BvS Batman's motivation for fighting Superman

Bravo sir. This is what I have been saying for awhile. The Zod attack on Metropolis, Bruce being there, witnessing it and having no way to stop it all, this brought him back to that moment when his parents died I think. It's possible it's written that Bruce is emotionally spotlighting Superman for things out of his control. I really doubt even once the dust settles and all the information comes to light clearing Superman, that Bruce takes a deep breath and let's that emotion, that moment go. This is likely not about logic, it's emotion. Add in a Bruce that has lost Robin (Dick?) and possibly Gordon (no proof yet but... You never know) and let the Manor go to ruin over it perhaps... Well he's a Batman with more turmoil under the surface than usual I suspect. This could make him an easy mark for Luthor to goad into a confrontation. If Lex can set something up where Bruce's emotions and his rationality are in agreement then I think you have a Batman that easily sees himself as the one person that can stop this alien God on Earth. Some incident where to the world it seems Superman has done something unredeemable and Bruce wouldn't take a lot of time to consider all the angles, he'd act to end such a monumental threat.

I agree with both your and Mainline's posts. I see very often people saying that he goes after Superman because "he destroyed Metropolis in MOS" and it's been annoying me for a very long time.

Now, is it like Batman to be like this, acting out of sentiment rather than rational thought? It is for some, more unhinged iterations and him being at least slightly unhinged was a given ever since it was indicated that this iteration will be based of Miller's TDKR one.
It may not be my favorite version of Batman, or rather, Batman at his best, but it was there in the lore, many times.
What I'm trying to say is, similarly to OP, I've been trying to figure out more substantial reasons for him to go after Supes, but then I realized that if they're going for Bruce in this state of mind, which indeed they are, there doesn't really need to be any more justification for his actions. Despite him being very intelligent man, he gets to be portrayed as stubborn, arrogant, narrow-minded and downright obsessed in comics quite often and what we see here is basically Batman from "Hiketeia", "The Dark Knight Returns", "Absolution", etc.
 
Bravo sir. This is what I have been saying for awhile. The Zod attack on Metropolis, Bruce being there, witnessing it and having no way to stop it all, this brought him back to that moment when his parents died I think. It's possible it's written that Bruce is emotionally spotlighting Superman for things out of his control. I really doubt even once the dust settles and all the information comes to light clearing Superman, that Bruce takes a deep breath and let's that emotion, that moment go. This is likely not about logic, it's emotion. Add in a Bruce that has lost Robin (Dick?) and possibly Gordon (no proof yet but... You never know) and let the Manor go to ruin over it perhaps... Well he's a Batman with more turmoil under the surface than usual I suspect. This could make him an easy mark for Luthor to goad into a confrontation. If Lex can set something up where Bruce's emotions and his rationality are in agreement then I think you have a Batman that easily sees himself as the one person that can stop this alien God on Earth. Some incident where to the world it seems Superman has done something unredeemable and Bruce wouldn't take a lot of time to consider all the angles, he'd act to end such a monumental threat.

This reminds me of an interpretation that occurred to me of the possible desert dream sequence (and my guess is that it is a dream):

Batman suffered the trauma of having felt powerless to prevent his parents' death, for which he has compensated by becoming the Batman. As a crime-fighter Batman also apparently was unable to prevent the death of Jason Todd at the hands of the Joker, which surely haunts him. So Bruce's loss of his employees during Superman's battle with Zod must tweak that core vulnerability within him: his sense of both helplessness and rage about those losses.

I'm going to assume that Batman, the World's Greatest Detective, has some insight into the effects of the trauma of witnessing his parents' death and his rage at a feeling of helplessness that Alfred describes.

But the desert dream may reveal an aspect of Batman's helplessness/rage that he may be out of touch with. And that is how much the Superman he fears symbolizes the darker qualities within Batman himself that he is unable to accept.

This is a speculation based on a speculation, obviously... but I think it is significant that Batman snaps someone's neck in the dream. Because as we know, both Superman and Batman share the same moral code to at all costs try to avoid killing. It is at that point presumably well known by the world that Superman killed General Zod by breaking his neck.

Thus, in this dream Batman and Superman are merged together through both their no-kill rule and breaking that rule.

If all this is correct, the dream about Superman could be viewed as a dream about Batman himself. And in this sense it truly is a nightmare. Through the image of Superman in command of fascist soldiers, the dream seems to present a vision of what Batman fears Superman could become, i.e., a tyrant, an abuser of power. But is it possible that that is something that Batman has been denying about himself as a powerful vigilante, and the tremendous rage that drives him?

The issue of avoiding killing is central to both Batman's and Superman's characters. Superman has his own reasons for the no-kill rule that we will set to the side for now. But for Batman, the moral code to never, ever kill is arguably a reaction formation. Bruce's own parents were murdered as he looked helplessly on as a child. Apparently due to guilt from it being so helpless about it, he became a vigilante who avoids killing at all costs so that he will never become like his enemies. However, it does not take a great stretch of the imagination to suppose that Batman has been repressing his own urges to satisfy his vengeance by killing the wicked ever since his parents died.

In both the teaser and full length trailer we see a scene in which the Batplane fires upon human targets and apparently kills them. Could it be that this more world-weary and jaded Batman has..."relaxed"... the no-kill rule?

In fearing what Superman may become, Batman is wrestling with ambivalence about what he himself is really and truly all about. We can easily imagine that Bruce has at some level asked himself whether it is true that, as Clark Kent warns Perry White in the BvS trailer, "This 'Bat-vigilante''s like a one-man reign of terror"?

Bruce himself states to Alfred in commenting on the condition of Gotham, "How many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?" The comment may in part refer to Harvey Dent. But perhaps the statement also reflects doubts that have festered in Batman about himself as well.

I doubt that Batman has 'snapped' because of all this internal pressure. Nor that he is unstable. But if what I'm conjecturing here is correct, my guess is that he will be driven by it with an extraordinary and singular force.

And again, we don't know the extent of Luthor's involvement in manipulating all this, if in fact Lex is indeed somehow ultimately acting as a puppet-master for the conflict, pulling strings unseen. (At one point Lex apparently has Superman kneeling before him in submission and the control he exerts to make that happen is unknown.) Lex Luthor's role is a big wild card in the hypothesis here.
 
I believe we have already witnessed Bruce's motivations in detail in the comic con trailer as to the reason why he wants to pound Superman into oblivion.

He clearly hates seeing young girls get dust on their clothes.
 
I believe we have already witnessed Bruce's motivations in detail in the comic con trailer as to the reason why he wants to pound Superman into oblivion.

He clearly hates seeing young girls get dust on their clothes.

So Batman is a neat freak fashionista? :hehe:
 
The motivations are pretty obvious and already discussed a million times. I'm ready for a new trailer lol.


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Ma'Kent told her bald son that she was going to Wayne manor for netflix and chill. Thus, the bald son was against their relationship.

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@InJustice,

You make a cogent argument for a straight-forward interpretation that Bruce/Batman fears Superman's potential for harm.

I would take the other side of the recklessness argument, though. Most people across the globe probably watched the whole thing go down on video. That is, I would assume that the whole world watched the Black Zero event happen live on TV. Superman was mainly just trying to survive against a viscous foe who was intent on annihilating the entire human species--and indeed Zod only failed by a hair's breadth in his attempt to eradicate humans from the globe by terraforming the planet (but for Superman). This is taking place in a more real world sort of setting where our media culture's talking heads on TV have apparently been analyzing it endlessly. I think it was likely apparent to all that Superman was trying his best, even if it wasn't perfect. (Okay, I grant you, raking Zod's face into a building was not the best move to ensure the safety of the citizens of Metropolis! :oldrazz: But in the course of the melee to knock Zod through a building may have been next to impossible to avoid.) And let's not forget that Superman is honored with a heroic statue at the monument.

I just think there should be much more to why Batman fears the damage Superman can do to humanity than the Black Zero event alone. I agree with AnneFan that Lex's machinations will provide the main impetus for it.

Personally, I would find the reasons that I listed for Batman's possible concerns about Superman compelling even before Lex launches his plot to turn the public against Superman. But I do not necessarily expect those to be featured in the movie.

We have people who view him as a savior because of what he’s done for the human race, but additionally, we have people who view him as a threat because he has more power than the strongest government has. He’s the only one who could legitimately operate outside of not only the law, but also borders and air space. Which is insane for a regular human being to comprehend. I understand and ultimately agree that he’s done good, but in the eyes of the public, being less than perfect is an indictment. The closest example to this I can think of is Person of Interest, the Machine is cryptically benevolent in its actions and yet the main issue is always the fact that the Machine’s very existence contradicts the rights to freedom and liberty, and as such, it will always be viewed as a threat by the public.

I agree with the notion that he was trying his best, but ultimately it wasn’t perfect. And that’s a problem for the public. Because he wasn’t perfect in his endeavor, he’s going to be scrutinized to hell and back. Had he acted like a typical hero where he saves everything and there’s no collateral, there would still be skepticism, but not nearly as much as what he’s facing now.

I do think Lex will ultimately manipulate Bruce’s (and by extension, the public) fears, but the trailer makes a suggestion that the fear is already there to start because of what Bruce experienced in the Metropolis battle.
 
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I find this Batman to be too ignorant.

If his motivation is the loss of life in Metropolis and he blames Superman for what the Kryptonians did then he's ignorant as he's blaming the wrong party

If he fears Supermans power then he's ignorant as he fails to look at his actions and correlating the likelihood he is to use that power against humanity which so far sits at 0%.
 
I find this Batman to be too ignorant.

If his motivation is the loss of life in Metropolis and he blames Superman for what the Kryptonians did then he's ignorant as he's blaming the wrong party

If he fears Supermans power then he's ignorant as he fails to look at his actions and correlating the likelihood he is to use that power against humanity which so far sits at 0%.

Please, PLEASE read through this thread then come back. This isn't about rationality. It's emotion. Bruce is EMOTIONALLY primed against Superman to start with. But he is probably aware about how Superman didn't destroy his building or was not responsible for the Black Zero attack... That's besides the point though. It's not about logic. It's about how Superman is the ONLY thing left to focus any blame on in the aftermath of the Kryptonian attack, a focus that comes about because his experience that day brought him back to the moment violence and madness ripped the people he loved most in his life away from him. This is an Ahab/Moby Dick thing. Ahab wasn't just going after the white whale cuz he lost a leg. No... He was IRRATIONALLY trying to strike a blow for mortal man against fate/God/the cruelties of the universe. So too with Bruce and his anger.
 
Please, PLEASE read through this thread then come back. This isn't about rationality. It's emotion. Bruce is EMOTIONALLY primed against Superman to start with. But he is probably aware about how Superman didn't destroy his building or was not responsible for the Black Zero attack... That's besides the point though. It's not about logic. It's about how Superman is the ONLY thing left to focus any blame on in the aftermath of the Kryptonian attack, a focus that comes about because his experience that day brought him back to the moment violence and madness ripped the people he loved most in his life away from him. This is an Ahab/Moby Dick thing. Ahab wasn't just going after the white whale cuz he lost a leg. No... He was IRRATIONALLY trying to strike a blow for mortal man against fate/God/the cruelties of the universe. So too with Bruce and his anger.

Whoa... Perfect analysis.
 
Whoa... Perfect analysis.

I could be off but I think that Bruce is not in a state of mind to use his prodigious intellect to think this all through. He already has a strong emotionally based bias against Clark. Look at the verbal jousting in the first part of the trailer. He's comparing Superman to his face of being in the same category almost as the psycho that killed Robin, for all intents and purposes, his adopted son. Thing is... I don't think that is even enough for the fight. I think there is still going to be an inciting incident that is planned by Lex. Something so horrible that Superman is framed for that makes Bruce go, "He has to be taken out and I am willing to sacrifice my own life to do it because I am the only person on the planet that can." If something like that goes down, say Lex making it seem like Superman killed that Senator les say, Bruce would just go for it and not do as much investigation and due diligence as he normally would.
 
Yeah, props to Krypton Inc for what figures to be a correct interpretation.

It's probably what the film will do, but conceptually it still bothers me. It feels like Batman has snapped, basically.

It's all in the execution, though. So if the story is well told that way, I'm sure I'll be able to roll with it. I want to be massively entertained so will be inclined to go with the flow.
 
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Krypton Inc., has this motivation for Batman replaced evil clone Superman for you?
 
Krypton Inc., has this motivation for Batman replaced evil clone Superman for you?

Well, I always figured the "inciting incident" thing with or without the duplicate. In my duplicate theory (which... The embers still burn for it a little ;) ) Lex would use the duplicate to do the frame up. If Bruce were to see with his own eyes Superman murdering a sitting member of Congress on live TV that would be enough to make his decision. Now I don't know what it could be. This was why, before this last trailer, my money was on a Bizarro gloss of some kind, either duplicate made from the scout ship birthing chamber tech or even a revived Zod somehow made to look like Superman. It would either break down or through some action by the heroes become a Doomsday or look more in line with classic Bizarro.The duplicate solved a lot of issues as I speculated about the plot given what we saw before this last trailer. Now... I'm thinking the odds on a duplicate have severely dropped.
 
What do you make of Superman standing behind Lex at the Dr. Frankenstein-ish (apparent) moment of creation of (what we assume to be) Doomsday?

A mind-controlled or extorted Superman (i.e., Lex is holding Lois hostage) doesn't work well for me in theory at least...

Evil clone Supes would feel more satisfying as the thing that really definitively drives Batman to go balls out against Superman in a suicide mission (as Alfred puts it).
 
What do you make of Superman standing behind Lex at the Dr. Frankenstein-ish (apparent) moment of creation of (what we assume to be) Doomsday?

A mind-controlled or extorted Superman (i.e., Lex is holding Lois hostage) doesn't work well for me in theory at least...

Evil clone Supes would feel more satisfying as the thing that really definitively drives Batman to go balls out against Superman in a suicide mission (as Alfred puts it).

Yeah, that has me puzzled a bit as well. I mean, Supes just standing there letting Lex monologue does raise a lot of questions. I know some people hate the idea of mind control and so do I. I also don't buy Lex simply having Martha or Lois captive as a strong reason for Supes to do his bidding... It's a conundrum.
 
Although, now that I think of it, if that is an evil clone of Superman standing behind Lex, then the theory that he (the clone) gets used to create Doomsday is negated by him standing there. Doomsday looks like Zod, and we see his corpse being delivered just before the apparent creation of Doomsday. I suspect Zod gets reanimated in conjunction with Berton's code for Doomsday that Lex has uncovered in the scout ship's AI.

So anyway, evil clone Superman would still be around to be reckoned with... unless the clone has a very limited lifespan or something (borrowing a motif from Blade Runner, i.e., the replicants).
 
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Although, now that I think of it, if that is an evil clone of Superman standing behind Lex, then the theory that he gets used to create Doomsday is negated by him standing there. Doomsday looks like Zod also, and we see his corpse being delivered just before the apparent creation of Doomsday. So evil clone Superman would still be around to be reckoned with... unless the clone has a very limited lifespan or something (borrowing a motif from Blade Runners, i.e., the replicants).

Yeah, I had thought of that as well. Like, the duplicate was doing Lex's bidding because he required something on a regular basis to maintain himself, and then it gets out of Lex's control somehow... I think it's moot now. Though I think such a story could have been interesting. They used a duplicate in the animated DOOMSDAY DTV and he was his own character with his own motivations and arc. I was thinking something like that here, but... Seems less likely now.
 
Please, PLEASE read through this thread then come back. This isn't about rationality. It's emotion. Bruce is EMOTIONALLY primed against Superman to start with. But he is probably aware about how Superman didn't destroy his building or was not responsible for the Black Zero attack... That's besides the point though. It's not about logic. It's about how Superman is the ONLY thing left to focus any blame on in the aftermath of the Kryptonian attack, a focus that comes about because his experience that day brought him back to the moment violence and madness ripped the people he loved most in his life away from him. This is an Ahab/Moby Dick thing. Ahab wasn't just going after the white whale cuz he lost a leg. No... He was IRRATIONALLY trying to strike a blow for mortal man against fate/God/the cruelties of the universe. So too with Bruce and his anger.

I could be off but I think that Bruce is not in a state of mind to use his prodigious intellect to think this all through. He already has a strong emotionally based bias against Clark. Look at the verbal jousting in the first part of the trailer. He's comparing Superman to his face of being in the same category almost as the psycho that killed Robin, for all intents and purposes, his adopted son. Thing is... I don't think that is even enough for the fight. I think there is still going to be an inciting incident that is planned by Lex. Something so horrible that Superman is framed for that makes Bruce go, "He has to be taken out and I am willing to sacrifice my own life to do it because I am the only person on the planet that can." If something like that goes down, say Lex making it seem like Superman killed that Senator les say, Bruce would just go for it and not do as much investigation and due diligence as he normally would.

:up:
 
Okay, if in fact as has been reported from the Brazil Comic-Con, it is true that the desert scene is Bruce Wayne's nightmare, I will reassert my speculation that embedded in the dream is Bruce's deepest fears about what might himself someday become in his own right, and is to a very substantial degree projecting onto Superman (the fear that Superman will become an evil overlord). Batman may even have gone into retirement because he saw himself drifting closer and closer to the line.

Batman is about controlled rage stemming from that childhood trauma that made him feel so powerless and helpless to stop his parents death. Inside of him is the potential for the rage to go unchecked, and for him to become like (or worse than) the criminals he hunts.
 
Also, Darkseid theory debunked since it isn't a vision of WW.
 
Uh... What's been reported exactly? Confirmed by whom?
 
Here is a repost of something I wrote July 18th at another fan site shortly after the first full length trailer was released (with a few minor edits to improve flow).

Batman suffered the trauma of having felt powerless to prevent his parents' death, for which he has compensated by becoming the Batman. As a crime-fighter Batman also apparently was unable to prevent the death of Jason Todd at the hands of the Joker, which surely haunts him. So Bruce's loss of his employees during Superman's battle with Zod must tweak that core vulnerability within him: his sense of both helplessness and rage about those losses.

I think these ingredients explain Batman's conscious experience of why he is going after Superman. I'm going to assume that Batman, the World's Greatest Detective, has some insight into the effects of the trauma of witnessing his parents' death and his rage at a feeling of helplessness that Alfred describes.

Now back to the desert dream. There is an aspect of Batman's helplessness/rage that he may be out of touch with. And that is how much the Superman he fears symbolizes the darker qualities within Batman himself that he is unable to accept. This is a speculation based on a speculation, obviously... but I think it is significant that Batman snaps someone's neck in the dream. Because as we know, both Superman and Batman share the same moral code to at all costs try to avoid killing. It is at that point presumably well known by the world that Superman killed General Zod by breaking his neck.

Thus, in this dream Batman and Superman are merged together through both their no-kill rule and breaking that rule.

If all this is correct, the dream about Superman is really a dream about Batman himself. And in this sense it truly is a nightmare. Through the image of Superman in command of fascist soldiers, the dream seems to present a vision of what Batman fears Superman could become, i.e., a tyrant, an abuser of power. But is it possible that that is something that Batman has been denying about himself as a powerful vigilante, and the tremendous rage that drives him?

The issue of avoiding killing is central to both Batman's and Superman's characters. Superman has his own reasons for the no-kill rule that we will set to the side for now. But for Batman, the moral code to never, ever kill is arguably a reaction formation. Bruce's own parents were murdered as he looked helplessly on as a child. Apparently due to guilt from it being so helpless about it, he became a vigilante who avoids killing at all costs so that he will never become like his enemies. However, it does not take a great stretch of the imagination to suppose that Batman has been repressing his own urges to satisfy his vengeance by killing the wicked ever since his parents died.

In both the teaser and full length trailer we see a scene in which the Batplane fires upon human targets and apparently kills them. Could it be that this more world-weary and jaded Batman has..."relaxed"... the no-kill rule?

In fearing what Superman may become, Batman is wrestling with ambivalence about what he himself is really and truly all about. We can easily imagine that Bruce has at some level asked himself whether it is true that, as Clark Kent warns Perry White in the BvS trailer, "This 'Bat-vigilante''s like a one-man reign of terror"?

Bruce himself states to Alfred in commenting on the condition of Gotham, "How many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?" The comment may in part refer to Harvey Dent. But perhaps the statement also reflects doubts that have festered in Batman about himself as well.

I doubt that Batman has 'snapped' because of all this internal pressure. Nor that he is unstable. But if what I'm conjecturing here is correct, my guess is that he will be driven by it with an extraordinary and singular force.

And again, we don't know the extent of Luthor's involvement in manipulating all this, if in fact Lex is indeed somehow ultimately acting as a puppet-master for the conflict, pulling strings unseen. (At one point Lex apparently has Superman kneeling before him in submission and the control he exerts to make that happen is unknown.) Lex Luthor's role is a big wild card in the hypothesis here.
 
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The organizing company(?) of Brazil Comic con apparently posted tweets saying Michael Wilkinson confirmed it. Check the "All things BvS thread".
 

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