I hold a pretty unpopular stance on this issue but I don't think the film makes a judgement call on Batman killing one way or the other. I think it presents a very matter of fact context and displays these actions as what happens as a result, neither condemning or condoning. https://twitter.com/benbattinson/status/1198297964671692800

I think the movie makes very clear what options Batman has in terms of gear/tech or whatever you want to call it. And unlike the MCU, these two films have consistently shown they do not take place in a universe where the characters have access to sci-fi tech no one else does.

Batman is never shown with access to any kind of weird smoke bombs or taser darts or EMP blasters or anything like that. His weapons and tools are very simple and the movie is very specific about showing what they are. To just whip out something more would be a lazy convenience.

With the exception of the Kryptonian materials being alien in nature the films have made it very clear that if it can't be made with current materials or technologies it doesn't exist. This all supports the approach to the storytelling world, and that supports the portrayal.

The point is that most of the suggestions for how the character should go about his work and control collateral damage in the film can't be applied because the world of the storytelling won't allow for it. The deaths are matter of fact because that's being sincere about context.

No one in the movie, at any point, brings up Batman killing in any capacity. The choice to kill or not to kill, outside of the plan to murder Superman, is never something the character has to make. If the movie doesn't make it a challenge for the character, how can it be an arc?

Being harder or crueler doesn't suddenly mean his entire methodology has changed. It doesn't mean the world around him has changed, and the movie never presents that as being centered around killing. I fought that for a long time, but it's true. This just isn't it.

The movie acknowledges that if someone is going to do what Batman does, even with the best of tools and training, some things cannot be avoided. This is why I don't believe the movie is trying to draw a moral line, because the context of the film supports the proposed reality.

That was a choice that was made for MoS and it is consistently maintained. That choice removes the movies from the ghetto of being live action cartoons, and I understand that's part of the major frustration for so many because it asks us to redraw the lines around the characters.

In the case of killing the line has to be drawn on intent, and that's what separates Batman killing the guy in the SUV with the mini-gun from him making a plan to murder Superman. Making that distinction is also part of what makes this a piece that intends a more mature portrayal

I think the fact that even being asked to make that distinction has been so devastatingly insulting to people says a lot about the relationship with have with the characters and the mediums they appear in. We seem to have lost the will to scale our expectations with the context.

I truly believe Batman kills in the movie because the movie world acknowledges that it wouldn't be something he could avoid. I think that comes not from a desire to knock the character down but from a desire to be honest like any other movie with any other character would.

And as many people have stated if this character were one other than Batman they wouldn't have an issue with anything. Meaning the problem isn't with the movie but with their relationship with the character.

The movie doesn't have an issue with Batman killing; the audience does. But because they don't want to deal with that, because they don't want to have to change their way of seeing the character, they demand to be catered to. They want to maintain their childlike image of him.

And that's fine, but trying to force the rest of us to continue to be live emotionally as children isn't something anyone should be allowed to do. We should be leading the conversation from a place of maturity instead of squabbling over immature intellectual fallacies.