By Kim Filchak, Senior Reporter

Greetings internet! Welcome to Rampant Speculation, which every day feels less and less like a rumor column and more of an excuse for me to blather on endlessly about things I think are neat (like G.I Joe/Transformers cartoon crossovers), threaten to throw my shoe at people, post random gifs, and fan cast to my heart’s content. To those brave few souls who actually read this not so silent cry for an internet addiction intervention, I commend you for your patience with the obviously crazy person Kevin was foolish enough to give a forum to. Seriously dude, thank you, but what were you thinking?

It has been quite a summer so far, between the Ant-Man drama, the DC V Marvel all-out war for our attention and surprise injuries on the sets of beloved space opera legacy franchises, but things had begun to slow down. I am not going to say I was getting bored, just that I had resigned myself to having to post more trailers and movie related updates between obnoxious gifs for the foreseeable future. People were playing nice and column writing type carbon based lifeforms such as myself thrive on controversy. It’s where we can spill out our mad theories across the screen with the illusion of legitimacy. Honestly, the thing I was most looking forward to was getting more information about Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 2 so I could post Jeremy Renner (Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Hurt Locker, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters) reaction gifs, because that man’s face is a gift to us all.

Then this weekend happened and the magic is back baby!  I wanted a conspiracy theory and the internet gave me one, though even I was not expecting a conspiracy of this magnitude. This ouroboros of rumors, leaked PDF’s and mysterious emails from anonymous sources is our faked moon landing, our reptile elite, our secret city of mole people living underneath Denver International Airport (Seriously look up DIA conspiracy theories, you will not regret it). If this hot mess of a situation is in fact the real deal than it is some seriously well coordinated Illuminati next level crazy, and it is truly glorious. If this just yet another misdirection/rumor mill misfire in a summer that has been plagued with them then it is still kind of awesome because it gave me something to write about other than the status of Wonder Woman’s outfit and for that I am eternally grateful.

I am speaking of course about the possible fake script for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice that, if it is an actual fake out, has had people chasing their tails for weeks if not months. I had pegged either Lucas Films or Marvel Studios to be the ones to give us our first false flag operation, what with thier connection the the Dread Mouse and it’s empire, but instead it may be that it is the WB and thier wascally wabbit that came through with the goods.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice began filming in Michigan in March and ever since it has been leaking rumors and plot points like a sieve. Every time you turned around somebody had a new detail to drop about the production that has not even finished shooting yet. From still as yet unconfirmed casting of Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones) as Aquaman, to leaks about the line up of DC films for the next five years, to the latest bit of news to drop last week listing four additional villains set to appear in Batman V Superman.

This last rumor is the one that finally got people thinking. Even I, giddy and incredibly credulous fan girl that I am, had a few doubts about the places those particular characters could fit in Batman V Superman. I had mentioned my concern in a previous Rampant Speculation over using a character like David Cain, with his dark history of forced pregnancy and child abuse, in the film as merely an assassin. There are other assassins in the DC verse and honestly if they were just using him in that capacity, which it seemed like that was the deal in the details that were mentioned, than Deadshot would have been a much better and a way less problematic choice. Then there was the Morgan Edge thing.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice seems to have more DNA in common with DC comics New 52 rebooted universe than with any of their classic eras, with the notable exception of Frank Miller’s  “Dark Knight Returns” and that itself is an AU and so therefore easily folded into the continuity of the film they are creating. Which is one of the reasons I was a little doubtful about them casting Scoot McNairy (12 Years a Slave, Halt and Catch Fire) as Morgan Edge, because in the New 52 continuity’s Morgan Edge is African American. No big deal, they could be going with the original flavor Morgan Edge for reasons of their own, it was a bit of a head scratcher but I could work around it. No, for me what stretched the fabric of plausibility to the point of disintegration was this quote from The Latino Review  in regard to the Edge character and his connection to Lex Luthor.

“In the movie’s backstory, Edge and Luthor were members of the most notorious gangs ever to come out of Hob’s Bay. This is the kind of role that is in McNairy’s wheelhouse.””

He knew Lex Luthor from their days together in a notorious street gang. Lex Luthor, as in the character being played by Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland, The Social Network). So basically they were saying this guy ran with the single most bad-ass criminal crew in Hobbs Bay.

So yeah… When news broke that the details that have been coming out could be from a fake script my first instinct was think okay, yes, the world makes sense again. Of course this being the internet, basically a vast playground of mendacity and obfuscation where nothing can be taken without loading up on the salt and where even the once powerful phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” has been rendered meaningless in the age of Photoshop, it was not as simple as that.

So how did all of this happen? That my friends is where the fun begins and by fun I mean a few hours or so killed on internet research. Luckily I had the time to kill and all of the caffeine in the known universe to aid me.

Everything had been scooting along just fine as we as a species edged our way toward extinction by way of zombie apocalypse when last week BadassDigest reported that they had gotten thier hands on a PDF of the shooting script for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. The PDF reveals that there are several previously unreported secondary characters in the film and way more fan service than expected. Full points to the folks at BadassDigest for being skeptical about the provenance of the purported script.

“There’s a pdf making the rounds that claims to be the script for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice*, one that I’ve had sent to me a couple of times. I discounted the script – it’s full of spelling and punctuation errors and it feels just a tad too fan-friendly to be real.”

Around the same time The Latino Review posted an article listing four new villains in the film, which I talked about in the last Rampant Speculation and hinted as to what thier roles could be in the film. The busy bees of the internet rumor hive-mind were still parsing out the data and distributing it about the web when the people over at MovieWeb broke, if it ends up being true, one hell of a game changing story.

MovieWeb has reported that they received an email from a source deep within the labyrinthine bowels of the Warner Bros bureaucracy machine that claims the script all of those rumors were based on was in fact a false script written by FanBoy Prime himself, Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Degressi: The Next Generation).

“Yes, that Kevin Smith. The director of Clerks and Red State. The guy who has been dropping Batman v Superman hints since the film was announced. The same guy who is best friends with Bruce Wayne himself, Ben Affleck.

Kevin Smith wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Warner Bros., with the studio purposely leaking the script to various movie bloggers and sites, helping to throw the scent off what director Zack Snyder was actually attempting to accomplish with Batman v Superman.”

 

The email, if true, basically says that everything we have found out thus far by way of gossip and rumor in regards to Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice that was not officially announced by Warner Bros is completely bogus. We are easily led cattle who have been duped by the studio in an attempt to make sure we don’t ruin the movie for ourselves with our insatiable appetite for spoilers. Do they even know us?

Here is the email in full via MoiveWeb.

“This isn’t a scoop regarding the plot or the details of the Batman v Superman movie or am I writing you in order to spoil or disappoint the general public.

My insider info regards a who has been the source of the vast majority of leaked information as regards to the movie and more importantly why.

Up until last year I worked for as a PA for a Warner Bros. exec until I was promoted to marketing. It was here I and several others where approached to work, directly and indirectly, for Susanne Knoll and sometimes Deborah Snyder.

It was here that I became a part of a particular strategy that Warner Bros has been using to great effect.

Early this year a Screenplay for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justicewhich was commissioned by Warner Bros was leaked to several gossip sites. It was a scanned PDF of the entire screenplay baring a official Warner Bros watermark.

This script has been the source of almost every leaked detail about the movie for the last six months. It has been posted on sites then quickly removed due to cease and desist letters from Warner Bros.

While the screenplay is legit and the watermark is legit and it is was commissioned by Charles Roven himself…

But it is written by neither David S. Goyer or Chris Terrio.

It was written by Kevin Smith.

Late last year both Charles Roven and Zack Snyder approached Kevin Smith with a early treatment for the film and It was Kevin Smith who came up with the idea to write an entire screenplay based on it but with several huge red herrings and changes which do not appear in the final film. These include plot points and characters etc etc. and ‘leak’ it online.

This script was distributed by myself and others to gossip sites and movie sites like aintitcool, latino review, movie pilot, etc etc

My job was to pose as a worker at Warner Bros who was leaking the screenplay.

There were several others involved who posed as recently fired members of the production, interns and special effects artists and we all spread the misleading info around the web.

None of this was done maliciously and was a strategy to misdirect much of sites that intended to spoil the film.”

It would be fair to say there have been some mixed reactions to this bit of potentially paradigm shifting news, but mostly people are erring on the side of caution. If this is true then it means that we have to re think everything we think we knew about not only Batman V Superman but also any other news we have gotten unofficially from unnamed sources about The Justice League and any other subsequent films in the DC Movie Verse. If this is not true then it begs the question of where did this email come from? Is the email itself a false flag designed to make us doubt the veracity of the leaks that have already sprung in the production? Or is it just someone jerking people around for thier own sick amusement? Which we really do not need at this point, the internet rumor mill is already the equivalent of a bag cats on a good day, muddied waters like this only exacerbate the reactionary, troll baiting, decisions made at the speed of ADHD problem. I mean, have you seen Tumblr?

For myself personally, I honestly do not know what to believe. If this pans out than to say this news defies adjectives is putting it mildly. This is full on evil genius level manipulation and I would be proud of Warner Bros for pulling it off for as long as they did while at the same time very annoyed at the implications this holds for the future of fan/creator relations. We need to trust these guys true, but we also need to make sure that we never get another horrible train wreak of a film that destroys a character we love. There is a long list of comic book based films that have basically sucked donkey balls (Batman and Robin, Green Lantern, Jonas Hex, Daredevil, Catwoman…oh dear god, all of the Catwoman) and we as fans have often been the ones stepping up to the plate and calling out the crap when we see it being made.

If they are in fact going to such lengths to make sure we have no idea what they are doing? Than that is only going to make me more suspicious that they in fact have no idea what they are doing. Protect your project yes, agreed, keep some secrets but if you are not operating under at least the hint of some transparency then I am going to seriously worry about what it is you do not want me to know. Last time we got lied to even remotely like this was the Khan reveal in Star Trek: Into Darkness, which for many people full on ruined what was shaping up to be a decent Star Trek movie, with the added slap in the face of being out right lied to about it for months before hand.

DC/Warner Bros, I truly did not think you had it in you and at this point I still don’t know if you do. Right now we have no way of know what, if any, of this is true. The only way we would ever know save reading the PDF of the script ourselves and then watching Batman V Superman is if someone (Snyder, Smith or even Warner Bros) officially commented on this and I do no think that is going to happen. All we know for a fact is what we can find on Batman V Superman’s IMDB page and in the official Batman V Superman content created by Warner Bros for the film. And seriously, where is the fun in that?

So my fellow rumor loving denizens of the web I leave it to you to sort this out. I have given you the information as it currently is known and now you have to make your own “Sophie’s Choice”. Which rumor do you believe? The lady with the almost too good to be true information or the tiger with the story that could have been ripped from the headlines of a conspiracy theory website? Are you going with caveman (rage) or astronaut (hope)? The choice is yours, but chose wisely.

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