From the get-go, it looked like Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman shared more in common with Snyder's Watchmen adaptation than any movie Marvel has put out in the last decade. His DC universe is dark, gritty and apparently, one where Batman has no problem killing people.
Minor spoilers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice below. You've been warned.
In a new interview with HeyUGuys, Zack Snyder is asked directly why the decision was made for Batman to kill people in the film. Snyder's response is surprising for fans of the character, fans who know that, with very few exceptions, Batman never kills as a rule.
"I tried to do it in a technical way, right?" Snyder explains, before talking about how Christopher Nolan's Batman also killed people. "There's a great YouTube video that shows all the kills in the Christopher Nolan movies, even though we would perceive he doesn't kill anyone. I think there's like 42 potential kills that Batman does. It goes back and even includes the Tim Burton Batman movies, where this reputation that Batman doesn't kill comes from."
Snyder continues by saying he tried to film Batman killing by "proxy" rather than directly.
"You shoot the car the guys in and the car blows up, or the grenade would go off in the guy's hand, whatever," he says. He then explains a moment in the film where Batman shoots the gas tank on a man's back, which then proceeds to explode.
"If the bad guys are associated with a thing that happens to blow up ... he would say that that's not really my problem, they shouldn't have been around that," he says.
Snyder then goes on to justify Batman's on screen actions by citing Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. In that comic, Batman kills repeatedly, even mowing down a criminal with a machine gun with no hesitation.
Regardless of the source Snyder is pulling inspiration from, more than a few fans will likely have a problem with Batman's on screen actions, just as they did with the end of Man of Steel. That film, too, featured a hero who doesn't kill indiscriminately smashing buildings filled with people before proceeding to snap a villain's neck.
For what it's worth, reception to Batman v Superman has been, at best, negative. The film currently holds a 33 percent rating out of 100 on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, though that shouldn't stop the movie from smashing records at the box office this weekend.
