It's been suggested that these characters, as currently depicted, do not represent the end of their development - that they are in the process of transitioning to an ultimate phase which more closely mirrors their "traditional" depictions. ( But you knew that, right? )
Batman, as depicted, is 15 or so years into his superheroing career. His refusal to kill is foundational and should be present from the start.
The idea that Superman needs to be driven by his guilt over killing Zod in order to "explain" why he won't kill is absurd. You're not supposed to need to explain why someone refuses to kill people.
You can't have it both ways. These films represent superheroes as seen from an adult point of view.
Which would be an appropriate way to approach
Watchmen. Not Batman and Superman. These characters are at their foundation for children, and while a film can expand upon that so that they are
also for adults, children should always be kept in mind as part of the audience. Christopher Nolan handled this brilliantly in the
Dark Knight trilogy, introducing themes that were compelling to adults while keeping the films tonally appropriate for children rather than filling them with existential nihilism. Another example of this balance done well is the DC Animated Universe.
Audiences shouldn't insist that films always be brightly colored.
It's a Superman movie, not
Melancholia.
Structurally the final battle isn't just introduced out of nowhere, it's built up through the movie as Lex gains access to the different things he needs to make it happen.
There are certainly plot elements. But
Doomsday as a character and the arc he represents comes out of nowhere. Yeah, we see Lex taking the steps to create him, but this new character is not present from the beginning.
Batman and Superman ending their battle is not a natural climax for the movie because the story isn't really about their fight.
Thematically, it is. The emotional core of the film is Batman blaming Superman for the destruction of Metropolis and Superman blaming Batman for violating civil rights and liberties. Everything else is just a plot device to service that thematic core; once that conflict is resolved, the film has no thematic or emotional reason to keep lurching on.
This is true to many of the comic stories where they fight, someone is manipulating one of them, and it ends with them taking down that manipulator.
Here's the thing: Lex manipulating them is just a plot device. It is not the story. It is there to facilitate Batman and Superman's conflict. Once they have resolved their conflict, Lex's mechanations are thematically pointless. We are left not knowing what Lex wants, how he is trying to get it, what he planned to do after his unstoppable killing machine defeated Superman, how this relates to Darkseid, or why we should even give a shit about Lex as a character.
I agree the film has structural issues and tried to tell too many stories within a story. I find this is especially true of the shorter cut but remains true of the longer one. However, despite the structural issues, I am very much in favour to the different approach to Superman, especially, taken in this film and Man of Steel. Especially as there are THOUSANDS of stories (print and film/TV) where Superman is "the icon".
Sure. But only a handful of films. A feature film adaptation should be about the essence of the character, not the darkest possible variation. There's a reason the 1978
Superman didn't feature any of the famous Silver Age "super-dickery."
I don't agree at all with your assessment that the filmmakers either fail to understand Superman or like Superman as a character.
Zack Snyder in 2009 said:
My mother saw I was into this comic called Heavy Metal magazine, so she got me a subscription. You could call it ”high-brow” comics, but to me, that comic book was just pretty sexy! I had a buddy who tried getting me into ”normal” comic books, but I was all like, ”No one is having sex or killing each other. This isn’t really doing it for me.” I was a little broken, that way.
<SNIP>
The average movie audience has seen — well, I can’t even count the amount of superhero movies. Fantastic Four, X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man. The Marvel universe has gone nuts; we’re going to have a fricking Captain America movie if we’re not careful. Thor, too!
<SNIP>
Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan’s] Batman Begins. ”Batman’s dark.” I’m like, okay, ”No, Batman’s cool.” He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie.
<SNIP>
About the violence: You have a scene in your movie where Dr. Manhattan incinerates a bad guy — and your camera dotes of the bloody, chunky aftermath. That’s pretty intense for a superhero movie.
That’s Superman gone bad. If Superman grabbed your arm and pulled really hard, he’d pull your arm out of your socket. That’s the thing you don’t see in a Superman movie. But in Watchmen, what you get is, like, ”I’m a Superman, and I really want to help mankind — but I just tore this guy in half by accident. People call me a ‘superhero,’ but I don’t even know what that means. I just blew this guy to bits! That’s heroic?”
Source:
http://www.ew.com/article/2008/07/17/watchmen-chat-director-zack-snyder
And here we have Snyder's reasoning for why he had Superman kill Zod in
Man of Steel:
The why of it for me was, well, if it’s truly an origin story, his aversion to killing is unexplained. It’s just in his DNA. And I felt like we needed him to do something—just like him putting on the glasses or going to the Daily Planet, or any of the other things that you’re sort of seeing for the first time, that you realize will then become sort of his thing.
<SNIP>
If there were more adventures for our Superman to go on, then you are also given this thing where you don’t know 100 percent what he’s gonna do. When you really put in stone the concept that he won’t kill and it’s totally in stone, it really erases an option in the viewer’s mind.
Now, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t now have a code ... but you’ll always have in the back of your mind this little of like, “Well, like how far can you push him?” Right? Like, if he sees Lois get hurt or he sees his mother get killed or something, you just made a really mad Superman that we know is capable of some really horrible stuff.
Source:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-zack-snyder-defending-the-end-of-man-1763888746
So, no, I don't think Zack Snyder understands or likes Superman very much.
Given the fact that this version grew up in a more cynical world (post Watergate, etc.) than the original,
I don't think this is an accurate way of thinking about the 1930s. One need only look at the violent history of American labor strikes and the accompanying massacres of striking workers; at Jim Crow and lynchings; at any number of major political battles happening in America the time -- to know that the 1930s were not a "more innocent time." As Bob Chipman points out in his
wonderful video essay on the 1978
Superman, people often assume that Superman's "Boy Scout"-ness is a function of the fact that he was created in the '30s and heroes in the '30s were like that. But what people don't realize is, Superman was
always depicted as unrealistically moral, even by 1930s standards. That's part of who he is and always has been -- it's not a function of his age.
(Also, as Chipman points out,
Superman was released five years after Watergate, and a recurring motif is Superman proving that he [and his narrative] work just fine in the modern world. "Pretty much every major exchange after he gets to Metropolis follows this template: 'Why hello, I'm Superman, exactly as you expect Superman to be!' "That's dumb! That'll never work in a movie--er, I mean, in this contemporary modern setting!' 'Ha! Watch me prove you wrong by being AWESOME!'")
