There were too many things that went wrong with the Snyder trilogy, the most distinctive of which was the unrealized vision of the director Zack Snyder. Like Icarus, he flew too wild with ambition – a fact which did help gain him a staggering, ruthlessly loyal, and almost cult-like following for his bravado. But in the long run, the filmmaker was left with literally nothing but a Knightmare to support the remainder of his DCEU future and a cinematic universe with brilliant potential in shambles and ashes because of tragically bad timing.
It later becomes clear, however, how horribly south things could have gone with regard to the wildly contentious and debated DCEU. In comparison, it seems as though the audience got off easy with the version of Batman that Ben Affleck brought to the screen.
Zack Snyder Draws a Horrifying Comparison To His Batman
In an interview delivered during the premiere of Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight, Zack Snyder showered the British auteur’s creative genius in no uncertain terms. As the time also happened to coincide with the press tour and promotion of his then-upcoming comic book movie, Watchmen, the director was naturally inclined to paint a picture of how a superhero film presented through his lens would look like in comparison to Nolan’s:
Everyone says that about 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 r-ped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go.
Thankfully, when Zack Snyder was presented with the opportunity of directing his own Batman and Superman movies less than half a decade later, his Batman neither found the time to do a prison stint nor was he subsequently assaulted within the institution by fellow prisoners. Snyder, however, did find the time to fulfill his promise of delivering a dark project for DC – something which he explicitly mentioned as lacking in his predecessor’s Dark Knight trilogy.
Why Nolan’s Dark Knight Works and Snyder’s Doesn’t
When Christopher Nolan delivered the Dark Knight trilogy, it was in an era unmarred by the rife of comic book movies. The singularly mellow decade that followed managed to build the legend of Batman to such an epic high that even in his lifetime as the Caped Crusader, Christian Bale‘s role became gospel for the audience, be it comic book enthusiasts or otherwise. However, what made Nolan’s films amazing and unquantifiable in their brilliance was his use of an Academy Award-winning roster of A-listers to support his main character through his journey.
Zack Snyder’s Batman, on the other hand, gets introduced in media res. Although that isn’t uncommon for a narrative structure, considering how the Batman origin lore is already so overdone in media and popular culture, Snyder’s film is shocking for its visually stark representation of a morally bankrupt Batman who acts as judge, jury, and executioner. He is no longer a crusader and an avenger but chooses to allow vengeance to consume him until the damage he has done is irreparable and irreversible in its magnitude.
In the widely revised comic origin lores, this is a Batman that is entirely new to the screen. With no moral compass to guide him through the underbellies of Gotham anymore, his dark visage represents an evil that is no less than the ones he swore to stand up and fight against – a sentiment that becomes immensely clear when an officer in the abandoned house at the beginning of BvS shouts at his partner not to shoot at the “good guys” when he nearly gets his head blown off thus indicating by association that Batman here was the bad guy.
Despite fighting crime for over 20 years in Gotham City, the police have lost all faith in their Caped Crusader as they are so quick to believe that the sightings of a monstrous creature around Metropolis and Gotham City that has been kidnapping people could actually be Batman. In Nolan’s trilogy, when the Dark Knight – lost, broken, and bent out of shape – rises out of the shadows after 8 long years, the police celebrate his return, despite him taking the fall for Harvey Dent’s murder.
The Dark Knight and Snyderverse trilogies are available for streaming on MAX.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
