Line #68 Headscratchers/BatmanForever


1	Headscratchers in ''Film/BatmanForever''.
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3	* Wasn't it suspicious that Edward could be seen cavorting with Two Face during the launch party?
4	** People were too busy panicking to notice. He could always pass it off by saying that he was trying to reason with him if anyone saw (which was technically true). Plus, the whole thing only lasted a few minutes.
5	* Wasn't it suspicious that Bruce Wayne beat up all those goons in the circus?
6	** As above, everyone was panicking and the whole thing was over in a few minutes. Plus, most of Gotham already sees Bruce in a pretty heroic light, and Bruce beating up some thugs in a life-or-death situation doesn't mean he is Batman.
7	** His fighting prowess isn't quite as suspicious as standing up and screaming "I'm Batman!" beforehand.
8	** Bruce looked around right after he said it; it was apparent that if anyone heard it, no one believed him. Perhaps they thought he was pulling a HeroicSacrifice by the way of an "IAmSpartacus"?
9	** Or just psyching himself up for the fight, same as an amateur boxer might shout "I'm Floyd Mayweather!" as he heads into the ring.
10	* Why was Robin sent to Bruce Wayne instead of a foster home? If Bruce is willing to donate his 10 million spare rooms to put up orphans and Gothan knows this, how come they haven't sent anyone to Bruce before? Knowing that Gotham's a crapsack town, Wayne Manor would be an orphanage by now.
11	** It's Gotham, the city of the legendarily corrupt. Bruce "multi-billionaire" Wayne asks, multi-billionaire gets, no questions asked. He probably didn't even have to bribe anyone, just his status would be enough for the corrupt civil service to roll over and acquiesce.
12	** The question was not that but why Bruce Wayne took in just that one orphan and not any other orphan. Is he regularly a source for the police to drop off wards of the state?
13	** He did it because both he and Dick have now seen their parents murdered by a maniac in front of their eyes. Bruce probably gives a lot of money and support to orphans and charities, but he took in Dick because what happened there hit close to home.
14	** It's implied, if not outright stated, that Bruce puts a fair amount of blame on himself, as Two-Face and Batman are rivals at this point, and Two-Face's actions that night, trying to flush out Batman, led to the Graysons' deaths. Taking it further, Bruce, as Batman, was unable to stop the mobster from throwing acid in Harvey Dent's face, so Bruce probably blames himself for Two-Face's existence in the first place. Taking Dick as his ward is a means of atoning for all that.
15	** The bigger question is why he needed a new guardian. This version of Dick is clearly old enough to support himself.
16	** I thought that was answered in the movie? He's supposed to be [[DawsonCasting Under 21]] and the law of whatever state Gotham is in is that kids under 21 are supposed to have a guardian, no exceptions.
17	* Why did the security guards not mind being punched by the Riddler?
18	** Because if they didn't let Two-Face and Riddler punch them, they'd likely be shot and killed.
19	* So it's completely normal for groups of kids to go trick-or-treating (without parental supervision) at Wayne Manor, even though it's on the outskirts of town?
20	** Parents don't have to be hovering over their kids' shoulders the whole time they're trick-or-treating. I don't know about your neighbourhood, but in mine the parents often stood well back from their kids.
21	** In my experience the presence of parents significantly hampers the feasibility of carrying out any necessary tricks.
22	** Besides, everyone knows rich people will have the most candy!
23	** Not to mention this is Wayne Manor - justified or not, people would probably be more comfortable being there as the Wayne family were well known, well liked, and lacking in any sort of scandal. Given that this Bruce was also more aware of the need to be Bruce as well as Batman, he's probably also started to make efforts to avoid seeming like a complete idiot with no day job.
24	** The problem is, Wayne Manor seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Even if the Manor grounds are entirely safe (as it happens, they aren't), it still looks like its a mile or two away from the rest of civilisation.
25	** Not necessarily. It's not in a cramped cul-de-sac, sure, but it's not unheard of for well-to-do subdivisions (especially in rural areas) to have much larger property areas, meaning houses are much more scarce and spread out. Wayne Manor is certainly isolated, but there could still be other homes on the road en route to it.
26	** We only really see the one group of kids. Maybe whichever parent was chaperoning saw the long distance between the end of the driveway and the front door and decided to wait in the car and let the kids huff it to the house on their own. It's a house in the middle of the woods. Aside from the unanticipated supervillains breaking in, what could possibly go wrong so long as the kids stay on the path to the lit porch?
27	** Halloween is one night of the year when Batman is going to be out from dusk till dawn, guaranteed. It's going to be ''Alfred'' who answers the door for trick-or-treaters, and he's got enough of a soft spot for kids that Wayne Manor has probably gained a local reputation as a great spot to pick up loads of candy from a very polite old man.
28	* Edward's apartment and cubicle is adorned with bobbleheads and fortune teller machines of a guy that's dressed in a green suit with question marks all over it; he even takes the jacket and hat from the fortune teller machine when he meets up with Two-Face for the first time. Who is this guy?
29	** This one comes from earlier script drafts, but was lost in the final cut. In those drafts, this pixie-like figure was called the "Guesser", and he probably served as the ''Gotham Globe's'' puzzles-page mascot (it's never stated what his function was). Apparently, he was popular enough that merchandise was made in his image, and his likeness licensed out for fortune-telling animatronics.
30	* Who the Hell puts a deaf man in charge of guarding a bank vault?
31	** He wasn't deaf. He had something to help his hearing, but he clearly wasn't deaf.
32	* How did Nygma make any money on the Box? Since he designed it while he was working at Wayne Enterprises, wouldn't the company have held the patent on the thing?.
33	** He had just invented it and hadn't filed for a patent yet, and Bruce Wayne himself said that the company didn't want to get involved in brain-wave technology.
34	** Stickley, Edward's boss, told him to terminate the project, so it was pretty clear that until it could be a proven money-maker, absolutely no one but Edward cared enough to patent it.
35	** The novelisation has some lawyers bring this up to Bruce, but he says taking Nygma to court would look too much like sour grapes. And, though this is implied and not stated outright, he wants to give Nygma enough rope to hang himself.
36	* What was Edward's fascination with leaving riddles? All we hear about it is that he does it because he's obsessed with Bruce, but why is he so attached to riddles? Why not just notes of admiration and/or hatred? I get that eventually he has to become the Riddler, but still...
37	** Some people just like riddles? Maybe he had OCD or Asperger's Syndrome?
38	** Either of those disorders would have been okay explanations, but the movie never brings either up or tries to tie the riddles into his pathos at all.
39	** Another question answered by the novelisation. He had an interest in riddles as a kid, and the school bully didn't like it when Edward stumped him with one. He beat him up so badly he accidentally cracked his skull and sent him into a coma. Earlier that day he'd read a newspaper report on the Waynes' murder, complete with a photograph of a crying Bruce, and thought Bruce might be similar to him. The last things he saw before going unconscious were his book of riddles, and the photograph, and when he finally awoke, he was never quite right again, and his ''interest'' in both of those things had turned into an ''obsession''.
40	* Batman states in the scene where Chase tries to seduce him that he knows Two-Face's obsession with his coin could be exploited as a weakness. So why does Batman not only wait half a dozen encounters with Two-Face later to use the trick, but wait until it was a lethal situation and decide not to follow up the distraction with one of the mook-wrangling gadgets we've seen him use earlier in the movie that could safely rope Two-Face to one of the nearby steel beams?
41	** You still need an opportunity to exploit it. Up until then, Two-Face hadn't given Batman an opportunity where he could turn the coin-flip to his advantage.
42	** But Two-Face wasn't going to, even then. Batman had to remind him to use the coin, which he could have done at any time. Evidently all it takes is to say something, and Two-Face will stop what he's doing, thank you, and give it a flip.
43	** Maybe, but he wouldn't have been standing in such a precarious position. As for not catching him afterwards, Burton/Schumacher Batman is clearly much more ok with killing villains, or at least letting them die, than the comic book one. Also, he may have done it for Dick's sake. Speeches or not, the kid was obsessed with killing Two-Face. Yes, he seemingly got over it, but then Harvey immediately betrayed his trust, which could push him back into the obsession. Bruce decided to spare him the anguish and eliminate the dilemma.
44	* What was the point of the SONAR Batsuit at the end of the movie? He threw a grappling hook at a Mook while being grappled himself by another mook at the beginning, he clearly doesn't need SONAR for throwing a Batarang at a ''giant obvious weakpoint'' in Nygma's lair. TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot as well, since he could have used the SONAR for finding Robin after being jettisoned into the water. Alas.
45	** Something else that was used in early drafts and the novelisation: when he makes it to Riddler's throne room, he charges forward, but notices Two-Face just quietly chuckling, and stops, realising something's wrong. He uses the sonar to discover that between him and the villains is the pit the leads to the ocean, and it's been disguised with a hologram. Without the sonar (and Harvey's inability to keep a poker face), he probably would have fallen in.
46	** Which leads to another headscratcher. Harvey Dent, district attorney, can't keep a poker face for two minutes?
47	** Harvey Dent, district attorney, probably could have. But this is Harvey Dent, Two-Face we're talking about. You know, the cackling, murderous madman?
48	* In the scene after Chase has been captured and the Batcave has been destroyed, Alfred and Bruce have all the riddles he's been sent gathered and are trying to deduce a pattern. They deduce that each one has a number (12, 1, 8 & 5), and that each one correlates to a letter of the alphabet (M, A, H & E). Why on earth would Bruce just throw out that 1 & 8 could be put together to make 18 and thusly stand for R to make M R E? Like, out of any of the numbers you could put together, you just decide "Oh, I'll put the middle ones together and that'll solve the riddle"? I understand he's Batman and he's been sent riddles by the Riddler, but still. It always seemed like too much of an ass-pull.
49	** It's a movie shortcut. Running through the other options he would have got N.H.E or M.A.N (arguably at least meaning something) but M.R.E gives you a better standing since Mr. E is obviously more specific than MAN and when you say it out loud the "mystery" is a pretty easy conclusion to make. The point being we're not given Bruce's internal process but only the result of the deduction in the movie.
50	** The movie portrays it more as a "shot in the dark". Bruce has had all but one of these riddles for days and figured out that the only connection between them was the numbers, so the "1 and 8 are 18" thing was more of an "eh, probably rubbish, but let's try it", and as it happens it was true (and of course, Nygma designed it to be so). It's just an intuitive guess on his part, and by luck it happens to be right, but it isn't ''that'' much of a stretch considering he's spent days pondering them already and in the scene in question seemed prepared to spend the rest of the night throwing out random ideas and seeing what stuck, though at least now he saw that the numbers were the key.
51	** You also have to take into consideration the limits of the English alphabet, i.e. it has only 26 letters. Putting 13 & 1 together gets 131; 8 & 5 gets 85, both beyond the range of the alphabet. And putting 1 & 5 together is right out because Bruce already deduced that the order they came in was important. So if you're going to transpose numbers to letters in this fashion, with these stipulations, 1 + 8 = 18 is really the only one that fits.
52	** There's a trope for this: BatDeduction.
53	* Did Nygma disguise himself as his employer, or did he use some kind of video editing software to pull off that trick? As a kid, I assumed he dressed up as the boss and ran towards the window (while hamming it up). He seems crazy enough to do it.
54	** Apparently, it was a computer-generated forgery. A better question is how did he erase the footage?
55	** It's possible it might have been intended to be a use of his Box prototype. Rather than beam the television footage into a person, he imagined the suicide scenario and beamed the imagined memory onto the tape. Scientifically implausible? Sure. Accurate to comic book science? Definitely.
56	** Alternatively, perhaps he used his powers to influence Gordon to make him see what he wanted. Gordon ''was'' suspiciously eager to dismiss the case as suicide. Might also explain how he strolled into Two-Face's lair so confidently - he knew he could coerce the gangster (maybe make him see the coin as landing the clean side up).
57	* What exactly did Batman hit with his Batarang at the end of the film to stop the Riddler, mess up his base and what seemed to deform the guy in the end?
58	** I think it was meant to be part of the machine that transferred the brainwaves of everyone using one of his boxes into his mind. Comic-book science explains why it was full of energy that wrecked the base, and I guess somehow explains his deformation?
59	** Earlier script drafts written by Janet and Lee Batchler would have explained the situation better -- the Riddler's usage of brainwave tech is not only making him smarter, but actively ''deforming'' him, with several script notes indicating that it was beginning to change his head (a.k.a. the "Big Riddle" concept that was later turned out to be a shell the real Riddler was inside, which was also cut from the finished product). When Batman confronts the Riddler during the climax, the device he hits not only cuts off the latter's connection with the "datastream", but it also implies that Riddler's brainwaves are controlling the place, which leads the "solid" floor to disappear, revealing that it's only a series of unfinished girders across the area (it also explains why half the floor randomly disappears in the final film).
60	* The Riddler tells Chase that he's counting on Batman to come to his lair. Yet a DeletedScene shows that there's another cave that he missed that contained the sonar suit, the Batplane and the Batboat. So why did he destroy the cave in the first place? Furthermore, why did he try to shoot Batman out of the sky?
61	** He says it himself after shooting the Batwing down, "Now... the real game begins." He's playing a game, and the ultimate goal is to show he's smarter than Bruce Wayne. Everything up to that point, including destroying the Batcave, was Nygma outplaying Batman, and positioning him for the coup de gras in Riddler's throne room.
62	* Dick leaves Wayne Manor... only to show up later in full costume as Robin. What the hell prompted his change of heart? When did he decide to do this? What was he doing when Wayne Manor was attacked? [[WebVideo/RedLetterMedia There's a word for this - lazy]].
63	** Perhaps he just changed his mind. People tend to do that sometimes.
64	* How did Batman, Robin and Chase get back to Gotham? The Batboat was blown up and the Batplane's at the bottom of the river.
65	** The same way Riddler and Two-Face did.
66	* So... is anyone gonna talk about Two-Face's molls Sugar and Spice just running away and [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse never being brought up again or shown]] after Batman destroys The Riddler's Lair? These two ARE aware of Batman's secret identity, are they gonna spread the word and be a problem?
67	** It's been a long time since I've seen it but if I remember correctly, neither of them are shown committing any crimes themselves, they're just Two-Face's arm candy and likely aren't much of a threat. Secondly, they're the arm candy of a homicidal lunatic, if they were to start blabbing about Bruce being Batman, who would believe them? Especially after said homicidal lunatic paired up with another lunatic who has a grudge against Bruce.
68	** They could always reveal Batman's real identity more subtly or talk to several people under other disguises (considering how cartoonish this movie is) to make them interested to the point there's a crowd of people wanting to inspect Wayne's Manor and find out if it's true or not. Otherwise I guess they just ScrewThisImOuttaHere and simply want to move on with their lives and not mess with Batman in case the plan backfires.
69	** In the Nolan-verse a small number of savvy people have figured out who Batman is and Christian Bale's Batman didn't go to extraordinary efforts to stop it. Maybe it's the same here.
70	** Well, he did intentionally put his Lamborghini in the way of a vehicular assassin who wanted to kill the person who threatened to snitch his identity, which had the effect of putting him in his debt (i.e. better stay silent, communicated in a meaningful glance at him). Any of the parties involved easily could have died, so that's a pretty extreme effort for sure.
71	** I think antagonising Batman would've been the very last thing either of them wanted at that point.
72	* Why is Two-Face's beef with Batman for failing to stop his face from being scarred rather than the guy who scarred his face?
73	** Because he always blames him, no matter how misplaced the blame is. Batman was n ally he trusted to protect him and Batman failed to keep his end of bargin. As to Maroni, well, Harvey probably already dealt with him.
74	*** FridgeBrilliance: That might explain why Bruce speaks so confidently that "taking revenge won't make the pain go away". He's talking from both his own and Harvy's experience.
75	* So, in the '89 film, Harvey Dent was played by Billy Dee Williams, but in this movie he's played by Tommy Lee Jones. There's a [[RaceLift pretty obvious distinction]] between these two actors, so... how does this work InUniverse? Does Dent just have vitiligo or something?
76	** It works the same way Bruce Wayne's or James Bond's being played by different actors does.
77	** Also, clearly actor continuity wasn't much of a goal for Schumacher (or the studio) after he took over from Burton, besides retaining the actors for Commissioner Gordon and Alfred.
78	* When/how did Two-Face rig the bank vault with the "Boiling acid!!!!!!" deathtrap? Were he and his goons doing that while they waited for Batman to show up (and if so, they did it very well, leaving absolutely no sign of their tampering)? Or is it a standard security feature at the Second Bank of Gotham?
79	** They probably did tamper with the vault and Batman probably would notice something like that. Batman is a hero, however, and his proclivity to save people regardless of the danger is something Two-Face exploited.
80	* When Riddler crashes Two-Face's hideout, he does sometimes HamToHamCombat with Harvey, then proceeds to show off his Box tech on the girls. The thing is, the Boxes are 'already there', in the lair. Edward doesn't bring them in, and there's no scene cut to allow for him to go back and get them. And they're definitely not there beforehand, the wide shot shows the table that the Boxes appear on to be empty when Nygma arrives. It may be the best riddle in the movie.
81	* Batman appeared on the cover of ''Time Magazine''. That would imply that ''Time'' did a feature on Batman and he agreed to it. How on earth does that work?

Context Headscratchers / BatmanForever