'Batman Begins' came out and it was really successful, and it had gritty naturalism. And suddenly... I can't tell you how many movies I was pitched where it was, 'We want to do what you did with 'Batman' but with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' or whatever.

I loved 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.' It was such a big part of my childhood.

Superman is not as innately cool as Batman.

What Christopher Nolan and I have done with 'Superman' is try to bring the same naturalistic approach that we adopted for the 'Batman' trilogy. We always had a naturalistic approach; we want our stories to be rooted in reality, like they could happen in the same world we live in.

I went to a Christian school, and as a kid, we weren't allowed to really watch anything violent, even 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.'

What I really like to do is write 'genre' stories without a cartoonish element. I did the same with 'Da Vinci's Demons,' and I'll do the same with 'Man of Steel.'