We've known for a while now that Ben Affleck's Batman kills. He was shown breaking a man's neck in one of the trailers and producer Charles Roven pointed out that he acts as "the jury and executioner" in Gotham City just a couple of months ago. However, you can bet your life that this is still going to be one of the biggest talking points coming out of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the director has now explained exactly why his take on the Dark Knight resorts to such brutal methods.
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!’
I can't deny that I felt a little uncomfortable at times watching Batman kill, but you know what, Snyder's justification is spot on here. Every big screen Batman (including Christopher Nolan's) has murdered crooks and bad guys in a much more brutal fashion, and this IS a Caped Crusader at the end of his tether after fighting crime in Gotham for two decades. Keep watching the video above as the filmmaker also addresses the cameo appearance made by a certain Justice League member and the ramifications that could have down the line. Stay tuned for much more on the movie this weekend.