Zack Snyder Defends Batman & Lois Lane Romance In Original Justice League Script

In a new episode of the Russo brothers’ Pizza Film School video podcast, former DCEU director Zack Snyder defended his original Justice League script that saw Batman and Lois Lane get together romantically. Although both Batman and Superman share several similarities in their respective histories, Snyder’s planned romantic plot for Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane was a significant deviation from the comics.

In early drafts of Snyder’s Justice League, the idea was that Bruce would end up needing to sacrifice his chance with Lois by bringing Superman back to life in Justice League, which would have been a personal loss to himself. Many fans were divided on Snyder’s planned storyline, which would have put Lois’ character into an even tighter love interest box that it did not need to be confined by. To many fans, Lois is simply a love interest, but in reality, she is far more than that. Making her love for Superman, and Batman’s love for her, a major component of the plot of Justice League may not have added to Lois’ own independent character arc.

Instead, it could have treated Lois as simply a plot device, which would have been a disservice to the beloved character. However, as is evident by the podcast discussion, many fans would have found that love-triangle story compelling despite this, which may have improved the film overall in the eyes of those fans. Snyder explained that “everyone was like, ’Oh my God, you can’t do that,” but that “Superman was dead … and Lois is a pretty amazing person” so he was going to make it work.

The director also felt that seeing a romance between Batman and Lois would allow the film to explore a war-film-like plotline wherein the wife of someone who went to war “moves on, and then the husband appears, like, ‘I’m not dead. I’m fine.'” Snyder would have wanted to set up a love triangle, of sorts, where “Lois was like, ‘I’m still in love with Superman. You were kind of a thing,'” but “Batman had already fallen in love with Lois.” Although Snyder’s planned storyline was scrapped, it is clear that he believed that it would have added an interesting dimension to the film.