Zack Snyder: We're all the Batman

Bob Kane co-created Batman in 1939. All of 23 at the time, Kane collaborated with Bill Finger to craft the Caped Crusader and his wild metro-bleak universe. Kane died in 1998, but on Wednesday he received his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, possibly in recognition of the fact that most actors in modern-day Hollywood will eventually play Batman.

Among the speakers at the ceremony was Zack Snyder, who’s currently putting the finishing touches on next year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Snyder offered a personal vision of Kane’s creation in his speech, which you can watch in the video below starting around the 20:30 mark:

Here’s the key bit:

Because Batman — unlike Superman, or Wonder Woman, or Flash — is a guy without powers. He’s a man. He’s all of us. I think that’s it. We all carry around a hero inside of ourselves every day. It’s that guy. It’s Batman… In truth, we’re all the Batman.

This is obviously just a very nice thing to say in a speech, but worth pointing out that Snyder’s vision of the Dark Knight sounds a little more democratic than, well, The Dark Knight, which reconceived Batman as a shadowy extra-governmental hero for the Zero Dark Thirty era. This also gibes with everything we’ve seen of Batman v Superman, which appears to situate Batman as the human-sized reactionary to the alien Superman.

After the ceremony, Snyder offered some more tidbits about his specific Batman vision to Comic Book Resources. “I really wanted to do sort of a fabric-based Batman,” explained Snyder, “Not what’s become the more normal, armored Batman.” (This may sound confusing given that the trailers for Batman v Superman feature scenes of Ben Affleck’s Batman wearing some Master Chief robo-armor.)

Comic Book Resources also asked if there were any artists besides Frank Miller who influenced Batman v Superman. In response, Snyder talked about Frank Miller. “Dark Knight Returns was such a big influence on me, that I wanted to to honor him through imagery in the movie.”

Probably won’t be much of a Dick Sprang vibe, is what he’s saying.