Amph ITT...I'm Batman (Discussion)

Pfft that doesn't count since everyone knows bullets are non-lethal to Darkseid just like how batarangs are non-lethal to humans. So it's all relative

 

I bet a batarang could be lethal if it was used properly.

 

It doesn't count if he's not holding them in his hand. I'm pretty sure he's cool with firing projectiles from his vehicles.

Except the gun was loaded with a bullet specifically designed to kill Darkseid. A radium bullet I think it was?

 

Oh, well then nevermind. I actually haven't read this comic, lol.

 

I can't think of any instances where that happens, outside of TV/film, though.

 

I'm sorry; I assumed you had some familiarity with Batman. I see I was wrong now.

 

OK Catherine, but taking silver age stuff that was intentionally removed from the character for 50+ years isn't actually useful nor instructive.

 

Idk that much about Batman, I mostly just watched the cartoon when I was little and I've read a few comics, but I'm not sure why Nolan should have been slavishly faithful only to the modern comics version of Batman and ignored the fifty years of Batman history before COIE or wherever you want to draw the arbitrary line. If he was writing a comic, sure, but (unless he was doing a straight adaptation of a specific story) it's his movie, so as long as he gets most of the basics right, why shouldn't he make the character his own? If everyone always wrote him the same, the modern Batman would still be putting machine guns on his vehicles and senselessly murdering people. Maybe Nolan's interpretation sucks, but I don't think it's because he didn't make it exactly like a character who's been changing and evolving for almost seventy-five years.

FWIW I didn't like that scene in TDK either, but mostly just because you'd think Batman might want to check if there were any people in those cars before he blew them up.

 

But he also cited something that just happened recently in the comics. It's not really tenable to say "it only counts as Batman when my two favorite authors are writing."

 

Yes, doesn't have to be a strict, rigid, 100% adaptation, but should at least be recognizable without having someone namedropping.
In that respect, very few of Nolan's characters are done correctly.

 

I don't see where that criticism really applies. In the Batman universe, there is only:

1. Research pharmacologist with an interest in psychoactive compounds that turns to crime (Scarecrow)
2. Megalomaniac who presumes to judge the whole world by his Draconian if ultimately well-meaning code (Ras)
3. Guy with the general appearance of luchador with some strong flavor of social belief*(Bane)
4. Brilliant sociopath with a clown gimmick (Joker)

*This is ultimately one of the many stupid points about Bane. He's not got a lot in the way of defining character traits that hold across multiple media, or even multiple authors. He's just an idiot with a wrestling mask that spent some time in prison. If you can't "recognize" the character beyond those points, it's because there's nothing to recognize. It barely qualifies as enough substance for a conceptual pitch for a costume.

 

Bane is only depicted as an idiot in B&R. In DKR and in the comics of the 90s he's quite brilliant, a strategic and cerebral match for Batman.

Has something happened in the comics I'm not aware of?

 

Alright, fine. Add "smart" to my description above. That's still not much of a character description. And they did attempt to show Bane having outwitted Wayne in this film, so I'm not sure about your complaint there.

 

I didn't touch on the radium bullet though?

And I'd be prepared to leave the rifle in TKDR out of it, because it's Elseworlds.

 

Well, not in that post, no. But you have repeatedly made pretty strident claims about Batman's rejection of firearms in the thread generally, which is more what I was referring to.

 

I think when it is someone's plan to end the entire universe, and the absolutely only way to stop him is to shoot him with a special bullet, you're going to apply a different set of ethics than with petty criminals.

 

Which I stand by?

Some people can point to the pre-Silver age stuff when Batman used a gun, but that was purposefully taken out of the character's profile. It was, in fact, a conscious choice which is why the Year Two covers featured it; the idea had to be formulated as to why the Batman of Frank Miller's Year One rejected firearms entirely. If I remember that run correctly (long time since I read it), Batman plans to kill Joe Chill in that too.

Batman has an understandable disdain for firearms. He does not use them. This acknowledges at the beginning he did; but since the 40s this has been part of who the character is.

Simply put:

 

Okay, but then what is your criticism of the Nolan films? Batman used firearms in the last film to stop someone who was going to detonate a nuclear explosive in the heart of one of the world's most populous cities. In Begins, he used it to prevent the largest use of biological weapons at any time since their battlefield deployments during the first World War. That's nothing like "a petty criminal" either.

 

Um. What?

Wocky, you can't just wander into a discussion at the tail end and apologise because Rocinate just wouldn't get you here faster.

The Nolan Batman is inconsistent in this regard. I disagree with Koohii that the characters are unrecognisable; I wouldn't go that far. I think it's more that if Batman is so anti-guns, why would he mount them on his vehicles?

It's like that moment in which John Tim Robin Drake Blake decides he hates guns, only to go back to using them straight away.

Koohii - Unlike any other film iteration of Batman, they got that the true person is the Bat and Bruce Wayne is now just a character that Batman inhabits when he's not "on the job".

The Joker, irrespective of the makeup and tell-tale purple suit, was a psychotic anarchist and his first appearance is a bank heist... I'm not sure what else you needed. Plus, if you didn't pick Liam Neeson was Ra's al-Ghul on first glance...

And Jim Gordon. Not only does he resemble Gordon in Year One, they fixed what the Burton/Schumacher films got so horribly wrong - Batman's relationship with Gordon and GCPD.

Yes, Bane was no longer Latino and they took Venom out, but let's be honest - who actually liked Bane? Of all the villains Batman has fought, he's low on the list for me (A Nolan Riddler, for example, is an interest prospect).

Catwoman - Anne Hathaway looked great in the costume, and parts of her were done well (I wanted the whip ), but her relationship with Bruce wasn't fleshed out enough.

Scarecrow - I thought the strength of Batman Begins was you took two of the less famous Rogue's Gallery and made them compelling antagonists in the Universe. TDK somewhat undermined the effectiveness of Scarecrow by reducing him to drug dealer, but in a way it makes sense because what else are the rogues gallery going to do in Nolan's world but resort to that kind of scheme?

Sorry, Koohii, but I think your criticism is un-merited.

 

To use in case of those rare situations where they are needed. Which is also why Bat vehicles in the comics are also armed. If it's dumb and contradictory, it's not anything new. Even in Miller's TDKR, he drove around in a tank. Come on.

 

Sigh.

Wocky, I repeat my earlier comments about coming into the discussion at the end.

largely, the batmobile is not armed excepting TKDR (which, as I stated, is Elseworlds) and the animated series (which is awesome).

There are no windmills here, please tilt at something else, in other threads.

 

That's from Hugo Strange and the Monster Men; it was one of the stories in the very first issue of Batman. A little later, Batman throws a lasso around a guy's neck and flies up in the air to hang him. The corpse is literally hanging from the Batplane as he's flying around. It's by far the darkest Batman story until Frank Miller changed the character in the eighties. It's the story that so shocked editor Whitney Ellsworth that Batman's no guns policy was created specifically in response to this story.

 

I don't know if this has been posted yet but....I love it.

 

Loved the bit with the lunch order.

"Pizza? Gotham City's not even known for it."