Zack Snyder is defending Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s Martha moment from all the mockery that has come since. In a lot of ways, that standoff between the two heroes is the lynchpin of the entire film. Snyder spoke to I MINUTEMEN about how “Martha” has become something of an easy target for pop culture in the years after the release. It’s quite clear listening to the director talk about Batman v Superman that the creative team was looking for a way to humanize Clark Kent. At that moment, the bond between these two icons becomes clear because of a random DC Comics factoid from decades ago. But, a connection is still real no matter how strange it may seem on the surface.
“Clearly I am a fan of, and am very interested in how ‘Martha,’ that concept is central to the film. I mean, it’s 100% the lynchpin that holds the entire movie together. I think it’s indicative of the way that Batman v Superman was received that its central tenant was sort of belittled and made fun of,” he began. “I personally think it is like this beautiful and incredibly symmetrical idea that it completely finishes it as a concept. It all is 100% with intent and intention to be all the images that you see, as far as their inspiration and stuff like that.”
Snyder continued, “I’m certain there’s a lot of cinematic references that we have, as well as classical, and Citizen Kane certainly would be among the things that we would and do look at as iconographic benchmarks that people would be able to link into as a way to help with a secondary storyline. That is to say that the images exist here, but the images they evoke are deeper. It’s like every image that you see – and we endeavored carefully – that each image you could take a dive on and find, whether it be a cinematic reference or whether it be mythological or historical, we really try and support the movies in that way as much as possible.”
In some previous comments during “The Director’s Cuts” panel at Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design, the director would talk about how he and Chris Terrio would come to develop the idea.
“It’s funny, because we, [screenwriter] Chris Terrio and I, we did reach that point in the movie, in our discussions… we knew how to get them to fight, right? But how do you get them to stop fighting?” he explained. “That’s a tough one. And we sort of were just throwing down on their humanity and Batman realizes Superman has humanity, he’s not just a creature, he’s a man — he’s an alien, but he is as human as, in a lot of ways, he’s more human than him, right? He’s sort of embraced all the good parts of the human race, and so Batman’s able to sort of see, in a lot of ways, a thing that he is not. And I think that that was how we started to talk about it.”
Do you think the Martha moment worked? Let us know down in the comments!