Zack Snyder's Superman & Batman

It has been commented in various ways before that DC’s superheroes are closer to being gods, and Marvel’s are closer to humans. There are examples in both that can prove that this isn’t universally the case, but never has the concept of the Justice League as a pantheon held more weight than in Zack Snyder’s take on the characters.

Just last month, Zack Snyder’s Justice League aka The Snyder Cut, was released to the public through HBO Max (for the countries that have it), or similar services such as Crave (for people in Canada, like myself). While the movie isn’t the completely different enterprise that some people seemed to claim, there are some key differences, as well as having the characters development aided by its doubled runtime.

This isn’t about to be a comparison between the two versions of Justice League though, or even a review of The Snyder Cut. After seeing Snyder’s original vision for what this group of heroes coming together was meant to look like, the relationship between Batman and Superman within this “Snyderverse” has an arc that I am shocked that I haven’t seen talked about more. And so, I’m talking about it.

So, to better understand this arc, let’s go over the movies that build out these characters.

Man of Steel (2013)

Man of Steel sets the stage for the relationship between Superman and Batman by building up who Superman is meant to be in this universe. It does this by focusing on two primary themes: choice versus predetermined paths, and the question of how the world would react if Superman revealed himself.

Let’s start off with how that first theme plays out.

When the Kryptonian people began engineering babies instead of naturally birthing them, each one was assigned a purpose that their whole lives became about. Kal-El is the first natural birth on Krypton in generations, and because of this he is the first Kryptonian in all this time to have real choice over who he is. When the planet falls apart, his parents send him to Earth so that he can be the last surviving Kryptonian and the hope for all their people.

While some of these details are given later in the movie when Clark (aka Kal-El, aka Superman) finds a Kryptonian outpost ship and talks with the AI version of Jor-El, this is basically the set up for the movie. This is presented in a way that makes Clark’s ability to choose sound like a huge deal, and this is idea is reinforced by the film’s villain, Zod.

Zod is a military leader from Krypton. Like everyone else there, he was genetically engineered, and Zod’s purpose in life is to protect Krypton. Within the scope of this movie, how Zod enacts this purpose is by committing treason against the council on Krypton, seemingly to stop politics from keeping Kryptonians from saving themselves as the planet dies; and then by attempting to commit planet-wide genocide on Earth in order to rebuild Krypton.

In just about any other movie, Zod’s actions would be undeniable evidence of his own evil, but because of the way in which Krypton is presented to us, that reading becomes all the more muddled. We’re essentially told that Zod possesses no agency of his own, and because of this, can he really be considered evil? His actions aren’t “good” by any means, but they also aren’t his own, he is simply doing what he was made to do. Because of this, his eventual fight with Superman doesn’t come off as a battle of a “good person” versus a “bad person”, but instead as a battle of “freewill is good” versus “lacking agency is bad”.

Jor-El is the only other Kryptonian of whom we get much of a sense of their character. Jor-El was created in the same way Zod was, only he had a different purpose forced upon him. He was a scientist, not a military general. He and his wife were able to go against tradition and make Kal-El in a natural way in order to give him the ability to choose a life for himself. Is Jor-El good here?

Well, he decides the entirety of their people should die along with the planet, except for his own son, ironically doing so while telling Zod they shouldn’t get to choose which bloodlines continue. This also creates a situation where a person born only for science believes all their own people should die, and a person born only for the military believes all other life is expendable if it means their people live.

So, the people without choice are doing pretty morally questionable actions, to put it lightly. But what about Clark? How is he using this freewill he has?

Regardless of Clark’s ability to choose who he wants to be, the possibility is never presented that he can be anything but good. Clark’s choices are never between good and evil, or even ambiguously moral options, his choices are to act or not act. If he is to act, it is by default the “good” choice. When he chooses to act it is to stand up to someone, to save someone, or to give himself up in hopes of keeping Earth from being at risk.

Well, except for that one scene in a bar…

Clark stands up for a waitress being harassed at a bar. So far, this is the same kind of action we see him take throughout. Because of this, the harasser tries to start a fight with Clark, but Clark doesn’t act. Clark can take the abuse, it’s not like this guy can hurt him. We see a similar kind of situation when Clark was a kid, the bullies try to make him fight, but Clark doesn’t fight back. But in the bar, things end a little differently than when he was a kid.

Clark ends up leaving the bar without a fight, but when the harasser finally leaves the bar, we learn that Clark wasn’t entirely without action, he destroys this man’s truck. Whether or not Clark can be considered justified for this act, or if this punishment somehow fits the crime, this is the one time where there can truly have a debate on whether Clark is doing something for negative reasons and not purely out of his own goodness.

But outside of this moment, and after he meets Lois (an important fact for later) we only ever see Clark do “good” things. Pairing this with the fact that the only two character who we really get to know who don’t have this ability to choose both end up being involved in at genocide – either of their own people through in action, or an attempt to actively cause it on Earth – the movie implicitly makes the argument that whatever Clark does must be good simply because he has choice.

Let’s switch gears and see what Clark’s two father’s believe about what Clark should do with his life.

As mentioned before, there reaches a point where Clark finds a Kryptonian outpost ship, inside of which he is speak with an AI version of Jor-El. This scene ends with Jor-El saying:

“You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They’ll race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time… They will join you in the sun, Kal. In time… You will help them accomplish wonders.”

This is the same scene in which Jor-El tells Clark about the way he was born and makes a big deal over the fact that Clark has choice. But this end to the scene seems to ignore that fact. Jor-El isn’t telling his son what he “can” do, Jor-El is saying what he “will” do. More than that, Jor-El is calling out his son as “an ideal to strive towards”. This is just one of many points throughout the movie that Clark is implicitly or explicitly compared to a god, or at the very least, a messiah figure.

Jonathan believes similar things about Clark and how he is a going to be a god-like figure for the world. But while Jor-El speaks as though Clark must be an example for the world, Jonathan feels like the world isn’t ready for that.

“There’s more at stake here than just our lives, Clark, or the lives of those around us. When the world… When the world finds out what you can do it’s gonna change everything. Our… Our beliefs, our notions of… what it means to be human. Everything. You saw how Pete’s mom reacted, right? She was scared, Clark.”

Jonathan believes that the best option for Clark is to do nothing. He literally dies to prove how much he believes in this idea, letting himself get taken by a tornado rather than have his son reveal himself. And it is this moment where Jonathan raises his hand to tell his son not to act, that is the one time we see Clark not save a person in trouble in front of him.

Man of Steel presents us with a Superman where both of his fathers believe he will be seen as god-like figure on Earth. Jor-El believes Superman will be a force for positive change, giving them an ideal to strive toward. And Jonathan believes Superman will be a symbol of fear, too powerful for humans to understand.

These two possibilities present Clark with a pretty major choice about whether or not he should reveal himself to the world. The two themes dovetail perfectly in this concept, and yet, Clark’s ability to choose is taken away.

When Zod comes to Earth he forces the situation. As we see throughout the movie, regardless of what is said about Superman’s ability to choose, when someone is in trouble, that ability doesn’t exist. So, by the end, Superman is outed to the world, and because he didn’t get to make the choice of when to reveal himself, we can safely bet that it means the world is not ready for him.

Between both of these ideas, one fact remains the same. Clark is the hero because he was special at birth. He is this god-like figure to humans because of his Kryptonian heritage, and he is more “good” than all Kryptonians because unlike them he has freewill. While the movie tries to say he is the only Kryptonian with no set path, he is still presented as predetermined to be a hero simply because of how he is born.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

With Batman V Superman we get the introduction of the other half of who we’re here to talk about, Batman. This movie has Lex Luthor scheming to get Batman and Superman to fight each other, while he creates something even more devastating. And for the most part, this movie is about telling us that Jonathan was right about the world not being ready for Superman, using two very human characters to demonstrate that fact.

We see a lot of news highlights in this movie to tell us about what the world thinks about Superman existing, and especially to ask the questions like if Superman doesn’t save someone when he has all this power, does it mean he is believes they should die? This disconnect from humanity is even demonstrated by the ways in which we see Superman save people. When he saves Lois, it is incredibly personal, but when he saves anyone else we rarely see him in contact with those he is saving.

The one exception to this is when Superman saves someone during a Day of the Dead celebration. In this scene everyone crowds around him, trying to lay their hands on him, while many of them are dressed for the event. Because of the way these people show their reverence, and the celebration during which this takes place, it almost takes on the appearance of a zombie movie. Like all the humans around Superman are already dead, and he just turns his head to look away.

After this scene we get a montage of Superman being a hero. He is pulling a massive boat, where we see the feat of strength but we can barely make out the people on board. Next is a family on a roof during a flood, and we see Superman flying above them, but while it is heavily implied, he saves them, we never see it happen. It is just as possible that he looked down on them from above, and then flew away. With the way we see him so cold and disconnected from those he saves, it isn’t hard to imagine why many people fear him.

Visually these moments show the audience that Superman is not a part of the human world, not really. But it isn’t until Lex’s plan to blow up a building filled with people, as well as Superman, that Superman really separates himself.

Superman hikes a mountain, where he ends up talking to a vision of his dead father, Jonathan. Here, Jonathan tells the story of a flood coming through Smallville when he was young, and how he worked so hard to divert the water and save his family farm. He was so proud of himself, but later discovered that his work caused the Lang farm to get washed away, and all their horses drowned. The lesson he is teaching his son is one of a fairly grey morality, where he says that doing something good can cause a lot of bad somewhere else, and that you need to learn to be okay with this.

Superman’s big question after this is how Jonathan learned to live with the fact that he did something like that. Jonathan’s answer is that he met Martha. She is his world, and she gave him faith that there is good out there.

There are a few things that make this scene really questionable. The biggest of which is how Martha is being spoken of. Martha is said to have made all of Jonathan’s nightmares go away. This is just a dangerous line of thinking. It is commodifying a woman as a symbol of purity and making the claim that just being with one makes a man better, like she is his conscious. And for anyone who might believe this is reading too much into the situation, Superman echoes Jonathan’s words when he tells Lois that she is his world. And in the Knightmare, we see that losing Lois is involved in turning him against the world.

Connecting to this is the way that Batman starts to trust Superman only because he learns he was raised by a human woman. More on this a bit later.

But let’s stick with this scene between Clark and Jonathan for a moment, because there is one more important element that we can glean from it. Superman needs to talk to his father at this point of the movie because he has so much doubt in his own abilities, because the way he sees it, he just let a building full of people die. He is struggling with not being perfect. This is a really interesting idea with him. Only, the movie takes away any possible doubt from the audience…

In a scene with Lois, we learn that the bomb was encased in lead. Superman had no way of knowing that there was a bomb, and therefore no way of stopping it. While it is still fair that Superman can feel he failed in this instance, the audience is made aware that it isn’t his fault, because presumably Superman is too good for that.

But let’s change gears and talk about Batman, because he is far more active in this story than Superman. Batman’s motivation for most of the movie can be summed up by a single line spoken by Alfred early on.

“Men fall from the sky. The gods hurl thunderbolts. Innocents die. That’s how it starts, sir. The fever. The rage. The feeling of powerlessness. It turns good men cruel.”

Throughout the movie we get glimpses into Bruce’s history as Batman, and especially the fact that he has been doing this for years. But since Superman revealed himself, the way Batman operates has changed. Alfred has hit the nail on the head, that Batman has turned cruel because he has learned of Superman. Batman is far more brutal in his actions these days, even going so far as branding criminals. It is as though he is trying to prove he can be just as worth fearing as this all-powerful new force.

Bruce doesn’t care if Superman is good or bad at this point, he only cares about the amount of power that Superman possesses. Bruce argues:

“He has the power to wipe out the entire human race, and if we believe there’s even a 1% chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty. And we have to destroy him.”

Basically, Superman needs to die. Not because he is bad, but because he could be.

Senator Finch is the only human character, outside of the two who are close to Clark, who seems to believe that Superman is good and should use his power. But she makes the caveat that he should not be making all his decisions unilaterally. The Senator believes the part of Superman we should be most worried about is his ability to choose things for himself, the exact thing Man of Steel taught us made him special.

Superman eventually learns about Batman’s brutal ways and tells him to quit. This comes mainly because of Lex’s schemes. Lex has been having criminals with the bat-brand killed in prison, and because of this, Superman believes Batman is acting as an executioner.

Similar to the Senator, Superman believe another cannot make these grand decisions (like who lives or died) on their own. But in Superman’s case, he does the same himself. But a key difference between how Superman and Batman react to how they view each other, is that Superman does not harm Batman. He lets Batman drive into him, a crash that really messes up the batmobile, but Superman just gives Batman a warning. Meanwhile, Batman stays aggressive, asking Superman if he bleeds.

Batman has three dreams throughout this movie, one symbolizing his past, one about his present, and one about his fears for the future (which are hinted to be true).

The movie opens on Batman’s origin, where we watch Bruce’s parents get murdered in a mugging, and then see this young Bruce fall into a cave during their funeral. By the end of this sequence, while nearly all of these moments really did take place, we learn that our viewing of it is a dream. Young Bruce is surrounded by bats that lift him up without touching him, literally flying him into the light. We even have a voiceover from Bruce telling us, “In the dream, they took me into the light. A beautiful lie.” Directly after this we see the events of Man of Steel’s climax, but from Bruce’s perspective. With this framing, aided by that line of voiceover, we are shown that this dream was how Bruce viewed becoming Batman, but that it changed when he learned Superman existed.

Later we get a second dream, taking place in the same cemetery as the first, but this time Bruce is an adult. He visits the crypt in which his parents’ bodies lie. Blood begins to pour out from the corner of this section of the crypt, and a monstrous version of Batman breaks free of the tomb and leaps at Bruce. Before Superman was around, Bruce thought he was doing good, but now we’re seeing something that seems to tell us he worries he is closer to a demon.

And finally, there is Batman’s third dream, his premonition that is referred to as the “Knightmare” world. The planet seems to have been destroyed to the point it looks like a Mad Max style existence. This future Batman is trying to get his hands on Kryptonite, but men working for Superman capture him. Before Superman kills this future Batman, he says, “she was my world, and you took her from me.”

Bruce wakes up from this Knightmare only to find that Flash is in the Batcave, popping in through what appears to be a rift in time. He warns Bruce, “It’s Lois. It’s Lois Lane. She’s the key! Am I too soon? You’re right about him. You’ve always been right about him! Fear him!”

While the entire Knightmare sequence was meant to have more importance in future movies, for now it is just the thing that Bruce needs to goad him into carrying out his plan of killing Superman. Not only did he see a vision of the worst version of what Superman can become, he was visited by a guy from the future telling him that he was right and to “fear him”.

So, if we take these three dreams into account, what is the story being told to us about Bruce? That he once thought of becoming Batman as a sign of his own goodness, but after seeing Superman in action feels jaded by the whole concept (also evidenced by him telling Alfred “we’ve always been criminals”). Bruce has become haunted because of what the existence of someone so powerful could potentially mean for the world.

And really, based off what this movie shows us with Superman and how disconnected from humanity he is, Bruce has every right to worry.

When Lex’s plan really kicks off, Superman is told he has to kill Batman or his mother will be killed. Superman heads to Gotham, but explicitly says he is just going to ask for Batman’s help. The two fight, with Superman quickly giving in and actually brawling instead of trying to talk. And eventually Batman is about to kill Superman with a kryptonite spear. Only he doesn’t go through with it, because Superman says the words “save Martha”.

It is at this point that Lois comes rushing into their battleground to explain that Martha is Superman’s mother. Batman relates too much Superman in this moment to kill him. He has a human mother; how bad could he be. Because again, just having a woman in your life is being presented as a kind of purity.

This finally leads us to the climax of the movie in which Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman team up to take on Doomsday. While Kryptonians are presented like gods, Doomdays is an abomination because he is a mix of Kryptonian and human DNA. Seemingly, Superman is good because he is a pure Kryptonian who was raised by moral humans, but to really be part human would make him a monster.

Anyway, Superman sacrifices himself when he kills Doomsday with the Kryptonite spear, and the moment he dies the entire debate about if Superman is good or bad for the world completely disappears. Everyone is now on board with Superman as a hero. While once a statue in his honour was defaced with spray paint calling him a “false god”, now it says, “if you seek his monument look around you”. The entire world is being said to be his monument, because clearly, he was a god.

Even just being on Superman’s side for this single sequence changes Batman. We see him visit Lex in prison, bat brand in hand, but he doesn’t use it. He punches the wall to scare Lex, but his more brutal ways are gone now that he has witnessed Superman’s goodness.

And that’s where we leave this movie. The world truly wasn’t ready for Superman, until he proved his worth by dying for it. Batman was so filled with fear of Superman’s power, he was blinded to any possible good until he knew a human woman raised Superman.

And now, Batman is changing. He tells Wonder Woman, “I failed him in life. I won’t fail him in death.”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

With Zack Snyder’s Justice League, we reach what is likely the end for this incarnation of these heroes. This is the longest of the movies, but there is the least to say about it in respect to Batman and Superman, because Superman is dead for most of it, and Batman is only one character of the ensemble so doesn’t the full runtime to himself.

This is a movie about how people are stronger when united, and so the Justice League must come together to prevent Unity from taking over the world.

This Unity they are trying to stop is a device used to terraform the planet and change every living thing on it into parademons, a kind of mindless slave to Darkseid. So, this version of what “unity” means is inarguably a bad thing, but what does that mean for the story as a whole? Seemingly that coming together is a good thing but only if you are still entirely an individual. It’s possibly making a decent point, but it is convoluting its message to a strange degree.

This concept also bookends with elements of Man of Steel, both with the bad guy looking to terraform Earth, and with the concept of evil coming out of a lack of freewill.

The heroes of the Justice League come together because of Batman’s arc with Superman. After the events of Batman V Superman, Bruce feels like he owes it to Superman to find heroes to defend the Earth, and he says this within the first 15 minutes of the movie. He went from fearing one man with god-like abilities, to trying to befriend every one of them that he can find.

Eventually the Justice League comes together, and the first decision they make as a group is that they should try to use the Mother Box to bring Superman back from the dead. While the rest of the team head to Smallville to collect Superman’s body, Bruce has a talk with Alfred.

Alfred seems to believe that bringing Superman back is going too far, and that Bruce needs to really think about what he is doing. And to this, Bruce says, “for once, I’m operating strictly on faith, not on reason.” This line stands in stark contrast to how he felt about Superman in the previous movie, where he believed if there was even the smallest chance of Superman turning bad then he couldn’t be trusted.

When Superman comes back, though he is disoriented at first, so much so that he fights against the heroes and even looks like he might kill Batman. But he is stopped when Lois shows up. Once again, we are reminded that she is his world, and if she exists, he won’t do anything bad. And he eventually rewards Bruce’s faith. He arrives at the final fight when he’s most needed, and helps the team take down Steppenwolf before helping Cyborg split up the Mother Boxes.

Superman’s arc here seems to be complete. Man of Steel spent a lot of time on the question of whether or not the world was ready to see someone as powerful as Clark, and Batman V Superman tells us the answer is that they weren’t.

After Superman comes back from the dead, he eventually walks through the Kryptonian ship, hearing the words of both of his fathers. Much of the lines we hear are from Man of Steel, but Jonathan’s side takes a new direction. He says, “You need to show them who you are. Fly son. It’s time.”

This moment with Jonathan says a lot about Superman’s arc within these movies, because, well, it has nothing to do with Superman at all. In the end, Superman does not change. He is the same character at the end of this movie as he is at the beginning of Man of Steel. It is the world that changes. To be clear, this isn’t a bad thing. Captain America is a similar kind of character who doesn’t change at all (apart from the physical change he goes through with the super soldier program), and these characters who are so wholly good that they change the world around them can be incredibly interesting.

Within this arc of the world changing because of Superman, Batman acts as a kind of avatar for humanity’s reaction of him, which is why their relationship is the most defined in the series. Even Clark’s relationship with Lois has less attention paid to it and is simply played as a given.

If we look the trilogy like this, it is about finding faith. A god reveals himself to humanity, scaring them because he is too powerful for them to comprehend, but then when he sacrifices himself for them, they realize they need him. We’re even told in Justice League that just by being on Earth, Superman was keeping the Mother Boxes at bay.

But this was never meant to be the end. And we see this even within the movies themselves thanks to the Knightmare sequences, which are brought back for this movie.

Through Cyborg we see what actually leads to the Knightmare world. We see Superman holding Lois’s dead body and changed by Darkseid, presumably using the anti-life equation that this movie tells us he is after.

This is shown to us right before the Justice League brings Superman back from the dead, as if a warning that their actions will cause this future to happen. But when the heroes stop Steppenwolf and the Unity at the end of the climax, it might look like maybe they prevented that future. If the Unity doesn’t change the world, Darkseid doesn’t take over, and Superman doesn’t go bad.

But then we have the epilogue.

In one of the final scenes of the movie, Batman is once again faced with a vision of the Knightmare world. The key elements here are that it still happens, and that Joker brings up that it is all because Batman let’s others die instead of himself. So, after a trilogy that appears to be telling the story of Batman (and humanity) finding faith in Superman, we’re being told that Superman is turned against us because Batman doesn’t die.

And that’s where the movies end, but luckily, we have learned what was meant to come next…

The Sequel Storyboards

While we may never see what was planned for the next two Justice League movies, we have learned what was meant to happen in them.

In March of 2021, honouring the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, AT&T put up “The Dreamscapes of Zack Snyder’s Justice League” exhibit in Dallas, where fans could walk through and see many of the costumes and other art materials for Zack Snyder’s DC movies. Included in this exhibit was a series of white boards that contained Snyder’s pitch for the next two Justice League movies, as well as art by Jim Lee.

While photos were not allowed, someone over at Geekosity was able write up everything written on these white boards so that people not able to get to Dallas could see what was meant to happen in these movies.

An important thing to note here is that details of the next two movies (if they were to happen), would have undoubtedly changed during production to some extent. Not only that, but these are basic outlines, and so the finished products had potential for a lot more nuance than we see here. Because of this, it is unfair to really judge these as though they are really the movies. That being said, looking at them only for the major beats (which would most likely remain intact), and judging not whether they would make good movies, but what it means for the arc of Batman and Superman, does feel fair.

Let’s start with a quick overview of what these movies were going to be.

Justice League 2 was going to have the heroes mostly split up. Each would work to fix relations with their own people, while Bruce and Lois team up to find out what Lex is up to, and Superman struggles with connecting to humanity. In the end, it turns out that Lex has not only formed a league of villains to take down the Justice League, but he is working for Darkseid. And Lex’s plan works. Lex’s team takes out members of the Justice League while they are apart, and Darkseid kills Lois, which distracts Superman long enough to use the anti-life equation on him and take over his mind.

Justice League 2A (as the white boards refer to it) was going to take place primarily in the Knightmare world. This is years in the future and Batman is on a mission to change time. The plan is to send Flash back to moments before Lois is killed and have Batman save her. Batman tells Flash that the message he has to give the past-Batman is that Lois is pregnant with his child. Flash delivers the message, and so this time Batman saves Lois. With Superman still on the side of good, the heroes unite the entire world to take on Darkseid and Batman dies delivering the final blow. 20 Years later, Superman and Lois have raised Bruce’s son together. As crime rates in Gotham go up, Lois brings her son to the Batcave, and he becomes the new Batman.

And so, we have the final ending of the Superman and Batman’s arc. But what does all of this mean for it?

First off, it’s worth just noting that Superman’s arc remains the same. He does not change, the world changes around him. The most you can see of a change in him is when his mind is taken over by Darkseid, but that isn’t really him at that point. Though it is interesting that the thing that Man of Steel told us makes him special is his ability to choose, and that is what is taken away from him here. Also, that these movies are so focused on Superman, but between being dead and having him mind controlled, he is only actually himself for a maybe half of the five movies.

Then thinking about Justice League 2, we see how Bruce and Lex basically have the same story, but on opposing sides. They both begin in Batman V Superman taking an offensive stand against Superman because they can’t handle to existence of someone so much more powerful than themselves. The events of the climax of that movie lead to Batman having faith in Superman, and Lex to being introduced to Darkseid (though it is Steppenwolf we see him learning about in that movie). They both even build up teams because of their respective all-powerful beings.

But the major aspect of the potential movies that deals with the Batman / Superman relationship is the Knightmare world becoming real rather than just visions. And at this point it is worth bringing up the message that Flash delivers to Bruce in Batman V Superman: “You’re right about him. You’ve always been right about him! Fear him!”

It is entirely possible that the two unmade sequels would have found a way to recontextualize this line to change our understanding of “him” from Superman to Darkseid, but we have never seen Batman really express an opinion on Darkseid to begin with.

Batman knows before the events of Justice League that there is something they need to unite against, and then he finally sees Darkseid through a portal near the end of that same movie. Given how little he knows of this figure, it seems hard to justify the “you’ve always been right about him” part. I wanted to include this argument for fairness – because, again, we don’t know exactly how things would have played out if these movies got made – but it seems more likely meant to still be about Superman even in the context of the Justice League 2A.

But why does this line matter? Well, Batman’s feeling on Superman at the time that this line was delivered are that he is too powerful, and any chance that he can turn against humanity means they have to treat him like an enemy. Flash does also say he is too early, but how do things change if, say, he popped in during Justice League.

At that point Batman has found faith in Superman, but it isn’t what he has “always” felt, so which feeling is he right about? The final words being “fear him” seem to be making the claim that even the latter Batman should go back to how he original looked at Superman.

Even with all of this in mind, the way all of this resolves isn’t that Superman needs to die, it is that Superman needs to keep his connection to humanity, his “world”. We’re once against back to Batman V Superman when Jonathan explains to his son that just finding the right woman can make the nightmares go away, or in this case, the Knightmare.

At the end of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the Knightmare scene in which Joker tells Batman that all of this is just because Batman won’t let himself be the one who dies. For an unknown reason, it is predetermined that the way to prevent the Knightmare world is not to stop Superman from coming back from the dead (and therefore keep Darkseid from turning him evil), but to have Batman die in the place of Lois.

Once again, let’s assume there is a reason that we just don’t know because we don’t get to see the full scope of what these movies would have been. Regardless of the plot reason, what does this mean in terms of the arc of these characters? In the end, Superman is needed on Earth, even if there is a way to turn him against humanity, but Batman is expendable.

So, this begs the question, why is Batman expendable?

Batman is the only character on the Justice League who is fully human, all the others are basically gods, and almost explicitly so by the end of Justice League 2A. Superman has always been presented as a god figure in these movies. Wonder Woman can be seen as the god of warriors and Aquaman the god of the sea. And by the end, Cyborg is called a god of the modern age in this pitch, and even Flash has reached the point where his powers over speed and time have him capable of being in two places at once, making it easy to consider him a god of either speed or time.

And Batman, his superpower is just being rich.

As the Justice League becomes more and more like a pantheon, it makes sense that the one who is easiest to let go of is the one who is human. But there might be more to it than that.

Batman, arguably, is the reason Superman dies in Batman V Superman. His actions led to him, and the rest of Earth, finding faith in Superman, but they are ultimately acts against this god. Now Batman must prove his faith by sacrificing himself so that Superman can be the hero Earth needs. 

What lends credence to this reading is that while Bruce stays dead, Batman is reborn. Bruce did not believe in Superman, which led to Superman’s death. Bruce had to die to prove his newfound faith. But by doing so, Batman comes back as a man completely raised not just in faith, but with Superman as his adoptive father.

Conclusion

I mentioned at the beginning that DC’s heroes are often compared to gods. Zack Snyder takes this concept and uses it as the lens through which he is telling a story. He takes the DC superheroes that are closest and furthest from godhood (at least out of their most well-known characters) and uses them to seemingly tell a story about faith.

Through the three movies we actually saw, and the two that were proposed, we witness Superman being presented as a wholly good god-like figure, only to strike fear into humanity by the fact that he exists (as shown through Batman). Superman sacrifices himself, leading to Batman and the world finding faith him. And in the end, Batman must die to prove his faith, and be reborn as Superman’s son.

While on the surface, this is the story being told, this is the arc of their relationship, but there is more to it. Just like every individual movie within this series, the concept becomes muddled and convoluted.

When we really look at how this series was meant to play out, Man of Steel isn’t about good versus evil, it is the argument that Superman is good because he has freewill, and Zod is bad because he doesn’t.

Batman V Superman asks the question of how much Superman can be trusted to make choices himself, and in the end the movie decides that he is so good that he is above being questioned.

Justice League shows us that unity is only good if every individual remains an individual.

But then with Justice League 2 and 2A it gets darker. Batman had freewill from the very beginning, all humans have freewill, but he cannot be purely good unless his beliefs are in line with Superman’s. He was left in a position where he needed to die to come back as Superman’s son. So, at this point the whole thing twists and changes. The rhetoric is that Superman is good because of the circumstances of his birth, and Batman cannot change to become better, the way he is born much change.

On top of this, Superman’s only connection to humanity, the only thing keeping him good, is having a woman in his life. He is reliant on this connection to a relationship that is bound to be toxic.

Imagine the story of Clark and Lois without the characters’ pre-existing history from comics. The man is proven good because he was willing to die and remains good only because he is in this relationship with a woman. If she ever leaves him, he will have no reason to care about the world, and he can turn against it. Because in the end, without her… the Knightmares come back.

Through this lens, when the powerful have freewill they are good, and can only be deemed such by how they come into the world, and the less powerful should need to submit to them. It is still a story about faith, but a corrupted one that that cares about freewill only so far as it applies to those born with power. And worse still, the powerful can only be good with a woman to keep them caring. And that’s kinda messed up.