(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

as a follow-up to this conversation though, here's my broader opinion on The Batman:

This Batman is, to some fundamental extent, a pathetic figure. He cannot get past his childhood trauma and responds to it by punching people, something that for the most part accomplishes nothing. He is not, even, that impressive at punching people.

Batman's cleverness and investigative skills help him occasionally get a riddle before the police do, but this is meaningless because this doesn't ever let him stay ahead of the Riddler; his plan goes off exactly as he wanted it to, and whatever few details failed were not because Batman outwitted him. They don't help him find Selina's girlfriend before she dies, either. His tools and gadgets and skills don't let him disarm a bomb right in front of him. His punching ability will let him occasionally scare a criminal, but when faced with the Riddler's followers he's outnumbered and loses.

Alfred tries to remind him of his family's legacy, and what does he do about that? He insists his family legacy is him punching people. Because it's easy and cathartic in the moment. If the world's greatest detective had tried to figure out why his family's actual legacy was not helping the city, he might've used his investigative skills, supercomputers, and privileged access to his family's records to find the same things the Riddler did and shortcircuited the plot. But he didn't.

Batman's comparative advantage is not his punching people skills. He may be good at it, but ultimately he's a guy dressed like a bat and wearing body armor; this is not the kind of story where amazing martial arts skills let him effortless beat up an army of mooks, and in any case the problems he want to solve won't obediently line up to all be beaten.

What can Batman accomplish, then? We are shown criminals running in terror from shadows, but this is not enough; we are also told crime hasn't gone down in Gotham since he started batmanning about. But it hints at what he does do, in the end: symbolism. Inspire hope. Lead people in an effort to recover from catastrophe, when they are hurt and scared.

Batman can do something if he lets go of the idea that he personally can punch problems until they stop moving and instead try to use his greater leverage to move people and change systems. Will he do so? idk. There's gonna be sequels to this and I rather expect he'll spend a significant portion of their runtime ineffectually punching people. But maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.