One complaint some may have of ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘ this weekend is Batman’s more lethal tactics in the movie when dealing with villains. Zach Snyder disagrees with these complaints and is on point on defending those actions. (I wonder if anyone else has noticed that Snyder constantly seems to be addressing complaints about his DC films?) He has even compared the destructive body count to being nothing in comparison to other major blockbusters like ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ as if that justifies the negative views of the Superman we were given in ‘Man of Steel’. Even more recently he stated “I’m a comic book guy and I made the movie based as much as I could on that aesthetic. And so I don’t know how else to do it 100%, so it is what it is” as to people who disagreed with his vision.
Personally, I haven’t seen the film at the time of writing this so I can’t tell you if I agree with the critics who have spoken against it or not. I do know that on page Batman has used guns infrequently in the past but as this is partially based off of ‘The Dark Knight,’ it really isn’t out of the realm of feasibility and not an area I’m at all concerned about.
It is by no means a deal breaker on Batman in my opinion.
As others have complained enough it seems that Snyder had to address this issue:
“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.
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 guy’s are associated with a thing that happens to blow up, he would say that that’s not really my problem.
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 yes, in the movie Batman does kill. However, with the source material that this is loosely based off of I don’t feel that it should be that much of a surprise.
Want to check out Batman’s kills from previous films? We’ve got a video to share with you on that as well!
As to the film being good or not, that will be up to us as viewers to decide. Complaining about a hostile Batman, though, is a bit ridiculous. If anything, he is the one hero in the film that would be the most justifiable to see this kind of action from.
What are your thoughts on Batman both killing and using guns in ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’? If you’ve seen the film, do you think that it did a good job of representing The Dark Knight? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Screen Rant
