Batman v. Superman: Inside Zack Snyder’s MPA Rating Battle

Zack Snyder is known to be a vocal defender of his own work. The Rebel Moon director, who was considered the overseer of the DCEU for a number of years before the torch eventually passed to James Gunn and Peter Safran, is still defending some of the decisions he made while crafting those movies today, and his 2016 DC superhero movie, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, is no exception.

The theatrical cut of the film, which saw Henry Cavill’s Superman and Ben Affleck’s Batman duke it out before bonding over their moms both being called Martha, was a smash hit despite largely negative reviews from critics, but Snyder’s director’s cut is often held up as a better version of the story.

In a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Snyder told host Josh Horowitz that his “100 percent honest reaction” to the movie and how it’s been received is “Do you really want a movie that’s [had] all the edges shaved off it by the focus groups? Do you really want a movie that has [had] decisions made in the boardroom, or tested ideas being rendered for your enjoyment? Do you really want the Kmart version of your story? Is that what you really want?”

Snyder also revealed that he was locked in a battle with the MPA (then known as the MPAA) over the content of Batman v. Superman before its release, saying that when they attempted to secure a PG-13 rating for the movie, the MPA kept “kicking” it back to them, maintaining it was still an R.

“I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? We’re taking everything out!’ And I remember someone saying we got a report from the MPAA saying like, ‘We just don’t like the idea of Batman fighting Superman. So that kind of makes it an R,'” Snyder recalled, adding that when the two DC characters battled each other, the MPA thought it was “rude” for them to also destroy various surroundings, such as radiators.

“We should’ve realized then that we were kind of kicking the zeitgeist in the nuts a little bit,” he said. “That we were going to anger people, because not only do they not want their heroes deconstructed, they don’t want their heroes battling each other on a road to deconstructing the ‘why’ of their existence. That is another sacrilege.”

Yes, that was definitely the issue with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. For sure.