediately think Kryptonite.

Low groans on synthesizer, building louder.

Batman steps over the crate, the green light bathing his face. The silhouette of the figure behind him shifts in the background.

We close to a high-angle shot of the contents, only to see two green lightbulbs hooked up to a battery. The expectation of Kryptonite also sets up the approaching reveal of Bruce’s true goal in the present day.

Synthesizer comes to an abrupt stop, and all goes silent.

We hear a gun cocking, and Batman looks up from the bait.

The driver, now aiming a SIG-Sauer P226R pistol at Batman, solemnly says, “I’m sorry.” We can thus assume that he was forced to betray Batman. Again, Zack Snyder recorded this line.

Outside, the hooded figure rips off his cloak to reveal a black military uniform He angrily points a machine gun at the freedom fighters, yelling at them, “Get down!”

Percussive burst followed by metallic sounds vibrating steadily.

Several other soldiers in identical uniforms pour from the other convoy vehicles to aim their guns.

“Get down now!” yells the first soldier as the fighters fall to their knees.

Another vehicle’s doors burst open as yet more armoured troops pile out. They are all armed with Heckler & Koch G36C assault rifles, Kel-Tec KSG shotguns, and Glock 17 sidearms. Each one has a Superman shield patch on their shoulder.

In the truck, one of the soldiers points his rifle at Batman from behind. Raising his hands, he looks over his shoulder to face the trooper holding him up. The fact they have not killed him yet tells us that Batman was lured into this vulnerable position in the truck to take him alive.

Back outside, the first soldier suddenly raises his G36C and starts firing in an arc, executing all five kneeling fighters.

The synthesizer changes frequency erratically with each cut as the soldiers are executed.

One trooper shoots up to kill a guard on the “walls”. Then he turns and joins his comrades firing on the five fighters lined up against a freight container.

Further erratic changes in tone.

Looking towards the trailer entrance with hands still raised, Batman yells, “No!” in horror.

Suddenly, he swats aside the troop’s machine gun, causing him to fire wildly. Then he kicks the LexCorp container into the driver to stun him before revealing his sidearm, a Colt MK IV Series 80 pistol, and fires three shots into the driver, killing him.

Frantic, repeating synthesizer and string figures to transition the helpless execution into a desperate battle.

Batman grabs the soldier’s G36C before getting elbowed in the face and pinned against the wall.

Batman headbutts the soldier before whacking him with the stolen G36C, spinning him around and shoving him against the wall with his left arm. He starts towards the trailer doors, dragging the screaming soldier against the wall while shooting him in the stomach with the pistol in his right hand.

Then Batman emerges into the daylight, firing twice with the pistol. We begin circling the scene as Batman engages the troops in combat.

He whacks one soldier in the face with the rifle, knocking him out.

He ducks and trips up another with the same rifle, dazed.

He fires the pistol at a soldier ahead of him before knocking him down.

A soldier behind him trips over the tripped soldier briefly before preparing to fire on Batman, who whips around the whack the soldier in the face with the rifle.

Another soldier kneels and takes aim at point-blank range. Batman knocks his weapon down with the rifle before hitting him in the face with it.

He trips up another soldier running at him with the stolen rifle.

He fires his pistol off-screen before turning and tosses the spent weapon at another approaching soldier’s face, knocks his weapon away, and holds him down before firing a few shots with the rifle, killing a soldier running at him.

A fellow resistance fighter falls at his feet. Batman shoots and kills her attacker who falls beside her before Batman throws his hostage aside.

With her own pistol, the fighter shoots another soldier before Batman grabs her arm, trying desperately to pull her to safety and showing concern for his comrades. She finishes the fallen troop beside her.

Winged Parademons then emerge from the distant sky, descending to begin snatching bodies from the ground and flying them away for some nefarious purpose.

Frantic synthesizer makes way for deep choral elements to accompany the Parademon arrival.

Then she gets shot, but Batman fights on, shooting two more soldiers. One gets close and hits him in the face, but he retaliates with a rifle to the soldier’s helmet.

The distraction gives two soldiers the opportunity to grab him from behind. One seizes Batman’s rifle and hits him in the stomach with it, but he responds by kicking him in the knee and breaking his leg. He elbows the other soldier in the face, snatches his rifle, ducks to trip him, and whacks him in the stomach with the weapon.

As helicopters begin to fly by, a spindly Parademon lands nearby and ominously stalks toward a live downed freedom fighter before charging and snatching him in its feet, flying away.

He redirects another charging soldier trying to grab him, using the soldier’s momentum to send him flying before another hits Batman in the back with his rifle.

Visibly pained, he deflects the sweeping rifle of another soldier before turning to mow them both down.

Another soldier grabs his rifle and they wrestle. The soldier steals it, but Batman grabs him by the head and slams him into the dirt.

Two, three, then four soldiers surround Batman, grabbing him and punching him in the stomach. One’s head he shoves into his knee, knocking him out. The other he forces down with the strength of his arm. He gets punched in the face before breaking the downed soldier’s neck.

We arrive in a low-angle shot of the struggle. By now, the air is filled with a vast swarm of Parademons and helicopters from which more soldiers rappel down to thoroughly secure the area. Batman being subdued here heavily resembles Rorschach being subdued in Watchmen.

All targeting his face, one punches him, another hits him with a rifle, and another kicks him.

Finally, Batman collapses forward. One Parademon, bulkier than the others, lands behind Batman to approach. Batman tries to force himself up, struggling with the two troopers at his shoulders, when the Parademon punches him in the back of the head.

Cut to black.

Music ends abruptly.

SHE WAS MY WORLD

Medium shot on Batman, suddenly waking up with his arms raised above him, gasping. He looks to his left.

Percussive beat. Silence.

Wide shot of Batman chained by the wrists to the ceiling, two more freedom fighters chained on either side of him, possibly representing the penitent thief and the impenitent thief in Biblical lore. He looks at them both.

Medium shot pushing on Batman. We hear a sonic boom, and his eyes turn forward.

Waist-level shot of the bunker corridor ahead of him. Four troopers line the hallway to the surface ladder. With a whoosh, Superman descends through the hatch and lands hard, sending up a cloud of dust and sand that obscures our vision and blurs him as the troops obediently drop to one knee. The backlighting hides his face to remove his humanity yet again.

• He is silhouetted here by the light on the wall behind him that stands out as the brightest illumination in the environment, resembling a light beam that once again implies a descent from Heaven, possibly into Hell, Superman assuming the feared devil role.
• This might be a callback to the Nairomi scene. He arrived similarly to save Lois, especially considering the desert compound, but now he has come for very different reasons. As Amajagh said, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and now Batman is the one whose desert compound is being assaulted by Superman and enemy soldiers.

Medium shot on Batman, looking afraid.

Suspenseful and dissonant synthesizer and strings textures fade in, slowly building to generate new tension.

Wide shot of Superman, blurred. Still shadowed, he steps forward leisurely, bringing us into a medium backwards tracking shot. He does not acknowledge the soldiers, framing him as aloof and authoritative. The light coming through the ceiling openings above highlights his shield and partially illuminates his face, blackening his eyes and revealing a hateful scowl. He has never looked so intimidating. Everything about this tells us that Superman is not as we know him. All this imagery, as this analysis points out, creates a feeling of oppression. Then he is blackened out again as he passes the light.

Return to wide shot of Batman, pushing in to give us Superman’s perspective and emphasise his nearing the Dark Knight.

Return to Superman. Entering a dim light, he turns to his right as his eyes begin to glow. Then he fires his heat vision.

Shoulder shot from the furthest prisoner from Batman as the fiery beam cuts through him below frame.

Return to wide shot of Batman, looking to his left as the adjacent prisoner is eviscerated. The beam terminates.

The higher layer of the synthesizer terminates, and a lower thread comes in to begin growing anew.

Medium close-up on Batman frantically turning to his right.

Shoulder shot from the next further prisoner, sliding left to watch Superman eviscerate them both before ending the beam for good. We arrive into a shoulder shot from Batman as Superman ends his stride, glaring at Batman.

Return to medium close-up on Batman, looking terrified now.

Medium shot on Superman. He reaches forward to us.

Shoulder shot from Superman to see him rip off Batman’s cowl. Bruce is panting, hair soaked in sweat, but he tries to look defiant. Samuel Otten pointed out how this is very symbolic of Superman stripping away the Batman persona, indicative of Bruce’s total failure before his execution.

Behind the Scene

“We had to build a special mask to pull it off so his hair didn’t look crazy when it came off. We were pretty proud of ourselves. It took a few [takes], but it was fun.”

Zack Snyder, Full Circle, Man of Steel commentary, 28 April 2023

Medium shot pushing on Superman, holding the cowl out as he turns to look at it.

Side shot on Superman to focus on the cowl. He lowers it and turns back to Batman.

Return to medium shot. Firmly and ominously, Superman says, “She was my world… and you took her from me.” We can assume he is talking about Lois Lane, especially since Superman calls Lois “my world” before his later sacrifice. By this time, Lois was murdered by Darkseid, weakening Superman’s psyche enough to be controlled by the god-villain’s use of the Anti-Life Equation, convincing Superman that Batman was responsible for her death.

Medium shot on Bruce, still panting with fear. Superman extends his arm, and we pan down to see him place his hand against Bruce’s chest.

Growing intensity in the soundtrack to emphasise something terrible is about to happen.

Medium close-up on Superman, looking up at Bruce before exerting.

Return to Bruce, pushing in rapidly to emphasise the moment.

Return to Superman, suddenly moving forward rapidly.

Return to Bruce, who screams in agony. The implication is Superman shoved his hand through Bruce’s chest, possibly referencing Superman’s execution of Joker in the Injustice universe.

Goof

In the remastered version of this scene, due to the vertically expanded IMAX aspect ratio, we can see that Superman’s hand below is not impaling Bruce’s chest.

FEAR HIM

Cut to Bruce in the Batcave, awakening from his desk with a start, a hand over his chest. He is bathed in a bright light, and we pull back as he turns to look aside at the source.

Tense strings terminate for a new, a low, vibrating rumble on percussion. However, this is hardly audible over the electricity and other noise.

Someone calls, “Bruce!”

Bruce is slumped against his chair and barely able to keep his eyes open from the bright light. Before him is a spectacle of light and electricity, right there in the Batcave. Within the anomaly, reaching for him in red armour, is a person, screaming into their crimson helmet.

“Bruce! Listen to me now!” His helmet opens, revealing a young man with light facial hair, his face partially obscured by a red cowl. He yells, “It’s Lois! Lois Lane! She’s the key!” Darkseid murdered Lois, weakening Superman’s psyche enough to become susceptible to the Anti-Life Equation, allowing the villain to brainwash him and effectively conquer the Earth. In that sense, Lois is the key, and saving her will save humanity.

“…Or if someone lost someone close to them they might be susceptible to a certain Equation and might blame a certain Bat…”

Zack Snyder, Vero, 2018

“Because [Flash] had to jump back [in time] right before Darkseid Boom Tubes into the Batcave to murder Lois.”

Zack Snyder, Zack Snyder: The Director’s Cuts, 24 March 2019

Barry pauses for a moment before realising, “Am I too soon?!” With a burst of light, he seems to shriek in pain for a moment. “I’m too soon!”

Bruce still looks confused and stressed as the wind rustles his shirt and hair, but he is listening.

Barry continues, “You’re right about him! You’ve always been right about him! Fear him!” Who the Flash is talking about is not entirely certain. It is implied to be Superman, but since he was brainwashed and is not mentioned by name, we know there is more to it, as storyboard artist and friend of Zack Snyder Jay Oliva confirmed (36:18).

“I wanted it to be both Superman then, on second read, ‘something darker’.”

Zack Snyder, Vero, 20 May 2018

As his helmet closes again, Flash begins to fade away into the light. “Find us, Bruce! You have to find us!” Flash is most likely referring to the various members of the Justice League, telling Bruce to assemble them as soon as possible. We can thus glean that Flash’s urging contributes to his decision to gather the League, expanding on this somewhat in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

Then the light grows ever brighter and consumes the frame.

Medium side shot of Bruce waking up off the Bat-computer desk with a gasp of terror, hand over his heart yet again.

Percussive rumble abruptly ends with this cut.

We pull out as he looks around him, towards where his visitor was. In doing so, he fails to notice the papers falling in the background behind him, telling us that what he saw was very real.

SCENE OVERVIEW

As Bruce begins decrypting the drive, his fears are visualised by a premonition of a dark future where humanity is on the brink of extinction, the Earth is a ruined wasteland, and Superman is a tyrant served by obedient soldiers and flying insect-like monsters. Seemingly waking, he is then visited by the future Flash bearing an ominous, yet cryptic warning. The events of proceeding films have been set up and Batman’s motivating fear of Superman as an uncontrollable alien invader are represented clear as day with this scene reminiscent of classic dream sequences, which also puts more energy into the film’s pacing with an exciting action set piece.

SCENE ANALYSIS

This nightmarish future may be inspired by the Injustice multimedia DC story. Superman arriving to confront Batman bears resemblances to prime Batman’s capture in Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013), his execution of Batman resembles his execution of Joker, and the Superman soldiers resemble the “Superman regime” soldiers. It might also be inspired by the final story arc of Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000), where Darkseid brainwashes Superman into being his general who leads an invasion of Earth. Batman’s resistance may be inspired by the Sons of Batman from The Dark Knight Returns (1986). Snyder confirmed on Vero the Knightmare also has roots in Clark’s dream sequence in Man of Steel where he sinks into an ocean of skulls amid a ruined Earth, later calling it an inspiration for the Knightmare.

From the moment the screen goes black to the frame before Bruce wakes up for the last time, the Knightmare sequence is exactly 5m4s.

The Knightmare is the culmination of the dream motif throughout the film. After the prior two dream sequences, the viewer would normally assume that this was a dream sequence too — a misdirect which also helps the scene fit with the story by playing that same role, easing the viewer into something with a more mundane, less dramatic explanation. So it fits one of the film’s motifs while serving another goal preparing events to come and giving the film more energy after the film’s pacing has slowed so much.

“There are little Easter Eggs that get populated along the way. What’s that city he’s looking at? It’s really Gotham. And when you look behind Batman when he’s [peering] out past the camera, you can see Wayne Manor. And then if you look in the direction he’s looking, you can see the remains of his glass house up on a hill. You can kind of piece together where the Omega symbol is (where the lake used to be where the Batcave was located down below).”

John “DJ” DesJardin, IndieWire, 30 March 2016

Snyder also had this to say about Wayne Manor in the background and “Manor Base”, provided some additional context as to Flash’s appearance, and explained the fantasy science behind time travel premonitions…

“Even though Bruce knows it’s dangerous to occupy the old Batcave, it has to do with time travel from one point to another, i.e., Flash travels from cave in the future to cave in the past, but he is ‘too soon’, meaning he went too far back, also meaning he will have to step off the ‘Cosmic Treadmill’ one more time.”

Zack Snyder, Vero, 20 May 2018

“It’s 100% scientific. You’re acting like it’s a movie or something and we made that up! That’s science! If you jump back through time, you create a vortex in which the reality of that world can be projected through subtly into the mind of the person who is directly in contact with the vortex that is created. That’s science. It’s pretty obvious. I mean, hello!”

Zack Snyder, Ping Pong Flix, 16 November 2020

Batman’s execution may be a parallel to the film’s conclusion. Here, Batman is the messianic figure who dies from impalement through the chest. At the end of this film, it is Superman who sacrifices his life with impalement through the chest, becoming the final messianic figure of the film.

One of the trucks bears four symbols resembling the Superman shield in black, white, and red, arranged around each other into a swastika-esque shape. This is fascist symbology indicating that the trucks were stolen from the brainwashed Superman’s regime.

As potentially foreshadowed by Lex’s Prometheus speech earlier, Batman has essentially taken the role of Prometheus as Lex described and was guilty of trying to steal Kryptonite like Prometheus stole fire from gods. Like Prometheus, Batman is chained up, and Superman shoving his hand through Bruce’s heart may reference the vulture that eats Prometheus’ liver.

Zack Snyder’s storyboards depict a very different ending for this valiant resistance of post-apocalyptic fighters. Joker’s mention of alternate timelines in Zack Snyder’s Justice League suggests this is one of many possible endings that await Batman, perhaps one where Flash died, rendering their mission to change history pointless.

The fight sequence is likely yet another reference to The Wizard of Oz (1939), specifically a scene where a swarm of winged apes descends on the protagonists to begin snatching them up. I doubt this was unintentional considering all the other references to that film.

Note the bullet holes on the logo on Batman’s chest. This damage cannot be found anywhere on his suit until the warehouse fight. This is a nice little consistency detail positioning this event in the future.

kingofthesevenseas on Tumblr pointed out that Flash’s appearance might be a reference to the Archangel Gabriel, who regularly appeared to Joseph and Mary in a bright light to warn them of impending future events. Furthermore, these meetings were initially believed to be dreams.

“I guess it’s boring waiting for it to decrypt, so he fell asleep, maybe? I’m not sure, or I’m not sure whether it’s a byproduct of Flash cracking on the Cosmic Treadmill, whether it creates some sort of rift that allows Batman to see into the future. Could be a combo of those things.”

Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Watch Party, 29 March 2020

The sequence of the Flash appearing to Bruce from the future may be taken inspired by Crisis on Infinite Earths, where Flash appeared to Batman to impart a cryptic warning of impending future events before he mysteriously disintegrated.

According to Zack Snyder throughout the years and the official storyboards for the originally planned Justice League 2 and Justice League 2A, Flash goes back in time to save the life of Lois Lane, whose death weakens Superman’s will enough that Darkseid — now in control of the Anti-Life Equation — can control him. As the Earth needed to be in the correct place in space before Flash can time jump on the Cosmic Treadmill, lest he appear in space or inside the Earth, two windows were available, and this was the wrong one. Realising the mistake, Flash tells Bruce what little he can, and this event will inform Bruce’s decision in this new timeline that has been created from this moment.

“And so this is the Flash running through time, coming back to warn Batman not to kill Lois Lane, I guess? Or that Lois Lane is the key. I’m not exactly sure what he’s supposed to do with that knowledge at this point.”

Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Watch Party, 29 March 2020

“I also had this idea that, in the future, when they’re talking about sending Flash back in time to warn him, that Cyborg — who’s doing the calculations to send him back — would say, ‘I have two possibilities for where to send Flash back in time. The numbers point to two moments to warn you, and you really want the warning to be closer to the moment where Bruce needs the information.’ Like, if it’s right near the moment where this event might happen, where Lois might get killed, or Bruce isn’t able to stop it, however that’s happening, it would be important if Flash came closer to that moment so that Bruce could understand the reality of it. And so, in the future, Bruce says to Cyborg, ‘What time would you send me back?’ ‘I’m leaning toward this one.’ Then Bruce says, ‘Do the other one because you already sent me that one. It was too early, so send me the other one.’ Because in the new timeline he goes to a different point in time that’s closer to the event we haven’t seen yet in this film.”

Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Watch Party, 29 March 2020

“And then there’s this craziness. The reality of this is that there was two opportunities in the timeline for him to find Bruce. When we go through the real time movie and you get to that point in the reality of him about to jump back in time, he’s going to say, ‘I have these two windows,’ and then Bruce is like, ‘Which one would you have gone to if I didn’t say anything?’ and he’d go like, ‘I’d go to this one,’ and he would, ‘Go to the other one, because you went to that one already. It doesn’t work. You’re too soon. You missed it.’”

Zack Snyder, Full Circle, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice commentary, 29 April 2023

“We were talking about it just a minute ago that the idea was, whatever Justice League that would’ve been — Justice League 2, I guess — there was a scene where Flash was getting ready to go back in time and Bruce said to him that there was two possible windows in which he could jump back through time and Bruce said, ‘Well, which one would you have gone through if I didn’t say anything?’ and he said, ‘Well, we were going to go through this one,’ and he says, ‘Don’t go through that one, because you went through it and it didn’t work, so go through the other one.’ So you would’ve seen that. He would’ve gone to the correct moment. He would’ve had to tell him something, yeah, which at that time, in the other reality, the child of Lois Lane was his. That’s what he told Bruce, to make him believe that he was really from the future.”

Zack Snyder, Full Circle, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Q&A, 29 April 2023

About Flash’s appearance, Snyder had this to say on Vero, providing a quote from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s collection, The Gay Science (1882)…

@jeffturner_9: “I have a question that has been bothering me since I first saw BVS: When Barry appears to Bruce and says, ‘I’m too soon,’ is this a reference to Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science? There are so many Nietzschean references in the movie, it almost seems too much of a coincidence to actually be one. If it then is a reference to the madman’s proclamation of the death of God, which is partially explored in Justice League, and most certainly was an idea Luthor was tinkering with, was Barry speaking concerning Bruce’s dream of a sort of totalitarian future (which Nietzsche predicted), in which Superman ‘died’ in the sense of becoming so corrupted as to be unrecognizable as Superman? Maybe I’m over analysing, but I feel there was a story so huge and epic in the works, and we may never know what it was now. Either way, I’m thankful for the experience that was MoS and BvS. Peace.

Zack Snyder: ‘What were we doing when we unchained this Earth from its sun?’ Flash is the madman whose time is not yet and heralds a future where God is dead.”

Vero, 5 April 2018

Superman and the sun are heavily related in these films, and he is later compared to Apollo by Lex. Nietzsche is also possibly referenced by Lex when he says before Doomsday’s birth, “If man won’t kill God, the Devil will do it. Now God is good as dead.” It was Nietzsche who said, “God is dead, and we have killed him,” in the same collection.

The music in this scene is Post Apocalypse. There seems to be no discernible “theme” to this track, instead serving purely as ambience. The Flash is not given a theme or motif. This track corresponds to Must There Be A Superman? in the commercially available versions of the score, however, there are some minor differences: 1) The first 33 seconds of ambience and silence from Post Apocalypse are not present; 2) The 13-second silence between Batman being knocked out and waking up in Superman’s prison is shortened to having almost no pause (much closer to the film’s timing); 3) The “rumbling” segment accompanying the Flash is shortened by nearly half.

BEHIND THE SCENE

According to The Art of the Film (p153), the outdoor setting for the Knightmare future was filmed at a sand and gravel pit in Oxford, Michigan. Addressing down rumours at the time, Peter Fredericks, co-owner of Koenig Sand & Gravel, denied in a Clarkston News article that the film was shooting at his property on 1955 East Lakeville Road. If he was truthful, the only alternate location is the American Aggregates site directly North on 275 Ray Road. No other source for the location exists that I can find. Shooting evidently took place between 31 July to 3 August 2014.

“We were shooting, Zack gathered the crew together, and said “I have an idea. You know the dream sequence fight scene we’re doing next week? Let’s do it all ‘in one’!” It was great. We all started brainstorming like crazy.”

Larry Fong, Twitter, 28 March 2020

“Zack and I love happy accidents! Unexpected ideas and spontaneity are welcome on our sets and we encourage crew to contribute. There is a desert sequence where the camera follows people fighting, then jumping out the back of a trailer, then encompasses a complex fight in a large 360-degree move, all in one take – shot with an IMAX camera. Zack came up with this concept pretty late in the schedule, and there would have been no way to accomplish this without the brainstorming and enthusiasm of many departments working together.”

Larry Fong, British Cinematographer

“I told Zack and Damon, ‘Let’s add some more guys up on the wall and add more demons that come down. And then add some helicopters, including one that blows up a gun turret.’ With such a virtual clean slate, you can keep adding elements.”

John “DJ” DesJardin, IndieWire, 30 March 2016

On 2 August 2014, Zack Snyder tweeted a photo of a Batman and R2-D2 action figure in a small rocky desert canyon along with the words “BATMAN & R2BIN” as part of his referential back-and-forth with J.J. Abrams, who was directing a Star Wars film at the time. Years later, Snyder would post the photo on Vero alongside another photo taken by director of photography Larry Fong.

“Ha, I remember taking this picture. It was downtime while shooting the Knightmare sequence of BvS. Zack and JJ Abrams were Tweeting (or IG?) back and forth, referencing each other’s current project…”

Larry Fong, Twitter, 4 July 2024

Zack Snyder posted a multitude of Kightmare Batman photos [1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8]. At the time, he also took this photo of a miniature meeting between Batman and R2-D2, and Clay Enos took this photo of Snyder taking the shot (Snyder put both photos on Vero). Both Enos and Snyder posted clean photos of the Superman soldiers. Director of photography Larry Fong took photos of Heaven and Snyder posing. Other set photos were posted by Ben Affleck’s stunt double Richard Cetrone [1/2], set costumer Kate Abraham [1/2] and Doug Stewart [1/2/3/4/5]. Key second assistant director Misha Bukowski posted this photo. One of the film’s storyboard artists, Jay Oliva — also known as a prominent director of DC animated films — drew this image of Knightmare Batman. Damon Caro’s photo gallery on IMDb has two more photos of the set. The father of Richard Cetrone, Ben Affleck’s stunt double, was invited to the set to spend the day with his son.

The scene was added to the script during shooting as a late addition and filmed on short notice. Batman’s giant one-shot fight sequence, composed of multiple elements and three separate takes digitally stitched together, was performed by Richard Cetrone, who struggled to sleep the night before and filmed tired and sweaty. He is not proud of his performance. This scene was shot in IMAX. Larry Fong tweeted a video of the shoot.

“[The scene was added] fairly late. I’m thinking, probably mid-way through shooting is when I heard about that. We didn’t have much time to shoot that. If I remember right, we shot that in… two days? A day and a half, I think it was? Because, if you look at it, it’s not a lot of coverage. It’s a lot of long shots, and that’s what it came down to. We just didn’t have time for the coverage. It would’ve been a lot cooler sequence if we could’ve covered it the way it should’ve been covered, but we just didn’t have the time. They really wanted to put it into film.”

Richard Cetrone, Holy BatCast, 17 April 2017, 37:52

“I had a little issue the night before back home. So, I didn’t get much sleep that night, and that was probably going to be the toughest day of shooting for the whole show for me, so I end up getting about an hour of sleep. When I got on the set I was just wiped out. So we start rehearing, and getting up into this truck, I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ I can barely get up into the truck. I’m, like, how am I going to get through this day? I was really getting concerned because I had no energy at all. Every time I watch that sequence, I kind of cringe. I can tell from the way I’m moving. You can see I’m just out of it. I have no energy whatsoever and I’m just trying to power through it. … I’m my own worst critic.”

Richard Cetrone, Holy BatCast, 17 April 2017, 39:07

“I have mentioned this before that I got one hour of sleep that night, so I was exhausted. I had a family emergency back home and I just couldn’t sleep, so I managed to squeeze on hour in, and I showed up to the set I was exhausted. … It was a struggle for survival. Trust me, I was just completely wiped out. But I got really lucky that it worked for the scene, because in reality that would be a really tough thing to pull off, having all these guys coming at you from different directions in that heat, trying to save your people and trying to survive it at the same time. So, for the first few times I watched this sequence, it was hard for me to watch it because I was so sloppy and I was so exhausted. I was just going through the motions really.”

Richard Cetrone, Light Cast, 24 July 2020

“We kept moving people around and putting dummies on the ground to be replaced. It’s hard to match all those things up so we pieced the three sections together editorially to get a sense of the action and scope. We knew we had to cover it a certain way to do what I knew we were going to inevitably do, which was erase everybody out of the frame and keep Batman live as much as we could.”

John “DJ” DesJardin, IndieWire, 30 March 2016

“The enviro-cam is a really neat way of capturing the entire set or location from a certain camera point of view, and I did that for each of technocrane start and end positions. There was a lot of dynamics going on that we had to respect and they all eventually get turned into CG people.”

John “DJ” DesJardin, IndieWire, 30 March 2016

“We had this crazy 360-degree fight to do, which is nuts, because when you shoot it on location like that it’s hard to make all the stitches work – the camera positions don’t match up no matter how well you planned it. We had to put it together editorially to make Batman work throughout the three camera positions, then we had to go through and take everybody else out. A lot of people are going to be CG guys, running in and out, fighting each other and fighting Batman. It was a pretty big reset to get the shot done right. We used enviro-cam to record a sphere of the set where the camera was. Batman fights right in the middle of all these guys fighting him, so it’s a perfect virtual environment.”

John “DJ” DesJardin, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: The Art of the Film, 29 March 2016, p150

“Very crazy. To start the IMAX camera inside and emerge, we built a scaffold next to the truck, cut a hole, and inserted the camera from above through black cloth with a slit. 3 takes were stitched together to do the 360 move (otherwise you’d see the crane base and the scaffold).”

Larry Fong, Twitter, 23 November 2025

On 22 December 2020, Snyder used this scene to show off their progress developing the remaster of the film.

During this scene, we see two types of Parademons. The first is highly insect-like and skinny, with spindly digitigrade legs. Concept art for Justice League confirms that these were originally going to be the main grunts of Steppenwolf’s Parademon legions. The second type we see are plantigrade and larger. Weta has some concept art for the Parademons here and here on ArtStation. Check here for a turntable video of a design by Jerad Marantz, a VFX artist who worked on Zack Snyder’s Justice League. On Instagram, Wētā Workshop said, “Our aim here was to blur the line between organic and technological forms. We intentionally made it difficult to distinguish the creature from their armour, breather, and weaponry.”

“These are the Parademons. Different kinds of Parademons too. We have the normal ones and then we have the more locust-looking ones, the scarier ones which I like.”

Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Watch Party, 29 March 2020

The interior bunker was a set constructed on a sound stage, presumably at the late Michigan Motion Picture Studios along Centerpoint Parkway, Pontiac, Michigan. Zack Snyder posted this photo of Batman in the bunker with the description, “On this date in 2014,” confirming the scene was shot around 15 August 2014. A few days after that date, Larry Fong posted this photo of the entrance ladder on the 17th. Billionaire founder of Vero and friend of Zack Snyder, Ayman Hariri, who also cameos in the diner in which Martha works, got this photo taken with Ben Affleck in the Knightmare Batsuit. Clay Enos also has a photo on his website.

Ezra Miller’s Knightmare Flash costume is digital, and the actor wore a motion-capture suit to film the cameo. Ironhead Studio, the costume design company that crafted many of the film’s costumes, posted this photo to their Instagram first revealing Flash’s Knightmare suit in full as a model.