By now, most of you should be aware of the rather shocking ending of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Though it’s obviously not for good, Zack Snyder and co. decided to kill off Superman at the end of the film. It was a bold decision, for sure, even though he’ll eventually be resurrected somehow, and in a recent interview with Collider, the director spoke about the reasons for having the character die.
Firstly, he revealed that Christopher Nolan was heavily involved in the decision to kill off Supes, and said that the director agreed it was the right choice to make.
“It was pretty early, and [Christopher] Nolan and I had long conversation about it, a really great, sort of philosophical conversation about it. He was really cool because he played an amazing devil’s advocate about why not to do it, and then in the end was like, ‘No you’re right, it’s better to do it.’”
Expanding further on why it had to happen, Snyder said that he wanted to make sure it was Bruce Wayne who put together the Justice League, not the Man of Steel.
“We had a version that we talked about where [Superman] just—this isn’t it, but where he got frozen and shot into space or something, so he’s kinda gone. Because one of the big things I wanted to make sure of was that as we went into Justice League, Bruce Wayne was the one who was gathering the Justice League.
I thought it was really important to have Bruce Wayne be the samurai who goes and finds the other samurai, that to me was important. And with Superman around it’s kinda hard, because Superman’s Superman so it’s kinda hard for Bruce to be like, ‘Yeah I wanna put a Justice League together’. It’s like, ‘Okay, but maybe Superman should be doing that. You’re just a guy. You’re a cool guy, don’t get me wrong, but you’re just a guy.’”
Another interesting thing that Snyder mentions is that killing off Superman was to show him embracing his humanity:
“I thought for the evolution of Superman’s character, there’s a crucible that he has to go through to really embrace his humanity or find what is the ultimate thing about being human? The ultimate thing you face is your mortality, and that’s a thing that I think is really cool about this.”
Obviously, the big question on everyone’s minds is how does Snyder plan to bring back Clark Kent for Justice League. Of course, the director wouldn’t go into specifics, but he did say this about the resurrection:
“I’m gonna say this: the second you do the first part of it, the death and resurrection are the same thing in a weird way. You have to know. The reason I wanted to do it the way we did it is because I don’t want the audience completely off the hook with it. They still have to go like, ‘What the fuck? Are you kidding me?’.
There’s a way to signal towards a more definitive resurrection concept, but I didn’t wanna do that because I want that to be real for them when they see it, I want the experience to be real and then the sort of need to be real later on. Suffice it to say there is a plan, but that’s gonna be—you need to wait and see.”
That’s all Snyder would reveal on the topic at the moment, but it’s nice to get some insight into the reason for him making such a big decision. Obviously no one expected Superman to die and even though the death feels a bit cheap given that it’s not permanent, it was still a shocking moment and one that I think they pulled off pretty well.
Unfortunately, it’s going to be a long wait before we find out what Snyder plans to do with the character in Justice League, as the film doesn’t hit theatre until November 17th, 2017. In the meantime, though, speculation will certainly run rampant and if you have any ideas of your own, feel free to share them down below.
