Nerd Alert!

For those of you who’ve been following along on the podcasts, you know that I have a yoga pants wearing mole at Warner Brothers. Thanks to her we’ve managed to stay a week or so ahead of the hype machine. We debuted the new Wonder Woman costume on the radio, that’s how cutting edge we are. We knew about Ray Fisher getting cast as Cyborg & Dwayne “THE ROCK” Johnson getting to play Shazam before almost anyone else did too. The thing of it is that this film, and its related entities, seems to be headed down a dark path. We already knew Ben Affleck was going to play an older incarnation of the Bat & that he and Supes would not be pals. Thus the “versus” in the movie’s title. And while I keep hearing rave reviews about the cast, currently shooting in Detroit, very little has been said about the plot. Oh, sure, you could intuit some of what’s coming just by seeing Batman’s body armor (the better to take a punch from Superman with) and the fact that the studio has made no secret that this film is a precursor to a Justice League franchise, but, after that, not so much.

Today that changes.

While we’re not the first to grab this we are near the front of the class. When I asked my friend about plot related items she would clam up tighter than a virgin in the back seat of a Chevy. We may be friends but we’re not good enough friends for her to risk ruining her career.

Fortunately for us, our new pal, Stubby the Rocket at TOR.com has scored some valuable intel and he’s willing to share it with the class.

Have that grain of salt ready? Because it’s time for an unconfirmedBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice rumor! Badass Digest is purporting to have some intel on the movie’s plot, especially its timeline as compared to the Batman mythos as we usually know it, Man of Steel, and Wonder Woman’s own history.

We already knew that Ben Affleck would play an aging Bruce Wayne. But Badass Digest claims that when Bat v Supes opens, Wayne will have already been Batman for 30-odd years, pushing him into his 50s:

In this version Batman is still an urban legend, a creature of the night, and no one has ever taken his picture. But he’s had plenty of adventures, and the Batcave includes a memorial centered around a tattered Robin costume.

Aww! Still, this is a keen way to solidly distance Batman v Superman from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, by making this Caped Crusader a more withdrawn figure playing the long game, rather than a bombastic force making headlines by leaving Gotham, training in foreign prisons, drag-racing through Gotham in his souped-up Batmobile (“this isn’t a car”), and getting publicly called out by villains on TV and at football stadiums.

As io9 points out, that would make Superman’s appearance in Man of Steelone of the last, not first, instances of superheroics—which doesn’t seem to quite match up with the astonishment he inspired in that movie. And what of Wonder Woman? Badass Digest says that she also keeps her heroics on the down-low:

By the way, my sources tell me that Wonder Woman has also been in operation for some time before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice begins, and her activities have been just as secretive as Batman’s. Her activities were badass as well… but in a very different, and unexpected, way.

Does this mean we’ll see more of Diana Prince, and less of Wonder Woman the superhero celebrity and ambassador?

I tend to agree with Stubby. I loved the Christopher Nolan universe but if a vigilante wants to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, ending up on TV all the time isn’t really the way to do it. Unless your staging public executions. Then that might put a damper on them. Of course, the real police tend to make frowny faces at that kind of stuff so that tactic might not be as effective as hoped.

Now, as to these new revelations, I like the whole idea. A creature so cunning that he can avoid all forms of public disclosure while still stopping crime is a fun concept. And the whole “dead Robin” motif is a nice start to any day. Add in Wonder Woman as a sword wielding Amazon who also is more rumor than fact and you suddenly have a lot of room to move.

Yes, there’s the fear that this could all end up being a parody if handled badly but, based on what I know thus far, I don’t see that happening.

In addition, this story line leaves open the possibility of the Justice League being a more underground affair and not some high profile entity with a space station. Certainly the gray palette they’re using for filming would suggest that.

The other item of note is that by using Cyborg right away, and making sure that Robin is well and truly dead, that leaves room for the remaining Teen Titans to join the fray as things go on.

One last thing, we talked on the podcasts about how Warner is using multiple camera crews simultaneously. That seemed like a wild luxury when we first talked about it back in March. Now, with ten movies slated to release by 2020, it seems like they might need more. But it still means they can be shooting up to three films at a time which would give them some serious room for editing and the like. Reshoots would be much easier with the cast and crew having some down time after Batman -v- Superman. They could really tweak these things to perfection.

Given that Warner seems to have allocated around $3 BIL (with a B) to this endeavor, that’s not a bad idea.