Batman v Superman is 10 years old… and Zack Snyder is still in charge!

“Do you really want a movie that has every angle smoothed over by focus groups?” The director looks back on his 2016 blockbuster, which caused a lot of discussion…

It’s the anniversary of an epic fight.

Ten years ago, Batman v Superman animated the dark rooms and the discussion forums. Ambitious blockbuster or obscure nanar?

Zack Snyder is a guest these days on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to blow out the candles on his most controversial film, and the filmmaker staunchly defends his vision of DC.

Released on March 25, 2016, the film – sequel to Man of Steel – was met with killer reviews, despite a massive box office of $874 million worldwide. Too dark. Too violent. Too radical. Between a Batman who kills and a Superman who doubts, Snyder’s clash of the titans has fractured the fandom. But ten years later, the director takes responsibility for everything:

“My 100% honest reaction to Batman v Superman and the way it’s been received around the world is… Do you really want a movie that’s had every angle smoothed over by focus groups? Do you really want a movie where decisions were made in a boardroom? Ideas tested and calibrated for your pleasure? Do you really want a big-box story? Is that really what you want?”

In other words: a film calibrated by marketing, or an author’s vision, even if it means disturbing?

At the time, the feature film absolutely had to get a PG-13. But according to Snyder, the MPAA (the American film classification office) has long considered that the film flirted with R-Rated, in other words “reserved for an adult audience”.

“When we were trying to get Batman v Superman rated PG-13, the MPAA kept sending the movie back to us and saying, ‘It’s still not under 17.’ He even remembers a lunar return: “We got a report from the MPA saying, ‘We just don’t like the idea of ​​Batman fighting Superman. That alone deserves an R. He hits him really hard with that sink. It’s brutal. It’s an R-rated movie.“Enough to disconcert Snyder:”Okay…let’s just pretend this isn’t Batman v Superman for just a second…”

What the filmmaker claims above all is to have dared to deconstruct the icons, even if this did not please everyone:

“We understood at that moment that we were kicking the zeitgeist in the balls and that we were going to piss people off.”

For him, part of the public did not want to see their heroes confront each other or be questioned in their very essence: “Not only do they not want their heroes to be deconstructed, but they also don’t want to see them fighting among themselves on a path that calls into question the very reason for their existence. That too is sacrilege…”