Tuesday, October 17, 2017

The Core Appeal of Batman


            I did not like the “Wonder Woman” movie that came out earlier this year.  It, along with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” are the two most popular and well-reviewed films that I have a deep dislike for (I think I will write a bit more on one or both of these later in the year).  But, something I will concede is that the Diana portrayed in the movie is a perfectly valid portrayal.
            The version of Wonder Woman I am most familiar with was defined by two sources, the “Justice League” animated series and the writing of Grant Morrison on JLA back at the turn of the century… Not his more recent work on the character in “All Star Wonder Womana bad comic I reviewed in two parts where I also talked about how incestuous and lame the marketing decisions of the comics industry can be.
            My point with all of this is that I had to ask myself while watching the latest “Wonder Woman” movie was, “do I dislike the “Wonder Woman” movie only because it is NOT like the versions of the character I am more familiar with?  Was I just attached to the confident, confidence inspiring, more veteran version of the character I had become accustomed to and seeing a less experienced version bothered me?”
            The answer is NO.

Though I definitely got sick of every freaking character in the movie saying how pretty she is.
Yeah, I get it.  You can be hot and strong.  Hooray for Lipstick Feminism. Can we just drop the stilted dialogue?
            I welcome interpretations of work that create fresh takes on stories and characters.  Permutations on familiar things are some of my favorite avenues of storytelling.  Changes in style, motivation, or even drastic changes in setting can make things better, interestingly bad, or (most often) neither better or worse but different enough that I appreciate it existing.
            But I can see other people having this problem.  For instance, I have seen lots of people who look at the “Harry Potter” movies as being bad because they deviate from the books.  These people are of course, fools, those movies are bad for numerous reasons unrelated to the books.  Side note, I would really like to encourage the Harry Potter fandom to read more books, when I see every god damn thing from politics to Stephen King’s “It” compared to Harry Potter mythology I start thinking they are all really dumb and myopic, get out of your comfort zone a little, they’re YA fiction, not a religion.
            What the hell was I going on about?  Oh, yes… Adaptations.
            With all this in mind, I decided to kick around the idea of how different can you make a character before it is unrecognizable.  To do this I decided to look at Batman, because there have been so many versions of the character.  They even made a joke about it in his last movie.


            Different aspects of characters appeal to different people and what constitutes the core aspect of a character is up for debate.  WHAT MAKES BATMAN…. BATMAN!?

To start, let’s list the three most important aspects of Batman,

1) He is a rich man who watched his parents getting murdered as a child.
2) He is intelligent and well trained in multiple disciplines related to combat and criminology.
3) He fights crime dressed as a bat using bat themed weapons and equipment.

            I am betting some people would say those things encapsulate everything you *need* about the character in order to make a movie, and that would be the minimum.  But others would say no list would be complete without,

4) No killing, more specifically Batman does not use guns.
5) He has a butler who raised him after the death of his parents.
6) He has a surrogate family, primarily consisting of adopted children who have similarly lost loved ones to criminal activity, but extends to father figures and love interests.

            Christopher Nolan decided 5 was more important than 4 (Nolan’s Batman has guns on his vehicles if not his person and does cause the death of several criminals, though under such extreme circumstances that it could only be seen as excusable).  Nolan cut number 6 almost entirely, his supporting cast is far smaller than other iterations of the character.
            Zach Snyder has Batman using guns and killing people left, right, and center.  Snyder would have had Batman kill Superman if it weren’t for an unintentional and really out of place reference/appeal to point number 1.  That screaming of “Martha!” was a sort of out of nowhere appeal to the core of the character… maybe a subtle way of saying, “Batman really shouldn’t be killing people, Superman especially”.  Was that a winking bit of self-awareness on the part of the creatives?  Or was it just another misplaced bit of character trivia to try and build a report that wasn’t earned… I would say it was silly either way and that movie sucked.
            Tim Burton had Batman kill people in massive explosions or throwing them to their deaths.  Beyond that his inner circle and surrogate family was the smallest it ever was.  During the whole first movie Batman’s only humanizing cast members are Vicki Vale and Alfred, Batman doesn’t speak to Gordon, Dent, or Knox and there is no Robin in the movie at all.
            I am sure more people saw Burton's movie at the time of release than had read a comic in the preceding 10 years.  I am sure more people saw Nolan's movie than had read a comic in the past 25, mostly because comic books are an industry on life support in spite of them being the core ancestral home of the most popular genre of entertainment on the planet currently.  But my point is, comics getting the title of “Definitive” is REALLY misplaced.
            More people having seen the movies or the old TV show means that their version of Batman is VERY DIFFERENT from what a comic book fan might see as definitive.  And if you are looking at “Definitiveness” as a sort of middle ground of what most people think of when they think of a character… More people will recognize a Batman that does kill.  Some might see Batman killing criminals as something so typical or part of the character that they wouldn’t even comment on it, or they might even dislike versions of Batman that don’t use lethal force, seeing them as childish or just out of date.



            Who's to say one iteration of a character is the superior or more iconic version of the character?  Especially when the multiverse exists in comics and film and each iteration "exists" in the same way all fictional characters "exist".  Like Shakespeare said in “The Tempest”:

As I foretold you, we’re all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.


            For me, Batman the animated series and to a lesser extent the “Arkham” video game series is the definitive version of the character and his supporting cast.
            If you prefer the Burton version, you aren’t wrong.
            If you like Lego Batman, you’re not wrong.
            If you think that Batman is just a lamer version of Zorro or the Shadow… You’re not entirely off base and I suppose if you dislike when characters are derivative I can see how that would be a strike, but I would still think you are an ass for writing off a character just because he is one of many other similar characters…
            … I mean, if you are going to knock them for that, let’s call them all derivatives of the Scarlet Pimpernel.


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