Zack Snyder took a social beating for depicting mass deaths and the destruction of Metropolis in last summer's "Man of Steel." As he gears up to shoot the the still-untitled "Batman-Superman" movie, the director defends his darker side to Superman saying that he's merely depicting the "real world we live in."

Snyder said that fans are clinging to the more heroic and squeaky-clean Superman as depicted by Christopher Reeve in the iconic movies, instead of the comic book version of Superman, who wreaked massive damage.

"The thing I was surprised about in response to Superman was how everyone clings to the Christopher Reeve version of Superman," he told Forbes. "How tightly they cling to those ideas, not really the comic book version, but more the movie version. ... If you really analyze the comic book version of Superman, he's killed, he's done all the things. I guess the rules that people associate with Superman in the movie world are not the rules that really apply to him in the comic book world because those rules are different. He's done all the things and more that we've shown him doing, right?"

Like in "Watchmen," which he directed in 2009, Snyder said he wanted to depict the true nature of violence rather than the sanitized, unrealistic version.

"It's just funny to see people really taking it personally ... because I made Superman real, you know, I made him feel or made consequences in the world," he said. "I felt like, it was the same thing in 'Watchmen.' We really wanted to show it wasn't just like they thought, like the PG-13 version where everyone just gets up and they're fine. I really wanted to show the violence is real, people get killed or get hurt and it's not fun or funny."

"Batman-Superman" will face off against "Captain America 3" in theaters on May 6, 2016. The movie stars Henry Cavill as Superman, Ben Affleck as Batman, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeremy Irons and Holly Hunter.