The batman was a good movie. It was a beautiful piece of cinema for me, its was something new to superhero movies after a long time, moral ambuity or not, it was a piece of art for me.
12:23 One thing I'd disagree on, is that I think it's actually fine for The Riddler to have a goal and a reasoning that doesn't make a lot of sense because the Riddler himself is a broken, disturbed man that's defined by what he's never had and the cruel hand fate dealt him. The choice to make him an incel-army leader then is great, because he has genuine problems that now are twisted and wrapped in all these absurd layers of "vengeance" that take an extremist opinion on how to fight them, just like what Batman is doing. Hell, you could easily see in the film that Batman could have instead become him, or could have taken his goals of "small dedicated group action" instead of single vigilantism. Also, I love how Patterson's Batman is just this weird loner that has no idea how to talk to people anymore. I kinda wished however, that they instead went for making him kind of charismatic yet empty; like he's only being good with people just to further his goals of crimefighting and not genuinely liking them, so his smile comes off as forced and hollow.
totally agree but the reason bruce isnt portrayed as charismatic is because this was batman year 2, bruce doesnt see the value of being bruce yet so he hasnt tried being charismatic in the slightest its his choice. what your describing tho is exactly how i felt about bayels bruce wayne which i loved he felt so fake to us because he is um hoping in the sequel we see more of bruce wayne furthering batmans goals
I think, because this movie is uneven, it's easy to miss some of the things it's doing incredibly well in the midst of the marks it seems to miss. It seems to me your take on the Riddler's scheme is more focused on being a clever plot, intricate but simple, like something from a standard crime story. But that's not really the point of this film, or this character. You have this idea that these characters, like Batman and Catwoman, are supposed to "pay a price" for "getting what they want," but this sounds a bit like you're trying to apply Rick and Morty story circle formula to a film that had very different intentions. As ham-handed as the Thomas Wayne backstory was handled, it wasn't meant to end with the reassurance that Bruce's father was a good man. It was meant to be left ambiguous, which technically, it was. We can never really know if Thomas was a good person who made a deal with the devil and then repented, or if that was just Alfred's half-truth to preserve the memory of a dead man he loved. Bruce has to take it on faith that Alfred's story was true. That, I think, was the point. Now, to be clear, this little bit of ambiguity is extremely vague, tangled with the additional ambiguity of whether or not Thomas and Martha were assassinated on the orders of Falcone. All that backstory is delivered so sloppily, and how it all lands with Bruce is essentially ignored in favor of his realization that he still has someone to lose, and his conflicted feelings about that. So it's no surprise that it comes off as though it's just a neat little resolution to a completely unnecessary side-plot about Thomas Wayne's potential culpability in the death of a journalist. I agree that the whole thing is messy. I just don't diagnose the problem quite the way you did. I also think, this ambiguous ending mirrors the ambiguity of Catwoman's resolution. I'm assuming it's meant to feel like an unsatisfying end to her revenge mission. But we just don't know, because the film doesn't show us how she feels about it. Bottom line, I think this whole film has the same issue as so many other Warner Batman films, trying to squeeze the plots of three movies into one, with every plot thread getting short shrift. The same thing happened to Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. My hope is that the studio environment that made this a chronic problem in so many DC films is gone now, and the next wave of films will be more coherent films, and less tugs-of-war between creators and studio egos.
I was always fascinated by Erwen Smith, leader of the Survey Corps, in Attack on Titan. He makes a point of saying flat out, multiple times, that he has given up any and all personal moral standing in order to advance the cause of humanity against the titans. As a result, he makes a lot of bold and often reckless decisions that do move the ball, but also get TONS of people hurt and killed. He's recognized that the situation his society has found itself in won't allow them to solve their biggest problem /and/ hold onto conventional moral values. So he makes the active choice to solve the problem anyway, values be damned. I like this character decision, because it's calling attention to the fact that, in many ways, being moral is a privilege. Being able to solve your problems and still feel good about yourself is a luxury that you can only have when the situation happens to allow for it. Smith is one answer to how a person could handle that situation. That, even if you don't agree, is a narratively interesting way to approach a moral arc in a story, I think.
Such a good video! When you started talking about moral dilemmas I immediately thought of your Dexter video and I was so happy that you mentioned it. It's like a reward :)
I think that you as a person wanted to see a very certain kind of movie and disliked this movie because you didn't get anything within those narrow parameters. Why must mysteries always have to give the audience a chance to solve it? Mysteries can also serve simply as a backdrop for character development. In some cases, the primary focus is on how characters react to and navigate the mystery rather than on providing a puzzle for the audience to solve. This approach can lead to more nuanced and character-driven storytelling. Why must the Riddler not just be a person who feels wronged by society? His character is contrasted to Bruce's. Its meant to evoke the question of 'if Bruce was in Riddler's shoes and vice versa, would he have turned out to be something other than what Riddler is now?' It is an interesting evocation. Why must you term everything remotely close to moral ambiguity as "A MORAL DILEMMA that MUST be solved by nothing other than the person who's involved with it being given choices that MUST lead to them LOSING something for making those morally ambiguous choices." I understand that this formula enriches moral dilemmas but not everything morally ambiguous has to be one. Take in point, the scene of Selina not killing her father. You argue that she was not given an actual choice and the writers lazily had the choice made for her. But I'd like to argue against this. I think this wasn't a moral dilemma, at least not in the narrow way that you like to perceive them. In this scene Selina is about to die at the hands of her father just as Batman shows up and saves her life. And with no plot contrivances/conveniences the rest of the events take place in a sensible order. And if your main argument is that this should have been a moral dilemma, well I still disagree. It could very much be possible that Selina still wants to kill her father but on account of her not being stupid, she decides to not do it in front of Batman, or maybe she realizes that looking at the kind of gangster her father is, a life in prison would be a far worse undertaking for him than simply being killed. This is something that we will never know because her father gets killed by the Riddler but this give us outs of the supposed moral dilemma that could have been created here. Just simply plopping Selina into a kill father or dont kill father scenario where killing means she goes to jail but not killing means she has to live with the pain that her father is still alive would be unrealistic. Human beings are complex and it is quite possible to find a middle ground in even morally ambiguous situations. It might not be super interesting but that is my point. As long as they occur organically, solutions to moral dilemmas do not always have to be interesting. A lot of real life works like that. Now, I do agree with your point about Alfred and Bruce kind of glossing over the fact that his father had someone killed. There could certainly have been an interesting scenario here. Thomas Wayne approached a violent gangster to deal with a reporter who was threatening to reveal sensitive private information about his own wife which would destroy his family's reputation, his wife's mental state and his own mayoral campaign. But how did Thomas not realize what consequences this would entail? He must have known that there would be a possibility that when you tell a violent gangster to ''take care'' of something, it might allude to murder as well. Was he simply feigning ignorance? However despite this potential, I think that the scene can work if you consider this to a be a flaw in Bruce's character. This Bruce is not just doing it for the people. He realizes it not before but a year after becoming Batman. That he needs to be this city's savior. He needs to be there for the people of this city. But in that scene he was still guided by his father as a basis for why he was fighting this battle and maybe it was more enticing for Bruce to accept that his father did indeed make a mistake and isn't really a bad person rather than having the entire basis of his mad crusade being shattered. Especially since it came from his trusted mentor, Alfred. Also looking at the next Batman movie, it certainly seems that this for sure will be explored in that movie too as Hush(who will serve as the main antagonist) has been all but confirmed to be connected to the reporter who Bruce's father indirectly murdered. All in all I think that yes, this movie does have flaws, major ones too but I also think that you don't want simple moral ambiguity. You want a Batman movie with Witcher 3 dilemmas where every solution is either evil or the lesser evil. Now I absolutely love The Witcher 3 and I think it is a formula that might work in the dark world of Gotham as well, but not all Batman movies need to be about that one point. This one, I think was more about Batman realizing just how similar he is to the Riddler which leads to him discovering what he actually needs to be in order to save Gotham and its people. The moment when he realizes that he is partly to blame for creating Riddler and the fact that Riddler looks upto him as a role model is an excellent scene. The ending was about Bruce learning that Batman must be more, it must serve not as a personal crusade for revenge but more as hope for Gotham, which it desperately needs. The crusade must serve as a vessel for 'justice' not 'vengeance'. BTW, I saw your video about Dexter too but I agreed with you on that one. But here, I just don't see a very strong argument. It seems your criticizing this film because you desired a different film than this one which you are entitled to desire but it doesen't mean that this one is bad.
I had the same problem with Selina in TDKR as in The Batman; I just felt no chemistry between her and Batman/Bruce. Batman Returns remains my favorite Batman film, not because it is the most faithful adaptation (it's certainly not that) but because it is the most entertaining and the chemistry between the leads is great.
I think Dark Knight Rises and The Batman kinda had the same problem. Good in places but too long and too many characters. Maybe if the stories didn't have so much going on the chemistry with Bruce and Selena could have developed more. But yeah neither catwoman comes close Batman Returns. Michelle Pfeiffer 4EVA!!!
@@davescripted3796 Batman Returns is also a bit of a messy film yet it somehow works. Maybe it is because it has a tighter script and is less grounded in realism. Oh, and also, Pfeiffer 4EVA!!!!
It's hard to top the Nolanverse but I believe The Batman was a gritty reimagining of the cinematic Dark Knight that was full of brooding moral dilemmas and tortured souls. The movie was dirty, nobody was clean. Even in Batman Begins you have these characters like Ra's that is essentially just the kingpin of an assassin's guild cult but you never see his struggle to achieve that. In The Batman you see Bruce tangle with his identity, you see Selina struggle everyday, you see Gordon deal with corruption, even the mob guys have conflicts at play. Nothing feels safe, nothing is safe, nobody is safe. Meanwhile the one guy that claims to have a moral code dresses up like a bat and beats the everloving fuck out of hoodlums in the subway wearing mascara but it turns out his dad was a billionaire with criminal friends and he had a guy wacked or something. And Selina wanted to dish out revenge to her father personally for an entire life of suffering only for some weirdo SAW-fetishist with no relation to Falcone at all to steal her kill from her... in front of an army of police. Justice failed her, revenge failed her, vigilantism failed her, only some random psycho got the job done. What's more dilemmatic than having no answer?
I'm not very good at figuring out why some movies don't click for me, and despite me having fun with this one, it failed to click for me. Couldn't figure out why, but your idea that this Batman doesn't have much moral ambiguity is a good enough explanation for me!
Imo the thing you're missing about The Batman is also the thing I absolutely loved about it: it's a movie about teenagers. Idk exactly how old Bruce and Selena are supposed to be, but to me, they read as scared, sad, deeply traumatized kids, desperately searching for decency in indecent times. This doesn't counter all your arguments; you're right that the moral dilemmas are poorly executed, although I think saying that Selena loses nothing is pushing it (there's a difference between delivering justice to the man who ruined your life and watching someone else do it for unrelated reasons). But imo, the immature reasoning, the inconsistent and often unplaceable moral codes, and yes, even the brooding, eyeliner, and Nirvana soundtrack all make this movie my favorite exploration of Batman's character. He's not the Dark Knight, some pure yet shadowy ontological force. He's a kid, tortured by his past and by the implications of his wealth and power, trying to stake out some kind of moral code and lashing out when it doesn't align with the ways of the world.
10:50 Was I the only person thrown for a loop by Salena wanting to be with him? I thought she had been in a relationship with Annika Koslov and had been overt with batman earlier because that's how she has learned to deal with men. She's either violently dismissive or overtly flirting with every man who crosses her path so for me her offer was completely left field and made no sense. Honestly her entire story kinda crumbles starting the moment she tries to kill falcone and is interrupted.
As some others have stated in the comments, I love The Batman partially because of the fact that it was angsty, brooding and dark. Regardless, this was a very stylized movie and I agree that it wasn't perfect, but it explored a side of Batman that we rarely see. That being said, I think there is one aspect that you didn't explore which I think is relevant to the idea of ambiguous morality. Bruce does face something and arguably it's not the riddler. He has to come face to face with himself. This kind of plays into the whole thing with his dad, but what he seems to come to realize is that he may very well be just as bad as the monsters he's fighting. He is contributing to the system of violence and malice that he is supposedly fighting against. That is the major moral question at the ending of the Batman that was so intriguing to me. Now albeit, there doesn't seem to be much a resolve besides the fact that Bruce is seen actually helping people in the end (vs beating them up), but I'm excited to see where the trilogy goes from here.
The first half of The Batman is just okay, and it has some promising themes. The third act of the film completely contradicts the themes and ruins the plot/characters/tone.
Thought I would disagree with you on The Batman when you were listing the changes, then you say "and i love it" and realize we are on the same page. Yes it is angsty, silly, and feels like a parody at times, and I am so ok with that. I loved that movie because they let someone do something different. We already got there with spiderman. I want studios to just acceot the idea that audiences can handle different interpretations of these characters and stories.
My issue with Falcone and Selena in particular is that it's already established Falcone strangled Selena's friend, and Selena knows her mother was strangled. But the Falcone has to go and confess to killing Selena's mother right before he's about to kill her. He had no reason to tell her, and even if he felt like it would clear his conscious somehow (while killing his own daughter), it weakens the audience's experience by "telling" not "showing".
Very interesting video. About the Ra's al Ghul death scene and the Joker's saving scene, there is a big difference: Batman was the one that threw the Joker out, so if he didn't save him he would become a killer. If Ra's was thrown off the train by Batman during the fight, he would try to save him.
A good way to write in more moments of intimacy between Selena and Bruce is make the tech she’s using an excuse for her to be in the cave or something. Like “Mr, Wayne, these need to be installed very carefully and we only have the tech to do it in the batcave” and then, she either has more of a chance to bond with Bruce but maybe even learn his identity. Then, that romance will be better set up for when she’s gonna kill, like you said
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are probably the better movie, but The Batman is absolutely the best Batman movie for the simple reason that it’s actually a Batman movie. The Nolan films were always Batman through the eyes of Nolan and Nolan didn’t really portray the characters correctly. Hell even though the films on paper get Batman right with him refusing to kill, he still does. He literally kills Two Face at the end of The Dark Knight. The Batman gets just about every part of Batman’s mythos correct (within the context of the story). That might sound contradictory to what I said about Nolan earlier but it’s different there because Matt Reeves told a new and different story with the characters from the comics, and Nolan created his own versions of the characters for his own stories
so I guess I'm a utilitarian in this discussion, as opposed to a deontologist. deontology is apparently for people who are unable to understand consequences, both short and long term.
But we know batman and catwoman still go back and forth and even have a daughter in the future, so her leaving isn't really that big of a deal for those of us who know. I really liked the movie.
First off, I loved the movie. Leagues above pretty much every superhero movie made since about 2014 and better than most before even still. Alot of the issues I see people have seem to stem from movies like this relying on prior awareness of these characters. We know batman is gonna be perceived a certain way by citizens and pull it off at the end cause he's batman. On a deeper level, we READERS know falcone and thomas wayne have a relationship that is a bit tricky for bruce to deal with. The movie can only function in regard to what we already know about what it's presenting. That says more about the genre as a whole at this point than the one movie. It's a great movie and would be better if batman never existed from a meta perspective.
The batman was a good movie. It was a beautiful piece of cinema for me, its was something new to superhero movies after a long time, moral ambuity or not, it was a piece of art for me.
I love how he gave Bale and Nolan his props , they did such an awesome job showing Bruce as a three dimensional character
''Equally excellent and arguably superior batman begins'' wiser words we're never been said before
Dark Knight superiority every day
12:23
One thing I'd disagree on, is that I think it's actually fine for The Riddler to have a goal and a reasoning that doesn't make a lot of sense because the Riddler himself is a broken, disturbed man that's defined by what he's never had and the cruel hand fate dealt him. The choice to make him an incel-army leader then is great, because he has genuine problems that now are twisted and wrapped in all these absurd layers of "vengeance" that take an extremist opinion on how to fight them, just like what Batman is doing. Hell, you could easily see in the film that Batman could have instead become him, or could have taken his goals of "small dedicated group action" instead of single vigilantism.
Also, I love how Patterson's Batman is just this weird loner that has no idea how to talk to people anymore. I kinda wished however, that they instead went for making him kind of charismatic yet empty; like he's only being good with people just to further his goals of crimefighting and not genuinely liking them, so his smile comes off as forced and hollow.
totally agree but the reason bruce isnt portrayed as charismatic is because this was batman year 2, bruce doesnt see the value of being bruce yet so he hasnt tried being charismatic in the slightest its his choice. what your describing tho is exactly how i felt about bayels bruce wayne which i loved he felt so fake to us because he is um hoping in the sequel we see more of bruce wayne furthering batmans goals
I think, because this movie is uneven, it's easy to miss some of the things it's doing incredibly well in the midst of the marks it seems to miss. It seems to me your take on the Riddler's scheme is more focused on being a clever plot, intricate but simple, like something from a standard crime story. But that's not really the point of this film, or this character. You have this idea that these characters, like Batman and Catwoman, are supposed to "pay a price" for "getting what they want," but this sounds a bit like you're trying to apply Rick and Morty story circle formula to a film that had very different intentions. As ham-handed as the Thomas Wayne backstory was handled, it wasn't meant to end with the reassurance that Bruce's father was a good man. It was meant to be left ambiguous, which technically, it was. We can never really know if Thomas was a good person who made a deal with the devil and then repented, or if that was just Alfred's half-truth to preserve the memory of a dead man he loved. Bruce has to take it on faith that Alfred's story was true. That, I think, was the point.
Now, to be clear, this little bit of ambiguity is extremely vague, tangled with the additional ambiguity of whether or not Thomas and Martha were assassinated on the orders of Falcone. All that backstory is delivered so sloppily, and how it all lands with Bruce is essentially ignored in favor of his realization that he still has someone to lose, and his conflicted feelings about that. So it's no surprise that it comes off as though it's just a neat little resolution to a completely unnecessary side-plot about Thomas Wayne's potential culpability in the death of a journalist. I agree that the whole thing is messy. I just don't diagnose the problem quite the way you did.
I also think, this ambiguous ending mirrors the ambiguity of Catwoman's resolution. I'm assuming it's meant to feel like an unsatisfying end to her revenge mission. But we just don't know, because the film doesn't show us how she feels about it.
Bottom line, I think this whole film has the same issue as so many other Warner Batman films, trying to squeeze the plots of three movies into one, with every plot thread getting short shrift. The same thing happened to Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. My hope is that the studio environment that made this a chronic problem in so many DC films is gone now, and the next wave of films will be more coherent films, and less tugs-of-war between creators and studio egos.
I was always fascinated by Erwen Smith, leader of the Survey Corps, in Attack on Titan. He makes a point of saying flat out, multiple times, that he has given up any and all personal moral standing in order to advance the cause of humanity against the titans. As a result, he makes a lot of bold and often reckless decisions that do move the ball, but also get TONS of people hurt and killed. He's recognized that the situation his society has found itself in won't allow them to solve their biggest problem /and/ hold onto conventional moral values. So he makes the active choice to solve the problem anyway, values be damned. I like this character decision, because it's calling attention to the fact that, in many ways, being moral is a privilege. Being able to solve your problems and still feel good about yourself is a luxury that you can only have when the situation happens to allow for it. Smith is one answer to how a person could handle that situation. That, even if you don't agree, is a narratively interesting way to approach a moral arc in a story, I think.
Such a good video! When you started talking about moral dilemmas I immediately thought of your Dexter video and I was so happy that you mentioned it. It's like a reward :)
🙂
I think that you as a person wanted to see a very certain kind of movie and disliked this movie because you didn't get anything within those narrow parameters. Why must mysteries always have to give the audience a chance to solve it? Mysteries can also serve simply as a backdrop for character development. In some cases, the primary focus is on how characters react to and navigate the mystery rather than on providing a puzzle for the audience to solve. This approach can lead to more nuanced and character-driven storytelling.
Why must the Riddler not just be a person who feels wronged by society? His character is contrasted to Bruce's. Its meant to evoke the question of 'if Bruce was in Riddler's shoes and vice versa, would he have turned out to be something other than what Riddler is now?' It is an interesting evocation.
Why must you term everything remotely close to moral ambiguity as "A MORAL DILEMMA that MUST be solved by nothing other than the person who's involved with it being given choices that MUST lead to them LOSING something for making those morally ambiguous choices." I understand that this formula enriches moral dilemmas but not everything morally ambiguous has to be one. Take in point, the scene of Selina not killing her father. You argue that she was not given an actual choice and the writers lazily had the choice made for her. But I'd like to argue against this. I think this wasn't a moral dilemma, at least not in the narrow way that you like to perceive them. In this scene Selina is about to die at the hands of her father just as Batman shows up and saves her life. And with no plot contrivances/conveniences the rest of the events take place in a sensible order. And if your main argument is that this should have been a moral dilemma, well I still disagree. It could very much be possible that Selina still wants to kill her father but on account of her not being stupid, she decides to not do it in front of Batman, or maybe she realizes that looking at the kind of gangster her father is, a life in prison would be a far worse undertaking for him than simply being killed. This is something that we will never know because her father gets killed by the Riddler but this give us outs of the supposed moral dilemma that could have been created here. Just simply plopping Selina into a kill father or dont kill father scenario where killing means she goes to jail but not killing means she has to live with the pain that her father is still alive would be unrealistic. Human beings are complex and it is quite possible to find a middle ground in even morally ambiguous situations. It might not be super interesting but that is my point. As long as they occur organically, solutions to moral dilemmas do not always have to be interesting. A lot of real life works like that.
Now, I do agree with your point about Alfred and Bruce kind of glossing over the fact that his father had someone killed. There could certainly have been an interesting scenario here. Thomas Wayne approached a violent gangster to deal with a reporter who was threatening to reveal sensitive private information about his own wife which would destroy his family's reputation, his wife's mental state and his own mayoral campaign. But how did Thomas not realize what consequences this would entail? He must have known that there would be a possibility that when you tell a violent gangster to ''take care'' of something, it might allude to murder as well. Was he simply feigning ignorance? However despite this potential, I think that the scene can work if you consider this to a be a flaw in Bruce's character. This Bruce is not just doing it for the people. He realizes it not before but a year after becoming Batman. That he needs to be this city's savior. He needs to be there for the people of this city. But in that scene he was still guided by his father as a basis for why he was fighting this battle and maybe it was more enticing for Bruce to accept that his father did indeed make a mistake and isn't really a bad person rather than having the entire basis of his mad crusade being shattered. Especially since it came from his trusted mentor, Alfred. Also looking at the next Batman movie, it certainly seems that this for sure will be explored in that movie too as Hush(who will serve as the main antagonist) has been all but confirmed to be connected to the reporter who Bruce's father indirectly murdered.
All in all I think that yes, this movie does have flaws, major ones too but I also think that you don't want simple moral ambiguity. You want a Batman movie with Witcher 3 dilemmas where every solution is either evil or the lesser evil. Now I absolutely love The Witcher 3 and I think it is a formula that might work in the dark world of Gotham as well, but not all Batman movies need to be about that one point. This one, I think was more about Batman realizing just how similar he is to the Riddler which leads to him discovering what he actually needs to be in order to save Gotham and its people. The moment when he realizes that he is partly to blame for creating Riddler and the fact that Riddler looks upto him as a role model is an excellent scene. The ending was about Bruce learning that Batman must be more, it must serve not as a personal crusade for revenge but more as hope for Gotham, which it desperately needs. The crusade must serve as a vessel for 'justice' not 'vengeance'. BTW, I saw your video about Dexter too but I agreed with you on that one. But here, I just don't see a very strong argument. It seems your criticizing this film because you desired a different film than this one which you are entitled to desire but it doesen't mean that this one is bad.
I had the same problem with Selina in TDKR as in The Batman; I just felt no chemistry between her and Batman/Bruce. Batman Returns remains my favorite Batman film, not because it is the most faithful adaptation (it's certainly not that) but because it is the most entertaining and the chemistry between the leads is great.
I think Dark Knight Rises and The Batman kinda had the same problem. Good in places but too long and too many characters. Maybe if the stories didn't have so much going on the chemistry with Bruce and Selena could have developed more. But yeah neither catwoman comes close Batman Returns. Michelle Pfeiffer 4EVA!!!
@@davescripted3796 Batman Returns is also a bit of a messy film yet it somehow works. Maybe it is because it has a tighter script and is less grounded in realism. Oh, and also, Pfeiffer 4EVA!!!!
It's hard to top the Nolanverse but I believe The Batman was a gritty reimagining of the cinematic Dark Knight that was full of brooding moral dilemmas and tortured souls. The movie was dirty, nobody was clean. Even in Batman Begins you have these characters like Ra's that is essentially just the kingpin of an assassin's guild cult but you never see his struggle to achieve that. In The Batman you see Bruce tangle with his identity, you see Selina struggle everyday, you see Gordon deal with corruption, even the mob guys have conflicts at play. Nothing feels safe, nothing is safe, nobody is safe. Meanwhile the one guy that claims to have a moral code dresses up like a bat and beats the everloving fuck out of hoodlums in the subway wearing mascara but it turns out his dad was a billionaire with criminal friends and he had a guy wacked or something. And Selina wanted to dish out revenge to her father personally for an entire life of suffering only for some weirdo SAW-fetishist with no relation to Falcone at all to steal her kill from her... in front of an army of police. Justice failed her, revenge failed her, vigilantism failed her, only some random psycho got the job done. What's more dilemmatic than having no answer?
I'm not very good at figuring out why some movies don't click for me, and despite me having fun with this one, it failed to click for me. Couldn't figure out why, but your idea that this Batman doesn't have much moral ambiguity is a good enough explanation for me!
👋:-)
Love your channel. Keep it up!
Imo the thing you're missing about The Batman is also the thing I absolutely loved about it: it's a movie about teenagers. Idk exactly how old Bruce and Selena are supposed to be, but to me, they read as scared, sad, deeply traumatized kids, desperately searching for decency in indecent times. This doesn't counter all your arguments; you're right that the moral dilemmas are poorly executed, although I think saying that Selena loses nothing is pushing it (there's a difference between delivering justice to the man who ruined your life and watching someone else do it for unrelated reasons). But imo, the immature reasoning, the inconsistent and often unplaceable moral codes, and yes, even the brooding, eyeliner, and Nirvana soundtrack all make this movie my favorite exploration of Batman's character. He's not the Dark Knight, some pure yet shadowy ontological force. He's a kid, tortured by his past and by the implications of his wealth and power, trying to stake out some kind of moral code and lashing out when it doesn't align with the ways of the world.
Another banger!
10:50 Was I the only person thrown for a loop by Salena wanting to be with him? I thought she had been in a relationship with Annika Koslov and had been overt with batman earlier because that's how she has learned to deal with men. She's either violently dismissive or overtly flirting with every man who crosses her path so for me her offer was completely left field and made no sense. Honestly her entire story kinda crumbles starting the moment she tries to kill falcone and is interrupted.
No, you weren't the only person.
As some others have stated in the comments, I love The Batman partially because of the fact that it was angsty, brooding and dark. Regardless, this was a very stylized movie and I agree that it wasn't perfect, but it explored a side of Batman that we rarely see.
That being said, I think there is one aspect that you didn't explore which I think is relevant to the idea of ambiguous morality. Bruce does face something and arguably it's not the riddler. He has to come face to face with himself. This kind of plays into the whole thing with his dad, but what he seems to come to realize is that he may very well be just as bad as the monsters he's fighting. He is contributing to the system of violence and malice that he is supposedly fighting against. That is the major moral question at the ending of the Batman that was so intriguing to me. Now albeit, there doesn't seem to be much a resolve besides the fact that Bruce is seen actually helping people in the end (vs beating them up), but I'm excited to see where the trilogy goes from here.
The first half of The Batman is just okay, and it has some promising themes. The third act of the film completely contradicts the themes and ruins the plot/characters/tone.
I’m so glad you can see how surface level/superficial
/incomplete this movie is
Thought I would disagree with you on The Batman when you were listing the changes, then you say "and i love it" and realize we are on the same page.
Yes it is angsty, silly, and feels like a parody at times, and I am so ok with that. I loved that movie because they let someone do something different.
We already got there with spiderman. I want studios to just acceot the idea that audiences can handle different interpretations of these characters and stories.
My issue with Falcone and Selena in particular is that it's already established Falcone strangled Selena's friend, and Selena knows her mother was strangled.
But the Falcone has to go and confess to killing Selena's mother right before he's about to kill her.
He had no reason to tell her, and even if he felt like it would clear his conscious somehow (while killing his own daughter), it weakens the audience's experience by "telling" not "showing".
Very interesting video. About the Ra's al Ghul death scene and the Joker's saving scene, there is a big difference: Batman was the one that threw the Joker out, so if he didn't save him he would become a killer. If Ra's was thrown off the train by Batman during the fight, he would try to save him.
Quality video. Keep it up
A good way to write in more moments of intimacy between Selena and Bruce is make the tech she’s using an excuse for her to be in the cave or something. Like “Mr, Wayne, these need to be installed very carefully and we only have the tech to do it in the batcave” and then, she either has more of a chance to bond with Bruce but maybe even learn his identity. Then, that romance will be better set up for when she’s gonna kill, like you said
I wouldn't mind creating my own Superhero.
I really enjoyed this video. Subscribe and looking forward to more!
🙏
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are probably the better movie, but The Batman is absolutely the best Batman movie for the simple reason that it’s actually a Batman movie. The Nolan films were always Batman through the eyes of Nolan and Nolan didn’t really portray the characters correctly. Hell even though the films on paper get Batman right with him refusing to kill, he still does. He literally kills Two Face at the end of The Dark Knight. The Batman gets just about every part of Batman’s mythos correct (within the context of the story). That might sound contradictory to what I said about Nolan earlier but it’s different there because Matt Reeves told a new and different story with the characters from the comics, and Nolan created his own versions of the characters for his own stories
Please make a video on Michael Mann's Heat
PLEASE
so I guess I'm a utilitarian in this discussion, as opposed to a deontologist. deontology is apparently for people who are unable to understand consequences, both short and long term.
What's not to like -" A billionaire dressing up as a bat and beating up poor people".
But we know batman and catwoman still go back and forth and even have a daughter in the future, so her leaving isn't really that big of a deal for those of us who know. I really liked the movie.
First off, I loved the movie. Leagues above pretty much every superhero movie made since about 2014 and better than most before even still.
Alot of the issues I see people have seem to stem from movies like this relying on prior awareness of these characters. We know batman is gonna be perceived a certain way by citizens and pull it off at the end cause he's batman. On a deeper level, we READERS know falcone and thomas wayne have a relationship that is a bit tricky for bruce to deal with. The movie can only function in regard to what we already know about what it's presenting. That says more about the genre as a whole at this point than the one movie. It's a great movie and would be better if batman never existed from a meta perspective.
I'm sorry, you lost the argument at "arguably superior."
Nice vids nonetheless.
You didn't like Batman Begins?!?
Anyone who liked The Batman is a bad person
The new batman was a complete disaster! A caveman bashing things with no detective, no charm, no stealth
Evil Thomas Wayne is the DUMBEST Batman plot point ever from DC and they KEEP DOING IT
The batman was never good. Cope harder
The fuck is your problem with nirvana?
The main problem of the Batman movie is that both Batman and the Riddler were turned into liberal porridge soy boys with "trauma" issues.
Because Batman is famously free of trauma