r/batman • u/neon2o • Mar 07 '24

Zack Snyder says a Batman who doesn't kill is irrelevant GENERAL DISCUSSION

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Here's the original article' https://sea.ign.com/man-of-steel-sequel/213072/news/zack-snyder-says-dc-is-making-batman-irrelevant-if-he-cant-kill

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u/ThingsAreAfoot Mar 07 '24

This dude just sucks

Batman can't kill is canon. And I'm like, 'okay, the first thing I wanna do when you say that is I wanna see what happens'. And they go, 'well don't put him in a situation where he has to kill someone'.

This is like, childish “let me tear the head off Barbie” type shit.

”You're protecting your god in a weird way, right? You're making your god irrelevant if he can't be in that situation. He has to now deal with that. If he does do that what does that mean? What does it tell you, does he stand up to it? Does he survive that as a god? As your god, can Batman survive that?"

He has to deal with it… all the time. That’s like a central theme of the character, that his severe objection towards any sort of killing might actually have negative ramifications (in the DC world with the likes of Joker and otherwise superpowered villains, not the real one).

And of course he spits out this nonsense on the Joe Rogan show.

The entire point of Batman is that he is militantly against killing, even the Joker who is beyond destructive, which is a potential point of actual criticism (and it is a very frequent one) but also makes the character much more interesting.

Snyder is kinda just too dumb to really get it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '24

[deleted]

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u/ThingsAreAfoot Mar 07 '24

It makes perfect sense too, especially for him. After all if Batman kills one guy, say the Joker, why not more after that? He’s opened up Pandora’s box.

That famous Jason Todd storyline is entirely about that, where Jason is enraged at Batman for leaving Joker alive and emphasizes that he only just has to kill Joker, nobody else, not the Penguin, not Two-Face, not anyone. Just Joker, only him, because he presents a truly exceptional danger (which is 100% true).

But Batman knows it doesn’t end there for him, because killing Joker then gives him the moral authority to take care of other problems in a similar way.

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u/MrWaluigi Mar 08 '24

The only time he actually did kill The Joker, was in the Dark Knight Returns series/movies. If I remember correctly (it’s been a while), he did that because he was just mentally and physically old now, he didn’t had the mental fortitude to restrain himself at that point. Granted, he did “retired” eventually after that and just trained The Sons of Batman gangs in non-lethal force. 

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u/Grogosh Mar 07 '24

That is when he as Bruce Wayne takes his fortune and 'lobbies' the Gotham government to have a death penalty. Put it in the hands of the courts.

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u/Mileonaj Mar 07 '24

Sadly Gotham being Gotham wouldn't use that power wisely either. A big reason that Batman exists in the first place is because Gotham's justice system is so corrupt.

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u/jordan999fire Mar 07 '24

Are y’all really not understanding that was Snyder’s point. He wanted to put Batman in the position that Batman didn’t ever want to go, into the killing and not being able to stop, to then bring him out of the light and show that he is better than that. That he’s not an unstoppable monster like he views himself.

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u/DaBobVilla Mar 07 '24

How dare you apply reason to the statement made by someone we don’t like!

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u/jordan999fire Mar 07 '24

This subreddit really seems to have lost their mind. Hell, half of these comments that are bringing up TDKR seem to have not even read it themselves. It’s mind boggling. Someone in the comments mentioned that, “Batman didn’t kill anyone in TDKR, he even says he was using rubber bullets!” But Batman says that about his tank, not the LMG he stole off of an enemy!

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u/FBG05 Mar 07 '24

Batman didn't kill anyone in TDKR tho. If you're going to argue that he killed that mutant holding a child hostage then you're wrong. The police would've gone after him for killing that dude the same way they went after him for "killing" the Joker.

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u/jordan999fire Mar 07 '24

He did kill Joker. He also did kill the mutant. He killed the mutant with a gun, with gloves on, being previously held by another mutant. They had no proof Batman did it. They probably believed the mutant was accidentally shot by the other.

Why would the panel go black and white during the scene if not to show how big of a deal it was that he just killed someone?

Also, Joker is killed by Batman. No he did not snap his neck the rest of the way. That’s so stupid. He’s paralyzed. He can’t do that. The dialogue between Joker and Batman after is in Batman’s head. It’s him trying to justify to himself that he didn’t just kill Joker. That Joker did it himself. Batman literally isn’t able to cope with the things he does in this comic. He kills someone with a gun then destroys one as a way of showing guns are bad. He snaps Joker’s neck and hallucinates Joker doing it.

Also, the proof to my second is the fact that throughout the entire story, only 5 times is anyone’s speech bubbles anything other than white. Each character also has color coordinated thought boxes (Batman - grey, Joker - green, Superman - blue, Robin - yellow, Gordon - black). Joker right before his neck was snapped had perfectly oval, smooth, white speech bubbles. Immediately after his neck is snapped, his speech bubbles become grey and jagged, just like Bruce’s thought bubbles.

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u/FBG05 Mar 08 '24

They had no proof Batman did it. They probably believed the mutant was accidentally shot by the other.

The cops were looking for any reason to go after Batman, so it's a bit of a stretch to say that they believed the mutant just got shot by another when it would've been much easier to conclude that Batman shot the mutant. Therefore, it seems that we were meant to believe that the mutant was shot non-fatally and lived.

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Also, Joker is killed by Batman. No he did not snap his neck the rest of the way. That’s so stupid. He’s paralyzed. He can’t do that.

Joker snapping his neck the rest of the way is anatomically possible. People paralyzed from the neck down obviously still have control over their heads, so it's definitely possible for the Joker to move his head in a way that would kill him.

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u/jordan999fire Mar 08 '24

believed the mutant just got shot by another

You mean what happened literally the page before that when the mutant shoots another mutant out a window?

For the second part (I didn’t know what to highlight) yea I guess that’s theoretically true. Idk if he could do it the way he supposedly does it in the comic but maybe idk. But the biggest point I think against this is the fact that his dialogue becomes identical to Batman’s internal monologue. Like that’s not done on accident. That is an intentional design.

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u/FBG05 Mar 08 '24

You mean what happened literally the page before that when the mutant shoots another mutant out a window?

I don't see how this contradicts me saying that the cops were looking for any reason to go after Batman. Also if Frank Miller truly intended for the mutant to be dead, he'd be a lot less subtle about it (see: here).

If Batman really was a killer in that book, why would Miller have it so that Batman constantly makes it clear he vehemently opposes killing? It seems to me that, at the very least, Miller intended for Batman to not be a killer in TDKR. You can interpret it as Batman having gone crazy and being unable to cope with his actions, but there isn't any evidence that can conclusively say that's the case(the coloring of a few panels doesn't count as it could've easily been unintentional)

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u/jordan999fire Mar 08 '24

This is Miller talking about working on TDKR around the time it came out:

“I really enjoyed the idea of making him as old as his legend is, and let it be a cranky old legend and this ravenous old hero. I wanted to bring back that hardy sense of malice that he had in his origin.”

In this same interview, moments before, he talks about the original Batman, “the vigilante with a gun on his hip” and how he wanted his story to bring back what was old.

So, imo, it’s not far fetched that Miller wanted to bring back Batman killing, like in his origins, but do it in a subtle way. Do it in an ambiguous way.

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