The Batman (2022)

I didn't really get any right-wing feelings, mostly because his main wrath was targeted at the wealthy.

Yeah most of his targets would be people the alt right would worship.

A lot of right-wing types rant about "the elites", they're just incredibly selective about who they're referring to.

There was a rise of right-wing terrorism in the 90's that pulled that kind of shit.

Edited by Diana1969 on May 4th 2022 at 12:53:13 AM

Difference is, these are the elites that the alt right worship unironically. Corrupt white mayor, corrupt white commissioner of the police, ETC.

I mean you could argue that his followers trying to kill the mayor elect, a black woman campaigning on reformation and anti-corruption is an alt right act but we can see in the video that it’s more of a general psychopathic misanthropic murder spree.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 3rd 2022 at 10:54:59 AM

He's a populist accelerationist more akin to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. I wouldn't call him straight-up fascist, more that he's about extremism for its own sake. Look at Kaczynski's manifesto—or really the manifesto of most violent terrorists and/or bombers who aren't aligned with a particular political faction—and it's a mish-mash of at times contradictory belief systems, because for guys like the Unabomber and the Riddler, the extremism is the point. Riddler isn't interested in enacting a specific ideology, he's about burning shit down. He's not interested in rebuilding the city or forming a political bloc because he's a narcissist who can't see past his own pain—one inadvertently created by poor material conditions borne out corrupt municipal politics, but a narcissist nonetheless.

Edited by DavidMerrick on May 3rd 2022 at 10:58:15 AM

> he's about burning shit down.

riddle me this,what's starts fires without a match?

I'm not specifically saying alt right here. In the 90's, you had a spiel of right-wing terrorists who took the whole "Give me liberty or give me death" thing to the point of committing terrorist attacks. And I mean pretty big ones. Oklahoma City suffered the biggest terrorist attack on American soil before 9/11 thanks to a lunatic named Timothy Mc Veigh, who was a Turner Diaries fan and believed the American government had become fascist. You have the Patriot Movement that flat out thinks the American government is illegitimate and advocates overthrowing it. These are right-wingers. That their views are inconsistent isn't surprising.

Oh, I won't deny that Killmonger's grandstanding had a point.

I'm just saying that he was using it as an excuse.

Like I actually agree with Real's points about restoring the faith in Gotham's government after all the shit that's happened in the movie, I do hope she's a more prominent part in the Bruce Wayne aspects of the sequel. I remember actually being pretty intrigued that her first reaction to meeting Bruce was to try to encourage him to continue the philanthropic work that his family did. It was a reminder that this Bruce is even more hands off than the other versions since even the Keaton version despite being a recluse still did stuff like fund Harvey's campaign.

It does feel like the sequel is gonna be about Bruce coming out of his shell and doing what he can to Gotham...besides just punching people out as Batman.

I don’t see Riddler as sympathetically as Killmonger as he seems mostly concerned about his own misfortune than of those who were abandoned by Gotham overall, hence why he gets so destructive. However, compared to Nakia, Mayor Reál feels rather vague. We only get a fuzzy sense of her platform in wanting to do the Renewal program better. And yeah, this is a Batman movie, not a political drama, but I feel Reál’s thin writing ties in to my frustration with how vague this movie’s message is about Bruce. He’s going to stop being so brutal, and use his money to… stand around supportively, I guess.

The point is that there are other ways Bruce can help Gotham and he needs to do so for reasons other than soothing his own pain. The movie doesn't go into full detail about what he can do, but it does point him in a direction.

Its kind of interesting because there's very few Batman media I can recall that focus on Bruce specifically beyond being a cover for Batman. Its the first time where the conflict is as personal Bruce as it is for Batman.

Kind of like what Spider-Man (PS4) did for Peter and Spider-Man.

This film series might actually dispel the notion that Bruce is just the mask.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on May 3rd 2022 at 2:17:11 PM

I get that point. I just think it didn’t make it very strongly, like if Black Panther had ended with T’challa just standing around watching the poor instead of investing in outreach and petitioning the UN and so on.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on May 3rd 2022 at 11:17:45 AM

I mean, Tell Tale had significant focus on the Bruce Wayne aspect of the character.

This Batman does end the movie helping victims of the flooding though. This is his first steps towards becoming a more hopeful hero, hell, this is the perfect setup for him to start using company resources to help fix the city and help the victims, next movie.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 3rd 2022 at 2:32:50 PM

Though he'll now need to contend with people who know what his dad did (or think they know, since Thomas never intended for the reporter to die), and maybe will see his genuine attempts at philanthropy as a cheap media stunt.

Like, even if he told people what Alfred told him, it would come off as awfully convenient that he the only person who knew that Thomas was going to come clean about what happened was the Wayne family's loyal butler.

Well yeah, I like seeing Bruce struggle with this sort of thing, like how his playboy reputation backfired during No Man's land. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

Plus Bruce needs to do more networking if he does want to improve Gotham through that side of his life, so he def needs to interact and build a rapport with Real and Gordon outside the mask.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 3rd 2022 at 3:01:41 PM

Eh, that's all easily hand waved away if that's how they want to do it.

Yeah, I think a major point of this movie was supposed to show that Bruce can do good as Batman, sure... but he also needs to do good as Bruce Wayne to support that and change Gotham.

"The film is fundementally a noir mystery narrative.

The third act... is a super-hero third act."

I felt that was part of the theme as said above, like some other Batman stories, the theme of the old Gotham, with simple Crime bosses and such being washed away giving the rise of the Era of Rogues and caped figures.

You can’t make a light-hearted batman movie these days, they say…

And I get that idea. But it wasn't very well executed. You now have a noir mystery who's mystery is solved and we still have 30 mins left to the movie and not a lot actually hinging on the stakes. A super-hero punch all the faceless badguys just doesn't gel with a crime mystery. Especially since the stand off with Falcone and Selina *is* the action-y noir climax.

I think the sequel-hook bait of Riddler and Joker sharing a cell block does a better job of setting up the rise of Batman's rogues gallery than a flooded city did. Especially since that would work well with sequel escalation; do the small thing in it's totality for the first installment. Then the sequel can ramp things up to raise the stakes.

Plus, like, the noir element made the movie unique. Why then go for the droll super-hero climax? Out of obligation?

How much higher can the stakes get from "We flooded the city and shot the mayor" anyway?

That's actually one thing I kinda think the Nolan trilogy struggled with a bit; (far as I recall) Scarecrow's plan is mostly isolated to the slums and threatens the entire city if Batman doesn't stop him and R'as. Joker *does* get the entire City into a strangle-hold and the film actually does take a lot of time to show how he gets that level of threat and power within the city.

Bane... also threatens the city. But he can't just threaten the city with lawlessness and crime. Because Scarecrow and Joker already did that on successively larger levels. He has to threaten to Nuke the entire thing. The script... also has to have every single cop be the biggest idiots in the world purely to make Bane's threat of crime be so much larger than Joker's iteration.

And if you told me "I have a Batman story. It ends with Batman disarming a Nuke" I'd be incredulous. A nuke just... doesn't really challenge Batman as a character. It's an excessive escalation. But that's a Nolan criticism... where was I?

Point is, I think it's kinda tunnel vision critique. That moment when you look at something long enough and find a nugget of brilliance in it regardless of the rest of the product (Arachne from Spider-Man) Like, can I make an argument for the idea of it? Sure. And probably a really compelling one. But I still have a noir mystery with an utterly unrelated masked army beat-em up ending tacked onto it.

The thing too is that flooding the city with little warning like that is going to have 9/11 level casualties, but the actual impact the hero has on mitigating the problem is very, very small. It falls into the similar trap of many blockbusters where the civilian casualties are less to show the stakes and more to make the hero emote.

Batman still averted a brutal mass shooting and a spontaneous terrorist group having time to run roughshod over the city before any help could arrive.

The Dark Knight Rises is so ridiculous.