The Dark Knight Rises Review (Part 4 of 4)

Over the past few weeks, I've been tearing down Batman, discussing major foibles built into the character by the different creators and times in which he has existed. It's not because I don't like Batman; I've found that a good rule of thumb when encountering things I don't like is to just walk away and get on with my life. If I truly thought Batman was as fundamentally flawed a concept as these last few posts might imply, I wouldn't care enough to talk about it.

This series isn't even a critique of these variations of the concept; I'm painting with some pretty broad brushes here. Most of the time, these issues are part of the general, grating background noise of an imperfect universe that I alone haven't learned to tune out in an effort to go along and get along. If life experiences are a pile of burritos with mud in the middle, Batman's foibles are the ones where the mud's been replaced with onions; still awful, but better than most.

Which is why Nolan's version of the Batman concept—the concept being the sum total of the characters, the setting, and the central conflict—is the best that has ever been created^[1].

What's Wrong with Batman, Part 3 of 3

I love Batman and I'm not alone. Batman is more beloved by the internet than a Jesus made of bacon. The concept of Batman has changed a lot over the last 75 years, but its core quality is that it adapts to the culture of which it is a part.

Batman does have some problems though. While some of these are products of their time, many are the result of concepts executed without considering of the implications. I'm no Batmanologist, but I'd like to take a few days to look at these problems.

The more modern interpretations of Batman take the violence back a notch. He starts the Martha Wayne Foundation. He helps street urchins get jobs. His equipment gets upgraded. He gets a son.

It's during this period that his one sort-of superpower hits its stride. It's a contextually supernatural ability to "use his fucking brain," which is apparently equally as rare as being the last surviving member of an alien world 100s of light years away and from an alternate universe. This boils down to his superpower being common sense, which is narratively executed so that Batman isn't smarter than everyone else so much as he makes everyone else dumber by being in the same comic.