Batman Begins: The Thread

you're telling me?

Huk-L on Every Major Batman Storyline of the Last 20 Years

I have nothing morally convoluted protagonists, but I don't see them as heroes. The guy in Taxi Driver is not hero. The problem with Batman is that, according to the superhero logic, he still needs to be hero. And that what makes taking him seriously problematic.

(x-post)

I agree with Ebert, but he apparently sees this as a strength, whereas I see it as a weakness.

Given the quasi-fascist tendencies inherent in Batman, there are still different ways one could treat the story. One Batman could be so campy, clownish, and nonviolent that he's basically a stand in for the revenge fantasies that are buried somewhere in everyone's head. Another Batman could be an unabashed celebration of fascist vigilantism. Or as Tuomas says, Batman could become an anti-hero whose killing puts him on the same level as his enemies. I felt like Batman Begins fell in between all of these approaches and ended up being weaker for it.

Seriously though, I don't see how the League of Shadows changes anything I've said. Basically the point of view of the film is that yeah, Batman may break a few eggs when he goes on his vigilante rampages but hey, at least he's not trying to bring down the whole society! It's a similar dynamic to the Bush administration's defense of the use of torture or the war in Iraq. "What we're doing may be bad, it may be technically illegal, but hey we're fighting these other guys who are much worse so can't you see that we're heroes?"

And I think that as Tuomas pointed out Batman is already a hero by default, based on the character's cinematic history and the nature of the superhero form itself. So it's a huge uphill battle to sell that idea of a ambiguous, conflicted Batman to an audience that is just there for the action and destruction.

It's such a huge uphill battle that the movie has made over $100 million in the US alone! Clearly no one wanted to see a movie like this.

you correctly assume that I (and others) would argue that this is a dubious assertion, that "superhero" = inspirational role model. The term itself is misleading, as it is derived from the most lillywhite of morally virtuous characters, Superman. But most of my favorite superhero stuff functions more as allegory, or myth, or cautionary tale, or morality play, etc. On some juvenile level, as a kid, sure I thought dressing up in long underwear and beating up people would be TEH COOLEST - but as I grew older I found myself gleaning different "lessons" from this kind of material.

(cue Stan Lee: "with great power comes great responsibility!" etc.)

The alternative was what? The utter destruction of Gotham City? All of the negatives you listed are overshadowed and presumably justified by the fact that he saved the city. Do you honestly believe that the audience was supposed to think Batman's actions were a mistake?

It's such a huge uphill battle that the movie has made over $100 million in the US alone! Clearly no one wanted to see a movie like this.

Huh? I said it was an uphill battle to convince audiences that Batman is anything but a hero. The movie didn't automatically succeed in that task just because millions of people saw it. I doubt a significant portion of that audience's response went beyond "awesome! Batman kicked some ass, drove a fast tank and had a naked romp with 2 hot chicks!"

sounds like the soft bigotry of low expectations! heheh

seriously, yr criticisms all stems from your assumption that Batman must be a character worthy of emulation, when he has a rich history of being much more morally ambiguous. I can't count the number of times/scenarios in which Superman has scolded Batman for being too violent/harsh/fascistic...

I never said he must be. I said that I think he is portrayed that way.

Hint to Tuomas and Walter: you don't actually have to claim that all depictions of superheroes are necessarily heroic.

Hint to Andrew: neither of us made that claim.

I never said he must be. I said that I think he is portrayed that way.

Hint to Tuomas and Walter: you don't actually have to claim that all depictions of superheroes are necessarily heroic.

Hint to Andrew: neither of us made that claim.

I don't think there are any real clear-cut examples, but there are ones where the "hero's" heroic aspects openly conflict with other impulses - the Incredible Hulk TV show (there are some heroic aspects to the Hulk being "wrongly persecuted", at the same time, he gets pissed and randomly smashes things). Wolverine in the X-Men movies (who, btw are NOT crimefighters, in the strict sense of the term, in either film) is clearly portrayed as having an amoral side.

The main problem with yr query is that the majority of superhero stuff has all come out in the last decade or so, and most of them (horrible as they are) have been lame cash-ins on a freshly established formula - up until then the "costumed avenger" trope was usually deliberately "dumbed down" for a children's audience (and hence morally simplified). so there isn't much to choose from. Comics, however, provide a much wider range of interpretations and material.

Oh no! Dumped by a woman with whom he had absolutely no chemistry or any sort of believable relationship.

while sifting through the wreckage of his house

Oh no! The billionaire's home is wrecked. But this time we'll make it even more swanky says Alfred.

after being told by the police that a large section of town is a no man's land being torn apart by its residents

Those ungrateful plebes!

and shortly before being told that the criminals are following his lead and getting theatrical.

Yes, that little teaser of the Joker at the end certainly seemed like a serious plot point and not at all like a lame attempt to set up the sequel.

Forget the historical framework

Umm, OK.

there is a gigantic, non-subtle informatation dump at the end of the movie that says "Batman is messing up things almost as much as he is fixing them" which makes your argument ill-informed and completely at odds with the facts displayed within the framework of the movie.

Facts! Ill-informed? I respect the fact that most people might interpret the movie in a different way than I did but I don't see where "facts" enter into it. We saw the same movie and we simply got different things out of it. I guess if I'm going to be accused of being ill-informed, the Batman Begins plot is as good a field as any to plead ignorance.

Well, without Batman this would've happened to the city, no? So he's still supposed to be the hero of the day. And the final exchange of words between Gordon and Batman ("I never said thank you." "And you never have to.") certainly frames him as a hero. He's not a clean-cut hero like Superman, rather than a flawed one. He starts out misguided but he faces his "hero test" while fighting the "true" vigilantes of the League of Shadows. If you're claiming that Batman in the end was still presented as morally corrupt character who isn't the hero of the story at all (a tragic hero, maybe, but hero nevertheless), I guess we were watching a different film. Remember, this is not Taxi Driver, this is the film that's supposed to start a whole new Batman franchise.

As I said, the problem with the film wasn't that Batman fought the criminals, but the fact that it took the problematics of vigilantism seriously, through the comments made by Alfred and Rachel, but in the end still shyed away from the issue. Batman was supposed to have been better than the League of Shadows because he didn't kill the criminals, but yet at the final countdown he was directly responsible for Ducard's death, and did nothing to save him. So, as I said, he has blood in his hands. From what I know about Batman comics, in them he never kills or lets someone die intentionally.

I do realize that the problem of vigilantism is ingrained at the very heart of the character; it's not just this movie that faces that problem (Dark Knight Returns is a much more glaring example of the same). This is why I've never much liked Batman in the first place. Other superhero stories, such as Superman or the X-Men, can more easily sidestep vigilantism by making their heroes fight against aliens or the prejudice of mankind. But Batman's modus operandi has always been the fight against criminals, the "disease" of crime. When he fights against vampires or the Joker, I can deal with that, because that is clearly fantasy, escapism. Batman Returns evaded the issue of vigilantism by telling a modern fairy tale and Batman Forever by not taking Batman too seriously. You can do all sorts of stuff with Batman, and I guess that's the reason for his longevity, even though his original "heroism" is rather out-of-date. But Batman Begins expects the viewer to both evaluate Batman's morality and ultimately accept him as the hero, and for me that doesn't simply work.

YES

tuomas, you're too fixated on 'fascism/viliganteism' -- they aren't the same thing, and the point is there is no rule of law in gotham. things are fucked. a straightforward anti-vigilante position is insufficient to the problem. you assume society is a stable kinda place and so batman's behaviour is irrational.

"If you take these stories on a more realistic level, you have to start thinking about the implications of the "good" guy beating up the "bad" guys in a way that could easily get them paralyzed or killed."

um... the implication is the good guys win, there. if you don't believe in good and evil, why are you throwing fascism and vigilantism as bad things? there's no moral commitment in whatyou're saying, no recognition of how fucked things can get, how fucked things are.

"Basically the point of view of the film is that yeah, Batman may break a few eggs when he goes on his vigilante rampages but hey, at least he's not trying to bring down the whole society!"

batman is confronting the problem of a lawless world. the film is complex and clearly does not endorse what batman does. but at the same time the film acknowledges that something needs to be done.

The movie doesn't say that there's no rule of law in Gotham; Falcone still gets arrested and charged. There are poor neigbourhoods, corrupt cops and thriving criminals in the film, but that's the case in the real world as well. Would you support real-world vigilantism? Also, the other problem with Batman's vigilantism besides taking justice into your own hands is that it addresses merely the symptom, not the cause. Why doesn't Bruce Wayne use his wealth to alleviate poverty and disempowered? I think he does so in the comics.

um... the implication is the good guys win, there. if you don't believe in good and evil, why are you throwing fascism and vigilantism as bad things? there's no moral commitment in whatyou're saying, no recognition of how fucked things can get, how fucked things are.

So it doesn't matter if someone gets permanently injured or killed, as long as the "good" guy wins? I don't believe in absolute good or evil, but I do believe in people's right to their lives and their bodily integrity, which cannot be violated except in extereme circumstances. So that is why, among other things, I condemn fascism. The problem with vigilantism is that a vigilante thinks he has the right to fight against "evil" and punish the "evil-doers" in the society, but the society hasn't given it's approval for him to do so. Without societal control, he has only his own morality to set him the limits, and the morality of such a person is already doubtful. Who's to say he won't flip out and start to mug litterers or kill demonstrators? Cops at least are, in principle, bound by rules, and selected out and trained so that they won't
break those rules.

"I don't believe in absolute good or evil, but I do believe in people's right to their lives and their bodily integrity, which cannot be violated except in extereme circumstances."

well, here we have some extreme circumstances.

batman grapples with this, it doesn't say 'vigilantes a-ok'

The film's stance on vigilantism is slippery, but in the end it does say "vigilantism's okay" by making the vigilante the hero. Batman clearly doesn't play by the book: he let's Ducard die, and says so himself, even though he could've saved him.

and they fail. hence: batman.

Also, nowhere in the film is it said that Batman enters the stage only because the police failed. Clearly there are deeper roots to his beliefs and his vigilantism.

It'd be a pretty short film though. I'm not being entirely facetious here, the rules of society have less of a hold in Batman's world than narrative rules. The police are corrupt and the criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot because this is the background against which the character exists: you could no more clean up Gotham than you could turn off gravity in Metropolis (in fact, it'd be a lot harder).