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.
Over 60 years of “crime-fighting” but no noticeable decrease in Gotham’s crime rate.
Curious.
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.
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.
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.
Costume design actually used to be more cool. Now everyone looks like an iphone.
That’s why every heavyweight character from the fictional and mythic canon is getting ‘rebooted’ at the moment. Many things changing fast in culture, many people having studied the humanities.
Wait until artists start using these characters - then it will really start getting interesting.
She’s trying to regrow the forests like the Orphan Crushing Machine is solving child hunger.
Isn’t it tho?! trust the process bro
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.
How do you know he’s not working on all those issues while beating others up?
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 economic 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 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 induced 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 but 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
Do you prefer LOTAD Batmans or fully optimized TAS Batmans?
He can pull off insane glitches that require inputs far more precise than what humans are capable of.
Some call that state the BATGOD
wonder why this is top post of lemmy.world today
to effect* meaningful change
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.
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
In a bunch of the comics he raises hell with the corrupt leaders of the Gotham.
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
Anyone who has ever seen Harley Quinn has definitely rooted for Poison Ivy.
Just realized fr freeze has costume nipples too
For more pleasure
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
Bro hates millionaires so much he actually went and misunderstood Batman, a literal hero in the dryer and most basic way possible
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.
Just say you don’t understand batman comics.
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.
Can’t remember it. I thought he defrosted his wife.
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, 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.
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?
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.
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.
That’s kind of the point. Bruce is just as mentally unwell as the villains he fights.
IIRC, one of the films noted that his parents had tried to fund serious reform in Gotham (I think the newest film, with Robert Pattinson?), and that corruption and crime siphoned off and diverted all the money away from the causes they were trying to support. I’m not sure if that’s cannon or not.
Looking at a number of cities in the US that have historically had a serious problem with public corruption, it’s not really an either/or approach; you need to adequately fund public works, but you also need to fight the crime and corruption that tries to take all the public money away from the public.
Indeed, and that could make for a lot of fun political intrigue with good writers. It’d be a fantastic juxtaposition from scenes fighting violent criminals on the street. Genuinely show how an evil person can be a guy in a suit with a smile and no direct ill intentions. Show how criminals don’t have to be violent to be detestable.
I think a seriously done Batman, that seriously approached these topics from the perspective of Bruce intelligently fighting against these things, would be fantastic. Easily able to put The Boys to shame with good writers. If only Hollywood et. al. knew how to pay for good writers…
I think that it would just not be very interesting for a lot of people. Real legal fights are actually quite boring, and take an incredibly long time. Showing how the bad guys draw things out in thr courts and in the boardrooms, and making it interesting is def. a challenge.
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…
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.
