Here's What Zack Snyder Has To Say About Batman Breaking His Traditional Rules

Henry Faherty March 26th, 2016 - 12:15 PM

Zack Snyder‘s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice has no doubt had some mixed reception from critics, especially because of the film’s very dark, adult tone. Batman (Ben Affleck) not only is a broodingly grim character, he’s at the forefront of the backlash because of the character going into previously unexplored territory. Snyder has already had to defend the film quite a lot since its release on the 25th, but now even more so.

The big aspect of the new Batman that some are claiming to dislike is showing the caped-crusader killing people on-screen. Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight Trilogy has Batman often hurting or maiming people, but there was almost no (or possibly definitive) cases of the character killing people. But in Dawn of Justice, there are many times that show Affleck inflicting serious kill moves on thugs and criminals. But in an interview with HeyUGuys, Snyder had plenty of examples of comparing his take to other filmmakers:

I tried to do it in a technical way. There’s a great YouTube video that shows all the kills in the Christopher Nolan movies even though we would perceive them as movies where he doesn’t kill anyone. I think there’s 42 potential kills that Batman does! Also, it goes back and includes even the Tim Burton Batman movies where this reputation as a guy that doesn’t kill comes from.

And while it may be true that other iterations of Batman have possibly shown him killing, most are somewhat indefinitive of the fate of the victims. But Snyder was also weary about having the character kill outright in overly-violent ways:

So, I tried to do it by proxy. Shoot the car they’re in, the car blows up or the grenade would go off in the guy’s hand, or when he shoots the tank and the guy pretty much lights the tank [himself]. I perceive it as him not killing directly, but if the bad guys are associated with a thing that happens to blow up, he would say that that’s not really my problem.

The director has frequently said about how much Frank Miller‘s graphic novels were a major influence on how Affleck’s Batman was visualized and created for Dawn of Justice, and he stated that how the character physically kills others is more circumstance than just blatant murder:

A little more like manslaughter than murder, although I would say that in the Frank Miller comic book that I reference, he kills all the time. There’s a scene from the graphic novel where he busts through a wall, takes the guy’s machine gun…I took that little vignette from a scene in The Dark Knight Returns, and at the end of that, he shoots the guy right between the eyes with the machine gun. One shot. Of course, I went to the gas tank, and all of the guys I work with were like, ‘You’ve gotta shoot him in the head’ because they’re all comic book dorks, and I was like, ‘I’m not gonna be the guy that does that!

So it will be up to fans of Batman to truly decide if this new side of him is truly faithful and effective to the comic books. The film is generally getting slammed by critics but big praise from most moviegoers, which is a good sign for the potentially long shelf-life the superhero epic could have in the future.

Here’s What Zack Snyder Has To Say About Batman Breaking His Traditional Rules