Out of all the Burton-Schumacher Batman films, none other shows Bruce Wayne as often nor depicts him so thoroughly as a meaningful character. This Bruce is braver, bolder, more comfortable in anything he wears. With no time to costume up and without hesitation, like James Bond in black tux, Bruce attacks Two-Face’s thugs during a frantic attempt to stop a ticking bomb from killing hundreds at the circus. He does not become Batman. He is Batman.
Bruce: You have a thing for bats?
Chase: Oh, that’s a Rorschach, Mister Wayne, an inkblot. People see what they want. I think the question would be: Do you have a thing for bats?
Some of the movie’s campier moments distracted from its psychological breadth, as did its association with Schumacher’s next Bat-film, which would become the campiest in more than thirty years.
Batman & Robin (1997 Motion Picture)
“This is why Superman works alone.”
—Batman (George Clooney)
Because the film Batman & Robin provided little depth to Batman himself,c spotting Batman’s character development at this point requires the viewer to step back and consider his personal arc over the course of the four films: In Burton’s movies, Bruce Wayne starts off in Batman as a hollow figure, but he’s at least trying to socialize and maintain some pretense of a life. By Batman Returns, he has stopped bothering to pretend. Gone is the party he threw at the start of the previous film. Now he sits home alone in the dark until the Bat-Signal flips his Batman switch and his ideal self springs to life. Selina must enter his life before he’ll consider revisiting Gotham’s social scene. This anti-heroine who challenges Batman as Catwoman and dates Bruce as Selina awakens his human nature in a way Vicki Vale never could—by attracting and matching both sides, bat and man. By the film’s end, he has discovered he does want someone else in his life. The Schumacher films then show him progressively opening up more. In Batman Forever, he opens his psyche and heart to a psychologist and begrudgingly takes on a partner, followed by the movie Batman & Robin, where he welcomes Batgirl and the whole Bat-Family notion without hesitation.
Cartoons
Many cartoons have starred or guest-starred Batman and Robin. The Dynamic Duo teamed up with Scooby-Doo, joined the Super Friends, tolerated Bat-Mite, and—due to the restrictive nature of 1960s to 1980s standards and practices—improvised nonviolent ways to combat evil over the course of assorted Saturday morning programs that offered no depth, few psychological insights, and precious little to attract adults. Many25 nevertheless consider Batman’s definitive screen depiction to have been that of one particular cartoon, Batman: The Animated Series.
In 1992, Warner Bros. Animation followed the success of Tim Burton’s Batman by developing a new animated program, which Bruce Timm masterminded. Filled with shadows, pathos, and wry wit, episodes retold comic book stories and mixed in new works from whole cloth. Its creators held to the principle that Batman was the character’s true self and playboy Bruce Wayne simply his disguise. “He is Batman,” said Kevin Conroy, the actor who voiced this Batman and Bruce Wayne. “He became Batman the instant his parents were murdered. Batman needs Bruce, however hollow that identity feels to him from time to time. Bruce keeps Batman human.” Where some movies show Bruce’s temptation to give up being Batman, this Batman’s only temptation would have been to give up being Bruce. “The temptation is to retreat into the cave and never come out. To give up his disguise as Bruce Wayne and surrender himself completely to the darkness.”26
Batman: The Animated Series left lasting marks on Batman’s rogues gallery. Its version of Two-Face’s origin integrated multiple personality in a way that made some sense, showing that its Harvey Dent always had a bad Harvey inside him waiting for trauma to bring it out. The series fleshed out Poison Ivy, introduced psychiatrist-turned-sidekick Harley Quinn into the Joker’s life, and re-envisioned the previously two-dimensional Mr. Freeze into perhaps the most poignant opponent of them all (see Case File 2–2: Mr. Freeze).
Timm’s Batman would continue his adventures in The New Batman/Superman Adventures, Batman Beyond, and Justice League Unlimited. Other, unrelated Batman cartoon series would follow, exploring new takes on the characters (the serious The Batman, the comedic The Brave and the Bold), along with unrelated animated films (e.g., Batman: Under the Red Hood) that each met popular demand for fresh exploits from our Dark Knight.
Batman Begins (2005 Motion Picture)
“A guy who dresses up like a bat clearly has issues.”
—Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale)
For the first time, a Batman movie’s central figure was the man inside the mask, Bruce Wayne. Director and script co-author Christopher Nolan finally got to spin the kind of tale Joel Schumacher had yearned for the chance to tell, the cinematic counterpart to author Frank Miller and artist David Mazzuchelli’s Batman: Year One. Whereas Tim Burton and his team had created a Gotham askew from our reality, built on massive soundstages with nightmare architecture and no hint that the rest of the planet might even exist, Nolan gave us a city as real as he could create with scenes shot in London and Chicago, no gigantic soundstage, and its hero roaming the planet. Quitting college, Bruce picks up skills outside Gotham until he is ready to bring his new knowledge home.
Batman Begins is about fear—what causes it, how it’s overcome, and how it’s instilled. Between scenes of Henri Ducard teaching Bruce advanced fighting techniques so that he might “turn fear against those who prey on the fearful,” we see how 8-year-old Bruce gained the fears his adult self is learning to face. Before we first see the man, we see the child running, playing, and falling through an old well into a cave filled with bats. Nightmares haunt the boy. His father assures him that the bats flew out to frighten him only because they’d felt their own fear, because all creatures feel fear, “especially the scary ones.” By daylight the family enters Gotham, the city his parents have worked hard to improve, a city that will never again look quite so bright, to attend a show that night. Performers’ bat-like costumes frighten Bruce, so the Waynes leave the show early only to cross paths with the mugger and murderer Joe Chill. Batman Begins brings in an element strangely edited out of Batman Forever: If not for young Bruce’s feelings, his fear in this case, they wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twentysomething Bruce later tells Ducard, “My anger outweighs my guilt,” without denying he feels guilty.
Once back in Gotham, Batman instills fear through intimidation and violence while Dr. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. the Scarecrow, creates long-lasting fear via panic-inducing toxin. Crane and Ducard, a.k.a. Ra’s al Ghul, mean to panic the whole city. Bruce, who has been so intent on making crooks feel fear, now fights to stop that toxin’s spread. He fights fear itself. Robbed of revenge against Chill, Bruce has launched his assault on all criminals—every thug he slugs a pitiful substitute for his parents’ killer—but he comes to recognize that justice is bigger than vengeance and that he can inspire much more. In the film’s final scene, Jim Gordon shines the Bat-Signal while he voices concerns about escalation. He worries that Batman’s example might inspire criminals to try to top him, criminals like a theatrical newcomer who killed guards and left a Joker playing card behind.
“This is your mask,” Rachel Dawes says, touching Bruce’s face in the film’s last daylight scene. “Your real face is the one that criminals now fear.” Not quite. While one face is truer to himself than the other, as this Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale actually plays three roles: the reckless billionaire playboy, the symbol who must be more than a man, and the flesh-and-blood mortal his surrogate father Alfred knows best.
The Dark Knight (2008 Motion Picture)
“They’re wise to your act. You got rules. The Joker, he’s got no rules. Nobody’s gonna cross him for you.”
—Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts)
The Dark Knight is about inspiration. Batman’s example inspires foolhardy copycat vigilantes, his threat inspires less fear once the criminals learn he won’t kill, and Harvey Dent inspires the ci
tizens of Gotham City. On the other side, there’s the Joker out to inspire anarchy and coax everybody into revealing their darkest sides. Inspiration leads to escalation.
More than any other villains, the Joker and Two-Face reflect Batman himself as funhouse distortions, converses of who and what he is. The laughing, jesting, brightly colored Joker contrasts with the grim, dark Batman. The Joker is the Joker, no alter ego. The film’s opening bank robbery shows him wearing clown mask over clown makeup. Under the surface there’s only more Joker. He gives no history except inconsistent lies. When he finally considers the impact of his demand that Batman unmask, he retracts the threat and demands that Batman’s identity remain undisclosed. He wants a Batman who has no other self, a Dark Knight whose only deeper layer is further darkness.
More obviously mirroring the hero overall, the Batman/Bruce Wayne duality, is Harvey “Two-Face” Dent—another man transformed by tragedy into a figure with two faces. From a dinner date of Bruce’s to the Joker himself, people keep wondering if Harvey Dent, the face of honor and hope in corrupt Gotham City, might be the bat. At one point Harvey claims that he is, turning himself over to authorities and trusting Batman to do the right thing by “saving my ass.” Worth noting from this film is one hint as to why their defining tragedies sent these two men down different forks in the road—Bruce into taking charge of his life, protecting the innocent, and fighting for what’s right, and Harvey into trusting only 50–50 fate, seeking revenge, and threatening innocents while showing no sign of remorse. Long before fire scars Harvey down one side, police have already nicknamed him “Two-Face.” Though we never hear why, it may mean they’d glimpsed some hypocrisy, a malevolent potential that the Joker would later lure out. When Gordon asks why Harvey won’t let doctors treat his burns, Harvey’s answer is to insist Gordon utter that nickname, after which Harvey says, “Why should I hide who I am?”
The Dark Knight includes depictions of mental illness. Harvey tries intimidating information out of one of the Joker’s psychotic henchmen until Batman points out the uselessness of the attempt. “Schiff, Thomas. A paranoid schizophrenic, former patient at Arkham Asylum, the kind of mind the Joker attracts.” For the most part, however bizarre he might appear, the Joker seems dangerously sane. He understands his actions; he uses order to sow chaos, developing well-orchestrated plans to foster anarchy; and although the people of Gotham will prove themselves better than he expects, he correctly anticipates many actions people will take and recognizes the reality around him. He has no hallucinations or obvious delusions. When he tells Two-Face he doesn’t scheme, “I just do things,” either he’s lying or he has a view so warped that he fails to recognize his own scheming nature. We do not know.
However, there are moments that make the audience question the Joker’s grip on reality. When he tells mobsters, “Why don’t you give me a call when you want to start taking things a little more seriously? Here’s my card,” and drops a Joker card onto the table, is he toying with them or does he truly not realize that this card that has no contact information will not help them call? This character who attracts psychotic henchmen may have lingering symptoms from his own past psychosis. He keeps making involuntary, repetitive movements—flicking his tongue, smacking his mouth—which suggest tardive dyskinesia, a condition that arises as a consequence of long-term or high-dosage use of antipsychotic (neuroleptic) medication. Even after discontinuing the drugs’ use, patients may show these tic-like actions for the rest of their lives.27
The film ends with Gordon smashing the Bat-Signal, the same bat symbol he’d shone in his first scene when he’d wanted to assure the folks of Gotham that their hero was out there. Together he and Batman will mislead them. After investing so much time trying both to make criminals cower and to help citizens have faith, they decide Batman cannot embody both chaos and order, both shadowed hero and light in the night. To preserve Harvey’s value as the White Knight beyond his death, they’ll keep the Face’s sins secret and let the public think Batman may have committed murder. Batman will be only the Dark Knight. He may have underestimated his own power to shine.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012 Motion Picture)
“We were in this together, and then you were gone. And now this evil rises. The Batman has to come back.”
—Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman)
Following the death of actor Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight’s Joker, filmmaker Christopher Nolan found himself without a story for the next film, initially saying he had “honestly no concept of what I would do next.”28 In time, he decided that instead of continuing to treat these films as Batman’s early career, he would skip ahead and bring his Bat-films to an end with a story the comic books could not tell. “And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story,” Nolan said, “viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories.”29 The old serials aside, what previous superhero movie series ever clearly concluded instead of fizzling out? Chris Nolan takes Batman into territory no movie superhero has dared visit before.
Ra’s al Ghul and the Joker have each tried to teach Batman lessons about the darker side of human nature. He’s not the only one they’re trying to teach. Ra’s wants the world to watch Gotham tear itself apart; the Joker wants Gotham’s citizens to see for themselves the worst that they’re ready to do. One thinks globally; the other thinks locally. Bane, too, means to bring out the worst in people before school finally lets out.
As if Gotham’s police, the al Ghul legacy, a city’s simmering tension, and outright riots weren’t trouble enough, Batman has to juggle dealings with Selina Kyle and Bane: the woman who makes him and the villain who breaks him. Having sacrificed the Dark Knight’s reputation in the previous film for the sake of White Knight Harvey Dent’s memory, should Batman fade into urban legend hated and hunted or emerge like a supernatural figure risen from the grave? Without Batman, what is Bruce Wayne? Without heroes during times of peace, who’s ready to oppose evil when new conflict appears? As things get bad and then get worse, Bruce will have to reconcile with his own creation, the Batman, as crime-fighter, symbol, and the truest part of himself so the hero can rise to the occasion. Bruce will have to push himself to the limits he has previously said Batman can’t have. How deeply do the sacrifices cut? Who will occupy Gotham? With the haves feeding off the have-nots during troubled post-9/11, post-war times and evil men then pounding their messages into frustrated citizens, Bruce needs to determine once and for all what kind of hero, what kind of legend or man, people really need and what they need to know about him. What does it take to break the Bat—or to salvage a shattered symbol?
“There’s a storm coming, Mister Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches ‘cause when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”
—Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway)
The Source Material: Comic Books!
DC Comics stories have featured more than one Bruce Wayne in their ongoing series, plus many parallel universes, variant histories, possible futures, imaginary tales, and other “alternate” Batman yarns, the most influential of which is arguably Frank Miller’s four-part graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986). In terms of ongoing continuity through most DC Comics publications, despite history-altering crises along the way, there have been two: the Golden Age Batman and the repeatedly revised Silver Age/modern one.
The Golden Age Batman
In 1956, DC Comics began replacing existing characters like the Flash, Green Lantern, and Atom with new characters that had the same superhero names but different origins and costumes, often new secret identities and powers. DC left certain characters unchanged, including those they now dub the “Big Three”: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. When Bar
ry Allen, a character whose debut as the new Flash launched the Silver Age,30 crosses from his world (Earth-One) into a parallel universe (Earth-Two), he meets Jay Garrick, who’d been the Flash during comics’ Golden Age.31 Earth-One’s Justice League of America soon meets Earth-Two’s Justice Society of America,32 and things grow complicated. Once the continuity establishes that the new versions and similarly named old ones live in different worlds, DC indirectly created two Supermen, two Wonder Women, two Batmen. The Justice League’s Batman, having interacted with Silver Age heroes like Allen, lives on Earth-One and, as such, has to be a different character from Earth-Two’s Batman, who’d known Garrick in World War II.
The Golden Age Batman and Superman become best friends, both honorary members of the Justice Society. While that original Batman has allies, he has only one partner, his ward, Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Robin the Boy Wonder. This Bruce Wayne, having been raised by Uncle Philip and not by the butler Alfred Pennyworth, hires butler Alfred Beagle sometime after becoming Dick Grayson’s surrogate father. Bruce marries Selina Kyle, the reformed Catwoman, and together they have a daughter, Helena. That world’s Catwoman and then Batman each die when they come out of retirement for one last adventure apiece.33 Adopting the nom de plume Huntress, Helena carries on the crime-fighting tradition.
Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (Wiley Psychology & Pop Culture) Page 4
