Batman (DCEU)

As a boy, Bruce watches Thomas and Martha Wayne get shot outside a movie theater. At the funeral, he falls into a cave full of bats. Decades later, on the day Superman and Zod fight in Metropolis, Bruce races through the debris and watches the Wayne Financial building collapse with his people inside.

Eighteen months later, Batman brands criminals with the bat symbol, a death sentence in prison. The Batcave holds a Robin suit defaced by the Joker. Alfred sees that Bruce has lost his way. Bruce comes to see Superman as a threat: if there's even a small chance he's an enemy, it has to be treated as a certainty. He has a nightmare about a desert future ruled by Superman, and a man bursts out of a portal to warn him that Lois Lane is the key.

Bruce steals the kryptonite Lex Luthor imported, turns it into gas grenades and a spear, and suits up in heavy armor. He lights the Bat-Signal to call Superman out. But Lex has kidnapped Martha Kent to force the fight. Batman brings Superman down with the gas and has the spear at his throat when he hears: save Martha. It's his own mother's name. Lois explains everything, and Bruce realizes he's been played.

He promises to save Martha Kent and does, storming the hideout of Lex's thugs. Then, alongside Superman and Wonder Woman, he takes on Doomsday. Superman dies to stop it. At the grave, Bruce tells Diana he failed Clark in life and won't fail him in death: he's going to find the others.

In the Suicide Squad's origin stories, Batman is the one who arrests Deadshot in front of his daughter and pulls Harley Quinn out of a sunken car after a getaway with the Joker.

After the crisis in Midway City, Bruce has dinner with Amanda Waller. She hands over the government's metahuman files, and he promises to protect her reputation. Bruce makes clear he knows she knows his secret and warns her: shut the team down, or he and his friends will.

Parademons start showing up, and Bruce knows an invasion is coming. He travels to Iceland for Arthur Curry, who turns him down. Barry Allen signs up on the spot. Diana helps him find Victor Stone. When Steppenwolf takes two Mother Boxes, Bruce argues for reviving Superman with the third and keeps a backup plan in case it goes wrong: Lois Lane.

Superman comes back confused and attacks the League, and Lois calms him. In the battle in an abandoned Russian town, Bruce offers himself as bait to draw the Parademons, knowing he may not make it back. After the win, he and Diana plan to turn Wayne Manor into a headquarters for the team.

In Zack Snyder's cut, the epilogue takes Bruce back to the desert future. There he leads a band of survivors including Mera, Deathstroke and the Flash, and strikes a truce with the Joker against a Superman controlled by Darkseid. When he wakes up, Bruce is visited by the Martian Manhunter, who introduces himself and promises to help in the war that's coming.

Years later, Bruce is still Batman. Barry gets called to Gotham to help stop a robbery by Al Falcone's crew and, in the chaos, saves babies from a collapsing hospital. Later, Barry tells him he's discovered he can go back in time and wants to save his mother. Bruce, who lost his parents too, warns him about the consequences of changing the past. Barry doesn't listen, and what follows changes more than he expected.

Ben Affleck's Batman owes a lot to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986): an older, worn-out, violent Bruce who suits up in heavy armor to fight Superman. Snyder himself said the film didn't adapt that story but brought that kind of Batman into his Superman's world. Affleck bulked up to look like a heavyweight fighter, and Batman's voice is altered by a device, since a famous billionaire's voice would be easy to recognize.