“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” has been met with a lot of controversy and director Zack Snyder is hitting it head on. Snyder recently spoke to HeyUGuys about some decisions he made with Batman in the film, mainly the fact that Batman kills.
Now of course this version of Batman isn’t the only version to technically kill someone in a film. Batman has killed in the movies before albeit most of the time he does it indirectly. There’s even a whole supercut out there that references 45 different potential kills from Batman’s film career.
Regardless, any time that Batman kills in a movie it’s going to be seen as controversial. When asked about Batman’s potential kills in “Batman v Superman” Zack Snyder said the following:
“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!’”
You can check out the full supercut from Mr. Sunday Movies which counts down the 45 potential kills from the Batman films below.
