Here's What Christopher Nolan Contributed to BATMAN V SUPERMAN

In the world of television, executive producers are often the showrunners and final decision makers of a show. They have a massive influence in shaping the final product before it makes its way to the screen. But with movies, executive producers are better known for dealing with money or using their names to lend credibility and prestige to a production. Christopher Nolan produced Man of Steel, but moved to an executive producer position for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and in a new interview with Collider, director Zack Snyder talks about Nolan's contributions to the movie. Spoilers for Dawn of Justice ahead.

I wrote this morning about how the ending of the movie incorporates Doomsday and the death of Superman, and Snyder had some interesting things to say about that in that interview. But it turns out that Nolan was at least partially responsible for that storyline making it into the final cut of this film:

“It was pretty early, and [Christopher] Nolan and I had long conversation about it, a really great, sort of philosophical conversation about it. He was really cool because he played an amazing devil’s advocate about why not to do it, and then in the end was like, ‘No you’re right, it’s better to do it.’

We had a version that we talked about where [Superman] just—this isn’t it, but where he got frozen and shot into space or something, so he’s kinda gone. Because one of the big things I wanted to make sure of was that as we went into Justice League, Bruce Wayne was the one who was gathering the Justice League. I thought it was really important to have Bruce Wayne be the samurai who goes and finds the other samurai, that to me was important. And with Superman around it’s kinda hard, because Superman’s Superman so it’s kinda hard for Bruce to be like, ‘Yeah I wanna put a Justice League together’. It’s like, ‘Okay, but maybe Superman should be doing that. You’re just a guy. You’re a cool guy, don’t get me wrong, but you’re just a guy.’”

So how did Warner Bros. react when they found out Snyder was going to kill off Superman?

“The studio was like, ‘What?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah but, how about I call the movie Dawn of Justice?’, and they’re like ‘Okay, okay, I like what you’re doing, I see what you’re doing.’”

So now we know who to blame for that subtitle. What did you think about the film's ending? Do you think that Batman should be the one to unite the Justice League?