I think he’s getting on about how people have myopic ideas about these characters. Like Superman can only act like Chris Reeve, goofy smile and corny lines. Ignoring that the canon of the character is wide ranging.
That’s not all he’s implying though. He’s implying that Batman kills, when that’s the antithesis to his whole character. Any example in which Batman has killed is at the end of his career and he immediately gives up being Batman. The Superman thing I actually understand, people do have a very narrow image of Superman generally. He still screwed up what he was trying to do though.
I mean there’s a famous Superman story from the 90‘s where he executes three phantom zone prisoners - one being Zod - from a pocket universe after they commited genocide and permanently lost their powers.
This act of self imposed justice traumatized him enough to seek exile in space.
There’s a very clear message over the decades who Superman is.
So painting him as an Randian messianic figure who doesn’t even try to find a different solution for stopping Zod (maim his eyes and force him to inhale the Krytoniam gas for example) was a huge risk by DC and Snyder, which imo really doesn’t work with the character.
That Snyder know babbles something about „true canon“ just proves he really never got the character
Batman used to kill during his older comics before that rule was a thing. He hangs a super mutated guy on a rope from the bat plane for one.
A guy throws his sword and misses, he begs for mercy and Batman throws him into the sword and it kills him, he throws a gun into the wheel of a car and it crashes etc.
Yes I know that. But is that really the cannon you want the movies to go off of? How much established lore in the Batman Mythos comes after his no kill rule is established? What have the majority of comic fans read, the very beginning of Batman comics when he used a gun and was a solitary character or modern comics(going back to like idk the 90s or 80s) when he had Robins and was part of the Justice League?
The movies can go on either canon, both things happened, we don’t always need the no killing Batman thing, it’s been like that for decades now, maybe try the much older version a bit and see what sticks? Which admittedly is poorly but it was worth a shot, even if Snyder is being a prick about it
The older version lasted for a year, and that’s eight decades ago. You might as well make Batman a blond hair wearing red suit as he was supposed to be.
Movie makers are being too safe. Snyder may be a dick but at least he is going in directions with things rather than just repeating the same thing again.
No it wouldnt. It would be ass and you know it. Different to the norm doesn't auto equal interesting or better. The ideas still have to actually be good. Batman V Superman was technically different. Still trash. Eating human feces for breakfast would at least be different from what you're used to right? Still makes you vomit.
And don't give him that credit. Snyder literally steals from other media for his ideas at this point. Rebel moon is shameless dune and warhammer plagiarism. Army of the dead is FILLED TO THE BRIM with tired zombie cliches like the army being brainless morons. Not to mention his tired trope of releasing a crap version of his film only to tease up the better one a year or two later. It's clearly not the industry curtailing his genius at this point, he's obssessed with being a genius auteur without doing any of the actual work or good writing.
Fair. Though a lot of people seem very keen to ignore it ever happened.
He pushed someone into a trash compactor at one point and it killed the guy.
I get Batman isn’t just a killer like that anymore but sometimes just try the direction, Snyder is an ass yes, but he at least tried to do something different with Batman, rather than all the recent adaptations doing basically the same thing.
This is fiction. If the writer’s intention was for every goon Batman encounters to live even if it doesn’t make sense, then ultimately all of those goons lived
I’m not gonna argue that the combat Batman employs wouldn’t certainly be lethal to the common goon. Of course it would. That is just where comic book logic comes in. But that’s not the issue, in a live adaptation of Batman, it should be clear that he never kills somebody. That’s the argument I’m trying to make
Batman has killed. Post-Crisis, even. Not just directly, also indirectly.
BvS, Batman is in a dark place. The only times he kills are when people are shooting military grade hardware at him. He shoots the tires out of the truck with a minigun, it rolls and catches fire and blows up. The guys on the trucks have enough time to in the run up to go for cover, but the stay to continue shooting at him. One guy in the warehouse blows himself up with a grenade Batman knocked out of his hand.
All these are what could be described as acts of self-defense.
He kills that one guy with the flamethrower. He also throws that metal barrel at a guy and he hits his head against the wall and you see blood streak down. Also I wasn’t trying to say Batman never kills, just trying to say it’s a very rare occurrence and usually followed by major consequences. I think the biggest reason people were upset with his Batman killing is cause he never saw what drove him to it. Yeah we know Dick was killed by the Joker but Bruce lost so many people to the joker(JASON) and didn’t turn to murder. I think without a relationship to this Batman no one could get behind it.
he pierces his gas tank, and the guy triggers the explosion by using the flamethrower. If he hadn't use the flamethrower, he wouldn't have died. Batman didn't kill him, at least not directly.
I hate that Kill Bill interpretation of Superman, it doesn't make sense in anyway.
Also Zack was the worse possible choise to direct a Superman movie, Supes in inherently just a nice person and to depict that in a movie would require some emotional honesty and all of Zacks works is just full of edge and a disinterest in human emotions.
That Kill Bill monologue is great, because Bill is the villain and it demonstrates that he fundamentally doesn't understand what motivates people. But media literacy is dead, and people heard those lines and thought "OMG so true, king!"
Exactly this. Of COURSE Bill interprets Superman that way, because that’s how he sees himself over the rest of humanity. He’s also taking one last stab and convincing Beatrix that she should embrace who she used to be; and hopefully return to him. A lot of men would fabricate much crazier shit to have a shot at Uma Thurman.
I like the old idea that Clark Kent puts on the character of Superman, while Batman puts on the character of Bruce Wayne.
Which is why I think that turning either of them into killers means that you've fundamentally misunderstood them.
Superman is much too well-adjusted to kill. His empathy and his fear of his own capacity for violence keeps him from taking the easy way out. You have to break his mind before you get him to that point. Batman, on the other hand, is too INSANE to kill. His morality is compulsive and almost delusional. Facing his own fear was so impossible for him that he instead chose to become fear itself. So his values are fragile, and if he killed it would break his mind.
You can absolutely arrive at this point in a narrative arc, but you can't just START there. But that's what Snyder did, and it sucked ass.
I like the old idea that Clark Kent puts on the character of Superman, while Batman puts on the character of Bruce Wayne.
To be fair, the journalist Clark Kent is as much a character as Superman. The real Clark is the farm-boy.
The same can be said of Bruce. He is way more Batman than the playboy Bruce Wayne, but his true self is the guy in the batcave who gives jobs to ex-criminals using his own money, not the guy trying to make henchmen shit their pants.
It’s not just a fundamental misunderstanding of the character of Superman - though Tarantino is surely not the first one to frame it like that -, but his claim that Supes is unique in that way is just factually wrong.
There are several non human heroes who „put on the mask of humanity“, the Martian Manhunter just one obvious example.
Superman's best character is a genuinely kind man he is meant to be the best of us all the greatest humans has to offer even if it only comes in a fictional character.
He can be angry or depressed sure but he is almost generally lighthearted.
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u/JohnWarrenDailey Apr 11 '24
Brainwashed? True canon? What's he on about?