Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman on Batman: The Animated Series, once explained the simple reason why the Dark Knight isn’t supposed to kill anyone (especially with a gun). “If he’d killed any of those people [in Arkham Asylum], they wouldn’t have been available, you know what I mean?” he said. “I love the fact that he doesn’t kill.” It’s safe to say, then, that Conroy isn’t a fan of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where the Batfleck kills nearly two dozen goons, including a few with a firearm. The body count could have been higher, though, in a deleted scene that would have enraged Batman purists.
“In the chase scene, he was dealing with dangerous dudes that were trying to kill him, but I feel he was driven more by hatred then. By the Martha rescue, he’s no longer fueled by resentment,” Dawn of Justice second unit director and stunt coordinator Damon Caro told ScreenRant about the warehouse fight scene. “You will see, something that would sort of contradict that, if you noticed in that the action-viz that we shot in prep, it’s a little bit longer than what we shot for the film. And he does use one of the guys as a shield in that, but it didn’t make the movie because it didn’t fit for the cut.” He added, “So that would have violated… but he uses him as a shield and the guy had a bulletproof vest on.”
Batman almost used a human shield to protect himself (even if the guy was wearing a ballistic vest). That might have been the “too far” tipping point for Dawn of Justice‘s already-ample nihilism. You can watch the side-by-side scene below, but only if your name is Martha (we’ll also accept Poor Martha).
Caro also discussed the Martha reveal, and why he doesn’t understand the negative response to the scene. “Zack and I had a conversation about that, I don’t know, a month ago, probably,” he said. “That came up and I just said, ‘I have never understood,’ and I don’t listen to a lot of the haters, but I’ve heard the chatter of it a little bit, but I don’t understand what the disconnect was.”
“What the problem is with how salient that line is and the connection between having the same mother’s name allows you to connect with someone you wanted to obliterate from the planet because you saw him as a threat to the human race. You saw him as a threat to humanity, then in that one moment, you realized he was an orphan and his mother’s… You saw him in that light, so that enlightened you, that made you drop and see him now, not as the enemy, but as an ally. A fellow being who is trying to do the right thing, to reach justice. So no, crystal clear and very, like I said, it always made sense to me, so I’m perplexed by that one and I don’t know that I… I don’t have the answer to that one.” (Via)
The answer is, as always, “f*ck Batman” (at least according to Robin).
(Via ScreenRant)