Batman v Superman - Now with spoilers and plot discussion!

[The Romulan Republic]

That would be a way to go, yes.

It even works with the set up from Batman v Superman. Lex is beaten, knows he can't take on Batman and WW alone, and so puts together a villain team like animated Lex did on Justice League.

[biostem]

What villain would you rather see for Justice League? I mean, I'm not exactly a comics expert, but I don't know of any other Justice League villain who'd be better.

Of course, you also want to save your best for last, so unless they're planning to make only one Justice League film or something...

But just because Darkseid is being set up doesn't mean he'll be the main villain in the first Justice League film. Thanos was behind everything in the first Avengers film, but that didn't mean he took centre stage. Loki did. Thanos had to wait half a decade or more to get centre stage in a film.

Since they went with a more maniacal Lex Luthor, perhaps they could bring in Vandal Savage as the cold and calculating master of strategy.

I wonder if they could pull off Cheetah or Atomic Skull without them looking too cheesy. Metallo could be interesting, if done correctly - go for a terminator-esque look, but be sure to keep in the kryptonite power source...

[Elheru Aran]

The problem with comparing Darkseid to Thanos (DCCU/MCU) is that the references to Thanos in Avengers were far more subtle and brief, while in the completed version of BvS, they practically come straight out and say that Darkseid is coming. If you include extra material like the 'Communion' deleted scene, it's even more blatant.

I do agree that it's possible they could slot in another villain/ team of villains for the JL movie. A lot depends on what they pull out in between BvS and JL; Wonder Woman is on its way, and I want to say there might be an Aquaman movie as well. Those could change the path enough for them to have a few bads in between Doomsday and Darkseid.

[biostem]

It'd be cool to have Wonder Woman face off against Darseid's Furies. Perhaps Barda before she turns good...

[Balrog]

[*]The Senate Subcommittee on Assholish Aliens getting worked up about Superman being indirectly responsible for some random Saharan village in the ass-end of nowhere being massacred was incredibly weak as an excuse to be angry at Superman.

It was just the latest in a string of Superman interventions. Supe's positive rescues embarrass the government, but they can do nothing because of political bloback. The African massacre was something that the government could stomp on and given that Supe's de facto "base" was the US, Congress likely was under pressure reign in the alien.

Perhaps but given how often random Saharan villages in the ass-end of nowhere are getting massacred at any given time, it felt too much like they were reaching for an excuse. If it had been an actual event where Supes is trying to save people and ends up causing more damage (or even deaths) in the process, then it would actually make sense for the government to be upset and Clark to feel culpable enough to agree to a meeting.

[*]Nameless Senator just rolls over and lets Luthor have his way with the dead Zod and the scout ship with absolutely no oversight by any other gov't agency;

Money talks, we know nothing about this iteration of LexCorp. Likely LexCorp is a very tight government contractor and has unrivaled facilities to study Kryptonian tech.

Yeah but we're the ones being forced to fill in that explanation. If LexCorp truly was very tight with the government, enough for them to get everything they wanted, then the movie should've shown us that.

Lex's Eisenbergian composure obviously raised no red flags, it's likely ...'normal'... for Fortune 500 CEO's to act like a stoned Jim Carey.

Serious question, what exactly is the normal behavior of a Fortune 500 CEO, particularly the "hip, cool" tech-geeks which Lex is trying to portray.

Probably for Doomsday to go berserk and for a Kryptonite weapon Lex controls to slay it. He Could make up a story that the ships AI created Doomsday as a boobytrap and he was prevented by said AI from escaping and warning everybody.

Except he didn't have a Kryptonite weapon on hand, Bats had stolen his rock, and the birth was happening right then and there. Never mind the fact that he apparently has total freedom to use the ship at will, so that excuse would be rather thin.

Or Doomsday was a tenderizer, softening up the Earth for Darkseid, Guess Darksied promised to make Luthor a "King" (...of fools.)

Meh.

[*]Random cut to Clark suddenly climbing a mountain, because why not, where he sees Papa Kent's Force Ghost. Uh huh.

Character needed guidance, all the father figures were killed off in 'Man of Steel', would a random priest have been better?

It was the nature of the editing which makes it such a random thing.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, both the editing and the script in this film seemed really incoherent at times.

[APlayerHater]

I'll preface this by saying this movie surprised me. I actually really, really liked it and I wasn't expecting to. I'm not going to say one opinion or another is the smarter opinion to have on this movie, but I do feel a bit exasperated at the hate bandwagon everyone seems to have jumped on. I may be a hypocrite because I am pretty vocal about the flaws I feel are in movies like The Force Awakens. I often feel like I need to say something when it seems like I can only read 1 opinion about a given thing online. When I see editorial after editorial, video after video, everywhere, all taking exactly same side on something, it does make me a little paranoid.

I probably filled in a lot of the plotholes in my head on the fly, or justified them. Sometimes when I encounter a plot hole I just assume a movie is being smart by letting us fill in the information ourselves or just make assumptions. Am I saying the movie deserves this? No, but I did genuinely enjoy it a lot and I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Everything in it made sense to me and I liked it. Then again, I'm the kind of person who enjoyed the ending to Mass Effect 3.

The movie left a better taste in my mouth than Age of Ultron did. I enjoyed Avengers 2 just fine, but I feel it was more flawed than Batman V Superman. I also appreciated that BvS had a different tone than the Avengers movies and was willing to take risks. Having a batman who kills, a superman who's a weird alien who doesn't fit in, and a completely new take on Luthor were pretty big risks. While this movie did make a lot of money, those risks might not have paid off. I do think it would be something of a shame if they decided to just ape the avengers movies from now on, because these movies are at least different in tone and structure.

I'd say Luthor's motivations are no less muddled and unclear than Ultron's, and I'd say his plan is no less convoluted/ made up as it went along than the Joker's in the Dark Knight. And I'd say this movie was much better than The Dark Knight Rises.
-Also, sorry if this is overly long or rantish.

Perhaps but given how often random Saharan villages in the ass-end of nowhere are getting massacred at any given time, it felt too much like they were reaching for an excuse. If it had been an actual event where Supes is trying to save people and ends up causing more damage (or even deaths) in the process, then it would actually make sense for the government to be upset and Clark to feel culpable enough to agree to a meeting.

We know that supes was deemed responsible for the reprisals that happened after the massacre. I am stretching a little to justify this, but I felt that there was a government coverup. They didn't seem to mention Jimmy Olsen at all in the hearings (as far as I remember), or the CIA's involvement. Obviously they don't mention the Lexcorp goons that were there.

With the information that is given to the public: nobody was sure what happened. All they know is that a reporter got abducted and superman showed up out of the blue just to save 1 person, and many innocents were killed afterwards in reprisals. I feel like that scenario had 2 purposes for Lex. 1, it was to see if superman really was involved with Lois Lane, and 2 to get people primed to start asking about what superman should be doing with his uncounterable godlike power. And I feel like when people started asking if superman was responsible it made Supes a little less sure of himself.

Then you get the guy who was crippled. Now Lex obviously knew about this guy since he was stealing his mail for 18 months, but it seemed like Lex was saving him for this opportunity. Lex can now kill 2 birds with 1 stone by:
A: Killing his enemy, the jar of pee senator, while framing this guy who was on the news screaming about superman being a fraud. Superman drove this crippled man to suicide in normal people's eyes.
B: Driving Batman further toward revenge, making him feel partially responsible for not keeping better track of this legless guy.
C: Making superman further question himself? When the bomb goes off superman just has this look on his face like he's done with this. And he does leave for some time after this to go climbing on haunted mountains. I don't know if this was part of his 'plan' though.

Yeah but we're the ones being forced to fill in that explanation. If LexCorp truly was very tight with the government, enough for them to get everything they wanted, then the movie should've shown us that.

Nameless senator seemed obviously involved.
A: He gives Lex pretty much everything he wanted without question in regards to access to the alien ship and Zod's body.
B: Lex Luthor saves him from the senate hearing bombing. He pulls the guy away and says "I want to talk to you." So I feel like that guy represented the shady dealings between Lexcorp and the US. Gov.
C: After the one senator who is blocking the import is killed, Lex gets his import immediately. I assume shady government guy was involved in this.
D: The military guy Lois tries to ask about the bullet says that the Lexcorp technology/involvement is classified and he can't talk about it.

Serious question, what exactly is the normal behavior of a Fortune 500 CEO, particularly the "hip, cool" tech-geeks which Lex is trying to portray.

Eh, I bought his weirdo socially awkward tech geek/ wannabe eccentric vibe he had going on. Him coming across as strange and mentally unstable also helps justify some of his weirder actions throughout the movie, like apparently coming to worship Darkseid and admire Zod near the end.

Except he didn't have a Kryptonite weapon on hand, Bats had stolen his rock, and the birth was happening right then and there. Never mind the fact that he apparently has total freedom to use the ship at will, so that excuse would be rather thin.

My assumption, based on Lex saying "the bell has been rung" is that he specifically created Doomsday in order to summon darkseid, after the kryptonian ship told him about Ol' Omega Beam. It's somewhat similar to Ultron's fascination with Thanos. I feel like Lex's motivations were changed when he was given his ultimate knowledge of the universe or whatever. He only tried to create Doomsday after he was exposed to the ship's computer and learned about Darkseid. The ship also calls Luthor's blood an "ancient deformity" which makes me think that maybe Kryptonians knew about humans already, and that humanity might even be the descendants of ancient kryptonians on earth. This would certainly explain how Jor El knew about earth.

It makes me question whether Darkseid was responsible for killing off the kryptonian colonies throughout space in MoS. Maybe when they left krypton they were given godlike powers and Darkseid saw them as a threat. I assumed the doomsday/superman fight, a battle between two kryptonians, was a pretty big signal, and maybe Darkseid was still looking for kryptonians throughout the universe. Either that, or Darkseid is also a kryptonian and Apokolips was a kryptonian colony.

Maybe Zod wanted to terraform earth because Kryptonians with power are a beacon for Darkseid. Certainly none of the kryptonians seemed interested in keeping their powers, aside from Quasi-Ursa.

The problem here is if Luthor wanted to summon Darkseid, I have to question why he still wanted Batman and Superman to fight. Now that fight 'did' distract them from the birth of Doomsday, which was occurring at the same time, so it was useful for that, but obviously Lex didn't plan to make Doomsday from the start. He knew he had batman ready to roll, and he specifically sent superman to go fight batman. Maybe he was just totally crazy at that point and worshipped the power of Darkseid. Or maybe he just assumed superman would be able to kill batman easily. Maybe he wanted to break superman morally by making him kill batman, before his ultimate defeat by doomsday. I admit I'm not too sure.

Doomsday looked pretty unstable. While he was apparently unkillable, maybe he would eventually blow up from his power in a big beacon to darkseid. I'm a little skeptical about this though.

[APlayerHater]

Now if Lex really 'did' want to just kill superman and wasn't a slave to darkseid, there is certainly evidence for that: He did say that if batman couldn't kill superman, his monster would have to finish the job, so killing superman still seemed to be one of his goals. Maybe he was actually trying to save the world, and knew Darkseid was coming. Maybe he believed superman had been detected and had summoned darkseid already. He did say that monsters came from the sky. And this would fit in with us knowing that superman is Darkseid's slave in the future.

Would Doomsday be able to defeat Darkseid? Who knows.

[SCRawl]

Now if Lex really 'did' want to just kill superman and wasn't a slave to darkseid, there is certainly evidence for that: He did say that if batman couldn't kill superman, his monster would have to finish the job, so killing superman still seemed to be one of his goals. Maybe he was actually trying to save the world, and knew Darkseid was coming. Maybe he believed superman had been detected and had summoned darkseid already. He did say that monsters came from the sky. And this would fit in with us knowing that superman is Darkseid's slave in the future.

Would Doomsday be able to defeat Darkseid? Who knows.

Any incarnation of Darkseid would deal with Doomsday more or less instantly by launching him into orbit, where he would be unable to do anything other than remain there, a prisoner of gravity. My issue with Luthor and his motivations, though, comes from there being no obvious path once Doomsday has been unleashed should he be able to defeat Superman. Unless Darkseid is ready to zoom in and cart Doomsday away, though, the rest of Metropolis (and, eventually, the world) will be killed off in the monster's destructive rampage. Unless there's a convenient "off" switch, there's nothing to stop Doomsday from doing whatever he wants, and from what I saw, that seems to have been "smash everything".

There seem to be only two explanations for Luthor's actions in this regard: he's batshit crazy; or (as strongly suggested in that deleted scene) he's taking orders from Darkseid, who has promised Luthor something pretty awesome for his cooperation.

[Bedlam]

Any incarnation of Darkseid would deal with Doomsday more or less instantly by launching him into orbit, where he would be unable to do anything other than remain there, a prisoner of gravity.

Actually I do remember a story (I think it was called Superman / Doomsday, Hunter / Prey) a direct sequel to Death of Superman where Doomsday after being tied to a lump of rock and thrown into space by the cyborg superman gets picked up by a random spaceship and brought to Apocalypse where he revived and started to smash his way through everything. Darkseid takes him on to one one and Doomsday wipes the floor with him. I can't remember exactly how it went down, I think Darkseid was going to Omega Beam him but Doomsday closed the distance really quickly and sucker punched Darkseid.

Of course with all these things who wins is always down to Writers fiat.

[SCRawl]

Going by what we see in the film, though, defeating Doomsday should be simply a matter of putting him into orbit, which is a task Darkseid should be able to manage.

[GuppyShark]

A perfect time to jump in and mention something I was wondering about.

In the film, Superman does indeed launch Doomsday into space. However, he CONTINUES TO ATTACK HIM instead of calling it a victory.

Forget comics for a minute.

Doomsday is a Kryptonian monster. Doomsday was born at night and in the film is never exposed to sunlight. There is every possibility that, once exposed to Earth's sun, he may in fact have developed the same flight capability the other Kryptonians acquire. That would explain why Superman did not simply leave him to his own devices.

[Kojiro]

That actually makes Superman's decision to take him into orbit questionable- as we saw sunlight was imminent (and luckily for Supes). That said, Doomsday did seem to exhibit Kryptonian level strength and durability (as well as heat vision). In fact given that the nuke almost kills Supes yet leave Doomsday none the worse, we could infer his durability is superior to that of a Kryptonian who has been on Earth for 34 years. At least against everything not kryptonite of Amazon 'steel'.

[SCRawl]

Doomsday seems to have had an extra ability to absorb (and re-purpose) energy that Superman doesn't; note that the nuke made him stronger rather than weaker.

[NeoGoomba]

Doomsday is a Kryptonian monster. Doomsday was born at night and in the film is never exposed to sunlight. There is every possibility that, once exposed to Earth's sun, he may in fact have developed the same flight capability the other Kryptonians acquire. That would explain why Superman did not simply leave him to his own devices.

That...is a good point. Plus his genetic source material, or whatever you want to call it, already had the other "Super" powers that Kryptonians had.

[Crown]

Yeah but we're the ones being forced to fill in that explanation. If LexCorp truly was very tight with the government, enough for them to get everything they wanted, then the movie should've shown us that.

Nameless senator seemed obviously involved.
A: He gives Lex pretty much everything he wanted without question in regards to access to the alien ship and Zod's body.
B: Lex Luthor saves him from the senate hearing bombing. He pulls the guy away and says "I want to talk to you." So I feel like that guy represented the shady dealings between Lexcorp and the US. Gov.
C: After the one senator who is blocking the import is killed, Lex gets his import immediately. I assume shady government guy was involved in this.
D: The military guy Lois tries to ask about the bullet says that the Lexcorp technology/involvement is classified and he can't talk about it.

Correction on B & C; both Senators die in the explosion. Lex removes an obstacle (Finch) and a pawn who can't give him anything more but has dirt on him (Barrows) in one move. He still had to smuggle the Kryptonite into the US via the Gotham ports though which happened prior to the bombing.

Except he didn't have a Kryptonite weapon on hand, Bats had stolen his rock, and the birth was happening right then and there. Never mind the fact that he apparently has total freedom to use the ship at will, so that excuse would be rather thin.

My assumption, based on Lex saying "the bell has been rung" is that he specifically created Doomsday in order to summon darkseid, after the kryptonian ship told him about Ol' Omega Beam. It's somewhat similar to Ultron's fascination with Thanos. I feel like Lex's motivations were changed when he was given his ultimate knowledge of the universe or whatever. He only tried to create Doomsday after he was exposed to the ship's computer and learned about Darkseid. The ship also calls Luthor's blood an "ancient deformity" which makes me think that maybe Kryptonians knew about humans already, and that humanity might even be the descendants of ancient kryptonians on earth. This would certainly explain how Jor El knew about earth.

It makes me question whether Darkseid was responsible for killing off the kryptonian colonies throughout space in MoS. Maybe when they left krypton they were given godlike powers and Darkseid saw them as a threat. I assumed the doomsday/superman fight, a battle between two kryptonians, was a pretty big signal, and maybe Darkseid was still looking for kryptonians throughout the universe. Either that, or Darkseid is also a kryptonian and Apokolips was a kryptonian colony.

Maybe Zod wanted to terraform earth because Kryptonians with power are a beacon for Darkseid. Certainly none of the kryptonians seemed interested in keeping their powers, aside from Quasi-Ursa.

The problem here is if Luthor wanted to summon Darkseid, I have to question why he still wanted Batman and Superman to fight. Now that fight 'did' distract them from the birth of Doomsday, which was occurring at the same time, so it was useful for that, but obviously Lex didn't plan to make Doomsday from the start. He knew he had batman ready to roll, and he specifically sent superman to go fight batman. Maybe he was just totally crazy at that point and worshipped the power of Darkseid. Or maybe he just assumed superman would be able to kill batman easily. Maybe he wanted to break superman morally by making him kill batman, before his ultimate defeat by doomsday. I admit I'm not too sure.

Doomsday looked pretty unstable. While he was apparently unkillable, maybe he would eventually blow up from his power in a big beacon to darkseid. I'm a little skeptical about this though.

Regarding Balrog's point about Doomsday consider these things;

1. Lex only goes to create Doomsday after Batfleck takes away his Kryptonite
2. Doomsday's birth can be halted at any point up to the countdown reaches zero (which was only after Superman was meant to return with Batfleck's head or Batfleck had killed Superman)
3. Lex was spiralling into insanity at this point and he legitimately felt he could 'control' or 'influence' Doomsday "blood of my blood"

He was obviously wrong about c) and was ironically saved from being squished by Doomsday by Superman who launched himself to protect Lex of all people without hesitation.

You (APlayerHater) have some interesting thesis on Kryptonian politics/decisions but they don't necessarily lose all their God-Like powers if the Black Zero and the World Engine had terraformed Earth. The yellow Sun would still have given them some pretty amazing abilities. Lastly the warning about 'ancient Kryptonian deformity' wasn't meant to imply anything to do with humanity and Kryptonian's prior interaction; in the Snyder-verse, they set up Kryptonian technology as quite obviously pretty advanced in the biological manipulation aspect. In MoS we had a 9ft tall Kryptonian soldier; he was engineered that way. I suspect Doomsday is as the ship suggested to Lex; a failed deformity that Kryptonians engineered at some point in their history which caused unimaginable carnage which the Council felt it needed to ban permanently.

[Crown]

A perfect time to jump in and mention something I was wondering about.

In the film, Superman does indeed launch Doomsday into space. However, he CONTINUES TO ATTACK HIM instead of calling it a victory.

They were going straight up, so unless he had given Doomsday escape velocity, Doomsday would have come straight back down again eventually because Doomsday wasn't in orbit. And to be flippant if a nuclear ballistic missile was catching up to them, I don't think they had reached escape velocity yet.

Forget comics for a minute.

Doomsday is a Kryptonian monster. Doomsday was born at night and in the film is never exposed to sunlight. There is every possibility that, once exposed to Earth's sun, he may in fact have developed the same flight capability the other Kryptonians acquire. That would explain why Superman did not simply leave him to his own devices.

Doomsday wasn't full Kryptonian, he was part human (Lex; "blood of my blood") and flight seems to be a pretty special superpower here; Zod was the only other Kryptonian to master it. Faora never did and she was exposed to the Sun. In fact Faora never even mastered control of her senses. So it is not beyond the realm of possibility for him to assume flight is off the table, and if he had managed to get Doomsday to escape velocity problem solved, but by then the nuke was incoming so all that was left for Superman to do was hold Doomsday in place for them to be nuked together.

[GuppyShark]

They were going straight up, so unless he had given Doomsday escape velocity, Doomsday would have come straight back down again eventually because Doomsday wasn't in orbit. And to be flippant if a nuclear ballistic missile was catching up to them, I don't think they had reached escape velocity yet.

Excellent point. All that time playing KSP under my belt too.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I just saw the film earlier today and a couple of things bothered me:

First, the film was called Batman vs Superman, yet they spent all of five minutes fighting each other, with Superman largely holding back his full strength until Batman whips out the green spear of doom...

Second, we know that comic book Batman doesn't like guns, yet during his rescue of Martha he turns plenty of the mook's guns against them. It's one thing to have the batmobile pack cannons etc (Impressive that it was still driveable even after its altercation with Superman), but Batman himself picking up firearms?

[Elheru Aran]

Second, we know that comic book Batman doesn't like guns, yet during his rescue of Martha he turns plenty of the mook's guns against them. It's one thing to have the batmobile pack cannons etc (Impressive that it was still driveable even after its altercation with Superman), but Batman himself picking up firearms?

Exactly this. It struck me as so very wrong. I could live with him using a grenade launcher against Superman, but straight up shooting, potentially killing the mooks? When 99% of the comics will emphasize the whole "Batman doesn't use guns" thing? Batman with guns is the Punisher. Batman without guns is the fucking Batman.

[Gandalf]

I just saw the film earlier today and a couple of things bothered me:

First, the film was called Batman vs Superman, yet they spent all of five minutes fighting each other, with Superman largely holding back his full strength until Batman whips out the green spear of doom...

He spent the film up to that point trying to set up that fight. Had the actual fight been any longer I would have been a bit bored.

Second, we know that comic book Batman doesn't like guns, yet during his rescue of Martha he turns plenty of the mook's guns against them. It's one thing to have the batmobile pack cannons etc (Impressive that it was still driveable even after its altercation with Superman), but Batman himself picking up firearms?

This isn't the comic book. I think a possible direction they're taking it is that Batman will go from "the bat vigilante" to a more recognisable form of the character. I like this take on Batman, because they show that he was Batman for so long that he became jaded as fuck about the whole thing. But suddenly 9/11 happens and he sees an existential threat that he can punch to death. Batman versus Gotham's underground might have proven futile, Batman fighting Superman could actually make a difference. But then it turns out that they're all on the same side, and together they can fight for good in a more constructive way.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I get the sense that this film's Batman is acting atypical even for him. Its a bit problematic because this is the first introduction to the character, but their are plenty of hints in the film that he wasn't always this brutal, and may not be in the future.

When he brands a suspect, Alfred comments "New rules?" or something.
Alfred has his line about what "turns good men cruel."
He was clearly driven somewhat off the deep end over Metropolis and what followed.
His asking Alfred how many people in Gotham stayed good could be taken as referring to himself (though I also took it as an allusion to Two-Face).

Its worth noting also that at the end of the film he feels he failed Superman, and may feel a need to live up to Superman's standard (Superman kills, sometimes, but usually seems reluctant to do so if he can avoid it). He also seems to have regained some idealism, from his words to Wonder Woman at the end.

I guess we'll see in Suicide Squad, though if he's going up against the Joker that might push him to be a bit darker as well.

I do suspect we'll see the brutality toned down in the Affleck-written and directed solo film, because Affleck is reportedly a Batman fan and seems to have a decent handle on the character from what I've seen.

[Crazedwraith]

Second, we know that comic book Batman doesn't like guns, yet during his rescue of Martha he turns plenty of the mook's guns against them. It's one thing to have the batmobile pack cannons etc (Impressive that it was still driveable even after its altercation with Superman), but Batman himself picking up firearms?

Exactly this. It struck me as so very wrong. I could live with him using a grenade launcher against Superman, but straight up shooting, potentially killing the mooks? When 99% of the comics will emphasize the whole "Batman doesn't use guns" thing? Batman with guns is the Punisher. Batman without guns is the fucking Batman.

The Moment where he saves Martha? That's straight out of Dark Knight Returns. only substituting Martha and Flamethrower guy for a pistol wielding mook and a kidnapped toddler. And Burton's Batman murdered plenty of people with vehicle guns and exhaust.

I don't particularly like it either but it's not unprecedented.

[APlayerHater]

Movie batman really never seemed to care about collateral damage.
I always mention batman begins, in the scene where he escapes from the League of Assassins home base.
He kills a ninja with a sword and then blows the place up, killing everyone inside including the person he had refused to execute.
He also kills a truckdriver in the Dark Knight when he rams the batmobile into their truck, and killed some other joker thugs when intercepting a rocket the joker fires at Harvey Dent's police escort.
As mentioned, in the burton movies he kills a lot of people, including burning at least 2 people alive.

Anyway, I felt his killing informed his character as a jaded batman who didn't believe in ideals anymore. Also, you're fighting with vigilante justice to take down groups of armed thugs violently; people are going to die. As said, people died in all the other batman movies too and no one seemed to complain. Sure, the Dark Knight showed him going out of his way not to kill on occasion, but it was a rule he seemed willing to bend when it was necessary.

In the Dark Knight Returns he does let some of the Mutant gang get killed when they fire explosives at his car and keep killing themselves by accident. Otherwise he says "rubber bullets, honest" when the batmobile opens fire on the Mutants, but I was never sure if that was supposed to be sarcastic. Then again, they make a big deal out of how he isn't able to kill the joker. It seems like he 'might' kill Harvey Dent in TDKR but it isn't shown for certain.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

His willingness to kill doesn't bother me as he's done so enough times in earlier films, it's just that since his parents were murdered by a guy using one that he generally avoids personal firearms.

Speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice some similarities between Eisenberg's portrayal of Luthor, and Ledger's Joker. I'm not entirely sure if that's just how I interpreted what I saw, or that effect was deliberate.