How ‘Batman V Superman’ Predicted The 2016 Presidential Election

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which played at-first like an amusing parable for the Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton presidential primary, turned out to be a grim prediction for Donald Trump’s shocking general election victory.

There is a skewed irony in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice turning four years old (in terms of its domestic debut) on the same day where DC Films’ Birds of Prey and Ben Affleck’s The Way Back arrive on digital HD. Neither films, while relatively good, were exceptionally successful. The Harley Quinn flick was merely a disappointment in relation to expectations ($200 million on an $82 million budget). At the same time, the Ben Affleck drama is A) precisely the kind of movie that Affleck signed on as Batman to get made after-the-fact and B) exactly the sort of film that audiences no longer see in theaters. We’ve been debating and dissecting Dawn of Justice pretty much non-stop for four years. Still, for the moment, I wanted to discuss its weirdest legacy: its uncanny resemblance to and prediction of the 2016 presidential election.

I’m presuming anyone reading this has seen Zack Snyder’s unapologetically gonzo bananas superhero epic, ideally in the 180-minute R-rated “extended cut” (since it is a genuinely superior version compared to the comparatively Batman-centric 150-minute cut. So you probably remember the plot in broad strokes. After the horrific events of Man of Steel, during which a newly emergent Superman saved the world from Zod’s invasion, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the world doesn’t know what to think about their alien refugee. Even Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) himself is conflicted, as he is aware that every move he makes is inherently politicized and comes with blowback and the potential for collateral damage. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) believes the Man of Steel is not a flawed good but an absolute evil and sets out to plot his death.

With the behind the scenes machinations of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), who fears the super-powered alien as a potential world-conquering tyrant, this all comes to a head during a big fight between Batman and Superman. The smackdown ends when Batman realizes Superman’s inherent humanity and how his fear of the Kryptonian has brought him to the cusp of villainy. While the bitter enemies become reluctant allies, it is too late. Lex’s contingency plan, a monster/scientific hybrid nicknamed Doomsday, is unleashed into Metropolis. Despite help from Batman and a new player (Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman), the alien and the monster kill each other. Luthor goes to jail, but he has slain the Superman while alerting the armies of Apocalypse that the time has come to conquer Earth. The bell can’t be unrung. Have I mentioned that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ mothers are both named Dorothy?

Even before the Warner Bros. film opened, I joked about how Batman v Superman might be a metaphor for the 2016 Democratic primary. Bernie Sanders, who I’ve liked since his “Brunch with Bernie” segments on Thom Hartmann’s radio show, would come to accept that Hillary Clinton is an imperfect friend rather than a deadly enemy. Sanders (or Batman in this scenario) would realize that his purity needed to be put aside in the battle against an actual world-imperiling threat. Alas, not only did the movie more or less revolve around two flawed heroes not realizing that the other party wasn’t an outright villain, but it ended with the two superheroes coming together but failing to stop “doomsday.” When Sanders finally conceded that the path to the Democratic presidential nomination was impossible, I joked that he finally realized that he and Clinton’s mothers shared a first name.

Yet during that grim summer of 2016, as Donald Trump easily won the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders seemed almost reluctant to endorse (let alone campaign for) the eventual Democratic nominee, we saw life imitating art before our very eyes. We saw this in the infamous scenes of Sanders supporters throwing money at Clinton as she arrived at a fundraiser. We saw this during the Democratic convention when hacked-and-leaked DNC emails, filled with off-the-cuff moments of grownups having grownup conversations about the ongoing election, bolstered the narrative that Clinton had cheated her way to a primary victory and that the Democratic National Committee had “rigged” the primary process in her favor. The overriding narrative, one espoused by (among many others who should have known better) Susan Sarandon, was that Clinton was no better than Trump and, in fact, might be worse.

That’s not to say that the 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump in the general election, most of whom were Republicans voting for the Republican candidate and/or were motivated by old-school racism and sexism, were the responsibility of the that year’s rival contender for the Democratic nomination. That’s especially true when you factor foreign interference, voter suppression and voter apathy). The primary is arguably supposed to be a glorified street fight between leaders who generally share similar political philosophies until a victor emerges battle-tested and more prepared for the general election. Just as the Dark Knight Detective and the Man of Steel realized the error of their conflict and teamed up right at the end, so did Sanders eventually go all-in in supporting Clinton in the general election. But, call it correlation or (relative) causation, it was too late to save the day.

Dawn of Justice provides a weird through the looking glass replay. That’s especially true for those who believe that Sanders’ relative stubbornness during the 2016 primary race and his (comparative) reluctance to come out swinging in Clinton’s favor in the general election was one of many factors in Clinton’s shocking electoral college defeat. Batman and Superman’s mutual ability to see each other not as an imperfect (super) friend but as a deadly enemy led to utter failure. The curtain closed with flawed ally lying dead in battle and the real menace, Lex Luthor, scoring a game-changing victory that would unleash hellish armies from another world. The critically-panned Batman v Superman (which still earned $330 million domestic and $873 million worldwide) was closer to the zeitgeist than the better-received (and more successful) Captain America: Civil War ($408 million domestic and $1.156 billion worldwide).

That Dawn of Justice became a sneak preview of the 2016 presidential election does not make it a better movie. That’s especially true since the version that played in theaters was inferior to the one that debuted on Blu-ray and VOD just months later, ironically just before the Democratic convention. Bad movies (like Prometheus or Wild Wild West) can have good ideas and of-the-moment insights, while great movies (like Zero Dark Thirty or The Devil’s Advocate) can have bad ideas, easily misconstrued commentary or icky topical subtexts. Nonetheless, I remain fascinated, especially on the eve of the next presidential election, how the most talked-about blockbuster of 2016 turned out to be the most authoritative commentary on the tremendous political tragedy of our time. Perhaps, like Our Brand is Crisis, Zootopia and The Purge: Election Year, Batman v Superman was a warning which became a prophecy.