'Batman v Superman' Blu-ray: What We Learn About Aquaman, the Flash, Cyborg, and the Justice League
Four months after its theatrical release — and two days before Comic-Con International — the DC Cinematic Universe-launching blockbuster, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, arrives on Blu-ray this week. The “Ultimate Edition” promises a lot more of the Dark Knight’s face-off with the Man of Steel. Thirty one minutes more to be exact, which is the expanded running time of Zack Snyder’s R-rated cut. The new version — which has already been available on digital download — restores several elements missing from the theatrical cut, including some bruising, bloody action and an entire character played by Sucker Punch veteran, Jena Malone.
The one thing you won’t see more of — at least in the film itself — is the Justice League. Sure, Gal Gadot’s scene-stealing Wonder Woman is still front and center for the DC Trinity’s final battle with Doomsday. But if you’re hoping for more extensive footage of the three remaining members of DC’s most powerful super-team, Aquaman (Jason Momoa), the Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher), you’ll have stay patient until the Justice League movie premieres on Nov. 17, 2017, followed by the characters’ solo films.
Related: 'Wonder Woman’: New Photos of Gal Gadot’s Superhero Movie
If that wait sounds interminable, you can check out the first of ten mini-documentaries that have been included on the Batman v Superman Blu-ray. Entitled “Uniting the World’s Finest,” the featurette includes quick primers on the future Leaguers along with brief commentary from the actors playing them. First up is Aquaman, who Momoa speaks of with obvious awe…and that’s probably the right way to approach an aquatic demigod. As DC head honcho Geoff Johns explains, Aquaman is the child of a human lighthouse keeper and the Queen of Atlantis and he’s torn between those two sides of his genetic make-up. “His attitude is one of a man caught between land and sea,” Johns says. “He’s born of human and Atlantian, but he’s home to neither.”
According to Momoa, that internal divide will be an integral part of Aquaman’s character in both Justice League, as well as his standalone feature, which will be directed by James Wan and is slated for release on July 27, 2018. “I want to see him struggle with the fact that he has these powers, and doesn’t know how to handle them. He hasn’t been trained.” But Aquaman also won’t spend all his time brooding, especially not when there’s an entire ocean waiting to be explored. “Ninety-five percent of the oceans — human eyes have never seen,” Johns says. “Aquaman takes us there. He’s a doorway to a massive canvas we can paint these stories across.”
Related: How ‘Batman v Superman’ Sets Up the Rest of the DC Movie Universe
Back on land, the Flash will be speeding across the continents. Johns reveals that the Justice League version of the Scarlet Speedster will be retaining the origin story that he personally scripted into continuity in his The Flash: Rebirth comic book miniseries and the one that also drives the hit CW television show. After his mother is murdered and his father is falsely imprisoned for the crime, scientist Barry Allen devotes his life to righting that wrong. But then a freak lab accident gifts him with faster-than-light speed, a power that his inquisitive mind tests in bold ways. “If it wasn’t for [Barry’s] scientific understanding, that ability wouldn’t mean much,” Miller says in the “World’s Finest” featurette. “He would [just] move fast. But because he understands the relation between matter and energy, now he knows, ‘Oh, I can walk through solid objects, because I can vibrate my [particles] at such a rate that they miss all the other [particles].’”
Besides racing through walls, the Flash can also race through time, as already evidenced in a much-discussed sequence from Batman v Superman when Barry appears in the Batcave just after Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) has woken from a nightmare of a conquered Earth. In the scene, Barry indicates that he has an important message for Bruce, but realizes that he’s arrived “too soon” for it to make complete sense. “Flash has the canvas of time travel to play [with],” Johns says, adding that this particular Justice Leaguer is also the key to unlocking DC’s multiverse, an enormous collection of parallel worlds and infinite Earths glimpsed in the comics, the TV series, and maybe the upcoming Flash standalone feature, dated for March 18, 2018 and set to be directed by Rick Famuyiwa (Dope). That means that Barry’s message in Batman v Superman might not even be intended for this particular Batman. “[If] someone could get close enough to the speed of light, they’d transcend space-time, where you exist in multiple places at a given singular moment,” Miller says. “For me, what’s interesting about it is, ‘What does that mean for a human being?’”
Related: 'Justice League’ v 'Seven Samurai’: Zack Snyder Says Superhero Sequel Channels Kurosawa Classic
Equally concerned with questions of humanity is the final member of the Justice League: Victor Stone, a.k.a. Cyborg. After a freak accident left the young man with a severely tattered torso, Vic’s father, Silas (Joe Morton), a prominent scientist at S.T.A.R. Labs, used alien technology to save his life. While the extraterrestrial tech preserves his body, Stone’s spirit isn’t quite as strong. “His greatest strength is his greatest weakness,” Fisher says. “The prosthetics give him crazy powers, but they don’t allow him to live a normal life. One of his greatest struggles is trying to stay human, or what we perceive to be human.”
Johns, meanwhile, suggests that Cyborg’s planned solo movie — currently slated for release in 2020 — could provide some social commentary in addition to superheroic action. “[Cyborg] is this perfect hybrid of man and machine, and he’s more relevant today than ever, because we rely on digital technology so much,” Johns says. “We have a guy who is always getting information through the data going into him, and he’s got to sort through it.”
Watch: Jena Malone’s role is revealed:
(Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment via AP)
