Zack Snyder recently once again defended his decision to make Batman a killer in the DC films that he made. Now Batman writer Grant Morrison is firing back at the filmmaker and explaining why Snyder is wrong. Before we get into that, I’ll share what Snyder said while a guest on The Joe Rogen Experience:
“People are always like, ‘Batman can’t kill.’ So Batman can’t kill is canon. And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, the first thing I want to do when you say that is I want to see what happens.’ And they go, ‘Well, don’t put him in a situation where he has to kill someone.’ I’m like, ‘Well, that’s just like you’re protecting your God in a weird way, right? You’re making your God irrelevant.’”
As you know, Snyder’s DC films saw Ben Affleck play a violent and jaded version of Batman who didn’t have a problem killing people. Morrison was not happy with these comments and took to his Substack, to share his own thoughts on the matter and explain why Snyder is wrong and how the director missed the whole point of Batman’s code:
“I was reading how film director Zack Snyder thinks Batman should kill as part of the character’s self-imposed mission to stop crime. [If] Batman killed his enemies, he’d be the Joker, and Commissioner Gordon would have to lock him up!”
Batman has always been a violent vigilante who strikes fear in the hearts of criminals by beating the living hell out of them and intimidating them. But, if Batman actually did kill… that would make him no better than the villains that he is fitting against. He’s always had a code that prevents him from crossing the line.
Morrison goes on to explain why Batman killing anyone stood against the character as a whole. His code is key to understanding Bruce Wayne’s trauma. He says:
“That Batman puts himself in danger every night but steadfastly refuses to murder is an essential element of the character’s magnificent, horrendous, childlike psychosis.”
ScreenRant goes on to add the following commentary: “Morrison writes, speaking to the hero’s code of honor that was locked in from the time he was a small child. In a way, Bruce Wayne never really grew out of that ‘childlike’ state, stuck forever as the little boy who lost his parents in Crime Alley. Morrison describes this as ‘fundamental to (Batman’s) grandeur as a fictional adventure hero! Is this not obvious?’”
What are your thoughts on these two different opinions on Batman’s code?
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