No art today, unfortunately, I've got half a million things to do and no time to do 'em. But here's a little rambling from lil ol' me, brought on by the recent return of the Joker to the DC Universe.
I don't believe that Nolan did Batman right. That isn't to say he didn't do an entertaining trilogy, and the Dark Knight still stands as one of my favourite movies, but Nolan's opinion of what makes Batman tick and the message he wanted to send didn't really click with the Batman I've grown to love.
First, Batman's crazy. Whether you want to say he's a schozophrenic, has a severe identity crisis, or is simply so introverted and driven to the point of ignoring vital aspects of his life, Batman is probably the most dangerous psychotic since his counter, the Joker. Like a lot of Super Hero stories, there's a distinct duality to him, Bruce Wayne and Batman, two separate personalities. "Which one is real? The one that hides your face? Or the one that is your face?" Green Goblin, Spectacular Spider-Man. But Peter Parker simply lets loose a little when he's Spider-Man. Bruce Wayne and Batman are distinctly different, and it rarely has anything to do with him putting the mask on.
Here's the thing. Bruce Wayne snapped when his parents were murdered. This privileged kid was knocked down for the first time. When this happens to most of us it's a small reminder of our mortality, or learning not to trust implicitly. We all have that fall at some point, usually pretty young, but most of us aren't as well off as Bruce Wayne and have our parents to fall back on afterwards, and while Bruce had Alfred, he still had to go from higher than most of us ever get to lower than most off us will have to go. That fall broke Bruce, gave birth to Batman.
In order to truly do Batman right you have to acknowledge that. Nolan made Batman driven, made Bruce Wayne be unable to stop being Batman, but it was Bruce Wayne's compulsion. Batman was barely in the movies, it was Bruce Wayne's show.
There's been a common issue with the Batman franchise with Batman being less interesting than his villains. For those who read the comics, we don't get this. Like I said, Batman's crazy, but the issue comes down to us not getting a good look at who Batman is. In the comics there's a massive supporting cast of people Batman has brought in, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Robin. But in the good movies all we've gotten is Alfred. Nolan's films had us learn about Bruce Wayne pretty much exclusively through Alfred. Rachel really didn't give us much, and Dent gave us a little bit more, but Alfred was the only one who knew both halves of him personally (Rachel practically ignored Batman, which meant she only got half a person out of Wayne).
The reason the army of teen (and one preteen) sidekicks is important is simple. First, we see Bruce Wayne's sympathy pushed on Batman's war on crime. Wayne wants to save these children, Batman wants soldiers, so they compromise with each other. Then we see how Wayne's traumatic experience has affected him. He's a father to practically all of these kids (The Robins, anyways). He adopted three of them, and is the genetic father of the fourth. And he does not get close to them. He pushes them away on a regular basis. Because he knows what his life will lead to and he knows the pain they'll feel from it.
Then there's Batman's view of the kids. They're soldiers to him. I've heard the argument that Batman's waging a war on Death itself, that's why he sticks to the code of no murder, that's why he has such rage in him whenever one of these murderers succeeds. I like this theory. Batman needs these kids to do their job, to wage his war, simply because he can't do it alone. He raises these kids with his ideals as basic training and then pushes them just far enough to keep an eye on them, so he can know that they've used his training to fight his war. This is why Jason Todd is his second greatest failure, because he died in training, and then came back as an agent of the enemy. The greater failure being the Joker, one small screw up leading to the greatest weapon of the enemy.
You might notice how close those two are to each other, in action alone. That's why he's rarely directly called schizophrenic, most of the time Wayne and Batman are together in what they're doing.
And then there's the Joker. I keep bringing up the Nolan movies because it's the closest we've gotten to a fair interpretation of the the comics, and the Joker is fairly close to the comics. They touched a little on how important Joker is to Batman, their connection ("You complete me." "We're destined to do this forever."), but the Joker, while crazy and incredibly well done in the movie, isn't the comic book Joker. The comic book Joker once said "He's real, like God. But worthy of respect." while the movie version said "I'm an agent of chaos. You know the thing about chaos? It's fair."
That's the fundamental difference between the two. The Joker wants people to lose. He believes in god, he believes in a higher power, but believes that god is a joke, a quack, a little pathetic being that simply has failed. He wants everyone to lose because that's the greatest affront to god, and the allmighty isn't going to do a damn thing about it. The Joker in the movie simply causes chaos for chaos's sake, he wants to flip the worlds ideals, show everyone how fragile their beliefs are, how everyone's as crazy as him with a little help, simply to sow the seeds of chaos. That isn't to say that's not close to how the Joker is, of course, that's pretty much how the Killing Joke paints him. But that's taking it solely from one source and twisted to fit Nolan's mold.
Most importantly, the Joker in the movie isn't the polar opposite of Batman. He's one more adversary, though his greatest, the Joker doesn't really call the darkest recesses of Batman's mind into question, even the one morally questionable device Batman makes to catch the Joker is destroyed once it's done, and they don't bother bringing up the slippery slope of using that device to begin with. Maybe they would have brought this up, and delved deeper, if Heath Ledger was still with us. Instead we got the third movie, which kind of disappointed on that end.
And the third movie is kind of my greatest argument here. In the third movie we're introduced to the mediocre villain of Bane, and the league of shadows. What we get is a long story of who Wayne is and what he's willing to do to save his city. Which, yeah, great, except it might as well have been a Spider-Man story with less puns. Wayne was knocked low and just kept charging in. We didn't see him dealing with fundamental issues of the conflict in his personality, the morally questionable actions he'd made in the previous movie, or even the cost of Batman on his body. Wayne went into hibernation until Batman was needed again, which is another showing of how Wayne and Batman aren't really two people. In the comics, when Batman was retired Wayne would still go out. In Batman Beyond Wayne was still somewhat in the public eye. Batman went to sleep because his war was being fought without him. Wayne went on living Wayne's life.
In order to truly get an accurate Batman movie Warner Brothers has to address just how crazy Batman is. You have to have one of his sidekicks, preferably Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon, be there to show different sides of the Dark Knight. And, finally, you have to show how his villains hit his rules and how they affect him. Batman can be the super hero that shatters peoples beliefs on super heroes, and I think we're getting to the point where that'll happen. But I'm also willing to bet that happens when Marvel does Daredevil.
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