Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice had a laundry list of problems that held it back, but there's one simple change that could have made the movie better overall. The film was a follow-up to Zack Snyder's Man of Steel and was meant to be the installment that would launch Warner Bros.' budding DC Extended Universe, with Suicide Squad following shortly afterwards. Batman v Superman stars Ben Affleck as a grizzled and brutal version of Batman, hunting down Superman for the threat he poses to humanity, while Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor manipulates the both of them behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, Batman v Superman never took off the way the studio expected, and instead received a mixed-to-negative reaction upon release. Critics and audiences heavily criticized the movie for its half-baked screenplay, the inconsistent character writing, and its overly self-serious and melodramatic tone. Despite breaking records in its first weekend, the movie experienced an unprecedented second-week drop at the box office and never recovered, making $873 million out of the $1 billion that it was expected to gross.
While Batman v Superman has a lot of fundamental storytelling problems baked into its screenplay, there's one issue that could have helped the movie and, specifically, helped deepen the conflict between the two "heroes". Ben Affleck's Batman is a killer, and Batman v Superman doesn't really attempt to reckon with that in a logical or meaningful way. Had this version of Batman not killed anyone else in the movie, but was aiming to make Superman his first, it would have greatly impacted several elements of the story.
A lot of Batman v Superman's most ardent defenders will argue that Batman takes the place of the film's primary antagonist, as his vendetta against Superman drives him to try and kill the Man of Steel at the movie's climax. However, this is severely unclear in the film and most of the general audience isn't given this impression because of how the film frames this version of Batman and his actions. While it's obvious that Batman killing Superman would be morally reprehensible, the movie doesn't take this same stance with the rest of Batman's obvious killings in the movie. Snyder frequently shows Bruce using lethal force against criminals, but these action sequences aren't framed in an antagonistic or villainous light, and are instead treated like standard superhero fight sequences.
This makes it difficult for audiences to figure out how they're supposed to feel about Bruce, because on one hand the movie doesn't handle Batman's killings with enough weight to truly feel like he's the movie's villain, but on the other hand it's impossible to feel connected to him as a protagonist because he's also a cold-blooded murderer. Had Batman not killed any of the faceless henchmen in the movie, the narrative could have portrayed him as a conflicted vigilante on his way to break his one rule, something that would have properly balanced him out as both protagonist and antagonist.
Batman v Superman tries to place both Batman and Superman on opposite yet even sides of an ideological debate. Batman believes that he needs to kill Superman because he represents an existential threat to humanity, while Superman thinks that Batman is an extrajudicial vigilante terrorizing Gotham City. While the characters don't take any steps to resolving these conflicts outside of violence, the movie also fails because having a murderous Batman immediately puts him on less of a moral footing than Superman. While Bruce is paranoid of the power that Superman possesses and the possibility that he might misuse it, Batman spends the entirety of the movie killing without discretion.
This is the reason that Captain America: Civil War works so well as an adaptation. Both Steve Rogers and Tony Stark have understandable motives that allow for audience members to root for them both separately. The problem with Batman v Superman is that the conflict between the heroes is a moral false equivalence due to Bruce's lethal tactics. If Batman wasn't a killer throughout the film, his ideological viewpoint would have been able to stand on equal footing with Superman's and it wouldn't have been such a one-sided conflict throughout the story.
The apparent story arc of Batman in Batman v Superman is that he attempts to murder Superman out of a misplaced sense of paranoia and fear, only to realize that he's been wrong and that killing Superman would have been an unforgivable act. However, this arc is severely undercut by the fact that Bruce has already taken lives up until this point. It doesn't feel genuine that he has a massive character change due to his refusal to kill Superman, when throughout the movie he's had no qualms about killing dozens of faceless henchmen and criminals the entire time. This leaves Batman in a weird limbo in which he's killed dozens of low-tier criminals and yet seems to feel no guilt or remorse about this fact.
This storyline could have easily been fixed by removing Bruce's previous killings from the film. If he hadn't yet become a murderer, the movie could have been about his slow escalation to that point. Had Snyder started the film with a Batman that was broken and brutal, but not yet a murderer, he could have put distinct emphasis on his plan to kill Superman as the first time he would ever be crossing the line that far. This, of course, would have given viewers a much clearer redemption arc, one in which Batman comes back from that dark place while also preserving his morality as a character for future stories.
While re-instating Bruce's code against killing could have alleviated some of the movie's character problems, there are still a host of other things that hold Batman v Superman back from being a great movie. Audiences still rejected things like the film's interpretation of Lex Luthor (and his nonsensical plan), as well as the cluttered and convoluted screenplay and forced references to the rest of the Justice League. However, a lot of these issues could have been overlooked (at least in the eyes of the general audience) if the movie hadn't had such a cynical and dour tone. Blockbusters are allowed to be dark and serious (see Nolan's The Dark Knight and James Mangold's Logan), but those films have to earn that atmosphere through consistently good writing.
If Batman wasn't a killer in Batman v Superman, then there would be a lot more room for levity without conflicting with the movie's already melodramatic tone. A lot of the tonal inconsistency comes from the fact that audiences were already in a universe where Batman is killing people and Superman is struggling with an existential crisis, so there's not a lot of room for the occasional humor that the movie tries to throw out. However, if Batman was slightly less severe, the slight levity and comedy would have landed harder and made audiences forgive the film's other problems. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice hasn't had the best reputation in the public eye since its release back in 2016, and it's frustrating to see how simple fixes might have helped the overall product.
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