The Case for a Bruce Wayne Movie
Apr. 11th, 2016 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastRepeated Disclaimer: I don't read the comics. I just don't have the money to spend. My main idea of "Batman" is based in Batman: The Animated Series on through Justice League/JLU and even acknowledging Batman Beyond. There's a characteristic of Batman, in these particular fictions, that I find needs more focus in other media.
In the comments of my post on the Silver Age, Smurasaki pointed out Linkara's answer to why Batman doesn't kill the Joker. It's similar to SF Debris's* take on the matter when discussing the Justice League two parter "A Better World". In both cases, it's not our right, as a society, to put that responsibility onto Batman, no more than it's his right to take it on.
That's a good answer for why we shouldn't want Batman to kill the Joker. It's a good answer for why it isn't an injustice for Batman to refuse to kill the Joker.
Red Hood vs Batman** gives an alternate answer. Batman can kill the Joker, but can't stop killing. That's also a good answer. He wouldn't have to become a serial killer over night. But, once you've killed the Joker for the things he'd done or the things he was definitely going to do, how do you justify not killing Marcone? Marcone's ruined lives, taken lives, and it's a given that he will put out more hits on people who's gravest crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time and potentially having witnessed something that they might, potentially, report to the police. And, what about Two Face? The only thing that holds him back is the flip of a coin that will, with statistical inevitability, land on the wrong side.
It's a good answer for a mature Batman that knows himself and has had time to see the consequences of his actions. It's a good answer for a Batman that already knows how brutalizing people in order to get answers has come to seem normal.
Yet, at some point, early on in Bruce Wayne's life, when he was making his plans to wage a one-man-war, it's worth exploring the question of why he didn't start. Why, when he didn't have that maturity and self-awareness that can only come with time and self-examination, didn't he start?
For this story, I think we should do what would otherwise be a mistake. We should find the man who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of little Bruce.
The reason this would usually be a mistake is that this could be used, like in Tim Burton's Batman, to give Batman/Bruce Wayne some level of closure. That shouldn't be the case. Part of the driving force of Batman should be that this one injustice can never be righted.
So, let's have 18-21 year old Bruce discover and confront the man who killed his parents only to have the worst possible things happen.
Worst possible thing #1. He's already dead.
It took a devotion to the case that Bruce Wayne had and Gotham PD, being in an average city with new crimes happening on a regular basis, couldn't afford. Bruce Wayne found his parents' killer and tracked the details to find that said killer is already in his grave. Any chance of actually dealing justice to the person who pulled the trigger is gone and never to be returned.
But, Thomas and Martha Wayne were wealthy people, important people, people who had business rivals and enemies within the company and even family feuds. Finding people who would benefit from their deaths is easy, so finding the actual conspiracy should be just a matter of the same diligent work that allowed him to find the murderer in the first place.
Finding people with conspiracy theories is easy. The thing about conspiracy theories, though, is that you can find evidence that the true ones are true, but you can't find evidence that the false ones are false. They just hang missing forever.
That is, until you come up with a conspiracy theory that isn't, technically, a conspiracy theory. In his investigations, it'll just take one person to say that the Nixon Administration is to blame and, if nothing else but to eliminate it, he'll have to investigate.
The Nixon Administration started the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs was a good cover for a war on anti-war protesters and a war on civil-rights protesters. Associate hippies with marijuana and black people with cocaine and both of those drugs with danger. Then, the police can raid the threats to the Nixon Administration's power, while believing they were keeping America safe from criminals and communism.
It wouldn't be true in a literal sense. Nobody would have put any hit out on the Wayne family. But, by keeping the view of drug addiction as a criminal activity, one can, incidentally, cut off treatment as an option. Which means that, as Bruce Wayne investigates the murderer's history, he'll find numerous places where he needed help, but couldn't get any.
He couldn't get any because the people who wanted to help didn't have the resources available. They could only tell him to stop or to "just say 'no'" because they couldn't do anything else. The ones with the resources didn't feel any special connection or obligation to some random gutter trash. The ones with the obligation, the criminal justice system and the government, couldn't even view him as a human being.
Worst Possible Thing #2. Bruce Sympathizes.
Bruce isn't addicted to any drug. But, his obsession with justice for his parents, which is already becoming an obsession with stopping other criminals, gives him some basis of comparison. It's not enough for him to fully understand, but enough for him not to write it off entirely. This may or may not have been started by the murderer, himself, losing parents. Either way, the inability to stop is something Bruce understands.
One of the things that Bruce had been focusing on, all this time, was his hatred for the one who took his parents away. But, he can't really do that anymore. Someone who had once had only the word "murderer" to describe him in Bruce's mind, now also has the word "victim" written in permanent ink.
Worst Possible Thing #3. Nobody's Guilty. Everybody's to Blame.
Perhaps the worst of the worst possible things to happen to Bruce is that there is no conspiracy. What happened was someone was desperate, so desperate that he couldn't even think of other things if he had wanted to, didn't think through the consequences of his actions.
Yet, other people did. Bruce Wayne doesn't have any conspiracy to find, but he does have history to examine. Not just the War on Drugs making an illness into a crime, but also classism and racism finding roots all the way back to the original settlers. And, the worst part of all, he's a part of it.
In a way, there was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy to control people by use of fear. Fear people for their skin color, their poverty, the education level that they don't, etc. For that fear, you support criminalization, you oppose funds going to "their" schools.
And, sometimes, people in the party that makes the most from this kind of control, wealthy people like Bruce Wayne and his parents, will be the victims of the results. In a way, that's just a sacrifice in order to maintain the fear.
All of these worst things that could possibly happen to Bruce Wayne come together to inform the plans he's already started with regards to the dark figure that would use skill and psychological warfare against criminals. It's easy to think of stopping crime as nothing more than a matter of being tougher on crime. In the long run, that's part of how his parents died.
This changes Bruce's view of what the win-state of being Batman would be. It's not all the criminals either in jail or executed for their crimes. Crime is only the tip of the iceberg of the enemy that took his parents. Injustice is the problem. Justice, he will find, needs compassion.
I think this fits quite well with Batman: The Animated Series. In the episode "Harley's Holiday", Harley Quinn comedically fails her attempt at redemption, Batman stops her, but also brings her the shirt she did, in fact, legally buy. He told her that he knew what it was like to have one bad day ruin your life and didn't want that to happen to her.
There's also a small moment, at the end of the episode "Baby-Doll" in which Batman gives a compassionate, if light, hug to the bitter and tearful "Baby-Doll" character, who had a biological condition that kept her from physically developing past the approximate biological age of five years old.
This compassion is essential for justice. And, I think the show makes that clear, even if not be intent. Whether Mr. Freeze as the victim of corporate apathy towards human cost, Edward Nygma as the victim of theft of his intellectual property, or Clayface as the victim of botched chemical trials and a show-business that only cares about appearance, the crimes are the tip of the iceberg. By the time they happen, injustice has already built up.
No, crime isn't the disease. It's just the symptom.
The end result isn't just a Batman that doesn't kill and can use his empathy for criminals to his benefit in fighting crime. It can also answer the question of why the rest of the world doesn't suspect Bruce Wayne of being Batman, despite his obviously having the resources, motivation, and connections to Gotham.
That is that Bruce Wayne already, openly, has a response that is motivated by the deaths of his parents. He can even openly admit that he changed his thinking based on investigating the man who killed his parents.
Bruce Wayne, on top of running a multi-billion dollar company and several charities, takes a particular interest in projects that help out people coming out of prison. Bruce Wayne can openly admit that his win state is justice winning, law just being a tool towards that end. So, he helps to make sure people have opportunities and options.
Batman is there to fight evil. It's a necessary task and not to be taken lightly. But, Bruce Wayne can do something more important. Bruce Wayne can do good.
* sfdebris.com Seriously, give it a look, he's funny, creative, has a preference for thoughtful discussion, and is one of the better net-critics you'll find.
** https://youtu.be/VRiX5Mh2YCo
In the comments of my post on the Silver Age, Smurasaki pointed out Linkara's answer to why Batman doesn't kill the Joker. It's similar to SF Debris's* take on the matter when discussing the Justice League two parter "A Better World". In both cases, it's not our right, as a society, to put that responsibility onto Batman, no more than it's his right to take it on.
That's a good answer for why we shouldn't want Batman to kill the Joker. It's a good answer for why it isn't an injustice for Batman to refuse to kill the Joker.
Red Hood vs Batman** gives an alternate answer. Batman can kill the Joker, but can't stop killing. That's also a good answer. He wouldn't have to become a serial killer over night. But, once you've killed the Joker for the things he'd done or the things he was definitely going to do, how do you justify not killing Marcone? Marcone's ruined lives, taken lives, and it's a given that he will put out more hits on people who's gravest crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time and potentially having witnessed something that they might, potentially, report to the police. And, what about Two Face? The only thing that holds him back is the flip of a coin that will, with statistical inevitability, land on the wrong side.
It's a good answer for a mature Batman that knows himself and has had time to see the consequences of his actions. It's a good answer for a Batman that already knows how brutalizing people in order to get answers has come to seem normal.
Yet, at some point, early on in Bruce Wayne's life, when he was making his plans to wage a one-man-war, it's worth exploring the question of why he didn't start. Why, when he didn't have that maturity and self-awareness that can only come with time and self-examination, didn't he start?
For this story, I think we should do what would otherwise be a mistake. We should find the man who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of little Bruce.
The reason this would usually be a mistake is that this could be used, like in Tim Burton's Batman, to give Batman/Bruce Wayne some level of closure. That shouldn't be the case. Part of the driving force of Batman should be that this one injustice can never be righted.
So, let's have 18-21 year old Bruce discover and confront the man who killed his parents only to have the worst possible things happen.
Worst possible thing #1. He's already dead.
It took a devotion to the case that Bruce Wayne had and Gotham PD, being in an average city with new crimes happening on a regular basis, couldn't afford. Bruce Wayne found his parents' killer and tracked the details to find that said killer is already in his grave. Any chance of actually dealing justice to the person who pulled the trigger is gone and never to be returned.
But, Thomas and Martha Wayne were wealthy people, important people, people who had business rivals and enemies within the company and even family feuds. Finding people who would benefit from their deaths is easy, so finding the actual conspiracy should be just a matter of the same diligent work that allowed him to find the murderer in the first place.
Finding people with conspiracy theories is easy. The thing about conspiracy theories, though, is that you can find evidence that the true ones are true, but you can't find evidence that the false ones are false. They just hang missing forever.
That is, until you come up with a conspiracy theory that isn't, technically, a conspiracy theory. In his investigations, it'll just take one person to say that the Nixon Administration is to blame and, if nothing else but to eliminate it, he'll have to investigate.
The Nixon Administration started the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs was a good cover for a war on anti-war protesters and a war on civil-rights protesters. Associate hippies with marijuana and black people with cocaine and both of those drugs with danger. Then, the police can raid the threats to the Nixon Administration's power, while believing they were keeping America safe from criminals and communism.
It wouldn't be true in a literal sense. Nobody would have put any hit out on the Wayne family. But, by keeping the view of drug addiction as a criminal activity, one can, incidentally, cut off treatment as an option. Which means that, as Bruce Wayne investigates the murderer's history, he'll find numerous places where he needed help, but couldn't get any.
He couldn't get any because the people who wanted to help didn't have the resources available. They could only tell him to stop or to "just say 'no'" because they couldn't do anything else. The ones with the resources didn't feel any special connection or obligation to some random gutter trash. The ones with the obligation, the criminal justice system and the government, couldn't even view him as a human being.
Worst Possible Thing #2. Bruce Sympathizes.
Bruce isn't addicted to any drug. But, his obsession with justice for his parents, which is already becoming an obsession with stopping other criminals, gives him some basis of comparison. It's not enough for him to fully understand, but enough for him not to write it off entirely. This may or may not have been started by the murderer, himself, losing parents. Either way, the inability to stop is something Bruce understands.
One of the things that Bruce had been focusing on, all this time, was his hatred for the one who took his parents away. But, he can't really do that anymore. Someone who had once had only the word "murderer" to describe him in Bruce's mind, now also has the word "victim" written in permanent ink.
Worst Possible Thing #3. Nobody's Guilty. Everybody's to Blame.
Perhaps the worst of the worst possible things to happen to Bruce is that there is no conspiracy. What happened was someone was desperate, so desperate that he couldn't even think of other things if he had wanted to, didn't think through the consequences of his actions.
Yet, other people did. Bruce Wayne doesn't have any conspiracy to find, but he does have history to examine. Not just the War on Drugs making an illness into a crime, but also classism and racism finding roots all the way back to the original settlers. And, the worst part of all, he's a part of it.
In a way, there was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy to control people by use of fear. Fear people for their skin color, their poverty, the education level that they don't, etc. For that fear, you support criminalization, you oppose funds going to "their" schools.
And, sometimes, people in the party that makes the most from this kind of control, wealthy people like Bruce Wayne and his parents, will be the victims of the results. In a way, that's just a sacrifice in order to maintain the fear.
All of these worst things that could possibly happen to Bruce Wayne come together to inform the plans he's already started with regards to the dark figure that would use skill and psychological warfare against criminals. It's easy to think of stopping crime as nothing more than a matter of being tougher on crime. In the long run, that's part of how his parents died.
This changes Bruce's view of what the win-state of being Batman would be. It's not all the criminals either in jail or executed for their crimes. Crime is only the tip of the iceberg of the enemy that took his parents. Injustice is the problem. Justice, he will find, needs compassion.
I think this fits quite well with Batman: The Animated Series. In the episode "Harley's Holiday", Harley Quinn comedically fails her attempt at redemption, Batman stops her, but also brings her the shirt she did, in fact, legally buy. He told her that he knew what it was like to have one bad day ruin your life and didn't want that to happen to her.
There's also a small moment, at the end of the episode "Baby-Doll" in which Batman gives a compassionate, if light, hug to the bitter and tearful "Baby-Doll" character, who had a biological condition that kept her from physically developing past the approximate biological age of five years old.
This compassion is essential for justice. And, I think the show makes that clear, even if not be intent. Whether Mr. Freeze as the victim of corporate apathy towards human cost, Edward Nygma as the victim of theft of his intellectual property, or Clayface as the victim of botched chemical trials and a show-business that only cares about appearance, the crimes are the tip of the iceberg. By the time they happen, injustice has already built up.
No, crime isn't the disease. It's just the symptom.
The end result isn't just a Batman that doesn't kill and can use his empathy for criminals to his benefit in fighting crime. It can also answer the question of why the rest of the world doesn't suspect Bruce Wayne of being Batman, despite his obviously having the resources, motivation, and connections to Gotham.
That is that Bruce Wayne already, openly, has a response that is motivated by the deaths of his parents. He can even openly admit that he changed his thinking based on investigating the man who killed his parents.
Bruce Wayne, on top of running a multi-billion dollar company and several charities, takes a particular interest in projects that help out people coming out of prison. Bruce Wayne can openly admit that his win state is justice winning, law just being a tool towards that end. So, he helps to make sure people have opportunities and options.
Batman is there to fight evil. It's a necessary task and not to be taken lightly. But, Bruce Wayne can do something more important. Bruce Wayne can do good.
* sfdebris.com Seriously, give it a look, he's funny, creative, has a preference for thoughtful discussion, and is one of the better net-critics you'll find.
** https://youtu.be/VRiX5Mh2YCo
no subject
Date: 2016-04-12 02:44 pm (UTC)Having a subplot about the cognitive dissonance between the Bruce Wayne role and the Batman role would be fun, too.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-12 05:26 pm (UTC)The Bruce Wayne who focuses on compassion and uses the anger of Batman to aid in the compassionate exercise. The Batman who focuses on anger and uses the compassion to aid in his anger-driven crusade.
They're both in conflict with each other. But, they both need each other.