Batman V Superman: 10 Reasons Man Of Steel Is Better

6. It Breaks The No-Kill Rule In A Clever Way

Fans were understandably p*ssed when Superman snapped Zod's neck at the end of Man of Steel in order to save nearby civilians, but at least even the cynics can appreciate that Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer put some thought into it.

Man of Steel aimed to bring Superman into the modern, real world, where the no-kill rule is silly and overly black-and-white, because real-world threats do not allow for such luxuries. Superman takes the drastic decision to kill the only other remaining member of his own race to save humans, and it clearly weighs heavily on him afterwards.

Much controversy has already been spawned from the fact that Batman kills a lot of people in Batman v Superman, mostly rent-a-grunts who could probably have been disabled by other means. In the very least, the film never gives a convincing reason why Batman is now killing people: has he been pushed to the brink by 20 years of crime-fighting? Has Superman made him this way? We never know because there's not even a sub-textual inference to Bruce's reasoning.

Now, yes, Batman has killed in almost every single one of his movies, but at least in the Nolan ones, the kills were cloaked in at least some ambiguity or a feeling that the kill was a case of the end justifying the means. Here, there's not any case made that these kills were necessary for the greater good: they're just generic goons liquefied, blown up and squashed.

If you're not going to engage with the psychology of superhero murder, then you probably shouldn't have them straight-up execute people.