This Is the New Batmobile—And It’s Kind of Ugly

Director Zack Snyder posted this image of the Batmobile on Twitter last night. Zack Snyder

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice director Zack Snyder took to Twitter last night to reveal Batman’s latest ride, and … well, fans of the sleek lines of the classic 1966 and 1989 Batmobiles might want to just look away now before it gets too painful.

Here’s the thing: Understandably the Batmobile isn’t just any car, and has to deal with all manner of problems and situations more complicated than “parallel parking on a busy city street” or “where to put all the groceries,” but why that means that the Batmobile has to look more like a Transformer than, you know, a car is a bit hard to grok.

It seemed unlikely that the Tumbler from The Dark Knight could ever be regarded as an understated take on Batman’s town car, but apparently that’s where we’ve reached. By the time Ben Affleck’s Caped Crusader gets his first solo movie, it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if the next generation Batmobile turns out to be larger than Gotham City itself.

Suffice to say, the internet reaction to the new vehicle has been as positive as could be expected:

It’s too late to hope that the powers that be will suddenly get wise and replace this new Batmobile with something more sensible, but we could get lucky: Superman might destroy it in the first half hour of the movie.