It's been coming for a long time. The Caped Crusader and Man of Steel are squaring off in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice this very month. But a question you might have asked yourselves while Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill warm up for the fight of the century is this: could Batman seriously ever hope to defeat Superman? Like, for serious?
Sure, Bruce Wayne might be a rich genius, but Kal-El is a flying alien who can lift whole islands and shoot lasers from his eyes, and is almost totally invulnerable. Many a comic – and now a multi-million dollar movie – has been dedicated to this very question, and now we're here to give you the definitive answer on the matter.
Batman is obviously at a disadvantage, so to really get to grips with this quandary we need to look into the ways in which he might try to come out ahead in a dust-up.
1. Physical combat?
Batman v Superman looks like it will be going down the straight fisticuffs route, with Bats donning some super mecha armour and attempting to punch Supes into submission.
Now, Superman's strength has varied considerably over the years. All his powers have – remember when he 'leapt tall buildings in a single bound' rather than flying?
But as standard, Superman can fly straight through a skyscraper like it's not even there (demolishing them and dooming hundreds to death, if you're talking Man of Steel). These buildings are designed to hold up hundreds of thousands of tons of glass, steel and concrete, so it stands to reason that Batman's armour would have to be considerably stronger than the foundations of the average tower block in Metropolis in order to even slow Superman down.
That flimsy BvS armour isn't going to do him any good at all – it would have to be metres and metres thick to serve as any protection against the mighty Kryptonian at all. And ok, so now Superman can't punch his spleen out through his spine, but dressed up like a giant titanium snowball, how is Batman going to land a blow? A purely physical battle is clearly not going to cut it.
Round One: Superman wins
2. Kryptonite?
Ah. The old weakness. Superman's literal and figurative kryptonite. Once he's curled up in a ball crying for his mummy, it will be Bruce's time to deliver the coup de grâce.
But that's not really how kryptonite works. First comes the frowning, the groaning and the staggering about the place. We're talking about a person who can run or fly at supersonic speeds. As soon as he notices that telltale green glow, Superman could be a mile away from Batman's deadly meteorite.
Coupled with the deadly heat vision and ability to drop a building on his attacker, kryptonite suddenly doesn't sound all that useful, does it? (Unless it's shielded in lead against his X-ray vision, like Lex Luthor pulled in the 1978 Superman film.)
Round two: a draw
3. Magic and or/turning the sun red?
Superman is weakened by magical powers (it's a comics thing), and it's been established that the light of a red sun will slowly leach his superhuman abilities.
As far as we have been able to work out, the Dark Knight is entirely un-magical, and we can confidently say that changing the physical makeup of our sun is beyond his abilities. So these probably aren't options.
Round three: Superman wins
4. Trickery?
The only real advantage that Batman has over Kal-El is his genius detective mind, so it stands to reason that he can only hope to outwit his super-opponent.
It wouldn't take too much for Mr Wayne to uncover the true identity of his rival, and that's even assuming he shares his fellow DC Universe residents' inability to recognise a person once they take off their glasses.
Once he knows about Superman's secret identity, he could go about manipulating Clark's loved ones and putting the Man of Steel in impossible situations where everyone is in mortal peril at the same time. This is the only way that non-superpowered villains have ever really had a chance of taking Supes down.
Hang Lois Lane over a vat of acid, infect Martha Kent with a deadly nanotech virus that could kill her with the push of a button, fill the Daily Planet office with killer bees. The possibilities are endless.
But hold up. That doesn't sound much like Batman. That sounds more like a supervillain, right? In fact, it sounds like what the Joker did to Batman in The Dark Knight.
So we guess Batman could defeat Superman if he really wanted to, but only by fatally compromising everything he stands for. And who would really win then, Dark Knight? Maybe you should just stick to beating on clowns and the mentally unwell and leave Superman to someone else.
Round 4: Batman wins, but it's a pyrrhic victory
