more Batman thoughts

[ivyfic]

Throughout that whole movie, I was struck by just how young Batman is to be doing what he's doing. I'm so used to seeing Batman as a 40-year-old that seeing the same drive and determination in him when he's in his late twenties is a little frightening.

Also, seeing a very little Barbara Gordon, knowing that she's going to have a liason with Bruce once she's the Batgirl, is just kind of - sick.

And I have to point out that Bruce has very strong morals in this film and no sense of collateral damage. No, I will not kill a murderer in cold blood. But I will blow up the house he's in, causing him and many other people to die.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

1) Batman would have to start pretty young to enjoy the reputation he has at 40. This does make it any less scary that he is so focused.

2) It doesn't have to be Barbara...does it? She's not twenty-five years younger than Bruce (I wouldn't put that kid in the highchair at any older than five). Does Jim have any other kids?

3) I thought about this, too, but only at the end when the mass destruction was being caused because he was trying to escape. Not to mention the massive injuries sustained by the cops in some of those overturned cars...Well, there didn't seem to be any league of shadows members dead in that fire that I saw. Maybe the farmer dude hightailed it. He had his chance; if he got incinerated instead, well, it's still justice since he's a murderer, right?

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Re: 2. Though the comic canon doesn't always agree, there was at one point a Jim Gordon Junior, though I think he was supposed to be Barbara's older brother. My memory is fuzzy, though, and I'd have to look it up.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Finally saw the movie--you're right, it was excellent.

Re: morals and collateral damage--that's one of my pet peeves with superhero and similar genres. Not that they're willing to deal collateral damage (of the 3 major examples cited above:
-- The first [destruction of the League of Shadows building] wasn't really collateral damage, i.e., he didn't destroy anything he didn't mean to destroy.
-- The second [the police chase] he was rightly chastised for by Alfred, and seemed to regret the unnecessary chances taken.
-- The third [the final scene] was the most certain way to stop a much greater evil.

No, my problem is this bizarre idea that a hero can never kill a disarmed and defeated enemy, even if the enemy was defeated in fair combat. This is the OSC criticism of Hook, but it applies to the climax scene here where Batman allows Al Ghul (sp?) to die in the resulting train crash, rather than finishing the job. Morally, it makes sense to refuse to be a vigilante executioner (as in the early scene,) but having defeated a deadly enemy in fair combat, it seems odd to claim that it's wrong to finish the job and protect the innocent from future malice. After all, if anything is certain in the world of superheroes, it's that villains will escape jail and strike again :)

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

There is a line that any superhero must not cross if he is to remain a hero. This is the convention the major comic publishers have maintained since the 50s, and is now understood to the difference between a hero (no matter what other wrongs he commits) and a soon-to-be-villain-dark-hero.

But more to the point, this convention was established because no writer wants to definitively kill off a villian. If the hero kills a villian in plain sight, then you've got to have a damn good excuse to bring him back, and if you can't bring back villians, you're going to be hurting for ideas in a few months. Not to mention, any other author who wanted to use that villian is going to be hurting _you_...

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

So, what you're saying is that ethics come out of the exigencies of commercial publishing?