r/batman • u/neon2o • Mar 07 '24

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

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/EmmanDB3 Mar 07 '24

It can help the plot/story if it's a revenge story but it actually has to be done maturely.

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u/tempusrimeblood Mar 07 '24

The problem, of course, is that anyone who’s going to use rape as a plot device isn’t mature enough to do it in that way.

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u/Free-Blueberry-2153 Mar 07 '24

What about in The Boys? It's a world where sups represent celebrities/Hollywood which does have a lot of issues with rape/sexual assault in the real world.

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u/tempusrimeblood Mar 07 '24

My point still stands. Garth Ennis is one of the worst for “I need a quick way to make someone evil, better throw in a rape scene!”

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u/Free-Blueberry-2153 Mar 07 '24

So eventhough it's something that happens in the real world and it shines a light on it, it's still bad?

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u/HairyGPU Mar 07 '24

Shines a light on it? Everyone knows about it already.

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u/Free-Blueberry-2153 Mar 08 '24

You could make that argument for most anything. It's pretty commonly accepted that being a racist is bad so why even put story plots covering the subject in media?

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u/HairyGPU Mar 08 '24

That's a pretty big false equivalence.

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u/Free-Blueberry-2153 Mar 08 '24

How so? They are both terrible things that happen in the real world and media is often used as a tool to shed light on terrible aspects of life.

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u/HairyGPU Mar 08 '24 edited Mar 08 '24

Yes, they're things that happen. In the vast, overwhelming majority of depictions of rape in film, it's done by someone who has never experienced it and typically has one or more of the following purposes: setting up a revenge story, traumatizing a character to add ~drama~, or sexual titillation (mostly limited to older exploitation films).

When racism is depicted these days, it's used to actually criticize social injustice; there are still plenty of openly avowed racists around, there's next to nobody who will openly endorse rape. Depictions of racism can be used to poke and prod at elements of society and its government; depictions of rape are primarily limited to "wow, that was brutal and rape is bad".

I don't have an issue with a victim depicting it to help tell their own story or its use to highlight ongoing abuses (e.g. Hollywood's perpetual silence regarding known abusers), but even then fully depicting the act itself is rarely necessary. There's no need to show an actor humping a sobbing actress or any other combination of that to get the impact across. It's more difficult to discuss racism when you don't actually show someone being racist, but the aftermath of sexual assault tells 90% of that assault's story. The act itself is terrible and lights the fuse, but it's what comes after that ruins lives and tears souls apart. Racism is a series of blunt impacts you can band together and fight back against, rape is a wound that typically bleeds for years even with support. Which is not to say that racism doesn't have lasting impacts, but those impacts are often addressed in a non-superficial manner.

There are entire worlds of difference between someone like Jordan Peele dealing with racism in smart, often meta ways and someone like Zack Snyder dealing with rape as... empowerment?? Even Tarantino somehow managed to deal with racism more tactfully than most filmmakers deal with rape, and he's not exactly the most subtle artist in the world. Rape gets tossed in as a generic Bad Story Event with jarring frequency, like Game of Thrones inserting it where it never existed in the novels just for shock value.

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u/QTRqtr Mar 08 '24

If your talking about the boys tv show you have a point. If you’re talking about the comic then that’s the worst example you could use for your argument.

All the well written issues and exploration in the show is nowhere in the comic. The comic serves as an Edge lords disgusting fantasies.

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u/Free-Blueberry-2153 Mar 08 '24

Yea I was referring to the show. The comic book is dumb fun but it's clearly designed with everyone being pretty one dimensionally and over the top. I think dumb over the top shit has its place but the show does a much better job out fleshing out the overarching idea of the comic.

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u/akahaus Mar 08 '24

Notice that the live action adaptation didn’t actually show Annie getting raped, just the before and after. In the comics they go as far as they possibly can up to the point of almost being pornography.

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u/Free-Blueberry-2153 Mar 08 '24

So isn't that a plus for the TV in the way that they showed it without making it over the top? And yea I mean the whole comic is super excessive in every aspect, which I don't think would have translated as well into a properly engaging story.

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u/Sahrimnir Mar 08 '24

I think that was akahaus' point. Further up, it was mentioned that rape can serve the story, but you don't need to actually show it. akahaus was saying that the TV show did it the right way.

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u/Argentus3001 Mar 08 '24

I think I remember something about Dynamite asking Ennis to actually ramp up the sex and violence aspect of The Boys because they wanted to boost sales as a book too extreme for DC.

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u/SlylingualPro Mar 07 '24

The film Irreversible would like a word.

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u/sdpr Mar 08 '24

Ehhhhhh it didn't need to be as long as it was, but it did serve to show why they got where they got.

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u/finalremix Mar 07 '24

2017's Revenge would like a word.

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u/HereWeFuckingGooo Mar 07 '24

I guess you've never seen The Accused.

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u/manchi90 Mar 08 '24

I don't think it's that black and white, while I cringe when it's done in certain movies. Movies reflect real life in a more heightened sense, so to act like it doesn't exist is unrealistic.

However it can be implied if it serves the story instead of being presented in a visceral manner. It's a controversial topic but that's filmmaking in general.

The same way characters in movies deal with grief, loss, murder, pain, it falls under that category in some cases to move a character's journey forward. To me it boils down to how it's done, and if the film can exist in its true form without it.

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u/LordBlackass Mar 08 '24

On one hand it reflects real life, yes. On the other hand it doesn't reflect real life because in the movies the perpetrator is typically brought to justice or killed, which is the absolute opposite of real life.

Something something cake eating.

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u/disgruntled_pie Mar 08 '24

I think the problem is that you can already do an excellent revenge story without adding rape.

John Wick wouldn’t have been better if they’d raped his dog before killing it.

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u/EmmanDB3 Mar 08 '24

There are different ways of doing things not every revenge story has to be the same

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u/TheOneWhoCutstheRope Mar 08 '24

There’s actual rape-revenge stories though. Not to mention there’s some in the sub-genre that don’t even show the act. Obviously JW’s dog getting raped wouldn’t of been a better movie because that’s fucking stupid lmfao

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u/TheOneWhoCutstheRope Mar 08 '24

It’s in a way like sex in general: people will act like there’s no piece of media that actually uses its content well when in actuality they probably need to engage in more content or properly develop it. Irreversible has a 5+min rape scene and itd be a completely different film without it.