Positive Cynicism – Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are supposed to be realistic?
Aaron R. Davis |
I’ve seen more than one debate in the last couple of days on more than one geek website where people are attempting to deconstruct the idea that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are realistic movies. I didn’t ever realize they were supposed to be realistic … I mean, sure, they have a superficial edge of realism that is part of Nolan’s style (none of his movies are realistic, but he approaches them as if they were), but do there need to be entire articles describing the myriad ways in which a movie where a guy dresses as a bat and rides a tank across rooftops are fantasies?
You know me, I have problems with Batman, anyway. I think too many fans are invested in the idea that Batman is special because he doesn’t have any powers, while ignoring the fact that over the past 20 years DC Comics has basically turned him into a Jedi with a limitless supply of wealth and free time. Sorry, but that old “could Batman beat Superman” saw is a litmus test for me. Could Batman beat Superman? If your answer is a long, rambling “Well, with time to prepare for the fight and blah blah going on forever” and not just “No, because the fight ends in one second when Superman punches Batman into the sun,” I’m going to get tired of talking about comics with you.
And you know I have problems with Christopher Nolan’s movies, too. I was never able to like The Dark Knight, and I’ve talked about it on many occasions. And that’s actually part of my annoyance with the people who are talking about how the Bat-movies aren’t realistic, because they’re picking apart inconsistencies in film editing (simple human error) or problems with the logic of, again, a guy dressed as a bat driving around the streets in a tank. They’re not talking about the massive narrative leaps in The Dark Knight.
“Do I look like a man with a plan? Even though the first time you ever see me in the movie I’m clearly following an intricately-designed and perfectly-timed blueprint to get away clear with my bank robbery? I’m an agent of chaos! Except for everything you actually see me do on screen! No, really, it was a complete coincidence that they took Harvey Dent down that one direction on Lower Wacker Drive that I needed them to go for all of my intense non-planning to work!”
Ugh, I get going with this movie and it’s the tip of the iceberg. Seriously, Lucius has an ethical problem with Batman’s big surveillance sonar, but he was fine doing it in Hong Kong? And ultimately, what was the frigging point of the whole Hong Kong thing? What was the point of the scene with the Scarecrow? There are about 40 superfluous minutes you could cut out of this flick, and it would be the exact same movie. Batman is too much of a good guy to kill the Joker, but not so much of a good guy that he’s fine killing Two-Face because he’s protecting an ideal or some such bullshit? Why would Commissioner Gordon even want to go through with Batman’s ridiculous “sacrifice” to preserve Harvey Dent’s honor when Harvey Dent was seconds away from shooting Gordon’s son in the face? And how is Harvey Dent angry at the system over Rachel’s death instead of the Joker? Seriously? It’s not the Joker’s fault, it’s everyone else’s fault for failing to stop the Joker from doing it?
Okay, okay. Yeah, I was hugely disappointed in that movie. I watched it a few times on HBO because, honestly, I really felt like I was missing something that made it all work for so many people, but it just made me hate it more and more. I came to dislike it so much that it actually retroactively ruined Batman Begins for me, because more narrative inconsistencies started popping out at me. I mean, Bruce won’t kill anyone, and the way he stops himself from killing someone is to burn down a building with the entire League of Shadows inside of it, thus killing them? That’s a weird moral stance to take … especially when it just boils down to the supposedly crowd-pleasing moment of Batman’s flip “I’m not going to kill you, but I don’t have to save you,” which really should have been “I have a moral code against killing, but I’m still going to make sure you die somehow,” which really isn’t a moral code …
Maybe in The Dark Knight Rises they’ll just go full bore on the hypocrisy and explain how the only way to protect law and order is for the super-rich to ignore the confines of law and order and take justice into their own hands, because only they know what’s best for people, and holy shit this is sounding more and more like Ayn Rand’s Batman to me …
But, yeah, those editing inconsistencies really ruin the realism of those movies.
Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com
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I don’t think saying that Nolan’s Batman films are realistic as much as they set things in an environment of consequence. That is to say, Nolan takes the characters and concepts he’s dealing with seriously. And that’s something we’ve rarely seen in live-action movies based on comic book heroes. A lot of comic book movies are based around camp, and while it’s nice at times, I think it becomes somewhat insulting after a while. You can only see “look how ridiculous this concept is!” so many times before you just want a filmmaker to play with a different concept of the character.
Anyway, as a longtime reader of your work, I’m really aware of your problems with the films, and Nolan in general. While I have my own opinions of the films (they are among my favorites), I just kind of wonder how much of you, personally, dislike the films, and how much of you just does not like the zeitgeist/the fans.
It’s only a question that I wonder about because I share similar feelings to yours, only with Fight Club. I can’t stand the fans, and the douchebags that quote it. And it makes me hate the film in a large way, because it’s incredibly flawed.
As far as the Superman/Batman thing goes, the strangest and most on the point critique I’ve ever heard anyone make of it (I’m not sure where I heard it, btw), was that Superman has dropped in popularity whereas Batman’s risen because of the perceived invulnerability of each character has shifted. DC depowered Superman and made him …weaker, prone to moral question and not as god-like; whereas Batman has basically become an undefeatable bat-god. Children, Teenagers, adults… I think that with heroes, its not that they like to see that their heroes CAN be beaten, but they’re confronted with situations (and great stories) where they actually wonder, “man…how are they going to get through THIS one???”
Anyway, just my two cents.
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– Yes, The Joker carried out plans in The Dark Knight, but his ultimate goal was always none other than to create mayhem. That’s why the “I’m an agent of chaos” line holds true. Besides, that speech is, more than anything else, The Joker’s way of finishing the job of driving Dent crazy and setting him loose. It was established in the movie that The Joker was a B.S.er (he B.S.ed the mob and the police, and told different stories about how he got his face scars… Batman is probably the only guy he was honest with), so he could have just simply been telling Dent what he needed to hear to finally go insane.
– Dent was not angry at “the system”, he was angry at life itself. And he WAS angry at The Joker, in fact, he went after The Joker before going after everybody else; he even put a freaking gun to his head. He didn’t shoot him because by then he was already Two-Face, a madman making decisions through coin tosses, and in this case the coin toss resulted in the Joker living.
– As I remember, Bruce and Lucius only used Bruce’s cellphone in Hong Kong to map out the chinese guy’s building (as opposed to using the cellphones of millions of people in Gotham to map out an entire city), so nothing happened in Hong Kong for Lucius to be upset about.
– The point of the Hong Kong thing? It shows the mobsters that The Joker was right: The Batman has no jurisdiction. That’s the point in which they decide to hire The Joker’s services. It’s also a kick-ass action scene.
– The point of the scene with the Scarecrow? To pick up Batman’s crusade after the events of Batman Begins, and show that it was getting good results against organized crime (people were buying crappy drugs from The Scarecrow because Batman had put the other street dealers out of business). Also, to introduce the bat-imitators. And it’s also a kick-ass action scene.
– Batman killing Two-Face to protect some kind of ideal? Now I think you’re just misremembering. Batman pushed Dent to stop him from killing Gordon’s son. Dent fell and died. Batman was busy saving Gordon’s son from falling, and so couldn’t save Dent. Dent’s death was not intentional on Batman’s part.
– Gordon plays along with the lie at the end of The Dark Knight, because if the truth about Dent becomes known, the results of their effort against the mob will be undone.
– Sure, a bunch of people died when Rä’s Al Ghul’s lair was destroyed, but the building caught fire by accident, it’s not like Bruce said “I’m going to burn you all because killing this guy is wrong” (There was a Batman Begins parody in Mad Magazine which brought up this very same issue. I find the whole thing funny, from the audience’s point of view).
– Not saving Rä’s Al Ghul is not the same as making sure he dies. Rä’s knew the same ninjutsu techniques as Batman, he could’ve pulled some ninja stunt at the last second and gotten out of that train wagon.
So there, I just solved all your problems with the movies, just in time for The Dark Knight Rises XD. Enjoy!
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Nice rebuttal, Carlos. Now go crawl back up Chris Nolan’s ass… winter is just around the corner, after all.
Aaron, I totally agree with you. Nolan’s been lauded– worshiped, actually– for his “gritty” and/or “realistic” treatment of the Batman franchise. I don’t see a hint of realism- or humor, for that matter- in any of these movies. The idea of people taking seriously a man in a rubber bat-suit beating up muggers is unbelievable. I personally think “Super” is a much more realistic take on the costumed vigilante idea.
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