SWAT officers are shooting at the Batmobile at point blank range. Not chasing it. Not blocking it in. Firing directly into it, on a snow-covered street in Glasgow that’s currently pretending to be Gotham City.
Multiple videos of the scene have spread across social media over the past several days, shot by fans standing at the edge of the set. In them, the Batmobile roars and does donuts on the fake snow. GCPD vehicles chase it. The GCPD surrounds it. A SWAT vehicle rams it.
And then the guns come out.
The truce from the first film is gone
Here’s why that matters more than the average set leak. Matt Reeves’ The Batman built its whole back half on an uneasy but productive working relationship between Batman and the GCPD, with Lt. Jim Gordon as the connective tissue. The film ended with Batman pulling the mayor and other citizens out of the Riddler’s flood. Public opinion was tilting his way.
Now the police are firing on his car. Whatever goodwill he banked has evaporated, and the sequel is treating him as an outlaw.
Where Gordon lands in all this is the open question. The footage doesn’t say whether the rift is institutional or personal, and nobody involved is telling.
The blonde in the passenger seat
User videos of the Batmobile first surfaced online last week. Since then, a mysterious blonde woman was spotted riding shotgun in it. Was it Scarlett Johansson? Unclear.
Fans on set also caught a nice bit of continuity: anti-drug ads on Gotham City cabs referencing “drops,” the fictional narcotic from the first movie.
What’s confirmed, and what’s just noise
Despite the incessant rumor-mongering online, The Batman: Part II remains largely, officially, shrouded in mystery. Sebastian Stan may or may not be playing Harvey Dent. Colin Farrell’s Penguin is only going to appear in a couple of scenes. The winter setting has fans convinced Mister Freeze has to be involved, which is the kind of speculation that fills the gap between now and a release date that’s still years out.
That date is February 18, 2028. Which means the fan with the phone on a cold Glasgow street is, for the moment, the most reliable narrator this movie has.
