Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

In a flashback to his childhood, Bruce Wayne runs from his parents’ funeral. He falls into a cave, where a circling vortex of bats elevates him back to the surface. Back in the present, eighteen months after the battle between Superman and General Zod in Metropolis, Superman has become a controversial figure. Bruce is now a billionaire who has operated in Gotham City as the vigilante Batman for twenty years. Having witnessed the chaos of that battle in person, he sees Superman as an existential threat to humanity. After learning of Batman’s form of justice, Clark Kent (Superman’s civilian identity) seeks to expose him via Daily Planet articles. Wayne learns that Russian weapon trafficker Anatoli Knyazev has been contacting LexCorp mogul Lex Luthor. Meanwhile, Luthor attempts to persuade Senator June Finch to allow him to import kryptonite discovered after Zod’s terraforming attempt, so that it can be used as a deterrent against future Kryptonian and metahuman threats.

She declines, but Luthor makes alternative plans with Finch’s subordinate, granting him access to Zod’s body and the Kryptonian scout ship. Bruce attends a gala at LexCorp to steal encrypted data from the company’s mainframe, but antiquities dealer Diana Prince takes it from him; she returns it after failing to access the information. While decrypting the drive, Bruce dreams of a post-apocalyptic world where he leads rebels against an evil Superman. He is awakened by an unidentified person, appearing through a portal, who tells him that Lois Lane “is the key” and urges him to find “the others” before vanishing. The decrypted drive reveals Luthor’s files on several metahumans across the globe. One is Diana, who appears in a photo from World War I. Wayne tells Alfred Pennyworth that he plans to steal and weaponize the kryptonite, if necessary, to fight Superman.