>“This has been the most rigorous intellectual exercise I’ve had in my writing life. For Batman v Superman I really want to dig into everything from ideas about American power to the structure of revenge tragedies to the huge canon of DC comics to Amazon mythology.[…]If you told me the most rigorous dramaturgical and intellectual product of my life would be superhero movies, I would you were crazy. But I do think fans deserve that. I felt I owed the fan base all of my body and soul for two years because anything less wouldn’t have been appreciating the opportunity I had.” – Chris Terrio, screen-writer of Batman v Superman.
Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is the most ambitious and original superhero film of the modern era. Not since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has any director working in this otherwise lifeless and stagnant genre elevated it to such thematic heights. Batman v Superman is multilayered in its thematic and symbolic depth, but at its core, it has one central ambition: casting the Superhero as modern mythological hero. This task alone provides more than enough thematic content for an entire film, but Snyder and Terrio decided to take things a step further, using the film to…
1. Comment on media-fueled xenophobia in post-9/11 America,
2. Restore Superman and Batman to their roles as genuine role models worth looking up to, rather than inhuman abstractions.
3. Explore, as Man of Steel did, the relationship between Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism (which advocates selfishness as a moral virtue) and Christianity.
4. Rehabilitate superheroes through the retelling of the comic book Watchmen.