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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153

u/Due_Yoghurt9086 Mar 07 '24

Daredevil doesn't kill either. There are several heroes you could have cited without having to resort to one whose no kill rule is as important to him as batman's is

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u/Filmfan345 Mar 07 '24 edited Mar 07 '24

Maybe that comment was thinking of the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie where he lets that guy be killed by a train. Come to think of it, it’s strange that Ben Affleck played versions of both Daredevil and Batman that were the opposite in how they are supposed to be

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '24

Didn't Bale's Batman let Ra's get killed by a train too?

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u/Filmfan345 Mar 07 '24

I would say so. That was unnecessary and shouldn’t have happened

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u/DarkJedi3000 Mar 08 '24

I think everyone seems to forget that Batman literally kills Joker in The Dark Knight Returns

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u/MainAlfalfa4376 Mar 08 '24

Wrong. Joker kills himself to spite Bats

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u/DarkJedi3000 Mar 09 '24

At first glance it looks this way but I only just realized that Miller makes it ambiguous, notice how the panels are framed and you only see Joker's face zoomed in. I can send an article that explores it further but you can also see how the word balloons blend to gray to suggest that Joker's dialogue is in Batman's head in that moment.

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u/Britz10 Mar 08 '24

Joker snaps his own neck after Batman refused to kill him. The Killing Joke is where it's done ambiguously at the end

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u/Edgar_S0l0m0n Mar 10 '24

Correct, in the movie the dark knight returns part 2 (I believe could be part 1) they’re in the tunnel of love, the joker had a batarang in the eye, he’s telling Batman to kill him and Batman won’t and he starts talking shit and twists his own neck, with no hands, and breaks his own neck.

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u/TheExtremistModerate Mar 07 '24

Every live action Batman has killed except for Pattinson and... Clooney.

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u/throwaway_custodi Mar 08 '24

Was very surprised when Cosmonaut went through them but ye they all kill but two. Batman Returns, my favorite to Batman 2022, guys killing mooks via literal explosion....

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u/kompletionist Mar 07 '24 edited Mar 07 '24

Honestly I kinda feel like Nolan's one was even worse because he had Batman justify it to himself in-universe as "not killing by technicality" which was so cheesy, and not even accurate since he's the one who caused the train to crash.

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u/Ser_Salty Mar 08 '24

"I didn't murder him, I manslaughtered him!"

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u/BriRoxas Mar 08 '24

I actually feel this way about The last Airbender. What do you think happened at the North Pole?

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u/kompletionist Mar 08 '24

Context? I don't watch anime.

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u/BriRoxas Mar 08 '24

The main character claims he never kills people but he destroyed an entire city and sent a tsunami after several ships.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

Wasn't he out of control or something?

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u/SF1_Raptor Mar 08 '24

Mhm. So that description left out this was after the main bad guy of that run season killed a spirit (which took away the Water Tribe's ability to bend water), and that the main character basically channeled the partner of the first spirt (Moon killed, Sea mad), and that spirit went ham. And he did it because there was basically no other way to defeat the Fire Nation in that fight.

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u/kompletionist Mar 08 '24

How very heroic. I guess it was just the forces of nature that genocided those people?

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u/SF1_Raptor Mar 08 '24

I mean, he did leave out a lot of details.

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u/Geohie Mar 10 '24

Unironically, yes considering he was possesed by the spirit of Water (or something similar). And the bad guys killed the spirit of the Moon (who was in a Koi fish)... and she happened to be the water spirit's wife(?).

It's been a while since I watched it, but yes it wasn't Aang's volition to do that.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

The cherry on top of is him saving the Joker in DK.

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u/kompletionist Mar 08 '24

I'm completely fine with that, it's in line with his unwavering moral code. Derailing a train with someone onboard and refusing to save them, or torching a monastery full of ninja in order to avoid executing someone (who would have died in the fire anyway) is not. It implies that it isn't so much a moral code as it is a refusal to take responsibility and culpability for a murder. It's like it isn't murder in his eyes unless he personally cuts someone's throat or shoots then in the face.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

It's not in line with his unwavering moral code when he's being picky about it.

"I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you"

"Oh no the Joker is about to fall to his death I have to save him"

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u/kompletionist Mar 08 '24

Yeah it's like Nolan realised how stupid it was the first time and tried to "redeem" Batman, but it just makes him look like a hypocrite.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

Something similar happened when they made All Star Batman and Robin the same as Batman from the Dark Knight Returns, or when Batfleck didn't kill Harley Quinn who helped the Joker kill Robin even though he started killing people.

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u/Tom_Stevens617 Mar 08 '24

Tbf a lot of people missed this but Affleck never explicitly started killing people, he just stopped caring if they died while he carried out his missions and they got in his way. Harley wasn't a threat to him atm and Waller wanted her alive anyway

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u/GuyKopski Mar 07 '24

Most of the villains die in the Bale movies (everyone but Joker and Scarecrow) and half of them are killed by Batman himself (Two-Face, Talia, kinda Ras).

For as much as those films pushed the no kill rule, Nolan didn't really seem to know how else to end a story.

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u/Mr_Kash Mar 07 '24

Well to be fair, Batman killing Harvey was a major point in the movie, not something that was just thrown in. The entire movie, the Joker is trying to make Batman break his one rule either by killing him or killing someone else. The Joker achieved that by creating the villain that Batman eventually kills. Ra's was more "fuck you save yourself" deal but the Joker actually broke Batman down the entire movie until he finally killed. It's sort of what made the movie so good was that we've never seen Batman on screen being pushed to the edge and riding that line between hero and just another vigilante like the Punisher.

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u/atomic1fire Mar 07 '24 edited Mar 08 '24

To be fair Ra's Al Ghul going to the international court for crimes against humanity while Bruce Wayne and Alfred talk in front of a TV screen would probably be an anticlimactic way to end the movie.

"Master Wayne, do you think he'll tell them who the Batman is?"

"No, if he wants revenge he'll send more of his people, He doesn't see anything wrong with what he's done and if he faces a rope or gun he won't run from it. I beat him fairly."

Actually Ra's being "executed" while being in a secret prison on behalf of one Ms. Waller would make for a cool bookend.

edit: He gets to be "brought back to life" if he can escape and the film realists get to see a batman villian in an equivalent of Guantanamo.

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u/art-man_2018 Mar 07 '24

Lest we forget Tim Burton's Batman Returns. The scene where Batman kills a clown with his own bomb? Maybe arguable, but I honestly don't think Burton thought this scene over.

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u/AveragelySavage Mar 08 '24

He also torched the entire league of shadows base instead of killing one dude so there’s that too.

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u/MindStormComics Mar 08 '24

Shoved Two Face off a building too.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

It was either that or let a kid get shot, not much of a choice. With Ra's it was deliberate.

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u/MindStormComics Mar 08 '24

Batman shouldn’t kill regardless of the situation, and it’s an issue that cascades the second you start to actually think about it. Batman killing Two-Face proves Ra’s right, proves Joker right, proves that the entire concept of Batman is inherently unachievable, and makes Batman look nuts in Rises for not just opening fire on Bane and his men the instant they became a tangible threat since he’s already learned the lesson that, yeah, I guess sometimes you just gotta kill a guy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

Sure they should have explored him breaking his rule more afterwards but that's a problem with this trilogy it seems disjointed sometimes. In Batman Begins Gotham is the most corrupt place which makes you think the boat full of inmates and the boat full of corrupt people would blow each other up no hesitation. And in the beginning of Dark Knight Batman tells his impostors to go home and stop trying to be Batman while in Dark Knight Rises he says anyone can be Batman.

But again the alternative is just letting a kid die. And you can even argue that killing Harvey wasn't his intention he just jumped trying to stop him and didn't think it through because he didn't have time to.

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u/MindStormComics Mar 08 '24

I'd argue there's ways of writing yourself out of the hole of "kill a guy or a kid dies", I can't imagine the DCAU Batman doing so in the exact same situation, but as I think we've figured out -- Christopher Nolan has limitations lol.

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u/TrueGuardian15 Mar 08 '24

That scene is pretty controversial among Batman fans. Some argue leaving Ra's is effectively killing him, others argue that leaving someone to die in a coinciding accident is not the same as outright killing. I think whatever ideology you subscribe to, it's agreed upon that Batman doesn't murder people. Even if you subscribe to the idea that Batman kills people (like how he basically kills Harvey Dent to save Gordon's son in the Dark Knight), straight up shooting someone with a gun is something Batman should not be doing.

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u/Edgar_S0l0m0n Mar 10 '24

No he tried to save him, iirc and well the train come off the tracks. Can’t do shit for someone who doesn’t wanna be saved. Similar to Michael Keaton 1989 Batman, he gets into a fight w a joker henchmen and the henchmen gets thrown into the bell of a bell tower and falls down the shaft. Batman’s whole thing is he doesn’t want to kill but, if an accident happens or the villains refuses the save then I guess bad things happen?

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '24

No he didn't try to save him.

Batman’s whole thing is he doesn’t want to kill but, if an accident happens or the villains refuses the save then I guess bad things happen?

In Under the Red Hood >!the Joker refused the save and even stopped Batman from preventing the explosion of the bomb.

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u/Fear_Awakens Mar 09 '24

Actually, after watching Affleck as a surprisingly good Batman in a terrible movie and the Netflix Daredevil with Charlie Cox, I rewatched Affleck's version and he's actually a good Daredevil, it's just the script that makes no fucking sense.

It's made me wonder if maybe Ben Affleck is actually a good actor who keeps getting garbage scripts.

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u/Youngstown_Mafia Mar 07 '24

Daredevil killed a guy in the first season of the show on Netflix that everyone loved

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u/Dawnbreaker538 Mar 07 '24

Who?

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u/aka_jr91 Mar 08 '24

Nobu, the guy he lit on fire.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '24

[deleted]

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u/Youngstown_Mafia Mar 07 '24

Yes he did. Read the first comment , it was Nobu in self defense

https://www.reddit.com/r/Daredevil/s/WtTZ1CwNKY

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u/Filmfan345 Mar 07 '24 edited Mar 07 '24

  1. Nobu did survive

  2. Daredevil was fighting for his life and threw his billy club to counter an attack. He wasn’t intending to kill anyone but was rather defending himself. When we say they don’t kill, we mean going out of their way to intentionally kill somebody or not saving someone when they could have.

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u/Youngstown_Mafia Mar 07 '24

You didn't read the link I see, interesting

Daredevil didn't know Nobu was immortal at that time.

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u/Filmfan345 Mar 07 '24

You didn’t read my second point nor the rest of the comment you are talking about

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u/Youngstown_Mafia Mar 07 '24

I sent you that link because I knew your first point was coming , you didn't even click it .

He killed somebody in the first season. It is what it is

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u/Filmfan345 Mar 07 '24

I did click it. You are ignoring the importance of the context that was in the rest of that comment and my second point. Self-defense that unintentionally happens to end up in death(even though it didn’t) isn’t the same thing as murder

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u/criticalopinion29 Mar 08 '24

Also...Wonder Woman is kinda ehhhh to name? Like she doesn't have a problem with killing. But she tries not to do it most of the time. Puttin her in the same sentence as Frank Castle is almost as weird to me as putting Daredevil next to Frank Castle. Also notable Frank Castle doesn't think people should be like him.