Writer Grant Morrison Defends Batman’s No-Kill Rule In Wake of Zack Snyder’s Comments
JB Augustine
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The Batman does not kill – at least that is what most of us Bat-faithful like to think. Occasionally, someone will waltz along like The Joker and get him to break that rule – the one rule he lives by to keep the streets of Gotham safer.
Zack Snyder is one such joker who’s unafraid to poke the bear of fandom. In Batman v Superman, he had the Bat killing several thugs in preposterous scenarios aping Frank Miller. Let’s not forget this is the same man who had Supes kill Zod to the shock and awe of everybody.
Far from retreating from this dubious decision, Snyder routinely leans in and defends it whether we’re talking about Batman or Superman. The guy likes seeing heroes stoop to the level of their enemies and casually commit homicide.
“People are always like ‘Batman can’t kill. Batman can’t kill is canon,’” he explained on the Joe Rogan Experience, “And I’m like, ‘Okay, the first thing I want to do when you say that is I want to see what happens.’”
Snyder would add, “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.'”
A plurality – at the very least – of fans would disagree with that statement and Grant Morrison is among them. The Doom Patrol and Animal Man scribe rebutted Snyder on Substack.
“I was reading how film director Zack Snyder thinks Batman should kill as part of the character’s self-imposed mission to stop crime,” Morrison wrote. “[If] Batman killed his enemies, he’d be the Joker, and Commissioner Gordon would have to lock him up!”
Morrison argues that Bruce psychologically is still the boy deep inside who watched his parents’ murder in Crime Alley. “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,” the writer added.
Batman carried a gun in his early appearances and was responsible for a few deliberate deaths in the Tim Burton films and Batman Forever. However, his code is “fundamental to [Batman’s] grandeur as a fictional adventure hero!” according to Morrison. “Is this not obvious?”
Not in Zack Snyder’s mind – but everybody else embraces a Batman with a code.
NEXT: Grant Morrison Opens Up On The Flash Script He Wrote With Ezra Miller
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