History Headscratchers / BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice

* So, a part of Luthor's plan was to somehow intercept the welfare checks Wayne Enterprise had been sending to Wallace Keefe, and then send them back to Bruce with some inflamatory notes written over them. Ok, setting aside that Bruce only got to see those notes pretty much by accident, because he happened to watch that specific newscast about Keefe defacing Supes' monument, how exactly were they supposed to work? Apparently Bruce was supposed to assume that Keefe was throwing his money back into his face, that he demanded "real action" instead of trying to appease his guilty conscience with charity, but it's not like Bruce ever expressed any pro-Superman feelings and besides, what action could he possibly expect from a mere mortal, no matter how rich, against that god-monster-whatever? Bruce wasn't even a politician! It's not like Keefe was aware Bruce Wayne was Batman or that kryptonite existed, is it? This incongruousness alone should've raised Bruce's suspicions (that and also how little sense it makes for a guy to refuse a generous allowance and then claim on camera that "he has nothing"). Moreover, how could Lex be sure that Bruce would only see all the letters together and be hit by the combined message, instead of just one or two, whereupon he wouldn't immediately get in touch with the Keefe and expose the entire charade? Even the last note, the "you let your family die" one, sent directly to Bruce, makes no sense. So the Keefe, after refusing the allowance, is now sporting a fancy new wheelchair and a suit, so he's clearly well-off and the "I have nothing" line was bullshit, and then he goes to commit a monstrous act of terrorism to... "wake Bruce up" I guess, and Bruce is supposed to sympathise with him?

** What was starting as an admonishing sermon clearly aimed at Superman and him alone ("this is how we do things in these here planets", "we talk" and all the other nonsense) wasn't then supposed to suddenly swerve into exposing Lex Luthor ''who wasn't even there''. If it was, the senator would've at the very least dragged the woman on the stage, instead of the wheelchair guy who had nothing to do with Luthor whatsoever. Otherwise, what was there to expose Lex with?

** The byproduct explanation makes the most sense, especially when you remember that, in Film/ManOfSteel, all of the Kryptonian terraform colonies died. Maybe they died of Kryptonite poisoning and the Council just never told anyone.

** In Film/ManOfSteel, he told Swanwick that he's here to help but that it has to be on his terms; also, that they'll never control him. My guess, he went to that hearing to tell his side of things, and if the government said "we don't want you getting involved", he'd have said "okay". I'm sure other countries would gladly let him save people from natural disasters without oversight.

* After Superman defeats Zod in ManOfSteel, half of Metropolis blames him for the resulting devastation of the city and Supes ends up being mistrusted and hated. In Batman v Superman, Superman and Co. fight Doomsday created thanks to Kryptonian technology, and along the way they all create havoc destroying and burning down Metropolis's buildings once again, with people dying in the helicopters and what not. But this time they bury Superman a hero with deep showings of respect and gratitude. Apart from Superman dying, what's the freaking difference between the devastation in ''Man of Steel'' and the one in ''Batman Vs Superman'' to warrant such opposite reactions for similar collateral damage?

* So, a part of Luthor's plan was to somehow intercept the welfare checks Wayne Enterprise had been sending to the wheelchair guy, and then send them back to Bruce with some inflamatory notes written over them. Ok, setting aside that Bruce only got to see those notes pretty much by accident, because he happened to watch that specific newscast about the WG defacing Supes' monument, how exactly were they supposed to work? Apparently Bruce was supposed to assume that WG was throwing his money back into his face, that he demanded "real action" instead of trying to appease his guilty conscience with charity, but it's not like Bruce ever expressed any pro-Superman feelings and besides, what action could he possibly expect from a mere mortal, no matter how rich, against that god-monster-whatever? Bruce wasn't even a politician! It's not like WG was aware Bruce Wayne was Batman or that kryptonite existed, is it? This incongruousness alone should've raised Bruce's suspicions (that and also how little sense it makes for a guy to refuse a generous allowance and then claim on camera that "he has nothing"). Moreover, how could Lex be sure that Bruce would only see all the letters together and be hit by the combined message, instead of just one or two, whereupon he wouldn't immediately get in touch with the WG and expose the entire charade? Even the last note, the "you let your family die" one, sent directly to Bruce, makes no sense. So the WG, after refusing the allowance, is now sporting a fancy new wheelchair and a suit, so he's clearly well-off and the "I have nothing" line was bullshit, and then he goes to commit a monstrous act of terrorism to... "wake Bruce up" I guess, and Bruce is supposed to sympathise with him?

Lex's reason for wanting Superman dead make no sense when you consider how old the two are - at most, there's an age difference of a few years between Lex and Supes, something Lex would've known (given that he figured out Supes's true identity), and Superman didn't even know about Luthor at that age; even if Superman ''did'' know about Lex's dad being an [[AbusiveParents abusive father]], what exactly would Lex have expected Superman to do? If Superman had killed Lex's dad, Lex would probably grow up hating Superman because YouKilledMyFather; even if any authorities would be willing to overlook a child having superpowers bringing Lex's dad to them (as opposed to automatically taking said child to some secret facility and experimenting on him), Lex's dad would likely be able to get off due to ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney (never mind the fact that it would basically be Clark's word against Lex's dad's); and odds are that Lex's dad could threaten Superman's parents if Superman did something that didn't involve killing or turning him into the authorities (since if Lex could figure out Superman's real identity, then surely Lex's dad could as well), never mind the fact that, given that Lex didn't out his father as abusive to the general public, Lex probably wouldn't appreciate his father's name being dragged through the mud. If the abuse Lex suffered as a child had caused him to develop a general hatred of metahumans and had decided to eliminate them all, starting with Superman, I could buy that, but he makes it pretty clear that he's only targeting Superman, and at most, he's only keeping tabs on Wonder Woman, Cyborg, the Flash, and Aquaman.

** But there's no explanation, sorry. We're told explicitely that Superman must obey Lex and kill Batman, or else Martha dies. Lex has Superman (and presumably Batman) watched remotely. Superman goes and... starts talking with Batman. What makes him think the watchers (who are not even Lex) won't interpret this as disobedience and kill Martha that very moment? Then they fight for a few minutes, make friends, talk, and Batman leaves to look for Martha. What makes either of them think the watchers will not notice that and kill Martha that very moment? Then Batman finds Martha and it takes him a good minute to dispose of the thugs. Taking the next folder into account, what makes him think they won't kill Martha before he can get to her? '''All in all, there was no reason whatsoever for Clark to expect that his actions would prevent Martha's death.''' If that was indeed his priority, and if killing Batman wasn't an option, then he should've tried to find her with his superpowers while pretending to fight Batman. Don't care how, he's Superman, he's got a license for doing impossible things.

** He's trying to appeal to Batman's humanity, also. By saying "Martha", he's giving a specific person, not an abstraction. Had he said "mom", Bats could easily have interpreted that as being another Kryptonian, rather than a human, and would have basically decided "who cares about another dead alien", whereas saying "Martha" is saying "a person is in danger"

** How would he know they were criminals? All he'd be aware of is the fact that they were transporting something for Lexcorp and were then attacked by a vigilante. As for the weapons, they are also in a city that has been described as a crime-ridden hell hole.

** As he says at the Lexcorp tower, he hates the idea of a benevolent all-powerful God. So when Superman is hailed by a good part of the world as a God he wants to either: 1) Show them that he's not that benevolent by having him kill Batman or, 2) that he's not all-powerful by having Batman kill him. And even if 1) happened, he's got Doomsday for getting 2) done anyway.

* So there is a service hallway in Luthor's mansion, next to the kitchens, with a bunch of data cables simply hanging out the wall. On top of that, there's a head-height port readily available there, which apparently leads directly to the entire secure Lexcorp network. And then the tiny hard drive cloning device ''seemingly'' was able to penetrate the network all on its own, presumably with a pre-programmed algorithm, without Bruce having to do any hacking himself. Extremely convenient, but fine. But he's still plugging into a massive corporate network with who knows how many terabytes of data. How did Bruce manage to download ''exactly'' the files he needed --the ''White Portuguese'' photos, all the metahuman investigation-- instead of, say, several hundred gigs' worth of quarterly financial statements of the "welcome" package for new employees?

** Remember, he was ultimately looking for the Kryptonite (which is unnamed) and knew the term "White Portuguese" was related to it. His search probably included terms like Superman, Krypton/Kryptonian, "Green Rock", etc. The metahuman files were probably stored under the same file system as the Superman data and came along. The real question is why Wonder Woman believed the drive would have her relevant data since corporate espionage would have been a more likely reason Bruce Wayne was hacking LexCorp.

** "What makes..." Already answered that elsewhere. Let's keep to the point. Ok, suppose you have proven that both the bullets and the wheelchair have been produced by LexCorp from the same alloy. How does that prove that he supplied the bullets directly to the mercenaries or gave Keefe the wheelchair with a bomb? Mind you, the wheelchair wasn't the bomb - only a container/disguise for it, so there's no reason to believe the metal had any special explosive properties (what would those even be).

** Neither has made their hatred of supers even remotely clear by that moment or stands a snowflakes' chance in hell against her for that matter. Besides, what does stealing the photo would get her? She's stealing it ''from'' LexCorp. If Lex wanted to use it somehow, he would've done it a hundred times already.

* Why did the black military-government guy refuse to come forward about the bullet being produced by LexCorp? Why does he say it's classified? Those were not the army, just some mercenaries. The USA government didn't have anything to do with the massacre. Even if he doesn't want the publicity for whatever reason, why isn't the government facing Lex about it privately? He's, for a second, currently tinkering with the most advanced technology on the planet, and they've just learned that he could be connected to mass murder, and they're not concerned?

* Why did Lex arm the mercenaries with unique bullets traceable only to Lexcorp? Seriously. Their job was to just kill people, regular bullets do the job and are much cheaper. Why go through extra work JUST to give some dumb report extra breadcrumbs to lay the blame on yourself?

** That clarifies nothing. We already know the bullets are unique. Confirming they're unique isn't what needs explanation. Why use bullets that could be traced ''in any way'' to Lexcorp when other bullets are much cheaper, easy to acquire, and literally have no connection to Lexcorp whatsoever? (on that note this is my issue with the Ultimate cut as a whole: the extra scenes may add more details, but the additional information isn't actually addressing the real problem at hand.)

* With all of Superman's powers and his sense of helping people, we're never given any hint that he helped or worked with anyone to rebuild Metropolis, and in the expanded material it was said that Lexcorp and Wayne Enterprise did the bulk of the work.

** He could just go public with his identity, counting on Batman and the League's resources to keep his loved ones safe. Several DC heroes have shed their secret identities long ago and it's been ([[IdentityCrisis mostly]]) fine.

** Personally, I thought this Batman fitted more [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall as Crazy Steve]], and it kind of helped solidify... [[OedipusComplex something else]] about him.

** Again, the AI wasn’t accepting a philosophical argument. It wasn’t accepting ''any'' argument, because it wasn’t arguing with Lex. It was merely informing Lex of information it judged to be possibly pertinent to the request he was making, not unlike the way a digital assistant might ask if you ''really'' want it to do something that you asked it to do. Lex’s response of “And where is the Council of Krypton?” was his pithy way of saying, “Yes, I understand the warning. Proceed anyway.”

** Yes, they did. Their job was to kill Martha should Clark come to her rescue. Someone (they don't know who) has come to her rescue. Are you honesty telling me they were waiting to see if it was Clark or not, and that Lex bothered to specify that they're only to kill her if it's actually Clark, otherwise they're to mill around like tools and await their demise? "having a hostage is like having a gun with one bullet", yes, but as Literature/GameOfThrones put it, threats are only useful if you're prepared to go through with them. "Lex may have had another plan" - indeed he had. It was called "Doomsday". Martha didn't feature in it.

** Clark doesn't hate Batman, not to the same murderous level that Batman hates him. As a reporter, he's concerned and ''curious'' about a Bat vigilante operating in Gotham, torturing and beating up thugs, acting like judge/jury/executioner. Then while he's busy flying around, said guy in his armored tank parades around ''his city'' and starts bombing and blowing up stuff like a lunatic, why shouldn't he stop that guy since from his perspective a maniac is blowing up stuff in a tank in his city at night. And again, what Superman does is give Batman a warning, a stern glare and flies away. Not indicative of hatred at all because for most of the movie, Superman has other stuff to deal with. He's worried about drifting from humanity, being there for his mom and Lois, trying to make his civilian gig as a reporter work, while Batman being a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob fantasizes about HuntingTheMostDangerousGame.

** She may just buy into his RichIdiotWithNoDayJob persona. Or, if Lex trusts her as much as he did in other versions, she might know he's trying to manipulate Bruce, and letting him think he was getting away with something could help with that (especially if she thought he wouldn't be able to break the encryption).

** Could be CriticalResearchFailure. Snyder may not realize that criminals in prison do know each other's crime almost automatically, and that child molesters and sex traffickers are supposed to get solitary anyways. In terms of Batman straight-up murdering people, the Bat Brand could be a leftover from a previous script that wasn't thought through. In the Ultimate Edition, there's a scene in which a Gothamite says Batman is playing judge, jury, and executioner, but when he says executioner, he only points to the branding, so Batman either doesn't kill anyone regardless of what we see, or for some reason no one cares.

** As a martial artist, watching that scene I'd like to clarify: it's not that it takes three tries of the same technique, but more that they are in a GunStruggle and insodoing he is maneuvering the mook into surrenduring his balance so he can throw him. However, given that he's disorientated with the gunshot concussion, your point largely stands.