The Dark Knight Returns: Batman uses a gun?

[lordultimus]

Zack Snyder: 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.






For the record, that same gang member that was going to kill the kid shows up perfectly fine later to confirm Batman shot the wall behind her, not kill her.

Comments

[walkingthroughforest]

I don't believe Zach Snyder did anything but looked at all the pretty pictures in TDKR.

[starwolf_oakley]

Dr. Wolper looks like F. Murray Abraham. I'm not sure if that was intentional on Frank Miller's part or not.

As mentioned in another internet article, if Batman had killed that gang member, it would be mentioned in the arrest warrant Ellen Yindel has in Book 3.

[lego_joker]

To be fair, Miller isn't the best at remembering small details he established in previous issues, even on his good days.

[ekrolo2]

You'll hear no argument from me in favor of Snyder's awful interviews. He's a jackass, but I do think that, besides the warehouse fight, he did a pretty good job keeping his jackassness from any major screws up of MoS caliber. Although that probably has a lot more to do with Terrio's script than anything else.

[walkingthroughforest]

He had Batman machine gun down criminals multiple times. That's a pretty big screwup.

[ekrolo2]

All Batman ever does in the movie is make justifications FOR his increasingly questionable actions. If this was a Batman who verbally tried to come off as nobler and only ever called his killing off Superman an exception to a long-standing rule, you'd be right.

But at every opportunity, all Batman ever does is make excuses for his actions. When Alfred brings up the branding, Bruce merely states he's always been a criminal so it's okay. When Alfred once again asks him if he thinks his 20 years of fighting crime were for nothing, Bruce compares criminals to weeds.

The best example of this is how he consistently de-humanizes Superman. He goes so far as to create a spear of Kryptonite just to further this illusion of him being an original Wayne, a hunter tracking down and killing a dangerous animal in Superman.

So yeah, if this Batman was trying to sell us on some holier than art thou, Nolan-esque bullshit, it would be a major screw up. But the movie clearly portrays him as man who's already pretty much dropped any pretense of holding back anymore. It's only what little sense of human decency he has left that allows him to spare Superman when he realizes the guy he's dedicated to kill is begging his soon to be murderer to save his mother. The same guy he's de-humanized and made an entire theatricality around murdering.

[alicemacher]

I just think the whole concept of Batman wanting to kill Superman at all is wrongheaded. Even in TDKR and TDKSA, which Snyder takes as supposed precedents for the title conflict of his film, Batman's objective is never to kill Superman. He doesn't fault Superman for merely existing, for having godlike super-powers; rather, he's disgusted that Superman has given up and agreed to be Not-Reagan's, and subsequently Luthor's, lackey.

And although he gives Superman a brutal beatdown in both volumes, his intent isn't to rid the world of Superman. Rather, in the first volume Batman wants Superman to realize he can hurt him, so that Superman will leave him alone as he fakes his death and goes underground, and in the second volume he wants Superman to stop capitulating to Luthor's blackmail, to break free of his "as long as I get to save lives I'll do whatever the government tells me" mentality, and to join him in bringing Luthor down.

[ekrolo2]

I actually appreciate the concept of Batman becoming so twisted in his own sad, pathetic life that he WOULD see killing Superman, a being who's first appearance was a total disaster in this universe as the only worthwhile thing he could possibly do.

As I said before, he compares taking down criminals as just ripping out weeds but it's just a patch job. He's been working on the garden (Gotham) for decades and it's still such a horrendous pisshole in spite of his efforts and sacrifices that Clark Kent can't even make a news story about people's plight in it.

But Superman? There's only one of him left, and if Batman can preemptively stop him, it WILL matter in his mind. Sure certain criminal organizations can threaten the world, but if Superman goes bad, which Batman definitively thinks will happen from his past experiences, it's over for us all. After all, if good men can become twisted (which ironically happens to Batman himself), what's to stop this... alien freak from doing it too? And WHEN it happens, we're all doomed.

It is interesting that you bring up Returns, because Superman fills in Batman's role from Returns wwwaaayyyy more than Batman himself does. Superman is the big figure of controversy, the guy with the talking heads on TV discussing his impact on society and is the outcast.

Ultimately, if you dislike a concept, I can't really convince you otherwise. But I can't really say the movie doesn't do a good job of justifying its own creative choices.

[ozaline]

I actually rather liked Batman's characterization too...

Usually in these kind of conflicts Batman is shown to be righteous and Superman is a fool, and idiot or worse. This was, if nothing else a nice change cause Superman is clearly shown to be in the right.

Here Bruce's obsessive need to control everything and his failure to do so have resulted in him having a break down.. If there's even a one percent chance Superman will go bad he must be stopped cause he can't be controlled...

It's really an interesting character study and kept me going.

[walkingthroughforest]

I don't see how that has anything to do with what I said. Batman killing criminals with a machine gun is a huge screwup because it's a betrayal of a core aspect of the character. He does not kill. You may as well put a skull on his chest and give him a war journal if that's the direction the character is going.

[ekrolo2]

My point is that his killing makes sense for him in the movie. If you feel it's a betrayal of his character regardless of justification or possible directions afterward I can't say much to change your mind on it. But to me, it's not a screw up for this Batman who's very clearly being played up as teetering close to becoming just as bad as his enemies. I would say Nolan's is more problematic since he clearly kills people several times yet all the movies make a big deal out of him refusing to do so under any circumstances.

[walkingthroughforest]

To me if you're making a story about a Batman that kills that's in the JLA, you've made an Authority story, not a JLA story and I have no interest in that.

[sadoeuphemist]

I said this before in another post but I think Batman has freely killed in every Batman movie. Even the Adam West one. Penguin snuck some dehydrated goons into the Batcave and rehydrated them with the wrong kind of water, and every time Batman and Robin punched one they'd just pop like balloons.

[ekrolo2]

Even if there's proper context for it and Batman himself, through the men are still good speech, openly acknowledges the fact he's fallen and promises to pull himself back from the edge to become more heroic? Even then?

[walkingthroughforest]

Yes. Because that's not Batman.

[sadoeuphemist]

But it is the Authority? C'mon, dude.

[walkingthroughforest]

Sure it is. The Authority are a group of heroes that use lethal force in the pursuit of justice. The JLA does not. And Batman personifies that.

What I watched on screen was closer to Midnighter than it was Batman.

[sadoeuphemist]

Oh, so everyone who's willing to use lethal force in pursuit of justice is the Authority. A police officer? The Authority. The Punisher? He's the Authority too. James Bond? Definitely the Authority. Finger and Kane's original Batman? The Authority, that's right.

You are shallow as hell, dude.

[ozaline]

Every film version of Batman since Adam West has killed, I don't agree with Snyder's excuses anymore than I accepted Nolan's but let's not pretend it's anything new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVIG7YvdjM

[walkingthroughforest]

So what? What does that have anything to do with the source and essence of the character?

[sadoeuphemist]

The source of the character, Finger and Kane's original conception of Batman, freely killed people! We're listing all these versions of Batman who kill people, and you're saying 'it's not part of his essence' what does that even mean? Flashpoint Batman killed people. Red Rain Batman killed people. This whole post is about TDKR Batman straight-up shooting a dude. Even mainstream comic Batman shot Darkseid and tried to starve KGBeast to death and incinerated Ra's al Ghul in a death ray.

[walkingthroughforest]

Mainstream DC continuity Batman from the last 40 years is what I consider the source of the character.

You're listing a ton of non-canon stories (elseworlds) where characters are sometimes purposefully written out of character. The only Bruce Wayne you've listed in continuity was shooting Darkseid, and the context of Batman shooting Darkseid (wounding him, not killing him) was very different than mowing down and killing a bunch of common criminals.

The KGBeast was retconned to have Batman tell the police he was captured, and the Ra's Al Ghul was retconned out post-crisis.

There are blips where the character has killed in mainstream DC continuity, but they are very out of character and have all been removed to keep the integrity of his ideals about human life.

I'm not sure what you're fighting about. A pillar of the character is that he does not kill, and to have his depiction on screen be a 180 is a betrayal of the character.

Ask yourself this. In nu52 DC continuity, could the characterization of Batman in BVS be told? Not a chance. Batman gunning down his enemies would be shot down (pun intended) by editorial before you could blink.

[sadoeuphemist]

BvS: Dawn of Justice is not in nu52 DC continuity! It's not even a comic book! For all intents and purposes, with regards to DC comics, it's a non-canon elseworlds story.

[walkingthroughforest]

I don't agree with that at all. Elsewords are built for a niche audience which is already very familiar with the characters. Just like Marvel, these big screen versions of the characters are the general populations only means of knowing them and I believe they should have the responsibility of being as accurate and honest to the characters as possible.

If the MU rebooted tomorrow and was retold using the MCU characters, it would essentially be a very similar world with very similar characters. If the DCU rebooted with the DCEU characters, at this point it would be unrecognisable.

[sadoeuphemist]

Movies have no responsibility to be accurate to the comics. The comics aren't even accurate to themselves. You were talking about the last 40 years of continuity - that's not even a single continuity. It's built upon retcons and reboots. Is Nu52 recognizable as post-Crisis Superman? As of now they're literally two different characters. And your definition doesn't even include the original versions of many of the characters! When Morrison sought to re-create Action Comics 1 in his Nu52 reboot, was he not being "accurate and honest to the character"?

The Marvel movies are themselves largely based on an alternate continuity - the Ultimate universe - that was designed precisely to be simpler for new readers. The movies are extremely different from the comics. The Avengers were formed by SHIELD; Tony Stark made Ultron; Hank Pym; JARVIS; the Mandarin; AIM; the Maximoffs; the Cosmic Cube; Donald Blake; everything Disney doesn't have rights to - Fantastic Four, X-Men; etc.

Beyond these deliberate changes, such a reboot would erase much of the impossibly sprawling history of Marvel simply due to the fact that it's impossible to fit 60-odd years of publishing history into a handful of movies. All the developments - Kamala Khan, Miles Morales, Amadeus Cho, Jane Foster as Thor, Falcon!Cap, the majority of the insane convoluted history of the Marvel universe would be vanished.

Your main argument for the DC universe being unrecognizable is that the JLA doesn't kill - Wonder Woman's on the JLA dude!

[ozaline]

There was a canonical story where Batman atomized Ra's Al Ghul...

But my point was I was talking about theatrical Batman movies and the only on where he doesn't kill someone is Mask of the Phantasm (where it is in fact a major plot point that he doesn't kill).

[wizardru]

Personally I think the script failed repeatedly to give characters the motivations for their actions that the audience could follow. Things like Lex's actions never really making a lot of sense (and how he figured out the secret identities of both Superman and Batman off-camera as if it was no big deal). How we're to accept that Superman can hear Lois in danger across the planet or recognize a tapping noise in the middle of a battle is her in danger, but apparently can't locate his mother in the same way (or in fact rescue her the same way he did Lois as the start of the movie in less dire circumstances, rather than go fight Batman).

Why does Clark suddenly get a mad-on to fight the Batman who has been active for 20 years? Why is Batman just now getting unhinged, rather than progressively over the last 18 months? Why is government incredibly lax with the only alien technology mankind has ever encountered, giving Lex absolutely no oversight? Why does Wonder Woman think that stealing a physical photo or even the digital copy of one somehow protect her (or why does she even care)? Does she think that if she deletes that file that somehow it's gone forever?

And so on. I think the movie was well made and the performances were good, when they could be. Ben Affleck and Jeremy Irons were great together. But instead of showing us Batman working out in the Batcave, we could have spent time addressing some of those issues. Most of them were totally fixable or addressable in the movie...Snyder simply chose not to do so. For me, that's what took a potentially great film and dropped it down to Good/merely OK.

[ekrolo2]

I don't consider Lex knowing who they are a big deal. Lois was able to figure it out in the span of a few days piecing together Superman sightings, Lex is shown to have access to camera's everywhere from the JL cameo segment and had 18 months time to piece it together on top of Batman's 20 years of activity.

I think the issue with the Superman situation is less of him not knowing where she is but rather the problem of him not knowing what else Lex has planned. The guy just threw his girlfriend off a building and figured out his whole identity. For all Superman knows, Lex could have any number of nasty surprises in store for anyone else in Clark's life if he doesn't fight Batman.

After they're done fighting, Superman arrives to Lex while Batman liberates Martha, pretty much making it impossible for Lex to pull a phone out of his ass and call someone else to try anything else besides release Doomsday.

I got nothing for the other stuff though lol. Wonder Woman's role is completely superfluous and she is easily THE most unjustifiably praised thing in the entire movie. The 18-month break does stretch believability and the movie should've had at least a throwaway line about Batman returning to active duty after a long retirement to explain why Clark only now has an interest in him.

[wizardru]

My issue with Lex knowing who they are isn't THAT he knows, it's that the script gives so little impact or weight to it. Instead of him playing with Jolly Ranchers, we could have gotten a minute or so of him showing or at least discussing that he'd done this like the genius he is, instead of asking us to take it on faith that he just sort of did it, just like they expect us to take in on faith that he found all these metahumans quickly and covertly. The story never establishes when or how Lex did or has been doing this stuff, it's just thrown out there. If he cracked Batman's identity, something that the Gotham PD, underworld and supervillians never have, then it should be at least mentioned that he's done something no one else has. They could have shown us an example of Lex being the evil genius the script wants us to just accept he is.

I can certainly get that he doesn't know what Lex is doing, but the movie never made that point; its another one where we're having to make explanations for weird gaps in the story.

It's funny, you'd think for all the complaining I'm doing that I think it's a bad movie. I don't. I just see that it COULD HAVE BEEN a great movie, if only better choices were made.

[ekrolo2]

See, I actually thought the reveal did have an impact, I was sure surprised they'd gone with that route. If they movie didn't leave any clues at all as to how Lex discovered all these people and their identities and just dropped it on us, you'd have a point. However, with the data drive Batman & Wonder Woman steal, the vast reach of Luthor already revealed through the Africa incident before hand on top of Lois using just plain resourcefulness to figure it out on MoS gives us good enough tidbits of information justify a lack of a scene where Lex sits down and explains it to us.

I actually appreciated this in comparison to say what Winter Soldier did. Now, I love Winter Soldier, it's probably my favorite MCU movie and one of the best in the past 10 years. But it has one of the most obnoxious "we HAVE to explain this because we think the audience are morons" type of scenes. It's the one where Arnim Zola just shows up and explains the villains entire motivation.

It's a cool motivation and all, but it would've been nice if the movie trusted me to think about what it's doing and come to that conclusion on my own without needing the movie to treat me like I'm a moron.

I will concede the point that this movie does rely on your knowing the comics a good deal more than most comic book movies though. Like if you don't know what Darkseid is from the comics, Lex being excited by the prospect of him arriving when he dislikes Superman is gonna seem like a plot hole.

[junipepper]

Any idiot can figure out Superman's identity considering he told the government official (MOS) he was raised in Kansas. Really not that hard to narrow that down when you have the resources and you have photos of his face.

I always think it's a bad idea for Superman to tell people he was raised on Earth; I think the key to maintaining his secret identity lies in people assuming he doesn't have one. I think he did that also in the Earth One book.

[captainbellman]

See, as there's no obvious wound in the Mutant's head and Batman answers his/her question - ignoring briefly the obvious assertion that he is a lunatic who dresses up as a flying rodent - I always thought that he got them in the shoulder, causing them to go into shock, in a William-Tell-esque display of marksmanship.

(Also, if he shot the Mutant "between the eyes" their visor would be shattered - but then, I would not expect Snyder to actually *read* the comics he bases his films upon, given he's already established he'd much prefer to vaguely skim over their splash pages and just film that.)

[sadoeuphemist]

I think Batman's response indicates the Mutant's dead. I believed you were going to kill the kid, so I killed you first. It's a badass one-liner you deliver to a corpse, not something you say to a still-alive person who's just been shot and would presumably be begging for help or screaming or responding in any way at all.

[mrwalker]

Snyder must not have read too close as I'm pretty sure the "guy" Batman "shot between the eyes" was a woman...

This scene in the comic did confuse me for a long time, it's obvious he did shoot her. But if nothing else, the big deal Batman makes in his thoughts about crossing the line in his fight with the Joker tells me that apparently he shot to wound when he was rescuing the child.

[sadoeuphemist]

Well the big speech he gives to the Mutants about how guns are a coward's weapon indicates that he wouldn't use guns, so...

[sadoeuphemist]

There's a bloodstain on the wall right behind the Mutant, so Batman obviously did shoot them.

[lieut_kettch]

It could have been a simple matter of showing the Batwing/Batmobile's display with options for different types of ammo, like High Explosive, Armor-Piercing and Non-lethal, and a big "NON-LETHAL AMMUNITION SELECTED" flashing on screen.

Just like TDKR's "Rubber bullets. Honest."

[sadoeuphemist]

Wasn't that line meant to be a winking admission that Batman is in fact gunning all these dudes down in cold blood but let's not worry about it? If you append "Honest" to the end of a statement without anyone having accused you of lying, that's an indication that you are not in fact being honest.

[sadoeuphemist]

Also, "that same gang member that was going to kill the kid shows up perfectly fine later"?? How can you tell? They all look and dress the same! Some people are saying the Mutant is a woman, again, how can you tell?

[philippos42]

I don't think Snyder understands what 'manslaughter' means.

I think though, that TKDR tried to have it both ways: sort of drawn as Batty Bats snapping and killing people, then changing that in the text.