Well, he had guns and missiles installed on the car prior to getting into that chase... So at some point he intended to use them to kill people since that is what they are for, after all.
Couldn't you say that about police officers, security guards, and soldiers? They are all armed, which means they intend to eventually use those arms if necessary, because that is what they are for. Are all armed people equally callous about killing?
This Batman believes he is fighting a war. It is a war that some would say he has no right to wage, but that's true with or without he no-kill policy; he's equally operating outside the law.
And if you kill someone, they are dead. You've killed them. Doesn't matter *why* you kill them, or what they may have done first, they're still dead. And, BATMAN DOES NOT KILL! There is not addendum to that. No "unless they shoot first." No "unless he's older and jaded." No addendum... BATMAN DOES NOT KILL! Period.
If you believe that's an absolute rule, then yes the circumstances themselves don't matter to your judgment of the character. But that wasn't the question I was asking, and I tried to be very explicit. You seemed to imply that Batman was a hypocrite because he kills and yet he hates Superman because he kills. But even if you think there's no difference, you seem to be implying that this is a universal truth everyone would agree with, because you implied isn't just objectionable, but ridiculous. If that was not your intent, I misunderstood.
In any case, I think you should at least be consistent with this rule. The Dark Knight Returns Batman should be equally objectionable to you.
Personally, I don't think the problem is with Batman killing. The problem is that TDKR was written for comic book fans, and we had years, decades of Batman history in our heads. And frankly, it was a bit stagnant history. TDKR didn't come right out and say "this is Batman" but rather "this is what Batman might become, if things continue to get worse." We were supposed to contrast this Batman with the Batman we knew and loved, and see they weren't different people, just the same person under different circumstances. We were supposed to appreciate the contrast: see what changed and what was constant. Would the Batman kill if he needed to, or would he refuse to kill even when necessary? Which one wins in Batman: the need to not kill or the need to do whatever it takes? In TDKR, the story answers that question in the latter. He doesn't kill indiscriminately, but he is willing to wage war when necessary even if it means killing.
In TDKR, Batman doesn't just give up his rule on killing, he ultimately gives up being Batman. Twenty six years before Nolan, Miller has the Batman realize that the world no longer needed Batman the night time viligante, it needed Batman the symbol to rally the people to take control of their lives from an oppressive government and a torrent of crime. The core essence of the man was that once again, he was willing to do what was necessary.
I think there's no set up for the man Bruce has become in BvS. There are many paths to get there, but without seeing them there are many people who will say, with some justification, that that is just not Batman. Batman has evolved over the years in many different directions: there is no one Batman. But I think if you want the hard core fans to come along for the ride, you have to show them how to get there. I think Nolan was more successful in this: he *created* a new Batman mythos, and because we see exactly how this Bruce Wayne becomes this Batman, it is easier to accept all the ways that Batman was not the Batman most comic book fans were accustomed to. There's no question for me that is a major flaw.
For me personally, though, I don't see that "Batman doesn't kill, ergo its wrong" is fair, given that at least once before I and a lot of other hard core fans were willing to give that a pass under the right conditions. Context matters.
It's apparent the people making these movies don't just not know the characters but have an active disdain for them.
That's a very strong statement. I can't speak for Nolan, or Snyder, or Goyer. But I can speak for myself, and I don't find these things as objectionable as you do. I find the
execution of them highly flawed, but I don't find the mere approach to them as toxic. I feel I know the characters very well and I do not have any disdain for any of them. So I believe reviewers making this claim cannot make that generalization without tossing every movie viewer like myself into the same bucket. I certainly understand why many find these things objectionable, but there's a difference between saying the movie is something you hate, and saying the movie makers must hate the material because
no one who loves the material could possibly have made any of the decisions they made.
Snyder is a grown up and rich, he can defend himself, and he should be able to take it if a bunch of movie goes say he's an incompetent doofus or he doesn't understand the material. But when you say he hates the material and the movie proves it, that is a very wide brush being waved around. It says everyone who doesn't agree that his every decision was obviously wrong must be equally idiotic or malicious.
I believe it is fair to say from interviews and such that Snyder doesn't really fully understand where the hate comes from. And I think that does prove he doesn't really fully understand or appreciate the social context of the characters: the parts of the characters that the majority of fans would agree were the most defining. But that just makes him tunnel-visioned, like frankly a lot of comic book fans are. It doesn't mean he hates the characters, it just means the reasons why he likes them may not be the same as the majority of other fans of the characters. I wish he had a deeper understanding of the context of the characters and their associated stories: its the singular complaint I had about Watchmen. But having a shallower or minority opinion about the characters is not the same thing as hating them, or even misunderstanding them. He just doesn't see what a lot of the rest of us see.
For me, I think this all hinges on (something I believe to be) a fact that we don't talk about much. And that is that as much as the Batman has a relateable origin story, Batman is just as inhuman as Superman is. There's no relateable human being inside the cape and cowl. Batman is an icon; we don't ask how hard it must be to be "crazy prepared" all the time, to see the world as nothing but victims to be saved and perpetrators to be stopped. I'm not saying there don't exist stories that deal with the human side of Batman, but I am saying the prototypical Batman in most hardcore fan's heads is stripped of humanity, in a way that is not true for say Peter Parker or Hal Jordan. The difficult part has always been trying to put a human being inside that suit.
I think Nolan's Batman is an underappreciated work of genius. In the Nolan movies, there is no Batman. Batman is a creation of Bruce Wayne, and not in a sense of being a different persona, but literally in being a modern myth that Bruce Wayne is actively and deliberately trying to invent. In the Nolan-verse, the Batman is not the cape and cowl punching villains. The cape and cowl are just the means to an end, the end being that Batman becomes legendary. Batman is really that statue they unveil at the end of Rises. In a sense, Batman doesn't die at the end of Rises, that's actually the moment when the real Batman is
born. Bruce Wayne was just the guy trying to convince the world that statue was worth believing in.
In a way, Nolan himself doesn't think of the Batman as a great thing. Instead, Nolan crafts the Batman as a necessary evil, something that a good man could
temporarily become to inspire others to rise up and eliminate the need for a Batman. In a way, Nolan "hates" Batman more than Snyder does, because Nolan believes Batman doesn't actually work as a permanent presence in Gotham.
But because Batman is not a person but a story, the movies are really about Bruce Wayne, and his struggles to create this dark story. Nolan's movies are about a person trying to create a legend, not the legend itself. Batman doesn't have to have motives or moral struggles or internal conflicts. Bruce does. And that humanizes the Batman story in an interesting way.
Nolan is a story teller, and one of my beliefs about Nolan is that all of his principle characters are story tellers (think Leonard in Memento, Robert and Alfred in The Prestige, Cobb in Inception, Cooper in Interestellar). Nolan put a story teller into the body of Bruce Wayne, and through that conceit he can make Bruce Wayne tell interesting Batman stories. Snyder, on the other hand, decided to put a soldier into the cape and cowl of Batman. In the hands of a Spielberg, or Ridley Scott, or maybe Jonathan Demme, I think that can work. But I think Snyder's style doesn't lend itself to the quiet moments necessary to pull that off. It then veers into Michael Mann/Michael Bay territory where the visuals or the style overpower any story that might have been there to start.
Snyder's soldiers tend to project their character mostly through their actions, not their thoughts or dialog. That works for 300. That actually doesn't work for Watchmen, and only the excellent acting of Jackie Earl Haley saves Rorschach from being a two-dimensional psychopath. I think both Batman and Superman needed more to realize these versions of the characters, and it ultimately wasn't there.
Ironically, when Snyder tried to make Batman more human he made him less relateable. A heroic Batman - a violent vigilante - is something you shouldn't think about too closely. Unless you are really good at it, it will likely come off the rails for a lot of your audience. I think Nolan was good enough. I think Snyder was not.
Just my opinion, though.