Whether you love Zack Snyder’s DCEU movies or not, there’s no denying the ridiculousness of the infamous “Martha” scene from Batman V Superman. But just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about (consider yourself blessed if you don’t), here’s what went down: Towards the end of their brutally epic fight scene, the weakened-by-Kryptonite Superman looks at the enraged who’s about to kill him and says, “save Martha!” Superman is, of course, referring to his mom, Martha Kent, who at this point was held hostage by Lex Luthor’s goons.
This plea confuses Batman and brings back memories of his late mother, Martha Wayne. Yeap, in a movie titled Batman V Superman, Gotham’s Dark Knight and the Metropolis Marvel stop fighting because their moms share the same name. It’s a headscratcher of a scene, to say the least. It’s also a scene that proved to many of us that perhaps Zack Snyder doesn’t quite understand these DC characters. As reported by ComicBook.com, Snyder had this to say during “The Director’s Cuts” panel at Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design:
“We [Snyder and Screenwriter Chris Terrio] 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.”
Snyder also touches on how the idea came to be in the first place:
“And it was actually Chris who told me, he goes, ‘You know, just saying… is it weird that they both, their mothers have the same name?’ I was like, ‘That’s crazy! Is that true? That is true.’ And so that’s kind of how the conversation started, it’s as simple as that … and then we started to talk about how it could work, and if it was Lois Lane that said it, maybe it’s better, it’s that kind of thing. Look, it’s a mythological construct, I have no problem with that part of it.”
Making Batman realise that Superman has a heart; That he’s human, perhaps even more human than Bruce is not only a great idea but absolutely the right way to go about it. However, Snyder and Terrio should’ve come up with a more poignant and emotionally resonant way to explore this idea. As it stands, the battle between two of the most iconic comic book characters ends in a hilarious, anticlimactic and all-out nonsensical manner. The quicker we forget about it, the better.
