Zack Snyder & Ben Affleck Defend Superman Killing & Man Of Steel Destruction

With Batman Vs. Superman coming to Comic-Con and the new images released, Zack Snyder’s take on Man of Steel is again being looked at as the end to the film was controversial for a lot of fans which saw Superman kill Zod.

Now as part of EW’s Comic-Con coverage, both Snyder and Ben Affleck make their case why all the destruction in Metropolis makes sense.

Zack Snyder:

“I was surprised because that’s the thesis of Superman for me, that you can’t just have superheroes knock around and have there be no consequences,” says Snyder. The director says he had always intended for the dead to be counted. Indeed, Batman v Superman addresses these concerns head-on—Superman’s victims serve as Batman’s impetus to take him down.

“There are other superhero movies where they joke about how basically no one’s getting hurt,” Snyder says. “That’s not us. What is that message? That’s it’s okay that there’s this massive destruction with zero consequence for anyone? That’s what Watchmen was about in a lot of ways too. There was a scene, that scene where Dan and Laurie get mugged. They beat up the criminals. I was like the first guy, I want to show his arm get broken. I want a compound fracture. I don’t want it to be clean. I want you to go, ‘Oh my God, I guess you’re right. If you just beat up a guy in an alley he’s not going to just be lying on the ground. It’s going to be messy.”

Ben Affleck:

“One of the things I liked was Zack’s idea of showing accountability and the consequences of violence and seeing that there are real people in those buildings,” says Ben Affleck, who plays Batman. “And in fact, one of those buildings was Bruce Wayne’s building so he knew people who died in that Black Zero event.”

You can watch the Man of Steel Superman vs Zod scene here: