On Cowards and Superstitions

A lot of writers just don't get Batman, and this saddens me--because honestly, he's really not that hard to understand.

At his core, Batman is supposed to be terrifying. I mean, think of it from a criminal's point of view: he's a grown man in peak physical condition who dresses in a black cape and cowl (fuck that blue and gray shit) and prowls the rooftops of his city, looking for any excuse to beat the shit out of someone.

An arsonist escapes from Arkham? Batman dangles him off a rooftop.
There's a murderer on the loose? Batman breaks the dude's ribcage.
Jaywalker? Batman curbstomps him. Nobody breaks traffic laws in Gotham.

The man's a borderline psychopath who happens to be proficient in damn near every form of unarmed combat known to man. That's pretty fucking scary, if you ask me. And hell--the entire reason that he chose a bat as his symbol was so he could strike fear into the hearts of criminals. (Maybe he should have picked something less adorable?)

That's why I liked Batman Begins so much: it was all about fear. Bruce Wayne conquers his own fears, Batman scares criminals shitless, and the Scarecrow traps people in waking nightmares. And Liam Neeson runs around with a ninja sword. It's certainly not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I actually like it better than The Dark Knight (the Joker notwithstanding) because it has a more streamlined narrative and the "fear" theme going on.

So, yes. Batman is a scary, scary man. He's the thing lurking in the shadows, waiting to snatch you up. I'd like to think that the mothers of Gotham use him to frighten their children into submission, whispering warnings of "Be a good boy, or Batman will come for you while you sleep" just before turning off the lights and shutting the bedroom door. He only attacks the wicked, so you're safe as long as you remain virtuous--but God help you if you fall from grace. He'll be there. Watching. Waiting.

One of this man's primary weapons is fear--and to paraphrase Carmine Falcone, people always fear what they don't understand. He's practically a walking nightmare to Gotham's criminal population, and you can feel his looming shadow even when he's not in the scene. Like most scary things, he's actually more effective when you don't see him. And that's another reason that I love Batman Begins: several of the action sequences aren't from his point of view. Instead, the camera focuses on gun-toting henchmen while something skulks around in the shadows and picks them off one by one. I would take the docks scene from Batman Begins over the climactic Batman vs. SWAT vs. Joker-thugs scene in The Dark Knight because the whole thing gets much less interesting when we actually see how Batman is doing that thing he does so well. He loses a certain amount of his mystique that way; it's like watching one of those shitty Fox specials where some douchebag stage magician reveals his secrets on camera.

So, here's my proposal. Someone needs to make a Batman movie that's not about Batman. Make the protagonist someone else entirely, set it in Gotham, and give audiences a chance to see the Dark Knight through a different set of eyes. One of the best damn Batman series I've read in years is Gotham Central, and Batman appears maybe three or four times in all of volume one--but you can feel his presence nonetheless. Gotham is his city, and everyone knows it.

That's what I want to see in a new Batman movie. It would need a respectable director (I mean, I'd love to see Robert Rodriguez's version of Batman, but for entirely different reasons) with a real flair for pacing, atmosphere, and use of light and shadow. Make it a crime drama or a thriller or even a straight-up horror film, and set it in Gotham City. We can see the man at work, but he needs to be used sparingly. Tastefully. He's fucking scary and he needs to stay that way.

Similarly, the less focus there is on gadgets, the better. Much as I like the Hellboy movies (let's be honest here--everything Guillermo del Toro touches turns to solid gold), they place too much emphasis on gadgets and underground lairs. The second movie tones down the sci-fi look quite a bit, but it's still a far cry from the comics, where Hellboy usually just fights evil with his Right Hand of Doom, the Samaritan, and whatever ancient artifacts happen to by lying around. In other words, take the route of simplicity. This isn't to say that Batman wouldn't use gadgets extensively--we just wouldn't have to see it. We don't always need to know how he does everything he does, as long as we know that he's capable of doing it.

So, yeah. Basically, I want to see a Darren-Aronofsky-directed crime noir thriller set in Gotham.

...Aaaaaaand there goes the nerdgasm. I'm gonna go clean up.