Robin has a gruesome fate in ‘Batman vs Superman’

Specialty costume manufacturer Douglas J. Stewart shared a closeup of Robin's costume on Instagram, writing, "A bit of detail on Robin’s gauntlet. He was brutally murdered and then set ablaze by the Joker. The story had to be told in the salvaged costume on display inside the Batcave. Aging and specialty distressing needs to tell these unscripted tales that support the main framework of the film. Here we had to create a Robin Suit in a matter of days. Using what we had and then figure out how to modify it all as well as building the support interior. It was a lot of fun."

“A bit of detail on Robin’s gauntlet. He was brutally murdered and then set ablaze by the Joker. The story had to be told in the salvaged costume on display inside the Batcave. Aging and specialty distressing needs to tell these unscripted tales that support the main framework of the film. Here we had to create a Robin Suit in a matter of days. Using what we had and then figure out how to modify it all as well as building the support interior. It was a lot of fun.

#batman #robin #joker #batmanvsuperman #mpc705 #motionpicturecostumers #specialtycostumes #superhero

We, @agentbrown1 @ivorypix @robotclouds, worked together to make this and a whole lot of this movie, happen.

Oops! Photo @jackrupert133 thanks!”

Even though Robin doesn’t appear in the movie, his costume is shown on display in the Batcave with the words "Hahaha Joke's on you Batman" spraypainted across the chest.

While many believed this costume belonged to Jason Todd, Batman's second Robin who was killed by The Joker in the comics before his death was retconned, director Zack Snyder later confirmed it was that of Dick Grayson.

Fearing that the actions of Superman are left unchecked, Batman takes on the Man of Steel, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero it really needs. ... Society believes there should be no Superman because of his alien-like powers. Batman agrees and proceeds to take Superman down.

Originally, we assumed that Zack Snyder had simply lifted Robin’s death from the comics, where Jason Todd is beaten to death by the Joker in “A Death in the Family.” We’ve since discovered, though, that the dead Robin is Dick Grayson. And now we’ve been told that not only was Grayson brutally beaten like Todd was in the comics, but then his body was burned. Yup, that sounds like something suitably grimdark that Snyder would do.

The interesting thing here is that there’s a chance we could get to see this tragic event play out, after all. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is set to be the missing chapter in the director’s DC saga that the 2017 team-up flick failed to be, so he’s expected to further explore ongoing plot threads like the coming of Darkseid and the Knightmare timeline. Remember, Leto is also on board for the reshoots and we’ve recently heard that one of his scenes is a flashback to Robin’s death, so we might just get to see it unfold on screen.

Since the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder hasn’t spent much time talking about Justice League or the future of the DC movie universe — instead, he’s mostly been explaining some of the (many, many, many) things that happen in his superhero epic. And while we anxiously await his explanation of Granny’s Peach Tea, the director is opening up about one character who wasn’t actually in the film, but whose existence was crucial to Ben Affleck’s iteration of Batman.

Affleck put in some solid work as the aging, disgruntled and exceedingly cynical caped crusader (setting aside the notion that this version of Batman would probably vote for Donald Trump), but you don’t become that jaded just because you witnessed your parents’ murder. This Batman has seen some s—, man.

And as we saw in the Batcave, one of the things that’s made Affleck’s Dark Knight so, well, dark is the death of Robin — whose suit, covered in the Joker’s taunting graffiti, Batman keeps as some sort of morbid monument. In an interview with IGN, Snyder talks about the importance of Batman’s former sidekick and offers a little more background:

In my mind, it was that Robin had died 10 years earlier, during some run in with a young Joker (Jared Leto). To me, it was a fun backstory there to play with. The whole idea was that there had been loss and sacrifice. In a weird way, he sacrificed everything to be Batman, right? He doesn’t really have a life outside of the cave. I thought by including Robin — a dead Robin — it would help us understand he’s been on quite a little journey.

Once again, Snyder uses the word “fun” to describe something that is decidedly un-fun. It’s almost as if there’s a mandate going around Warner Bros. insisting that everyone must use the word “fun” in any interviews about Batman v Superman and the DC movie universe. First there was Snyder explaining that brutal Jimmy Olsen cameo as “fun,” then there was the recent interview in which a WB exec said Batman v Superman is “fun” and “doesn’t take itself seriously.”

But while Snyder continues to have some really twisted ideas about “fun,” he does get a couple of things right: including Robin’s defaced suit does help us understand this emotionally removed and closed-off Batman a bit more, and casting Ben Affleck in the role was a huge help.