There’s a clip from The Batman ( the animated show) I can’t find at the moment, but it basically involves Batman clearing a room of thugs by offering them jobs. They all walk out, without a punch thrown.
In the real world, no one that has Bruce Wayne’s degree of wealth is a truly positive influence on the world on the whole. There are no ethical billionaires. But within the context of the DC Universe, Bruce has been routinely demonstrated as using his wealth in the most socially conscious, progressive, and generous ways. He is always shown in stark contrast with the likes of Lex Luthor.
Bruce has been routinely demonstrated as using his wealth in the most socially conscious, progressive, and generous ways. He is always shown in stark contrast with the likes of Lex Luthor.
Depends heavily on the author.
In “Kingdom Come”, for instance, Wayne and Luthor are partners and Wayne’s main contribution to Gotham is a fully automated dragnet of police-robots across a city he effectively owns lock-stock-and-barrel.
In “Batman 2099”, he’s a recluse whose personal tragedies have rendered him incapable of engaging in more than self-pity, while his board of directors does all sorts of evil shit completely off the leash.
In Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joker”, his family is just another one of the members of the criminal cartel that has corrupted the city, with Bruce’s doctor-father spending more time hob-nobbing with the elite socialites than attending to the city collapsing under his feet.
There are definitely more utopian takes on Bruce and his family. But Gotham is inherently dystopian, and you can’t escape how the city’s wealthiest family is - at least somewhat - responsible.
I think it’s awesome that different Batman stories can examine different versions of Bruce and his position as a billionaire - it allows different aspects of the world to be interrogated: criminals sometimes doing crime because they know of no other way to survive in a capitalist hellscape, the apathies of billionaires to the evils of their financiers, Batman’s obsession with order leasing him to militarise the streets of the city he loves, etc.
Read Legends of the Dark Knight #0. You might enjoy it.
an order obsessed capitalist militarizing to taking over society…
So, batman’s fascist arc? on the other hand, Libertarians have always been one step from fascism ironically
Of course he does.
The point is that Batman is the archetype of a right-wing superhero. Batman is how rightwingers understand social justice: accumulate as much wealth as you can, use crushing physical violence to punish bad guys, act charitably at an individual level but do not ever work to solve social issues at a systemic level.
Even in-universe he’s nowhere near as much of a positive force as he could be if he used his money to force political and social change instead of as an outlet for his mental issues.He’s not actively villainous because right-wingers don’t see themselves as such. But when that fantasy meets reality, you get Elon Musk.
a right-wing superhero.
There is any other kind? It seems to me that the entire genre is little more than right-wing individualism combined with right-wing power fantasy and right-wing vigilantism worship.
I mean yeah there are tons of other kinds. I can think of lots and lots of superheroes who are fundamentally anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist etc. Spider-man for example is hardly right-wing, his motto is literally antithetical to the individualism of right wing ideology: with great power comes great responsibility. He’s seen as a working class man’s superhero who isn’t an old rich guy, the friendly neighbourhood teenage hero. And when you get into iterations like Miles Morales it gets even less right-wing. I’m sure the presentation of Spider-man differs depending on the writer, but at the core he’s not what I’d consider a right-wing fantasy by any stretch.
Heck, even if you look at the Punisher, I haven’t read the comics so take this with a grain of salt but a lot of people who have read them have noted that the Punisher hates cops and the series does not actually align with right-wing ideals the way right-wingers seem to think he does. From what I’ve heard the Punisher comics, especially modern iterations, usually depict him as someone doing bad things as a result of the system failing him and driving him to try and take things into his own hands in all the wrong ways. Not a glorification of vigilantism but rather a deconstruction of it. But even if you set aside the problems with vigilantism, enjoying it as a fictional concept isn’t exclusive to right-wingers. A lot of people who fall under other political ideals can enjoy it for different reasons. Robin hood isn’t a superhero but he is a classic vigilante archetype who is not right-wing in nature. He literally steals from the rich to give to the poor. And enjoying the concept in fiction is fine, fiction can be escapist sometimes, what’s important is understanding why it isn’t a good thing in real life.
Even rich superheroes aren’t automatically a right-wing power fantasy, it can be the fantasy of people with other political ideals for rich people to care about the little guy and take accountability. Tony Stark for example is someone who did become a billionaire by being a bad person and inheriting it from a father who was also a bad person. He becomes a superhero after being hit in the face with the consequences of that and seeing the truth of where his money is coming from, and after that point with most versions of his character he does use his money to try and enact real social change large scale and help people on top of funding himself and other super heroes, who are necessary in a universe with aliens and gods and magic and shit. His story is centered around him realizing that his money was ill-gotten and him trying to take accountability for that by trying to undo the damage he’s done and use his money to help people instead. That is at heart a fantasy that isn’t right-wing even if it is unrealistic. In comparison Batman as a character reads as more right-wing (if unintentionally) mainly because there’s generally not much criticism levied at him as a billionaire. Even his father is usually depicted as a good person, a loving parent who didn’t deserve to die, because the loss of his parents is his motivating factor, compared to Iron Man, whose motivating factor is making up for the things he and his father did to become rich in the first place. Batman is depicted as a good rich guy, son of another good rich guy, and you know he’s good because he doesn’t kill people. His money is bloodless and innocent. Though of course I’m sure there are iterations of him and stories which do address this, but the most well known version of him does present in a way that is appealing to right-wingers in a lot of ways.
Not the biggest punisher fan but in most of the comics I have read of him he avoids actively harming the cops and will pull his punches a bit if one gets in his way.
I’ve heard one of his most common targets are corrupt cops but I can’t say for sure I suppose. I do know the creator has been adamant about the punisher not being a symbol for cops.
and corrupt cops love him for the very ideas he represents, as do the fascist, because he represents fascism (the comics single handily tick almost every box in terms of fascist ideology)
Spider-man for example is hardly right-wing
That depends on when you’re talking about. He was very much “got mine, fuck you” when he initially gained his powers (which resulted in Uncle Ben’s death) and he kept some of that mindset for quite a while afterwards. He slowly grew out of it over time, though, and was pretty much always shown to be in the wrong by the text when he acted on those ideas.
Yes, that’s called a story arc. Reasonably good stories tend to have them.
That his initial view of his powers implications was flawed is central to his character. His entire moral philosophy is predicated on his feelings of guilt and regret for his selfish actions resulting in Uncle Bens death.
The fact that it’s portrayed as wrong by the text is my point when I say that Spider-man isn’t right wing.
I’d argue many super-heros actually embody a social force for good, which is depicted through the actions of a single person for practical writing reasons. When Captain America finds himself out of the Avengers and fighting against the government, it’s not vigilantism but thinly-veiled political commentary.
Of course what you describe also happens, and lots of the times it ain’t that deep. But I wouldn’t say it’s “all super-heroes”, and Batman stands out a lot for me with his ultra-individualistic values (at least among the mainstream superheroes).
I’d argue many super-heros actually embody a social force for good,
I’m afraid not. Here’s what you’re missing - the “powers” these super-creeps have? They are all - without exception in the universe these super-creeps exist within - metaphors for institutionalized and concentrated power in the real world.
What does that power look like in the real world? There’s a good reason we say, “there is no such thing as a good billionaire.”
Yeah, of course if you apply real-life power dynamics to superheroes you get “The Boys”.
In-universe however superheroes seemingly have a super-power that makes them super-resistant to moral corruption (unlike super-villains).
This is because, now get this: The characters don’t really exist. They’re fictional plot devices.
The characters don’t really exist. They’re fictional plot devices.
You are still missing it - the “powers” these super-creeps have? They are all - without exception in the universe these super-creeps exist within - metaphors for institutionalized and concentrated power in the real world.
They’re fictional plot devices.
Let me fix that for you - they are fictional characters that justifies institutionalized and concentrated power.
Jesus Christ, you keep repeating the same ridiculous argument without processing what anyone else is saying to you. Are you drunk, dude?
Do you think Stan Lee made all his characters as explicit references to “institutionalized and concentrated power in the real world”?
You seem like you’ve never read a comic in your life, but maybe watched a few YouTube videos about superhero politics, sort of understood them, and then made it your mission to proselytize those ridiculous opinions.
I didn’t know that… but I guess he should know. He tried (and failed) to deconstruct that universe in Watchmen. In that universe, you cannot escape the “logic” of fascism - the Watchmen essentially ends using the same plot device as that MCU movie where Purpleface McMalthus murders half the universe because reasons that must never be questioned.
And, of course, Moore is absolutely correct.
Captain Planet… which is kinda of a joke.
Honestly, the MCU could have been a lot better for me if they actually gave a bit more attention to Stark using the arc reactor to solve dirty energy globally. Hammer could have had big old investments and been opposed to Stark for that in additional to the other stuff. Then then Thanos showed up, it would have been two different environmental philosophies, but instead it was status quo vs radical, strawman environmentalists.
Captain Planet… which is kinda of a joke.
I wouldn’t say that - I’d say that somebody could write a book on how Captain Planet represents superficial “green” capitalism. The great conceit of Captain Planet is pretty much the exact same conceit all of super-creep-dom perpetrates - that the problems are caused by a “few bad apples” that simply requires institutionalized “heroic” violence to solve, when, in reality, it’s that very institutionalized power systems that are the root cause of said problems. It’s not the Joker that is the problem - it’s the parasitic system of exploitation that allows people like Bruce Wayne to exist that is.
could have been a lot better for me if they actually gave a bit more attention to Stark using the arc reactor to solve dirty energy globally.
No, it wouldn’t, because they’d be pretending that capitalists will (somehow) be solving the problems capitalism created. We have a word for that - it’s called propaganda.
Captain Planet is considered a joke by modern pop culture. If nothing else, it’s way better at bring awareness of environmental issues to children then anything else. Anymore to say is just a litmajor spew.
No, it wouldn’t, because they’d be pretending that capitalists will (somehow) be solving the problems capitalism created. We have a word for that - it’s called propaganda.
Missing the point. I offered a minimum change to the story so it wouldn’t be anti-envromental, pro status quo. And honestly, I don’t think Hollywood has enough self awareness to create propaganda like that. Certainly not a machine produced MCU movie. Kingsman yeah, that’s a libertarian morality tale, but that’s on Mark Millar.
It’s fantasy for kids. There are constantly people getting hit in the head, with no sign of brain damage. In real life, Batman would be crippling people constantly, and he would die every week.
Are the Smurfs an Anarchist commune? Is the Federation in Star Trek space Communism? You can’t give them labels from political science in the real world because they are fantasy. They literally have different laws of physics.
The Federation is definitely socialism, lol.
It’s fantasy for kids.
You think it’s kids being enthralled by the hyper-violence of all these super-creep movies?
There are constantly people getting hit in the head
So they minimize the real-world effects of actual violence? Gee - do you perhaps think that a society that is entirely dependent on hierarchical violence to maintain the power and privilege of those at the top might be incentivized to gloss over the violence inflicted on those at the bottom?
You can’t give them labels from political science in the real world because they are fantasy.
There is no constructed universe that isn’t based on real-world political thought. None whatsoever. The political subtext that shapes them is no less real that which you can find in the real world.
Yes Batman movies are mostly for kids, as was the character originally. Did you want the latest Batman action figure for Christmas this year? Do you wear your Batman costume even when it’s not Halloween? Who do you think does that?
Do you think all violence is inherently “right wing”? Do you believe that no left leaning government has ever started a war? Since you seem well versed in “real-world political thought”, you must have an explanation for the following conflicts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
Yes Batman movies are mostly for kids
left leaning government
Lol! There is no such thing as a “left leaning” government. The USSR - killed and imprisoned more leftists than the US has. The PRC - killed and imprisoned more leftists than the US has.
Your understanding of what “left” and “right” even means is based on the hollow aesthetics fed to you by propagandists, so read this part carefully - when you become institutionalized power, you become the status quo right-wing politics exist to protect. That is what left and right is really all about.
So no… the USSR and PRC’s expansionist and imperialist actions was not some “leftist” thing.
Red Sun Superman (and Batman) 😎
It’s because they all basically grew out of Heinlein’s hero soldier ideas.
Stark contrast… you could have done something with that.
In the real world, no one that has Bruce Wayne’s degree of wealth is a truly positive influence on the world on the whole.
Bill Gates almost completely eradicated polio, contributed seriously towards the eradication of malaria, and is addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa. He and Buffet have been working on a micro-reactor energy project for several years now.
He’s also done a lot of wide-spread horrible things to get that money though, that’s the thing, the good stuff billionaires do rarely makes up for the stuff they’ve done to get that money in the first place. The most fantastical thing about Batman is that he and his parents are usually depicted at face value as good rich people who get their money legitimately without hurting anyone and then only do good things with that money. And despite that Gotham is still an eternally crime-ridden cess pit. Most billionaires donate huge amounts to non-profits or start their own. Hell I bet trump himself has done plenty of philanthropy, but that automatically doesn’t make up for the way they earned their blood money in the first place. Is Bill Gates going out of his way to lobby for taxing the rich, or universal healthcare, or other systemic changes that would help a lot of people but likely reduce the rate he accumulates wealth? Because he has more than enough money to make large waves in those political arenas and still be rich for the rest of his life. If he never made another cent and gave away 90% of his money to homeless people he would still have enough left to be rich for the rest of his life.
That’s true. He was a ruthless businessman while running Microsoft, and hurt a lot of people, and the industry as a whole.
Hell I bet trump himself has done plenty of philanthropy
I seriously doubt that. Every one of his charities that I’ve heard of was actually a fraudulent grift. He stole from cancer patients! I’d be seriously shocked to learn that he’s done a single charitable thing in his life that didn’t directly benefit him.
Is Bill Gates going out of his way to lobby for taxing the rich
No, but he has stated that he thinks he and his peers should be taxed a lot higher than they are.
Idk if Gate’s overall influence balances towards the negative or positive, but I do recognize that he has done some seriously positive things for the world after accumulating his wealth.
There are no ethical billionaires.
Oh, to the extent everyone else can be they are. Which is very little.
I guess Mark Cuban is the closest we get to ethical billionaire
Edit you chuds didn’t really realize this was a joke? Lemmy has just continually gotten worse the more redditors it absorbs
Taylor Swift. Fight me.
Scratch that. Dolly Parton. Her net worth shows as much less because she keeps giving it away.
I have to say:
Ratio!
Dolly wins by a landslide
Taylor squeaked by Cuban using that metric.
The upvotes have spoken 👍
Does Taylor actually do much? I thought she just hung out being a rich person and occasionally influencing people on social issues by her presence alone rather than by explicit action?
You’re correct.
In the continuum of “ethical billionaire” (as much as that’s possible) to “evil billionaire” she’s pretty much “neutral”.
Jets
Can’t melt steel beans
In other words… there are no ethical billionaires.
Yeah that’s what I said
Bruce also didn’t do all the scummy things people typically have to do to become that rich. He inherited his wealth and there’s so much of it that it’s self perpetuating. He could sell his company, give 99% of his money away, and still have enough to live comfortably on just the interest it generates.
Couldn’t he use his batman persona to intimidate the rich to affect social change? Like Bruce Wayne can do so much if he had a dude in the night breaking into other billionaires houses in Gotham and telling them to raise wages or stop influencing politicians to not raise taxes and let healthcare for all go through
Over 60 years of “crime-fighting” but no noticeable decrease in Gotham’s crime rate.
Curious.
If anything, Batman single-handledly escalated the matter.
Bringing Shark Repellent to a Gun Fight.
Joker: I’ve tried everything! Mobs of gun-toting clowns. Mind altering gas. Inciting riots. Political engineering. An elaborate plan to make everyone look like me. Sharks.
Bane: Sharks?
Joker: Yes, sharks. Did I stutter? Honey, do I have something distracting stuck in my teeth?
Harley: No, sweetie. Just that winning smile of yours. ::mwah::
^_^Bane: (That’s it. I’m just gonna level the whole city and be done with this place)
Bane was wasted potential. Once people figured out if you pull the tubes out he is incapable of even walking. The first time he takes over his physical abilities are just a supplement to his natural charisma. After he loses he somehow loses the ability to lead men and the only thing left is he is a big guy.
The writers could have easily made him a long term effective foe like Penguin.
Considering there’s, variously,
- the Lazarus pit leeching into the groundwater,
- The
IlluminatiCourt of Owls enabling more crime alongside the general pervasive corruption by the ruling class, - The buried evil bat god Barbatos who was summoned and remains under the city
- The corruption of insane wizard Dr. Gotham who has also been buried under the city for over 40,000 years (Who gave him a doctorate 40,000 years ago is what I want to know.),
- Amadeus Arkham (and seemingly every warden of Arkham since) grossly mistreating the patients there.
- The city being surrounded by swampland lending it to be perpetually gloomy.
One can see why the city might not have the best base to positively grow from.
Joker might be supernatural in origin, too. The ‘vat of chemicals’ story is explicitly a maybe, Batman can’t find any evidence he existed before he showed up as Joker, and he keeps surviving things it should be impossible to survive. That last one could be connected to the lazarus pit, though.
Depending on the timeline, that’s not true, but that’s the problem with resetting a timeline a dozen or whatever times. We see an endless amount of him fighting the crime and never the results.
They didn’t explore it as much as I thought they should. Batman created Bane, indirectly, and in some ways attracted Bane to Gotham which set off the events that lead to all of Arkham criminals being released. Which in turn led Arzial to Gotham. Which brought about the events of Contagion and Cataclysm which lead to No Man’s Land.
So in a way the entire city of Gotham was brought down by him being there.
Sure. But you can take a step back from there and assert the crime cartels of the earlier era - the Falconnes and Mannheims and Marchettis - and their corrupt police confederates created Batman (since they’re indirectly the cause of his parents’ death and the main antagonists that head up the crime wave that young Bruce pits himself against).
And since there’s a (even in-universe) hard association between organized crime and the various state and federal intelligence agencies, I guess you could put the entire Batman Villain universe at the feet of Harry Truman, J. Edgar Hoover, and Allen Dulles.
True but it is not on the same level. It is sorta like Indiana Jones.
That general and his scientist were going to use Venom and like 5 soliders to attempt a coup. Which would have failed. You can’t take over the US with 5 guys. Ffs it doesn’t even make sense. The government has nukes. You are not going to win that war. Because Batman interfered they fleed to that knock-off Cuba. So Batman followed which meant that the thugs ruling that country knew the serum was worth it. Making them use it on Bane. But it doesn’t end there. Bane wants to rule the world so he needs to go to the most powerful country. Which city does he pick within it? He picks Gotham because he sees that Batman is the single point of failure.
Had Batman done nothing the coup would have failed and the serum would have been forgotten. At most a few people die. Had he interfered but later on retired after Jason Todd other vigilantes would have stepped in making Gotham have more than one failure point. Stopping Bane.
You can’t take over the US with 5 guys.
Well… if one of them has super psychic powers and another can pick up a tank and hit you with it… Its also worth taking a step back and recognizing John Locke’s theory of Consent of the Governed does not hold up particularly well in the DC Universe. Powerful Metas are taking over small nations left and right.
The government has nukes.
Okay, sure. But every time you use a nuke, you get five new radioactive themed supers. So you gotta use those judiciously.
Had Batman done nothing the coup would have failed and the serum would have been forgotten.
That’s a huge leap. Had he done nothing, the coup would have forced Star Labs or the Suicide Squad or some equivalent to intervene. And then you’d just get a different group of Meta-humans dabbling with super-drugs. And besides, its not like Magic Steroids are a hard sell in a setting where half the new wave crime bosses are trying to get into fist fights with Superman.
he sees that Batman is the single point of failure
To that end, I’d argue Batman’s Babel Protocols as a bigger issue than Bane fixating on Gotham. Less that Batman is a single point of failure than that he’s written as this Ubermensch who needs to outclass all the other Metas in the Justice League.
He’s a singular point of overwhelming strength that only really exists as a counterpoint to the high fantasy impossible people surrounding him. And then, as a consequence of him being on such a high level, all his enemies also have to be able to feasibly beat up Superman our outpace The Flash.
This gets you to Joke functioning as a literal demi-god.
And that’s not really a “Batman” problem but a “Writers getting into a dick-swinging competition” problem.
The line is quippy, but it’s silly when you look at the batman stories. Anything can be funny if you get reductionist with it
When the writers have her saving plants, they do it in a way that you root for her. Same with Mr. Freeze, those episodes and the movie is really touching, solely because of his motivation.
You don’t root for batman to beat them up or flex his wealth on them, you want Batman to help them. You want them both to get happy endings.
The stories usually end with batman stopping the carnage, while also arresting whatever CEO was cutting down trees or doing experiments on Nora. In other stories, he funds social programs and advocates for reforms as Bruce Wayne.
Maybe there are other stories where he acts like a frat boy. I skip content that has shitty writing
Yeah people that make this joke don’t pay attention the actual content. Bruce is routinely demonstrated to be a positive force with his wealth. He’s socially conscious, generous, invests in progressive causes, runs numerous charities, restricts his company from participating in unethical practices, creates jobs for convicts, and treats his employees very well.
Now, I’m not suggesting this is realistic. No one of Bruce’s wealth, in the real world, would be anywhere near as good as Wayne is depicted.
But within the context we of this world, the actual text of the stories tells us quite plainly he is a positive, progressive influence.
… and yet, he’d STILL be infinitely more effective if he either properly funded Gotham, or started actually killing evil people. Instead, he does neither… Batman still sucks balls even in the good interpretations. . … mind, I still enjoy most of his comics and stories, but dude is just as healthy of a role model as The Punisher: Not at all. For the opposite reasons, ironically.
Simply handing drug dealers and corrupt politicians a boatload of money isn’t likely to do much of anything - he’d be bankrupt in a year and the city worse off than when he started. That’s why the Harvey Dent arc was so crucial: Batman can only do so much in the shadows, but what the city really NEEDED was a hero who could operate in the light of day (though he still needed support from the shadows).
Ofc the real answer is that the premise of the franchise is based on Batman punching people, as in physically, so his goal isn’t even saving the city so much as making satisfying wham bam pow sounds.
More “political” franchises are fewer and further between, which is why Star Wars and to a lesser degree Trek (in this regard) were so popular. Both involved a radical, violent and bloody overthrow of the corrupt forces (Trek having been in the past but in Wars it happening “live” and being the central feature).
Did I say, “hand them money” or “properly fund”?
What part of “proper” says, “hand money over, no strings attached” to you?
A serious and properly written Batman would be even better than The Boys. I love how everyone pretends it’d somehow turn Bruce in to a typical politician…
Yeah, the refusal to kill is the worst part about Batman. Like, it’s cool that you have a moral code or whatever, but when you keep putting mass murderers like the Joker in a prison you know he’s gonna escape from, you should probably think about your life choices. You kind of get why Jason Todd went a little nuts when Batman didn’t kill the Joker after he brutally murdered a child that Batman dressed up and put in his way. Holy shit, just shoot the guy in the fuckin face, you know?
That’s kind of the point. Bruce is just as mentally unwell as the villains he fights.
Yea… At a certain point, Batman becomes 100% culpable because he had a guaranteed end handed to him and didn’t take it.
The dude plain solves Trolly problems incorrectly.
As Feathercrown said, most modern stories have Bruce aware that he’s nuts. If he starts killing, then he doesn’t stop killing and things go bad. He’s essentially like on Murderers Anonymous and making sure to stay away from anything that could trigger him down an even darker road.
I mean, somebody must have agreed, because they made a whole movie about it.
This tweet is the entire premise of The Batman.
It does end kinda going back to justifying why he’s more useful in the suit instead, but at least they spend a bunch of time talking about it, I suppose.
I actually haven’t seen the one in the screenshots, is it this one?
Well yeah, but that’s not the one I’m talking about. I’d be referring to The Batman, the 2022 film starring… well, let’s be honest, starring Zoë Kravitz, but yeah, with Robert Pattinson as Batman. There are so many of these now that giving out titles is starting to be useless.
That one spends a bunch of time talking about how Bruce Wayne isn’t doing anythign with his money to help because he’s too busy seeking revenge and gets into the weeds about how charitable donations from billionaires end up being used. It’s weird. And long. But it’s actually alright.
And that movie makes him my favorite Batman.
He is obviously not mentally healthy, taking out his rage on the streets. He tries to portray his actions as morally justifiable, but it really isn’t.
Because he is vengeance, he isn’t Bruce Wayne. By not being a good Bruce Wayne, he is actively harming his community in wasting billions on crime. The Riddler attacking Bruce Wayne makes sense because Bruce Wayne has to be complicit in the use of the Renewal Fund. And if Bruce isn’t aware, Alfred should be.
And when being a cosplay detective, Batman sucks. He misses several clues due to his rich white privilege. Batman believably becomes the pawn of the Riddler because Batman is too stupid to be better. In the end, Batman’s best use is being a thug to beat the crap out a Mafia don’s henchmen.
This is what a real life Batman would be at best.
Using the Riddler was a brilliant idea. He starts out sympathetic, and like a more violent version of Batman that brutally murders corruption. There’s a deleted scene with the Joker that implies Bruce has a hard time totally disagreeing with Riddler.
That changes over the movie as he’s confronted with what vengeance looks like. As much as he shouts about it in Arkham, him and Riddler are pretty much the same. That’s what makes the Riddler’s final scheme so pivotal I think. It explicitly becomes about vengeance – convince disaffected extremists to gun down everyone in the high ground, where the newly elected mayor is having an election party, while flooding the rest of the city. It’s explicitly revenge and vengeance, and pointedly, the new mayor is shown as trying to be a good guy and not like the corrupt fucks.
The whole movie is a huge lesson to Bruce that vengeance won’t do anything and that he hasn’t done anything to actually help the city. To help, he has to let the past go, and try to be a positive influence.
The movie was really realistic and down to earth, like you said, and I like it’s messaging a lot. I’m hoping sequels keep that setting while Bruce starts to do more with his wealth to actually help, like the new mayor was urging him to do.
Totally agree though, the movie depicts what a real life Batman would look like – driven by hate and anger and fury. Not a symbol or force for good. Not yet, anyway.
Time to take a meme on the internet too seriously! :D
There are two things that bug me about the weirdly frequent discourse on Batman.
Firstly, there’s no one version of Batman. You can find bastard fascist Batman, and you can find actual justice Batman. Hell, you can find both by Frank Miller, depending on the point in his career. My favorite version is from The Animated Series, and you’ll find tons of examples of Batman using kindness and compassion to affect meaningful change, instead of reveling in violence as though it solves anything. Heck, he’s nicer to working-class folks, even sympathetic criminals, than to his fellow rich people.
Secondly, I think it’s a talking point with bad optics. Batman rules. Why let the fascists have him? If there are loads of ways to look at and interpret the character, I’d rather focus on the one that makes him the good kind of class traitor, anti-fascist, anti-cop, and fighting for economic and social justice.
I like TAS Batman A LOT especailly since he gave his villains every shot at redemeption, many of them were simply too damaged to live a normal life… Heck, for Harley Quinn all it took for her to start being evil again was a single PTSD attack, and it was induced by a mall cop, implying her trauma was started by police brutality
Yeah, that’s one of the episodes that immediately came to mind.
Harley: There’s one thing I’ve gotta know: why’d you stay with me all day, risking your butt for someone who’s never given you anything but trouble?
Batman: I know what it’s like to try and rebuild a life. I had a bad day, too, once.
It was absolutely a rehabilitative vision of justice. The same thing happens with The Ventriloquist, where Batman is extremely supportive, and goes to great lengths to talk him down after he was manipulated into returning to crime. Heck, there’s even a villain, Lock-Up, who personifies a cruel, punitive form of justice. He even reveals the guard’s abuse, through a clever ploy, as Bruce Wayne, in a hearing about Arkham.
And Harley did eventually get better in TAS’s continuity. In Batman Beyond, she has a brief cameo where she’s upset with her grandkids for getting involved with the Jokerz gang.
I like TAS Batman
I like tool-assisted speedrun Batman too
He can pull off insane glitches that require inputs far more precise than what humans are capable of.
Some call that state the BATGOD
Do you prefer LOTAD Batmans or fully optimized TAS Batmans?
Couldn’t he use his batman persona to intimidate the rich to affect social change? Like Bruce Wayne can do so much if he had a dude in the night breaking into other billionaires houses in Gotham and telling them to raise wages or stop influencing politicians to not raise taxes and let healthcare for all go through
You’re pretty much describing a scene from Batman: Year One. He crashes a party full of rich people to intimidate them. It’s actually the good Frank Miller comic I was talking about.
As someone who hasn’t read comics we need it in the mainstream media of shows and movies
In a bunch of the comics he raises hell with the corrupt leaders of the Gotham.
Several versions also have him channeling huge amounts of money to charities as Bruce. Also trying to influence local politics with his company or hiring petty criminals he runs into as Batman to work at Wayne Enterprises so they have legitimate income. Batman is working on things that are happening right this second, but Bruce is trying to fix systemic issues so that Batman eventually won’t be needed.
Yeah, one of my favorite depictions of him are the Year One movies/comics, where Batman is fighting corrupt cops just as much as he’s fighting the mafia and other villains of the week.
to effect* meaningful change
wonder why this is top post of lemmy.world today
That’s always the issue with super heroes. All these people with these crazy abilities and powers and the only thing we can think to do with them is beating up petty criminals.
Like that’s really what the world needs: tougher cops with no oversight.
Except that actual super villains exist in their universes.
What’s the difference between the super villains in their universe and the ones in ours? Mass shooters, serial killers, billionaires who own sweat shops, leaders of drug cartels, Jeffery Epstein, corrupt cops, corrupt judges, Putin, all the soldiers commiting war crimes and those who lead them who are either ok with it, or instructing then to do so… we’ve got super villains
OP said all they do is beating up petty criminals, which is simply not true.
I don’t know why you question me about the difference between their universes supervillains, and what you define as supervillains in our world.
And wouldn’t it be nice if we had some morally upstanding person in a cape to swoop in and beat the absolute fuck out of them?
Not even superman does that. Hell not even o Brian. Not even Darkseid does that
Doesn’t change the fact that much of what they do is beat up petty criminals. Hell, that’s usually their goal early on, before super villains get introduced.
She’s trying to regrow the forests like the Orphan Crushing Machine is solving child hunger.
She’s also an environment strawman. Think of how often mainstream media portrays environments as radicals vs how often they’re portrayed as reasonable heroes. Thanos? Kingman’s villain? Think that’s by accident? Well, maybe some of it is. Being able to find success within a power structure means you may find it reasonable and fair, so you end up writing stories that reinforce that power structure.
Thanos’ MCU depiction isn’t a distillation of a decades old comic character, it’s a result of them not adapting the subplot where he wants to bang Death. Seriously, his motivation in the comics is that he has a boner for Death and thinks she’ll want to sleep with him if he kills an incredibly large number of people. They hadn’t gotten that far into the cosmology by the time they used Thanos in the movies, so they had to come up with some other reason that he might want to kill half the population of the universe.
Isn’t it tho?! trust the process bro
I love to hate this movie, but I think Freeze’s costume, made by an actual armor fabricator is just sick as hell, nipples be damned.
ngl nipple homages kinda seem to be his thing, judging by the other stuff
Wow, I never noticed that. I always thought it was just a Joel Schumacher thing. Match made in heaven I guess
Fun fact: Barb’s suit in that movie also has nipples, they’re just more subtle.
That dude has one of the best jobs ever
Also he is trying to find a cure to his wifes disease.
Which Bruce helps him with in the end. He could of sent Nora to a hospital, Freeze to jail, and washed his hands of it. Instead he makes an effort to transfer her to Arkham so Freeze can continue his work.
He does something similar in virtually every single iteration. Of his principle Rogues Gallery, Freeze is nearly always the villain Bruce makes the most effort to assist.
Just say you don’t understand batman comics.
I get the overall vibes but
- Poison ivy literally kills little children for littering
- Bruce does spend a fuckton of his money on Gotham. It has like 0.01% of the effect it would have in the real world because a warlock is interred on Gotham’s soil.
The basic premise of the Gotham universe is that everything is fucked. It’s grimdark, it’s DC’s 40K. Actually it would make near perfect sense if those two were one universe.
OTOH the Harley Quinn series (the one with Harlivy) does take jabs at Bruce’s sheltered status, “People pay rent?”. Lots of stuff going on in that series that don’t fit standard canon, though, the series is as much a contemporary commentary on the universe as it’s an in-universe show. Do watch that series btw even if you’re not into comics, or the universe, or whatever, it’s hilarious.
“Because a warlock is interred on Gothams soil.” I’m sorry, WHAT?!
Bro needs a lore update
This is maybe the stupidest take on Batman in the history of the Internet. Prior to the Internet, anyone weird enough to think this way would’ve felt far too alone in the opinion to speak it out loud. Those were better days.
Anyone who has ever seen Harley Quinn has definitely rooted for Poison Ivy.
… dressed as an ebola vector
Bro hates millionaires so much he actually went and misunderstood Batman, a literal hero in the dryer and most basic way possible
How do you know he’s not working on all those issues while beating others up?
