A sense of an ending

If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, and then you become something else entirely”

“Which is?”

“A Legend, Mr. Wayne”

                                     This caped crusader has certainly become one. Surely, never has a superhero movie franchise received this much anticipation, this much appreciation, this much adrenaline which, of course it thoroughly deserves.

                  As every kid who grew up in the 90’s would know, it was Cartoon Network, not the movies which introduced us to this dark world, portraying this very man whom we all look up to, now. And yes, it definitely did a lot of justice to the original. It faithfully adhered to the comics, and did a brilliant sketch of the superhero himself with Kevin Conroy voicing the Batman. I still adhere to the opinion that Kevin Conroy could be the best possible voice to the Batman. For people who tend to disagree, watch the scene when Conroy (Batman) says in the episode “Nothing to fear” amidst Danny Elfman’s theme,

“I am the vengeance, I am the night, I am the Batman”

                        Coming back to the big screen, we idolized the adroitness of Tim Burton’s classic; people saw the Batman in Keaton and the Joker in Nicholson. It was one of the movies that did perfect justice to the literature: The comics. As Bob Kane, the creator himself puts it aptly,

"I envisaged Gotham the way I see it now at Pinewood. They've got it, every building, every trashcan, and every brick.”

Burton revolutionized the Superhero genre with his two movies. The previous installments, be it the Adam West’s “Batman” and “The New adventures of Batman”, made Batman a household name , but can never be juxtaposed to what he really is now. When people saw a crime fighting hero in Batman, Burton had a different perspective. He saw a freak in Batman as everyone saw in Joker. The entire theme of the movie was a duel between two freaks. As he states,

“It’s a fight between two disturbed people. The Joker is such a great character because there's a complete freedom to him. Any character who operates on the outside of society and is deemed a freak and an outcast then has the freedom to do what they want. They are the darker sides of freedom. Insanity in some scary way is the most freedom you can have, because you're not bound by the laws of society.”

                    Burton persisted in his dark sketch of his freak, with the next installment. And then arose the ingenuity of Warner Bros, as they felt they wanted the movies to make more money and portraying the protagonist as a dark freak with flaws won’t help them in their cause. They made Joel Schumacher the director and Burton take the back seat as the producer. Seldom did they realize that the next two movies would be considered as the worst movies ever made in history. To any person who respected Batman, the script missed the pain that Tim Burton found in a man tormented by the long-ago murder of his parents. One does have to question the logic behind adding nipples to the hard-rubber bat suit. Sometimes, I feel that a director like Perarusu would have done a better job than Joel Schumacher, and Mallika Sherawath would have done a better “job” than Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy.

                                    When the news that Nolan and David Goyer were going to reboot the franchise came out in 2003, one had a glister of hope. The director revealed that his intentions was to make an origins story in a way that has never been told before. It portrayed Bruce Wayne traumatized by his parents’ death from which he never recovered, by what people call as “Survivor’s guilt”, and gradually, his anger outweighs his guilt.           

            “That impossible anger strangling the grief until the memory of your loved one just becomes poison in your veins”.

                        We did not see Batman as a superhero, we saw him as a person who was betrayed by the very society that his parents stood for. We saw him as person who has his fears, who has his weaknesses, we saw him as us. Batman Begins was more than just a movie. It impinged everyone what Batman stood for: something more than justice, something more than revenge. Bats scare him. They remind him why his parents died. This particular scene where Bruce Wayne stands among swirling creatures that blazed in darkness is one of the scenes in the trilogy. To overcome fear, you shouldn't cast yourself away from it. You should embrace it.

"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy. And I cannot do this as Bruce Wayne. A man is just flesh and blood, and can be ignored or destroyed. But a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, everlasting"

  

                 Not just Batman, it was crystal clear that each character stood for something, something more than what you’d think. Alfred was not a mere butler; he stood for the name “Wayne” and stood behind his master as an ally. The covert fatherly affection he shows for Bruce Wayne: be it consoling the boy who’d lost his parents, or the grief when he tears the letter by Rachel to Bruce, or the melancholic anger when he hears his master himself calls Wayne mansion a mausoleum and he’d rather have it down brick by brick instantaneously makes you shed a tear or two.

“I give a damn because a good man once made me responsible, for what was most precious to him in the whole world.”

I am not sure whether anyone in the future can match Christian Bale as Batman in the future, but am pretty sure that no one can match Michael Caine as Alfred.

Jim Gordon. “In a town this bent, who is there to rat to anyway?” He stood for everything that Batman did. He still had hope in a city which was corrupt, which even Bruce Wayne didn’t as his desire to revenge overcame the desire for Justice. When everything is bent, every system was broken, when everything that good stood for deteriorated, it is rare to see a person imperishable. Every ounce of him was filled with the hope of “We can bring Gotham back”, in all the three movies, in all the worst circumstances, which makes him such a vital character.

“I never said Thank you”

“And you’ll never have to”.

                           Superhero movies are often seen as popcorn flicks. Viewers enter the theater to be entertained and nothing more. The best example to the above is “The Avengers”, which had an ensemble cast, where the plot revolved around an object called Tesseract and nothing else. It had its moments though, but it makes you applaud, it doesn’t do anything beyond that. Look at the Spiderman Franchise. For one thing, Spiderman has a best friend who becomes his enemy, who becomes his friend, who becomes his enemy, who becomes the suspected girlfriend’s boyfriend. The entire story revolved around Peter Parker, the douche bag, getting the girl. The Batman films go deeper, and are more thoughtful than that. Each of them was entertaining, but the movies spoke about something more about the human mind. These films were realistic; they didn’t show the protagonist thrashing the villain every time, instead it was the converse. Let’s consider Superman. He is powerful, sadly too powerful.

                                    The movies were not entirely dark, was not entirely serious. It allowed Bruce Wayne to have his moments. It allowed Alfred and Fox to deliver subtle humor. Amidst the serious plot, the darkness and sheer villainy, and the complexity of survivor’s guilt, Nolan has so much to talk about in such an intense screenplay. The scene when Freeman says,

“Yes, I was fired. And then I got another job. Yours’ “, or when Bruce says, “Oh, At least we’ll have spares” were priceless.

                       

                                    I wish to set aside the argument of which is the best movie among the three, as people scoff at me when I say Batman Begins is the best among three. Perspectives differ. This is for people who made fun of the same Superhero (thanks to Joel schumacher), who wear Batman T shirts now . This post is to ascertain the fact that Christopher Nolan as a true film maker, whose goal was not to convert the Batman franchise into a money making franchise, but was to make good movies. People will definitely attempt to reboot the franchise again, they certainly will, but the bench mark looks impossible to pass. More than the adrenaline that gushed in my system, seeing the last scene in TDKR, the sense of an ending will take time to set in.

                       

                      There is this scene from Kill Bill 2, so brilliantly narrated by David Carradine to Uma Thurman:

                                   

“Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there’s the superhero and there’s the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His outfit with the big red “S” – that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes.”

                                    I do concur. Spiderman doesn’t wake up as Spiderman. He wakes up as Peter Parker. Everybody needs a mask to become somebody else except Superman who is born Superman. But I’ve one single statement to rebut, that stands for all the Batman Comics, and is the heart of Nolan’s trilogy, while only rarely touched upon.

“A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat over a little boy’s shoulder to let him know that the world hadn’t ended”

Anyone can be a hero. Anyone who shares his hatred of evil can be Batman.