So over the past week we had the release of two highly anticipated theatrical trailers.  The one for the new Star Wars film, with its Harrison Ford coda, was met with euphoria.  The one for Batman vs Superman, presented below, was met with a more muted reaction…

There are those who felt the more muted reaction was a result of any number of possibilities.  For one, a bootleg version of this trailer was released to youtube a couple of days before Warner’s “official” trailer release and the company was therefore forced to release their HD version a day or two before the announced they would.  Others have bemoaned the movie’s “dark” tone, stating that while it fits in well with the character of Batman, it doesn’t fit with the more optimistic and bright Superman.

My feeling is that whatever muted reaction came as a result of the trailer it was due to the fact that Warner Brothers presented for the most part stuff we had seen before and missed a very big opportunity to give us something new.

The fact is that what was presented in this trailer doesn’t add all that much to what was already displayed (to much cheer!) at last year’s San Diego Comicon.  Sure, we saw a little more of Batman in his suit and we saw a brooding Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), but the “punchline” of the trailer remained the same as what was shown to great rapture at the Comicon, and that was the armored Batman confronting Superman.  Normally, seeing those images in HD should have been enough.  They are damn powerful.

But we’re living in the era of cell phone cameras and Youtube and those powerful Comicon scenes, which were never meant to appear outside the Comicon, did so in grainy form on Youtube, much like the leaked trailer, for everyone to see.  Sure, the images weren’t all that clear, but they were clear enough to give you an idea of what was coming.

So when this new, official trailer appeared, I personally felt a little disappointment that we didn’t see much that was new this time around.  This trailer, like the one in Comicon, featured the almost identical armored Batman confronting Superman punchline.

The frustrating thing is that the folks behind the scenes have other things –new things- they could have given us in the trailer’s climax.  Something I’m personally dying to see.

Wonder Woman.

That was the trailer’s missed opportunity.  Present everything as before, but at the very end, after we see Batman and Superman square off, give audiences at least a little taste, a hint if nothing more, of the third of the “big three” characters.

Had they shown Wonder Woman in full costume, holding her lasso or standing over a bunch of defeated badguys or getting into her airplane -even if it is something that will not make it to the film itself- I guarantee you that would have turned those frowns upside down.

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.