The Batman (2022)

Ahh, did you just watch the movie?

Who, me? I've seen TDKR before, if that's what you're asking. I saw The Batman a week or so ago, though.

x5

Pretty much.

Batman is one dude with no powers. Riddler... flooded a city. Hundreds are dead. The city is fundamentally in ruins.

Come to think of it, if Riddler's whole plan is to flood the city and end everything... what point is there to the army of Riddler shooters to shoot the mayor? Why? The stadium floods and collapses anyway. The Mayor willingly avoids evacuating anyway.

Say Riddler's Q Anon army isn't there. And thus Batman isn't there. What actually changes here? Because the building collapses and floods regardless.

I kinda think the Q Anon Army is there purely because "Batman can't fight a flood" so here's a bunch of goons I guess. VICTORY!

Wasn't the flood just a way to get a ton of people into one place, including the Mayor?

And yes, The Dark Knight Rises ended the Nolan trilogy on a wet fart.

If the Riddler kills the Mayor-elect, he effectively decapitates the city government and ensure that Gotham will never recover from the flood since there's no rallying figure for Gotham.

And there's also a good chance that the Mayor and several key figures may be rescued by the National Guard in the morning, as seen in the film. The Riddler Army is there to ensure that Mayor Reál is actually dead.

Edited by Shadao on May 12th 2022 at 11:20:59 AM

Yeah she's not the most complex or interesting characters, but Real does work as a symbol of a better government for Gotham since we see at the end, she's working to rally people and promising to restore faith in government.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 12th 2022 at 2:23:58 PM

Look, preferences are subjective and all that, but "countless people died in this disaster and therefore it matters little that someone was able to singlehandedly save hundreds" is an absolutely wild take not only for fiction but just real life in general.

Hell Batman even discusses it in his ending monologue, that the city needs symbols to show that things can get better.

x5 speak for yourself, I thought it ended pretty cool.

Anyway agree with others that batman does manage to do some good in the climax and I can't wait to see the future movies where he decides to do good as Bruce Wayne instead of just Batman. That's what the end of the movie is clearly setting up.

Yeah, Reál even discussed it with him at the commissioner's funeral, she quite literally says "You have all this money and influence behind you but you're not doing anything with it, don't you think you could be doing more?"

I can understand people don't liking the climax, but it is important for Bruce character development from a symbol of vengeance to one of hope.

You eliminate Riddlers plan to flood the city and kill the mayor and then Batman doesn't get the ephipany that his way is causing the opposite results he intended by inspiring people like the Riddler and his followers, and that by saving the people in the rally and bringing hope is better (and saner) than the whole "I'm vengeance" thing. And you cannot have the same impact on Bruce if the consequences of his crusade is only inspiring one person selectively killing corrupt people and criminals and not a whole city.

And to have the same result without the climax you would have to rewrite a lot of the movie, but saying that the climax in this movie isn't necesary or doesn't work is wrong. That it could've been better executed, sure. But I wouldn't say it was incompetently executed either.

So according to the character trope page for this film, Edward Elliot, the reporter who was going to expose Martha's previous time in a mental hospital worked for Salvatore Maroni, and it was under the latter's orders that Elliot dug into Martha's past and planned to expose it.

I feel like I missed that part. Was it mentioned in the movie anywhere?

Falcone said something like that, so it makes it immediately suspect. I don't know if he said that it was done under Maroni's orders though.

It might have been in a Freeze-Frame Bonus with the Power Point presentation, but it could be some leaps are being made based on the rough outline we got in the film.

I finally sat down and watched this movie on HBO Max, and I really liked it. I will say it took some guts making an almost 3 hour Batman movie, and it worked out well for WB. Imagine if this movie was just ok, I wonder if it would have made almost 800 million dollars then.

In regards to the movie itself, I like that they decided to show us a rookie Batman for a change, because the versions of Batman's I've seen prior to this movie were all veteran heroes who've seen it all and fought off all manner of bad guys and world ending disasters. Whereas this Batman is very skilled but a bit unrefined, the crooks actually manage to land a few hits/shots on him that knock him down. He's smart but not yet the master planner/crazy preparer we're used to seeing in other stories.

Something I'd be very interested in seeing them do is have this Batman take somebody under his wing, whether that be Robin or someone else. Instead of the usual a father son/daughter dynamic Batman usually has with his proteges they could do an older brother younger brother/sister type of deal. A relatively rookie Batman having to train a new and even less experienced vigilante while dealing with the newly created power vacuum within the Gotham city underworld could make for a good plot I think.

Edited by clockworkboy on May 22nd 2022 at 12:10:18 PM

Two thoughts:

1) Why did the reporter want to reveal the truth about Martha so badly?

Like, what benefit was there in it besides ruining her life?

2) How do we think this version of Selina would react if she learned Bruce was Batman, considering she figured he was as bad as the other corrupt officials just for what Nashton revealed?

I think she'd be disillusioned at first, assuming he was just using his power to deal with his mommy and daddy issues before she realized he really did want to help.

The same reason any gossip reporters publish scandalous private secrets, for more readers and more money.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 16th 2022 at 6:51:56 AM

There was also probably a strong sense of sticking it to the rich people, because Thomas offered him money, which he refused.

And there's a desire to be first, and to be part of the story.

If Kate Spade's suicide had been covered up, you can bet some people would have stopped at nothing to prove it.

We don't get any 100% reliable info on the reporter (as all the characters who talk about him have some reason to be biased and he's not here to defend himself) so it is technically possible he also thought the public just had to know out of some misplaced sense of journalistic integrity to reveal the truth about the powerful elites of Gotham. The characters as a whole think he was basically tabloid scum, though.

He pretty much is one.

Like there is no actual reason to reveal this stuff to the public other than as a form of slander to besmirch Thomas' reputation.

Was that before or after he learned the secret.

I admit, him not being a good dude does seem likely. Like, this isn't exposing someone corrupt or anything. This is revealing a woman suffered extreme mental trauma in her youth, and that it was covered up so she could have some peace.

Maybe, just maybe there are a few situations where people would need to know, but I don't any of those applied in this case.

I could have sworn I heard someone say he was on Maroni's payroll as well. I think either this was an attempt to get Thomas in his pocket, or an attempt to discredit him because he thought he was already in Falcone's pocket due to doing that emergency surgery on him.

No confirmation on that. A lot of things about those events are deliberately vague, such as whether Thomas and Martha were really shot by a random burglar, or if it was a hit.

Probably adds to the mystery.

The person who said he was on Maroni's payroll was Falcone, which makes it immediately suspect. At the end of the day I'm of the opinion, like most other people here, that it's an extremely scummy thing to do and there likely wasn't a good reason.

Wow. So we're all in the dark, just like Bruce?

That works.

I do wonder if the reporter never actually really expected the story to run and it was just an opportunistic bit of blackmail that went wrong.

Would it be blackmail?

Supposedly Thomas offered him money and he rejected it, right?

Unless he was trying to squeeze him for more cash, or thought running the story would get him more than Thomas could offer.