The Batman - 2022

[Psyren]

The chute hitting the bridge should have broken some bones at the very least. But yeah, after all that, the gun ast think is hardly something that bothers me.

One of my issues is that folks online (not necessarily here) are giving Batman a pass for all the crazy stuff he survives in this movie, but Black Widow - an actual (quasi) super-soldier - falling off one building and hitting the fire escape made people want to throw the whole thing in the bin.

(For that matter, I don't think this movie was better than Black Widow overall.)

[warty goblin]

Yeah, I had that same thought looking at the trailer. It's one thing if it's a brief moment as he jumps in from the shadows or something, you can excuse a single miss as good fortune or what have you, but in this case, everyone is just ignoring the face.

And they treat a dude holding a pistol to the masked part of his head as a lethal threat, so I guess that part isn't bulletproof either. It's cool if it's Iron Man or something, but this rendition of Batman does not actually appear to be invulnerable to bullets. So just weird.

If we're gonna kvetch about guns in the movie, we should so it right. The velocity of a ballistic projectile decreases approximately linearly with distance, thus the energy decreases roughly quadratically. The effectiveness of armor therefore drops off incredibly quickly as you close the distance. Tanking shots at fisticuff ranges requires some genuinely massive levels of armor, not least because Batman's armor clearly does not degrade substantially after being shot, which real armor does. Additionally, the penetration capability of ammunition varies substantially, with soft projectiles like hollow pointed handgun rounds or shotgun pellets/slugs having much less penetration than FMJ rifle rounds. A pistol round from a few inches could well overmatch his head protection, even if it would from 20 feet, or his torso armor is proof against rifles at that range - if nothing else his head protection is not very thick.

This assignment leaves out the problem of blunt force trauma caused by the hit on the armor, again requiring even heavier plating. Those scenes where the criminals hear him clanking up are exactly right, the guy is carrying a huge amount of weight. Like an amount of weight that should really start to vastly decrease his agility and mobility.

The smart criminal, when faced with Batman, should jog away at a brisk but sustainable pace and wait for Batman's vast load and awful heat dissipation to cause him to collapse from exhaustion. If you are going to strap a hundred plus pounds of armor to yourself, you probably don't want to cover all the rest of your skin in black rubber. Even if Batman is plastering himself in Bat-talcum powder all the time, that's asking for some really fun rashes, fungus, and all manner if skin ailments.

All of which is to say, the real bat-nipple issue isn't whether the suit has them, but just how raw and worn they must be after a week of crime fighting in a heat wave. Gonna make getting dressed up on day 4 of a blistering heat wave a real joy.

Now that Batman's chafed, bleeding nipples are lodged firmly in your mind, perhaps we can remember why we shouldn't demand realism from these things.

[Peelee]

One of my issues is that folks online (not necessarily here) are giving Batman a pass for all the crazy stuff he survives in this movie, but Black Widow - an actual (quasi) super-soldier - falling off one building and hitting the fire escape made people want to throw the whole thing in the bin.

(For that matter, I don't think this movie was better than Black Widow overall.)

Having not seen Black Widow, I can only speculate, but I have two theories on this (that can each be true independently of the other). One is rather charitable on behalf of the complainers, the other is significantly less so.

[warty goblin]

Having not seen Black Widow, I can only speculate, but I have two theories on this (that can each be true independently of the other). One is rather charitable on behalf of the complainers, the other is significantly less so.

I found Black Widow formed almost no lasting impression in my mind; the movie equivalent of a bagel at a hotel's continental breakfast. It's not terrible, you can chew it up in a semi-comatose state, then forget about it and continue with your day. I seem to dimly recall it had something to do with the importance of found families (i.e. the Other Marvel Storyline) and... nope, that's it.

Also Black Widow wears what looks like a slightly padded jumpsuit, and not heavy full body armor. Looking at her doesn't exactly say impact resistant. Or maybe she was wearing a lot of padding in that scene, like I said, I can't remember anything about that movie.

[Peelee]

I found Black Widow formed almost no lasting impression in my mind; the movie equivalent of a bagel at a hotel's continental breakfast. It's not terrible, you can chew it up in a semi-comatose state, then forget about it and continue with your day. I seem to dimly recall it had something to do with the importance of found families (i.e. the Other Marvel Storyline) and... nope, that's it.

It's possible Psyren holds the same view but still viewed it favorably compared to The Batman.

Also Black Widow wears what looks like a slightly padded jumpsuit, and not heavy full body armor. Looking at her doesn't exactly say impact resistant.

That was the charitable theory I formed, yes. Based purely on how she looked in the ads I saw.

[warty goblin]

It's possible Psyren holds the same view but still viewed it favorably compared to The Batman. .

In some ways it'd almost be better if Black Window was worse. Like Black Widow was, in every possible way, a more competent movie than, say, Justice League. But at least Justice League's nonsense script, floundering tone, and VFX straight out of the intro cutscene of a 2009 videogame were awful enough to get a reaction. Mostly that reaction was incredulous laughter at, well, all of that, and that a major studio actually released it. It was a bad movie, and I enjoyed the hell out of its badness.

I can find pleasure in good things, in bad things that are blissfully unaware of their badness, or are entirely aware of their own artery-clogging levels of cheese. But the ones that are just... there in a blandly competent, check-the-content-boxes way are soul-numbing. I find that much worse than being bad.

[Iruka]

Now that Batman's chafed, bleeding nipples are lodged firmly in your mind, perhaps we can remember why we shouldn't demand realism from these things.

Come on, he obviously tapes them down with some Bat-Aid before getting into the suit.

[Dragonus45]

I would also remind people that Black Widow specifically called out that Natasha wasn't superhuman and went out of it's way to make a few jokes about her getting beaten up and bruised and buying over the counter painkillers after a fairly minor fight that other Avengers may just laugh off and go grab a beer after. Then it finished with a finale that involved the main character fighting the main rival enemy in free fall on top of falling debris from the giant sky base she just blew up. Consistency in both these movies was odd, I personally overlook it but I get why in either case people wanted to complain.

[Dr.Samurai]

The explosion is a good point. We see Batman being bullet-proof, and we see the impact of an explosion on him; it knocks him out.

Later on a gunshot also risks knocking him out. It's just inconsistent. To be clear, I'm not complaining that a gunshot hurt him. I'm wondering what was the narrative point of having him be stunned/hurt and get back in the fight with adrenlaine, just to get immediately stunned/electrocuted and get back in the fight to help people. It's just a weird sequence in my mind.

That said, I've remembered another shot I really liked, which is when the Penguin is shouting in triumph only to see the Batmobile emerge from the flames. I really like the way they showed people being afraid of Batman. (That said, I do think it was a little undermined by having him walk up to the car, and then peek his head outside the window; looked really goofy lol.)

[Tvtyrant]

The entire movie after the conversation with the Riddler in Arkham is botched. Suddenly changing venues, scope of the story, stakes, and the character's abilities in the finale is bad writing. The rest of the movie is great, and if they had stuck to a noir ending that matches the movie I think it would have been a much better movie overall.

[Dr.Samurai]

The entire movie after the conversation with the Riddler in Arkham is botched. Suddenly changing venues, scope of the story, stakes, and the character's abilities in the finale is bad writing. The rest of the movie is great, and if they had stuck to a noir ending that matches the movie I think it would have been a much better movie overall.

I wholeheartedly agree.

[Peelee]

The entire movie after the conversation with the Riddler in Arkham is botched. Suddenly changing venues, scope of the story, stakes, and the character's abilities in the finale is bad writing. The rest of the movie is great, and if they had stuck to a noir ending that matches the movie I think it would have been a much better movie overall.

I'll second this. I liked the idea of the whole master plan being mostly unstoppable because of how Batman couldn't solve the riddles but the execution left more than a bit to be desired.

[Tvtyrant]

I'll second this. I liked the idea of the whole master plan being mostly unstoppable because of how Batman couldn't solve the riddles but the execution left more than a bit to be desired.

Agreed there too. I think a better ending would have been other people in the Riddler's murder outfit releasing similar murder videos, because neither the problem or the solution are supposed to be one person.

[Psyren]

Also it was very uncharacteristic for the Riddler himself, who up until that point only cared about vengeance against the corrupt officials and mobsters who pillaged his orphanage's Renewal Fund (+Bruce Wayne since his high-profile orphan-ing kept the news cycle off their scent) - to decide to just murder thousands on innocent people along with the new progressive WOC mayor for no reason other than we couldn't have him being remotely sympathetic, now could we.

And even having decided the Riddler they spent 2.5 hours establishing would pull this completely unexpected contrivance out of his rear thin air, this would have been a great opportunity to have Batman outsmart him in the end, or at least partially ruin his plan. Show the value of Batman by having him stop the vans, and then Riddler's radicalized and now desperate henchmen create a hostage situation inside the auditorium anyway so you still get Batman and Catwoman punching goons together for 10 minutes. Have trying to kill the mayor-elect be their idea; it's not like Riddler is known for being a supremely charismatic leader who can easily control a legion of henchmen the way a Two-Face, Penguin or even Joker would be.

But then, doing that you don't get a big splashy (heh) flood to stick in the trailers, or the grimdark of Gotham just being the worst place to live ever that isn't Apokolips. Hell, saving the city might have had Batman cracking a smile at the end, and we definitely can't have that!

[warty goblin]

I wasn't wild about the final fight scene itself, it felt overlong and wasn't as visually interesting as the earlier ones, but I think the movie would have been absolutely weaker if the Riddler's final scheme hadn't (at least mostly) gone off. The entire point of the movie is that Batman's isolation, limited perspective, and myopic focus on his in trauma (as expressed by punching muggers) makes him both factually and morally wrong - he fails to understand the Riddler's plans, misses clues because he's a billionaire, and doesn't understand that his personal vendetta is going to inspire a lot of other people who want violent retribution. These are pretty major character flaws, and I think the movie does a reasonably good (not flawless, but good) job of highlighting them, certainly as good of a job as I'd expect something working under the enormous constraints of a superhero movie to do.

If he stops the vans blowing up, the narrative basically would just shrug and go "yeah but he's Batman so it's all good." A failure in a story only means something if it has narrative consequence, and Batman saving the day in spite of repeatedly messing up would remove the narrative consequence of his mistakes. Batman would be too big to be allowed to fail, and we'd get a limp, pointless movie without the courage of its own convictions.


Maybe this would make a better, or more immediately satisfying, Batman movie. I don't know, and don't care because I don't care about Batman. It would have made it a worse movie overall though, and I'd rather have a good movie that fails at Batman than a good Batman that fails at movie.

[Psyren]

I wasn't wild about the final fight scene itself, it felt overlong and wasn't as visually interesting as the earlier ones, but I think the movie would have been absolutely weaker if the Riddler's final scheme hadn't (at least mostly) gone off. The entire point of the movie is that Batman's isolation, limited perspective, and myopic focus on his in trauma (as expressed by punching muggers) makes him both factually and morally wrong - he fails to understand the Riddler's plans, misses clues because he's a billionaire, and doesn't understand that his personal vendetta is going to inspire a lot of other people who want violent retribution. These are pretty major character flaws, and I think the movie does a reasonably good (not flawless, but good) job of highlighting them, certainly as good of a job as I'd expect something working under the enormous constraints of a superhero movie to do.

If he stops the vans blowing up, the narrative basically would just shrug and go "yeah but he's Batman so it's all good." A failure in a story only means something if it has narrative consequence, and Batman saving the day in spite of repeatedly messing up would remove the narrative consequence of his mistakes. Batman would be too big to be allowed to fail, and we'd get a limp, pointless movie without the courage of its own convictions.


Maybe this would make a better, or more immediately satisfying, Batman movie. I don't know, and don't care because I don't care about Batman. It would have made it a worse movie overall though, and I'd rather have a good movie that fails at Batman than a good Batman that fails at movie.

I'd agree with all this except I have serious doubts that there IS going to be a narrative consequence. They've all but promised that there will be a sequel where Batman keeps being Batman and Riddler keeps being Riddler (except worse, since he'll be likely

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working alongside Joker, so taking bets on how long before he gets inevitably betrayed and offed by his embodiment-of-chaotic-evil "friend"

and so I expect the bodycount to be even higher because (a) two supervillains now, maybe three if Penguin shows up again and (b) that's just how Hollywood does things (see the escalating bodycount of the Dark Knight trilogy for example.) And with that, it'll be hard to then turn around and say that Batman's approach is working now or that he's getting better, but they're going to try anyway.

If this had been a more meditative/standalone affair like the Joker movie, it ended with the Arkham scene and Bats hung up his cowl afterward (if even temporarily a la Garfield's Spiderman post-Gwen) I would have hailed it as a masterpiece. As is, I don't think it's going to run with any of its footballs and it makes me sad. Good to see the cinema as a whole making a comeback though.

[Tyndmyr]

Hey now, it's not like he stuck his unprotected chin directly into C-4 or anything. Or got hit by a truck and thrown bodily into a car and metal trash cans before walking away.

I admit, I expected either slightly more prudence or damage from the bomb as well.

If we're gonna kvetch about guns in the movie, we should so it right. The velocity of a ballistic projectile decreases approximately linearly with distance, thus the energy decreases roughly quadratically.

What the heck, let's kill some catgirls. Velocity does defeat armor, yeah. That said, most rifles do not decrease noticeably over movie distances. Consider some bog standard .308 150 grain round. That's not a specialized load, it's somewhere in the middle.
muzzle 2820 fps
100 yds 2533 fps
200 yds 2263 fps
300 yds 2009 fps
400 yds 1774 fps

*all* of those ranges will require a level 3 plate to get a stop. Level 3a will fail at all of them. It doesn't traverse one category of armor. 3a is not rated to stop 308 at any range, but in practice, you may get a stop at 500 yards. I would not care to bet my life on it, though.

In any case, this largely doesn't matter, as the range differences shown all fit well within the 100 yards range. I dare say that every time Batman is shown being shot, it's less than half that range. There's essentially no difference between any of the impacts.

Of note: While it is still quite painful, 3a will definitely stop a shotgun round up close, despite not stopping the rifle.

The point about weight is well taken. My level 4 ceramic set weighs runs 8.3 lbs each for front and back plates, with a few more pounds for side plates. While these are among the tougher plates that exist on the market, they only cover the upper torso, and one would need to double up on plates just to get full torso protection, at a total of perhaps 40 lbs. Ceramic shatters on impact. While tougher plates like this do have some multihit protection, they will still fail if you dump a mag into the same spot. It isn't sufficient to explain the cops. Simply tanking two mags to the chest results in a dead person.

You *could* suggest that he's wearing steel....though that much spalling into his unprotected neck and chin would absolutely leave him with a shredded head. But weight of steel is brutal. Most steel has trouble with the bog standard 5.56 steel tip up close from a long barrel. It's usually only rated to level 3. He could be extra thick or doubling it up, but that worsens the steel problem. He'd be looking at maybe eighty pounds of steel torso armor.

Plus whatever is on his limbs.

I do think it is as reasonable to complain about this as the Black Widow jumping. Both are definitely playing fast and loose with physics.

I found Black Widow formed almost no lasting impression in my mind; the movie equivalent of a bagel at a hotel's continental breakfast. It's not terrible, you can chew it up in a semi-comatose state, then forget about it and continue with your day. I seem to dimly recall it had something to do with the importance of found families (i.e. the Other Marvel Storyline) and... nope, that's it.

Also Black Widow wears what looks like a slightly padded jumpsuit, and not heavy full body armor. Looking at her doesn't exactly say impact resistant. Or maybe she was wearing a lot of padding in that scene, like I said, I can't remember anything about that movie.

I had a similar opinion of Black Widow. Part of it is just it dropped at a bad time, but yeah, it's not going to be generally ranked among the top tier.

That said, I will give it credit for not making Nat bulletproof. Sure, sure, people survive impacts at a somewhat implausible level, but bullets are generally treated as a credible threat at all times. Credit where credit is due.

The one fall was several stories with multiple impacts off metal, culminating in slamming into concrete if memory serves. It looked pretty brutal, and I'm confident if I did it, I'd be quite dead. One would think at least multiple broken bones would be on the table. However, people *have* survived some insane falls in real life. I know of nobody that survived 60 rifle rounds to the torso. So I have to say that Black Widow perhaps has a more realistic and consistent portrayal of damage than Batman. Not necessarily a *good* one, but...hey.

The entire movie after the conversation with the Riddler in Arkham is botched. Suddenly changing venues, scope of the story, stakes, and the character's abilities in the finale is bad writing. The rest of the movie is great, and if they had stuck to a noir ending that matches the movie I think it would have been a much better movie overall.

That's a fair point. The film feels....almost as if it is ending, and then you have another half hour bolted on.

And the Joker tease felt...like sequel bait. I mean, I know it is, but cmon. The Joker's been used an awful lot, that's not really a lot of points for originality.

As for the point of it all....I mean, the Riddler killing corrupt people wasn't all that bothersome. Murdering everyone is getting away from the theme. It might be interesting to explore if retribution is wrong, but it doesn't really seem to entirely stick that. Batman isn't going to stop being Batman. There's no real indication of that. The audience, if they're on board with Batman getting revenge, probably also doesn't mind Riddler getting revenge.

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The audience probably DOES disagree with Riddler morally regarding the Sins of the Fathers mentality. That's not Batmanesque. Punishing someone for someone else's crime is different than hitting the guy directly responsible. That could be explored, I think, but it breaks the relationship between them. Batman isn't pursuing anyone due to their family relationships.

You could argue that Catwoman would qualify, but he certainly doesn't hold her responsible for her father's evils.

Unfortunately, this moral quandary doesn't really get resolved, and the attempted citycide sort of overshadows it. You could perhaps build a finale out of the confrontation with Bruce Wayne and develop that philosophical difference a bit earlier...but it's not actually that important to the finale in the current film, save to try to sell the audience on the fakeout for Bats' identity.

[Peelee]

[usual rant on how grain is a stupid measurement to have kept with]

[lord_khaine]

One of my issues is that folks online (not necessarily here) are giving Batman a pass for all the crazy stuff he survives in this movie, but Black Widow - an actual (quasi) super-soldier - falling off one building and hitting the fire escape made people want to throw the whole thing in the bin.

They could have failed to get the memo about Black Widow being a super soldier now.
All the time i read comics she were just a peak trained human.

Though personally. The reason i didnt even see that movie were more that they had already killed her.
I dont care about the start of a story i have already been given a hard and definitive ending on.

[Palanan]

Finally watched this, although it took me two nights to get through it all. It was both oddly addictive and a relentless grind.

I hated the first thirty minutes, because I dislike arty establishing shots that don’t actually establish anything, and it spent the first thirty minutes beating you over the head with its nonstop ultra-gritty grimdark aesthetic. But once the plot began to move it was surprisingly compelling, if still over-the-top grimdark.

Unfortunately not even a twisty plot could overcome my dislike of Robert Pattinson here. Goth emo Batman just doesn’t work for me, and Pattinson has neither the gravitas nor the physical build to present a convincing Batman. Most of the dialogue was either cliché and predictable or delivered in a mumbled whisper, or both.

As much as I respect Andy Serkis, he wasn’t an especially impressive Alfred, and his scenes with Pattinson seemed muted and flat. He also seemed to be forgotten by the end of the movie, without so much as a brief closing scene showing him leaving the hospital, or something.

As for Selina…hot supermodel is hot, and there was at least an attempt at chemistry on her part, though Pattinson didn’t really sell me on the mutual attraction. Her backstory was almost as tragic as Moon Knight’s, and between her, Riddler and Bats it’s a real photo finish who’s had the darkest childhood.

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And all the really professional criminals know that changing from sexy civilian wear into a skintight crime suit in front of not one, but two large windows is of course the best way to maintain anonymity. Swinging out of another window onto the street below is naturally just as effective. (She couldn’t just take the stairs?)

Despite all this, I ended up mostly enjoying the movie—and more than that, respecting the scope of the film and its attempt, however mixed, to say something about the intersection of vigilantism and social media. Whether or not what it said was anything more than momentary and superficial is another question; but at least it tried. Which is just as well, because otherwise the movie never missed a chance to deliver a cliché or a massively telegraphed moment, or to linger on a scene four times as long as necessary. (Lookin’ at you, flare scene.)

And some things really broke my immersion:

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Apparently Batman doesn’t always care about civilian casualties, because I’m pretty sure several truckers and a number of other drivers died in the explosion which Bats used as a backdrop for his bad*** ride. No attempt to help them? We’re back to Justice League Batman, who mows down people like James Bond with his headlight machine guns.

The wingsuit scene was a mess, starting with how ridiculous Batman looks in a wingsuit. Besides that, Bats should’ve been killed outright when his parachute caught on the train bridge and slammed his head into the superstructure. Wingsuits can hit 125 mph in a few seconds, and even if the chute had slowed him slightly, the impact should have taken his head halfway off. People die in those things every year from tiny miscalculations, to say nothing of slamming a head into solid metal at speed. Bouncing and rolling on hard asphalt should have shattered most of the rest of his bones.

The scene with the machine guns lighting up the fistfight was visually great, but in a confined space with lots of metal there would’ve been ricochets everywhere, and soon enough one of those would’ve clipped Bats in the mouth. Highly annoying that his suit is as bulletproof as Iron Man, and also annoying that none of the Riddler clones had the brains to aim a rifle at his teeth.

So it was a mixed bag at best, though compelling and generally well-paced. I won’t be yearning for a sequel, but if there’s more Selina and less Joker I’ll watch it at some point…even if that means tolerating more Battinson.

[Eldan]

Ah yes. "Realistic".

[Fyraltari]

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[Psyren]

Don't forget tanking point-blank C4 with his unprotected chin So realistic!

[warty goblin]

At a basic physical level The Batman is totally unrealistic, and I don't see any reason to dispute that.

What it does have going for it in comparison to a Marvel superhero movie is a sort of metaphysical realism is maybe the right term? Moral equality? Anti-solipsism? I'm not sure what the precise best term is, but I get the sense in a lot of Marvel movies that at a fundamental level the heroes are the only thing which matter, and everyone and everything else is only relevant to the degree, and in the manner, that people with funny names feel about it. You can send Dr. Strange to other universes, and the most important question is always what's he like in this one. Everything is based on what the protagonist feels about it, and in like 99.5% of cases those feelings are correct, or the movie clearly wants you to think of them as correct.

I don't think that is true of The Batman. Batman's feelings are in fact interrogated by the film and found to be wanting. His understanding of the world is wrong, precisely because he only accounts for his own emotions and values. And his lack of understanding actually matters and has consequences.

It's funny, people always say that Marvel has the likable and relatable heroes, but I've never found that to be true. They're funny, but I also find their smug certainty in a universe that exists to affirm them deeply unsympathetic and unlikable. The best part of Infinity War was that for three hours, the heroes didn't have their magic pixie plot dust, and the fact that they're a bunch of emotionally malfunctioning spoiled brats matters. The worst part of Endgame is that is spent it's entire runtime smashing a literal undo button as hard as it could.

[Psyren]

I don't think that is true of The Batman. Batman's feelings are in fact interrogated by the film and found to be wanting. His understanding of the world is wrong, precisely because he only accounts for his own emotions and values. And his lack of understanding actually matters and has consequences.

I was with you till the last sentence. Because I would argue Batman's actions had no consequences - meaningful ones for him, anyway. His failure to detective (never mind his failure to superhero) got a ton of innocent people killed, resulted in half of Gotham getting destroyed, left the main villain not only alive and well but put him in touch with an even worse villain, and resolved essentially nothing relating to his family's ill-gotten wealth and the demons of Thomas Wayne's past. So what we're left with is that as soon as they drain the flood water from the streets, he's going to put on the bat outfit again and go right back to punching poor people in alleyways and hoping that somehow does something about the city's crime rate eventually. I mean, it's been an utter failure at reforming the city so far but perseverance, right? And it has to do that because brand and status quo and this movie doing gangbusters especially for a DC film.

Marvel by contrast might get a bit quippy, but at least the multiverse gives them a way to explore stories and endpoints with their characters that DC has yet to be able to touch. Yeah, you can't kill off an iconic character like Loki permanently, but you can give his character not one but two cathartic and satisfying endpoints/deaths.

[warty goblin]

I was with you till the last sentence. Because I would argue Batman's actions had no consequences - meaningful ones for him, anyway. His failure to detective (never mind his failure to superhero) got a ton of innocent people killed, resulted in half of Gotham getting destroyed, left the main villain not only alive and well but put him in touch with an even worse villain, and resolved essentially nothing relating to his family's ill-gotten wealth and the demons of Thomas Wayne's past. So what we're left with is that as soon as they drain the flood water from the streets, he's going to put on the bat outfit again and go right back to punching poor people in alleyways and hoping that somehow does something about the city's crime rate eventually. I mean, it's been an utter failure at reforming the city so far but perseverance, right? And it has to do that because brand and status quo and this movie doing gangbusters especially for a DC film.

And if they do that I'll be annoyed and consider it a real mess up of the things this movie did best. They could also do a movie where he (more or less) successfully investigates higher level crime and corruption, have the destruction of Gotham matter long term, or any number of other potentially interesting things. I'm not going to condemn one movie that mostly successfully delivered on its themes because the sequel might suck.

I feel pretty confident bashing Marvel for this since they've been consistently doing it for nearly a decade and a half now.

Marvel by contrast might get a bit quippy, but at least the multiverse gives them a way to explore stories and endpoints with their characters that DC has yet to be able to touch. Yeah, you can't kill off an iconic character like Loki permanently, but you can give his character not one but two cathartic and satisfying endpoints/deaths.

That would require watching Loki, and Loki sucks. Like even my girlfriend who really likes Loki as a character got so bored with it we stopped watching after maybe 4 episodes.

I also don't give credit for killing a character if you have infinite copies of them and/or you immediately smash the reset button. That's just wimping out.

[Psyren]

And if they do that I'll be annoyed and consider it a real mess up of the things this movie did best. They could also do a movie where he (more or less) successfully investigates higher level crime and corruption, have the destruction of Gotham matter long term, or any number of other potentially interesting things. I'm not going to condemn one movie that mostly successfully delivered on its themes because the sequel might suck.

Come on, Batman has been doing this cycle way longer than a single decade. I have a great bridge to Metropolis to sell you

The best I can hope for in the sequel is that he really does keep his cape hung up for a while, but then Joker and Riddler break out of Arkham and he "reluctantly" resumes the mantle as the only one who can stop them. The events of the movie happen and bam, status quo restored until Bane comes along to break his back at some point. By then we either have another crack at Justice League or we reboot again.

That would require watching Loki, and Loki sucks.

Lol! Pull the other one

[Saph]

I get the sense in a lot of Marvel movies that at a fundamental level the heroes are the only thing which matter, and everyone and everything else is only relevant to the degree, and in the manner, that people with funny names feel about it. You can send Dr. Strange to other universes, and the most important question is always what's he like in this one. Everything is based on what the protagonist feels about it, and in like 99.5% of cases those feelings are correct, or the movie clearly wants you to think of them as correct.

I've been having this feeling about Marvel movies/shows for a while. It's interesting, because if you go back to the very early movies in the MCU, like Iron Man or Captain America, this wasn't really the case – the non-superpowered inhabitants of the world did actually matter and the protagonists had to work with/around them. But over the years of the MCU, there's been this gradual drift away from that and towards this style where all the regular humans in the setting feel more and more ghostly and insubstantial, and the only "real" people are the heroes.

I do kind of wonder at what point the shift happened, and what caused it.

[warty goblin]

I've been having this feeling about Marvel movies/shows for a while. It's interesting, because if you go back to the very early movies in the MCU, like Iron Man or Captain America, this wasn't really the case – the non-superpowered inhabitants of the world did actually matter and the protagonists had to work with/around them. But over the years of the MCU, there's been this gradual drift away from that and towards this style where all the regular humans in the setting feel more and more ghostly and insubstantial, and the only "real" people are the heroes.

I do kind of wonder at what point the shift happened, and what caused it.

Glad I'm not the only one.

I think, based on various shaky recollections, that it's probably somewhere around Civil War, or at least that's when it gets really blatant for me, since the entire plot is basically screw accountability to anybody else, the only things that matter are FRIEND FEELS or PARENT FEELS.

I suppose in some ways it's inevitable, since the MCU takes as axiomatic that (somehow) the non-super world only advances according to the real world timeline (although it's arguably a stronger assumption, anybody trying to change anything is bad and the heroes who never change a thing are good) the heroes only get stronger, and are pretty much right about everything, or at worst fooled and still worthy of unconditional trust and forgiveness. At some point any conventional force isn't even a nuisance, the problems are utterly out of scope for anybody else, and everyone who isn't either a superhero is irrelevant unless a superhero feels otherwise. And because of the Hero Wrongness Exemption Clause, this is the natural and correct order of things.

In a way The Multiverse of Madness is painfully honest about this. Mind-slaving a town of normies is fine, they're just around to buy the merch - better go zap something to get back on the lunchbox! But hurt one single Particle Effect Person, and that's over the line. It's this weird neo-Calvinist by way of Ayn Rand metaphysics, and it kinda freaks me out.

[Caledonian]

Eh, there hasn't been a good movie Riddler

I beg to differ! Frank Gorshin gave a perfectly creditable performance in the 1966 movie. Admittedly the tone was very different from the 1989 and later film versions.