Zack Snyder can't catch a break when it comes to his role in the burgeoning DC Cinematic Universe. If he isn't under the pressure of fan expectations for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, he's still defending himself against those who had a bone to pick with his controversial third act destruction of Metropolis in Man Of Steel. It's a decision that he still defends to this day, simply because it sets up a crucial theme in his next DC outing.
The wide scale destruction of Superman's adopted city did indeed serve a purpose, and Snyder wasn't shy about sharing it with Famous Monsters in a recent interview. When he was ultimately asked about that infamous throwdown, he gave the following defense:
I stand by it, because for me, I’ve always said when I was working on Watchmen — and maybe it’s sort of left over from a Watchmen philosophical sort of thing — that there should be consequences to superheroes’ interaction with the earth. And that was kind of the way that we approached Man Of Steel. I wanted a big consequence to Superman’s arrival on earth. Certainly, Batman v. Superman sort of cashes in all its chips on the ‘why’ of that destruction."
In his defense of the colossal clash between General Zod and Superman in Man of Steel, Zack Snyder has both bolstered and bashed in the defense of his own work. The portion of his argument that contradicts his remarks is the fact that he name drops Watchmen as his philosophical basis for creating such an ending. Which makes no sense, when you factor in the fact that Snyder re-wrote the ending of his film to stray from the source material; and in favor of a sequence that lessened the consequences of the actions being perpetrated. Taking down half of Metropolis is apparently OK in Snyder's book, but a giant squid causing bloody carnage in New York is a no go.
Despite Watchmen being the Kryptonite to the argument that Zack Snyder's ending in Man Of Steel was all about the stakes of the situation, there's the other half of the argument that more than makes up for this breach. As it sounds, Snyder was always planning to address the immediate reaction to Superman's battle with General Zod with another film, and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is the film he's chosen to do just that. With the knock down, drag out destruction in Metropolis fresh in everyone's minds, the political and personal fallout is about to hit big time. Not only does this give Snyder fresh material to mine in the Superman mythos, it also gives him a chance to comment on the nature of comic book movies on the whole.
The jury is still out on Zack Snyder's rationale for Man Of Steel's climactic battle, and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice will either add fuel to the fire, or put an end to the debate once and for all. We'll see which side wins out when the film debuts in theaters on March 25th.
