Everyone is wondering why Zack Snyder and his wife, Producer Deborah Snyder, are making the choices they are in creating the DC Cinematic Universe. Why are the films so dark? Why did the Snyder’s choose to go with a younger Superman and an older Batman? In the wake of a lackluster Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, many are questioning the director and his wife are taking with the franchise.
Deborah Snyder has a little insight for all of us naysayers. In an interview with Forbes, Snyder talks about the philosophy behind the choices that made. According to Snyder, Batman and Superman are defined by their age difference:
“[Batman is] scarred physically, he’s scarred emotionally, he’s seen a lot from the brutal deaths of his parents. Crime has been his whole life, basically, and fighting it. He’s at this crossroads where he loses hope and he doesn’t know if it matters anymore — his whole life, what he’s been doing, has it really mattered? And it’s not until Superman comes along and — without spoiling it — what he ends up doing and the sacrifice he makes allows [Batman] to get his hope back. Someone who’s an alien, someone who this is his adopted family and home, if someone is able to do that, it gives him [Batman] his hope back. And that’s pretty cool, I think.”
Snyder admits that she never read comics growing up, and chooses to see the characters in deeper terms:
“So kids can go to it, and it’s Batman and Superman who are going to fight — but there’s something deeper and it’s so multilayered, you realize its after.”
According to Snyder, Chris Terrio’s script was so dense that she didn’t understand all the layers of meaning until she watched the film. She goes on to comment about how the DC heroes are mythic, and their journey needs to be about what defines them:
“That’s the great thing about our Superman. He is more relatable. Someone said, “It’s so dark,” and I go, “Well, is it dark? He’s going through real problems that we go through as people every day.” To me that’s not dark, that’s life. We’re complicated people. And we’re making him in that way more relatable.
So I don’t think that’s dark, I think that’s just who we are. People are complex, we’re not strictly just the good Boy Scout trying to do good. He does want to do good, and I think all of the the things Superman represents are who he is, but he also stumbles along the way and learns from it. To me, that’s so much more interesting. I think also, too, at first he doesn’t realize there are implications, he doesn’t realize there are consequences to his actions. He thinks he’s doing something good, but then I think he’s surprised and taken back that, “Oh, this is much more complicated.”
You can check out the entire interview here.
The next big film in the DC universe is Justice League hitting theaters on November 17, 2017.
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