It also does that trope where it has the revolutionary “villain” fighting to expose the systemic corruption be/act so unhinged and do evil things as to give justification that their critiques are wrong. It’s a really well made, entertaining movie, but it’s themes are just such weak centrist bs that I couldn’t ignore it.
I wrote about it more in-depth here if you’re interested: https://letterboxd.com/peytobrock/film/the-batman/
EDIT: this is a write-up by a critic I really like that’s even better than what I wrote: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63389248
I’ve noticed a trend in a lot of these comic book movies over the past decade that makes me feel like a tin foil weirdo. It seems like a lot of the villains end up aligned with populist/vaguely anti-capitalist ideas. It’s almost like they want us to think those ideas are bad :shocked-pikachu:
He doesn’t literally, but there’s a plot point about how he posts videos on some made up social media website where he has like a bunch of followers and supporters helping him with things like “detonator suggestions”
It’s almost like they want us to think those ideas are bad
I’ve heard secondhand (i think they heard it) from the West Wing Thing that a lot of writers are somewhat leftist so they try to sneak their ideas in where they can, but that would be very stupid for that very reason… So, it’s probably true.
traditionally when writing a history the author would represent both sides as having part of their political views and use the speeches to express them.
This is notably what Milton was doing with paradise lost
I know it’s not great representation, but I can’t help but love the gay villains lol
this is what all superhero movies these days
villain: I have good ideas
audience: damn, these ideas are good
villain: unrelated episode of sociopathic violence
audience: damn, i guess those ideas are bad
hero: first world free market rules-based world order with consent from the international community (US/EU/NATO only)
audience: damn i guess i’m a liberal capitalist now
This was also the last fucking Batman movie. And the one before the one before that.
So it’s a superhero movie? Dang
It feels like an ersatz Joker to me. I liked that they included some allusions that Batman’s rich-boy background is a blindspot for Batman (Selina pointed it out, as did the moustache cop) and I liked the depiction of Gotham, but I was kinda…confused by Riddler?
Like I liked the movie overall but there was one line by the mayoral candidate Real that kind of irked me for its tone-deathness (especially now) where she promises to restore people’s faith in institutions after the sheer shitshow of the events of the movie (we’re talking zodiac killer weaponizing Hurricane Katrina levels of bad). I think Real was supposed to be like girlboss AOC/Kamala? Dunno her politics were left vague besides a general “we need to care” idea that the movie seems to deposit (See; Batman’s change from pursuing vengeance to pursuing…helping in general?)
Plus what was even Riddler’s ideology? Like I get he’s supposed to represent maligned and alienated white men (good on the movie on this take of Riddler), but besides a general anti-corruption message what was his ideology? And how isn’t his end-of movie actions completely nullifying his point of anti-corruption by trying to take out the non-corrupt lady? I don’t really get leftist vibes from him (there’s no slapped on haves vs havenots narrative or revolutionary movement) nor really right wing besides like the aesthetics of weirdo online reactionaries.
spoiler
Still wish we could have a Poison Ivy main “villain”, with like Gotham as a sweltering concrete hellhole (think Baltimore, Los Angeles and Pittburgh slammed together) in the late 1980s with a thick orange haze in the sky, a red sun, a summer heat wave. Poison Ivy as a grad student, trying to get a decent break in being a botanist while participating in minor ecological activism in Gotham, particularly the pollution of the Gotham River. Since Ivy is a feminist icon, touch into the sheer sexism in STEM fields and the difficulty of getting a good job as a person from a working class background (Ivy in some comics sold drugs to make tuition lol).
Shit happens, she gets fucking turned or whatever. She starts targeting major polluters with assassinations using increasingly more vile plant-related methods that force people to confront the damage they’ve done. Climax can be the entire goddamn Gotham river bursting into flames like the Cuyahoga river, to really drive home that Ivy was not only right, but justified to make these people pay. Make it an homage to Batman: Poison Ivy or something.
It felt like they were going for a “left wing revolutionary” vibe with the riddler, but if they had only had him focus on going after corruption he would have been unambiguously in the right (other than maybe the fact that his murders were pretty gruesome). I feel like they HAD to make him go over the top evil at the end because otherwise the Riddler would have pretty much been a hero.
