Batman v Superman Cyborg scene explained — spoilers

By now, most people know that key members of the Justice League make their first appearances in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, by way of introduction for next year’s movie.

But one in particular actually has his origin story presented.

Like many births, it’s both miraculous — and painful.

For those unfamiliar with Cyborg, who will also be getting his own movie in four years, the sequence may also require a little further explanation.

Since Batman v Superman has just opened in theaters, let’s avoid accidentally spoiling it for anyone by heading over to Page 2 to discuss …

NEXT PAGE: Zack Snyder on his introduction of Cyborg …

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The scene in question involves Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) hacking into the private database of Lex Luthor and discovering he is collecting information about other “metahumans,” like them — individuals with enhanced abilities who are operating below the radar of normal society.

In other words, The Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg are all out there in the world, but the world doesn’t know this yet.

The data they find is like an archive of cyptozoology — the Lex Files, instead of the X-Files — only instead of found-footage and snapshots of flying saucers, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, it contains surveillance video of The Flash stopping a convenience store robbery, Aquaman encountering some surprised deep-sea divers, and a nearly century-old still image of Wonder Woman looking the same today as she did during World War I.

This file also contains the video diaries of Dr. Silas Stone (played by Joe Morton), who is a scientist with S.T.A.R. Labs (a.k.a. the Science and Technology Advanced Research Laboratories), which operate independently of any government or outside corporation.

On the wall behind Dr. Stone is a truly sad sight: the upper torso of a young man (Ray Fisher) who has lost most of his limbs and is horrifically scarred from an unspecified accident. This is the doctor’s son, Victor, and in DC Comics lore, he was a promising young football star who was gravely injured when an experiment in his father’s lab went awry.

We see clips of the doctor lamenting his failure to help his son, and then in another experiment, something changes: He presents a strange, shapeshifting box which latches onto the barely surviving remains of the young man and reconstitutes his body into, well … a Cyborg.

“That’s the first glimpse of the Mother Box there,” director Zack Snyder tells EW. “It was an agonizing birth.”

The Mother Box is a part of DC lore created by writer and artist Jack Kirby as part of his Fourth World series. These devices are alien supercomputers that function in a way that could almost be described as magic, manipulating time, space, and reality. Basically, they could do anything.

They were called Mother Boxes because they attach themselves to a host and nurture and protect them in any way necessary, granting them abilities beyond the physical laws of the dimension they occupy.

This scene suggests that Cyborg is part Mother Box, which allows for his extraordinary abilities as a “technopath,” who can mind-meld with and manipulate any kind of technology.

“I really wanted to show Cyborg’s birth because I feel like he plays such a strong part coming up, and I really wanted to give a sense of him. I really want [the audience] to know how far he’s come,” Snyder says.

Justice League – Part One starts shooting in two weeks and will be released next November. The Cyborg stand-alone movie is set for April 3, 2020.

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