The Dark Knight has got his darkest movie yet, with a villain more in common with the
Jigsaw killer than Jim Carrey.
Bruce Wayne goes to some bleak places in "The Batman" – and these are his darkest depths.
By the time "The Batman" starts, it's been two years since Bruce Wayne's mission to fight
crime in Gotham has begun — and by his own admission, he's failing.
Things have only gotten worse since he put on the mask and began spending his nights
striking fear into the hearts of criminals.
Even though the myth of The Batman and the looming threat of the violence he spreads
has rattled the criminal element, it has barely slowed their pace.
Bruce wants to change Gotham for the better, but knows deep down that what he is doing
is not having its intended effect.
Before he can fix his focus on the bigger picture and discover the true breadth of corruption
and graft that has long strangled any potential for improvement in Gotham, he must trudge
through this fruitless, repetitive cycle – and by the time we meet him, it's clear that it's
taking a toll.
The first time we see Batman in action, the audience gets a glimpse of what these brutal
late nights have been like for Bruce.
He encounters a gang of face-painted hoods, recreationally assaulting random people in
the street and filming it for kicks.
They're about to descend on their latest victim, a guy simply trying to make it home on the
train, when they are confronted by Batman in full, cloaked regalia.
"I'm vengeance."
On some level, it's a thrilling action scene; on another, it's a discomforting example of
Bruce's flawed approach to fixing his city.
He dispenses with the gang members despite being outnumbered, but takes significant damage
himself in the process.
Shot at, tasered, kicked, punched, hit with weapons?
No amount of billionaire armor and gadgetry is going to fully soften those blows.
It's almost like he has a masochistic streak, believing he deserves such nightly beatdowns.
The ferocity it takes to overcome those odds and fight the gang showcases the sort of monster
Bruce has become.
The innocent bystander he set out to save from the face-paint gang is far from appreciative,
cowering under the Batman's gaze out of fear that he'll be next.
The carnage on display makes it hard for him to comprehend that Bruce is a good guy – which
makes you wonder what exactly Bruce Wayne is getting out of all of this.
By virtue of being the only living soul who knows Bruce's secret, Alfred is burdened with
a sense of objectivity that Bruce is sorely lacking.
Every night Bruce comes home to the cave and throws himself into maintaining his case files,
diaries and ongoing investigations.
It's Alfred – the closest thing Bruce has to a father – who has to perform the unfortunate
task of pointing out the ineffective, unsustainable nature of his efforts.
But, like many who love a person with self-destructive tendencies, he still tries to be supportive.
Much like it was the case with Christian Bale's Batman, it's Bruce's responses and reactions
to real concerns that make these early morning reality checks so depressing.
"Oh, you know how it is Mr. Fox.
You're out at night, looking for kicks, someone's passing around weaponized hallucinogens."
We've already established through Bruce's own admission that he doesn't really care
if he dies doing what he's doing.
But when Alfred urges him to think of his family's legacy, as he continues to ignore
managing his fortune or engaging with the company his father left him, Bruce remarks
that his mission as The Batman is his family's legacy.
That alone would be a pretty dark declaration to make, but every time Alfred pushes him
further, Bruce responds with callous and selfish thoughts to put Alfred in his place.
When Alfred tries to be firm, Bruce reminds Alfred he's his butler and not his father.
When Alfred won't let Bruce go to a funeral without cufflinks on, to keep up appearances,
he makes Bruce wear his own, to which Bruce asks if Alfred himself is a Wayne.
It's a question whose answer is meant to hurt Alfred for suggesting any connection to this
lineage.
Alfred explains to Bruce that it was his Thomas Wayne who gifted him the cufflinks, and that
he was close enough to be family to the man Bruce is killing himself every night to avenge.
"The Batman" is a movie that, more than any other Batman flick, showcases Bruce's intelligence
and skill as a detective.
But this being a story that takes place so early in his career, it also highlights how
fallible he is.
Midway through unraveling the film's central mystery behind who The Riddler is and what
maze of moral rot he is trying to uncover in Gotham's history, Bruce and Lieutenant
Gordon believe they have figured out who "the rat" is.
The latest riddle they've solved references an informant tethered to The Riddler's accusations
that there's rampant corruption both in the Gotham City Police Department and the city's
political power structure.
Bruce believes the riddle refers, in broken Spanish, to "a rat with wings," leading him
to think it's The Penguin, the right hand man to mob boss Carmine Falcone.
After an insane car chase, The Batman and Gordon tag team Penguin with their key accusation,
going back and forth like a pair of cops in an interrogation, but Penguin insists he's
not the rat.
When they repeat the riddle, which includes the phrase "you are el rata alada" Penguin
points out that it should be "la" since the noun in question is feminine.
Bruce realizes the bit the Riddler emphasized is "you are el" and types the rest of the
phrase into a browser that leads to a chat window with the Riddler.
There he realizes Riddler's next victim is Bruce Wayne, and desperately tries to race
home to save Alfred from the bomb that's been shipped there.
But he arrives too late.
Alfred is hospitalized and in critical condition — all because Bruce misinterpreted a clue.
"Oh, you're really not as smart as I thought you were."
Sins of the father
As he probes more deeply into Gotham's history and sees how crooked its vaunted power structures
have long been, he can accept that the shape of his enemy is more sprawling and vast than
he initially surmised.
But when the Riddler exposes the hidden history of Bruce Wayne's own family, it shakes him
to his foundation.
In this iteration of the story, the Waynes were murdered not long after Thomas Wayne's
bid for mayor of Gotham.
The Riddler posits that the Waynes and the other founding family of the city, the Arkhams,
had always exerted control over Gotham through their power and wealth, but in no case was
this more pernicious than when a reporter was digging into their past during the campaign.
A journalist uncovered that Martha, an Arkham before she married into the Waynes, suffered
from severe mental illness in her youth and had a lengthy stay in the asylum of her namesake.
Thomas, worried the scandal would impact his campaign, used his influence over Falcone,
having once saved the man's life, to get him to silence the reporter — who was murdered.
Suddenly faced with the realization that his father wasn't the noble, altruistic victim
he has committed himself to avenging, Bruce is sent into a tailspin, calling into question
everything he's ever known.
Although he later discovers that what he's been told by the Riddler and Falcone isn't
exactly the whole story, such revelations still rock him to the very core of his being.
When the Riddler is revealed to be forensic accountant Edward Nashton and put behind bars,
Batman comes face to face with him, only to discover some disturbing wrinkles to their
adversarial relationship.
Firstly, Bruce discovers Nashton knows who he really is.
He arrives to their little tête-à-tête thinking his days of anonymity are over and
that Nashton is going to reveal his identity, but what he finds out is far worse.
Nashton goes on a lengthy rant about how he always resented the sympathy the city had
for the poor little rich boy who lost his parents, but not Nashton or the other orphans
suffering in the dilapidated orphanage whose funding had been pillaged by greedy bureaucrats.
But beneath this screed about his motivations is the revelation that his master plan is
even larger than his string of killings.
Batman comes to understand that the Riddler views himself as a kindred spirit, the same
kind of necessary vigilante as Batman.
He sees the two of them, together, as partners, as he's made Bruce an unwilling participant
in his plans.
Later, during a climactic showdown with one of Riddler's followers, Bruce injects himself
with some kind of adrenaline shot.
It sends him into overdrive – he brutally beats his opponent, nearly killing him.
The man, near death, responds to the question "who are you?"
with a haunting answer – instead of being straightforward, Batman's enemy says, "I'm
vengeance," echoing Batman's very own words right back at him.
As rock-bottom as this moment might be for Bruce, it's a necessary wake-up call.
For as dark as "The Batman" is, it's a story that must plumb those depths to come out the
other side transformed, a Bruce Wayne who understands that Gotham needs more than fear
and violence to be saved from itself.
It needs hope.
And so does Bruce Wayne.
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