Again, this is really more of an essay than a review (there aren't enough essays about Batman), but there isn't a forum specifically for essays.
Anyway . . .
----
Like every other nerd on the internet, I love Batman. When I was six, I got hooked on the reruns of the 60s Batman TV show and pestered my parents into buying me whatever Batman toys were available at the time. When the 90s rolled around, I watched each episode of Batman: The Animated Series as it came out. I missed both the Burton and Schumacher films when they first came out, but only because my mom was the one who decided what movies we saw in theaters and she simply refused to go to them, but I did eventually see all of them. When Batman Begins rolled along, I sort of missed the theatrical run due to having stopped paying attention to movies at the time, but did get it on DVD and later I was there on the opening day of Dark Knight and, while I?m not as hyped for the upcoming third instalment as I was for the second, I?ll probably be there on its opening day as well.
Given this, it shouldn?t be too much of a surprise that when I got a PS3, one of the first games I had to get into my collection was Arkham Asylum. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. Don?t get me wrong, there are elements of the game that I dislike. The boss fights are mostly crap, the Riddler subplot is really unsatisfying and the story is kinda ?meh? at its best moments, but for all that, it?s still the most fun I?ve ever had playing a Batman game. This could be a lead in to a discussion on the biggest hurdle that games have to overcome if they want to be real art ? that, unlike books, movies or comics, a game can get away with a dumb story and bad characterization as long as it?s really fun to play ? but that?s not what I want to talk about here. Maybe another time, but for this essay, I want to focus more specifically on Batman than I do on games because of something that Arkham Asylum made me realize.
You see, even though the game is a blast to play, its plot is really pretty much nonsense. It centers around the Joker taking over Arkham Asylum, which is an excellent starting point, but then it kinda shits itself when you discover that Joker plans on using an experimental chemical based on Bane?s Venom to create an army of mutant super soldiers and . . . well, that?s not especially clear. Possibly take over Gotham City? Maybe just wreak havoc? Either way, it struck me as a very un-Joker-like plot that they came up with mostly as an excuse to fit Bane into the story, who has never been incarcerated in Arkham, since he?s not really insane.
So, I started thinking to myself, ?how could we make this game better story-wise?? Well, to make the game?s story great, it would have to be something that we haven?t done with Batman before, or, barring that, doing something with Batman in a way that it hasn?t been done before. Trying to come up with something, I slowly began to realize that truth of the matter. From a thematic perspective, Batman is dead, by which I mean that the franchise really has nowhere left to go.
Let?s start with Batman. I?ve heard it said that Batman is always the least interesting character out of every story he?s in, but that?s really true. Yes, he is often overshadowed by the rogue?s gallery, but this is usually only because Batman is rarely made the focus of the stories he?s in. On at least two occasions, Batman has made for the most interesting aspect of the story. The first I?ll bring up is Batman Begins. Batman Begins may very well be the best told version of Batman?s origin, which I won?t recount due to it being the most well-known of all comic book super-hero origin stories. The point is that in Batman Begins, Batman is very much at the center of the plot. Sure, there?s Scarecrow and Ra?s al Ghul and they do provide interesting conflict to the plot, but they are merely extensions of Batman?s own personal conflicts which drive the plot. Scarecrow is a representation the personal fears that Batman needs to conquer, while Ra?s al Ghul (under the pseudonym of Henri Ducard) is a sort of surrogate father and later a reflection of Bruce Wayne?s own worst impulses, reinforcing the tragedy of his own parents? deaths.
As far as I?m concerned, I think Batman Begins is probably the ultimate expression of Batman?s origin and it is therefore pointless to do any further retelling of the origin. There is simply nothing more that needs saying on the matter. But I really wouldn?t have expected Arkham Asylum to attempt to retell Batman?s origin again. What else then could we do? Well, one of the aspects of Batman that can make him interesting as a character is the psychological trauma caused by his parents death and how inescapable that trauma is. You could center the game around that and make it interesting.
Except that this, too, has already been done. Although it went largely unremarked at the time of its release, the story that best expresses Batman?s never-ending struggle against his own inner demons has already been made in a little movie called ?Mask of the Phantasm.? Although not without its flaws, the core of the movie and its emotional thrust is focused on the chances Bruce Wayne had to let go and his inability to do so. There is a powerful scene of Bruce standing in the rain before his parents grave begging for some sign that it?s alright for him to be happy with Andrea Baeumont, the woman he loves, that emphasizes how fixed on their death he is. Just when it seems like he actually can leave it all behind and give up being Batman, the relationship abruptly ends and he goes back to being Batman.
It is later revealed that it ended because the Andrea?s father was in debt to the mob and had to go into hiding. The crime that took his parents also took his love and I always thought one of the points the movie was aiming at was that there would have been some other thing that the crime of Gotham pushed him back to Batman, even if Andrea hadn?t been forced to leave. Once that door had been opened, Batman had no ability to close it. Batman had become who he really was, while Bruce Wayne was merely the alter-ego he hid behind. Once again, the most defining element of Batman?s personality finds a near perfect expression. There is really little need tell a story emphasizing this as its core theme.
Naturally, what I consider the best Batman story out there features the Joker as a character, as any defining Batman story should. Like it or not, Joker is probably the most important figure in the Batman mythos because he expresses two of the central themes of the Batman franchise itself: that Batman needs crime and that Batman is, himself, insane. While there are a number of interesting and colorful Batman super-villains, the Joker transcends mere villainy to become Batman?s personal nemesis. Joker defines his existence entirely by his conflict with Batman and believes that he could not, in fact, exist without Batman. His goals are not really to kill Batman, but to make Batman lose control, to give into his own madness and become just as much a menace to the city as the criminals he fights. This is a reflection of Batman?s own need to fight crime to ease the pain of his childhood trauma.
Joker is the very thing that keeps Batman sane, despite the villain?s best attempts otherwise. If the Joker really wanted to hurt Batman?s sanity, the best way to do it would ironically be to find a way to put an end to the need for Batman, to stop being the nemesis that Batman has to fight. Stripped of super-criminals and deadly nemeses to battle, Batman would be crushed under the weight of his own misplaced guilt. In the end, searching desperately for a chance to avenge his parents ? which, in his own twisted mind, would save them ? he would turn his rage on the petty criminals, becoming worse than the villains he needs to fight. Yet again, in a further bit of irony, the Joker?s own madness serves as the anchor that keeps Batman grounded enough in sanity to not be a danger to the city. You see, just as Batman couldn?t live without super-criminals to fight, the Joker can?t live without Batman. His deep-seeded psychological compulsion to be Batman?s nemesis keeps him from doing the one thing that would ultimately destroy Batman; not being a criminal. That is why the Joker is the most important character in the Rogue?s Gallery.
But again, if you want to see something that is the ultimate expression of this theme, it?s already been done in a comic called ?The Killing Joke.? In this tale, the Joker attempts to drive Commissioner Gordon insane to prove to Batman that the only difference between himself and sanity is one bad day, which cements how everything the Joker does is about Batman. The final battle of the comic takes place in a carnival funhouse, visually representing how Batman and the Joker are distorted mirror images of each other. Both are the products of a random tragedy and both seek to escape that tragedy, but while Batman tries to build a meaning out of that tragedy, the Joker dives into total moral nihilism, yet neither could really complete their existence without the other and would ultimately fall into self-destruction.
This has been an element of many Batman stories since it?s telling. The Joker explicitly states it in The Dark Knight and the animated film Under the Red Hood also centers a large part of its conflict around this and I couldn?t even begin to tell you how many comics there are that use this, but none of them capture the fact quite as succinctly as Alan Moore?s original story. In that sense, then, we already have the perfect expression of the Batman/Joker relationship and any further discussion of it can only retread old ground.
All then that may be left for the Batman franchise is its other villains, but even then, many of them got their ideal expressions in the Batman animated series of the 90s. Mr. Freeze, for example, had a complete arc told in two episodes and a one hour movie. The first episode, Heart of Ice, reinvents Mr. Freeze from the goofy, lesser known baddie of the early comics to a tragic anti-villain by adding the tale of his dead wife and his quest for revenge against her killer. The second episode, Deep Freeze, Mr. Freeze, who had previously been content to remain in his frozen cell at Arkham, learns that his wife actually still alive and has been cryogenically preserved, waiting for a cure, which drives him to adopt his villainous persona in search of a cure. The capstone is the movie, Sub-Zero, in which Nora Friez?s cryogenic chamber is broken, forcing Freeze to once again adopt his alias to quickly find a cure before she dies and ends with her being saved by a life-saving organ transplant. Yes, there are a few problems that I could bring up, but the overall arc of it is pretty much the perfect telling of Victor Friez?s story. It is impossible to imagine a story involving Mr. Freeze that does not retell this arc that is any better than it is. True, there was a third episode after the movie, but it had nowhere near the impact of the previous instalments and only further cements how there is nothing further to say concerning the character and that attempting to continue that story will never add anything worth telling.
While not of the other characters in the Rogue?s Gallery have finished arcs, at this point we?re straying away from Batman. The story is no longer about him, but about the villains. At this point, Batman is no longer necessary and these villains could easily be pitted against any super-hero and have their stories be just as satisfying. Furthermore, most of the other super-villains of the Batman mythos do not really have much thematic weight to them and exist only to provide conflict for Batman. Riddler has a psychological compunction to pit his intellect against Batman, Penguin is just a crime boss that Batman deals with from time to time, Catwoman is a sort of rival/love interest for Batman, so on and so forth. There is nothing unique about there stories that needs telling and, even then, at this point, the only thing really missing to their stories is a conclusion of some sort.
Therein lies the proof of what I see as a self-evident conclusion: that Batman as a franchise is all told out. There is nothing more to say about Batman that hasn?t already been effectively said and done. All that we can do now is retell the same stories over and over again with minor variations that add nothing to the story as a whole. Even the retirement of Batman has been done through Batman Beyond, in which we see that Batman is so unable to let go of the trauma that created him that even when he becomes too old to fight personally, he finds others to carry on for him (although this had been hinted at by how Batman takes on Dick Grayson and later Jason Todd as Robin, but Batman Beyond more or less directly states this point). Batman has nowhere left to go as a franchise.
In short, Batman is dead. Perhaps its time we let him rest.
Anyway . . .
----
Like every other nerd on the internet, I love Batman. When I was six, I got hooked on the reruns of the 60s Batman TV show and pestered my parents into buying me whatever Batman toys were available at the time. When the 90s rolled around, I watched each episode of Batman: The Animated Series as it came out. I missed both the Burton and Schumacher films when they first came out, but only because my mom was the one who decided what movies we saw in theaters and she simply refused to go to them, but I did eventually see all of them. When Batman Begins rolled along, I sort of missed the theatrical run due to having stopped paying attention to movies at the time, but did get it on DVD and later I was there on the opening day of Dark Knight and, while I?m not as hyped for the upcoming third instalment as I was for the second, I?ll probably be there on its opening day as well.
Given this, it shouldn?t be too much of a surprise that when I got a PS3, one of the first games I had to get into my collection was Arkham Asylum. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. Don?t get me wrong, there are elements of the game that I dislike. The boss fights are mostly crap, the Riddler subplot is really unsatisfying and the story is kinda ?meh? at its best moments, but for all that, it?s still the most fun I?ve ever had playing a Batman game. This could be a lead in to a discussion on the biggest hurdle that games have to overcome if they want to be real art ? that, unlike books, movies or comics, a game can get away with a dumb story and bad characterization as long as it?s really fun to play ? but that?s not what I want to talk about here. Maybe another time, but for this essay, I want to focus more specifically on Batman than I do on games because of something that Arkham Asylum made me realize.
You see, even though the game is a blast to play, its plot is really pretty much nonsense. It centers around the Joker taking over Arkham Asylum, which is an excellent starting point, but then it kinda shits itself when you discover that Joker plans on using an experimental chemical based on Bane?s Venom to create an army of mutant super soldiers and . . . well, that?s not especially clear. Possibly take over Gotham City? Maybe just wreak havoc? Either way, it struck me as a very un-Joker-like plot that they came up with mostly as an excuse to fit Bane into the story, who has never been incarcerated in Arkham, since he?s not really insane.
So, I started thinking to myself, ?how could we make this game better story-wise?? Well, to make the game?s story great, it would have to be something that we haven?t done with Batman before, or, barring that, doing something with Batman in a way that it hasn?t been done before. Trying to come up with something, I slowly began to realize that truth of the matter. From a thematic perspective, Batman is dead, by which I mean that the franchise really has nowhere left to go.
Let?s start with Batman. I?ve heard it said that Batman is always the least interesting character out of every story he?s in, but that?s really true. Yes, he is often overshadowed by the rogue?s gallery, but this is usually only because Batman is rarely made the focus of the stories he?s in. On at least two occasions, Batman has made for the most interesting aspect of the story. The first I?ll bring up is Batman Begins. Batman Begins may very well be the best told version of Batman?s origin, which I won?t recount due to it being the most well-known of all comic book super-hero origin stories. The point is that in Batman Begins, Batman is very much at the center of the plot. Sure, there?s Scarecrow and Ra?s al Ghul and they do provide interesting conflict to the plot, but they are merely extensions of Batman?s own personal conflicts which drive the plot. Scarecrow is a representation the personal fears that Batman needs to conquer, while Ra?s al Ghul (under the pseudonym of Henri Ducard) is a sort of surrogate father and later a reflection of Bruce Wayne?s own worst impulses, reinforcing the tragedy of his own parents? deaths.
As far as I?m concerned, I think Batman Begins is probably the ultimate expression of Batman?s origin and it is therefore pointless to do any further retelling of the origin. There is simply nothing more that needs saying on the matter. But I really wouldn?t have expected Arkham Asylum to attempt to retell Batman?s origin again. What else then could we do? Well, one of the aspects of Batman that can make him interesting as a character is the psychological trauma caused by his parents death and how inescapable that trauma is. You could center the game around that and make it interesting.
Except that this, too, has already been done. Although it went largely unremarked at the time of its release, the story that best expresses Batman?s never-ending struggle against his own inner demons has already been made in a little movie called ?Mask of the Phantasm.? Although not without its flaws, the core of the movie and its emotional thrust is focused on the chances Bruce Wayne had to let go and his inability to do so. There is a powerful scene of Bruce standing in the rain before his parents grave begging for some sign that it?s alright for him to be happy with Andrea Baeumont, the woman he loves, that emphasizes how fixed on their death he is. Just when it seems like he actually can leave it all behind and give up being Batman, the relationship abruptly ends and he goes back to being Batman.
It is later revealed that it ended because the Andrea?s father was in debt to the mob and had to go into hiding. The crime that took his parents also took his love and I always thought one of the points the movie was aiming at was that there would have been some other thing that the crime of Gotham pushed him back to Batman, even if Andrea hadn?t been forced to leave. Once that door had been opened, Batman had no ability to close it. Batman had become who he really was, while Bruce Wayne was merely the alter-ego he hid behind. Once again, the most defining element of Batman?s personality finds a near perfect expression. There is really little need tell a story emphasizing this as its core theme.
Naturally, what I consider the best Batman story out there features the Joker as a character, as any defining Batman story should. Like it or not, Joker is probably the most important figure in the Batman mythos because he expresses two of the central themes of the Batman franchise itself: that Batman needs crime and that Batman is, himself, insane. While there are a number of interesting and colorful Batman super-villains, the Joker transcends mere villainy to become Batman?s personal nemesis. Joker defines his existence entirely by his conflict with Batman and believes that he could not, in fact, exist without Batman. His goals are not really to kill Batman, but to make Batman lose control, to give into his own madness and become just as much a menace to the city as the criminals he fights. This is a reflection of Batman?s own need to fight crime to ease the pain of his childhood trauma.
Joker is the very thing that keeps Batman sane, despite the villain?s best attempts otherwise. If the Joker really wanted to hurt Batman?s sanity, the best way to do it would ironically be to find a way to put an end to the need for Batman, to stop being the nemesis that Batman has to fight. Stripped of super-criminals and deadly nemeses to battle, Batman would be crushed under the weight of his own misplaced guilt. In the end, searching desperately for a chance to avenge his parents ? which, in his own twisted mind, would save them ? he would turn his rage on the petty criminals, becoming worse than the villains he needs to fight. Yet again, in a further bit of irony, the Joker?s own madness serves as the anchor that keeps Batman grounded enough in sanity to not be a danger to the city. You see, just as Batman couldn?t live without super-criminals to fight, the Joker can?t live without Batman. His deep-seeded psychological compulsion to be Batman?s nemesis keeps him from doing the one thing that would ultimately destroy Batman; not being a criminal. That is why the Joker is the most important character in the Rogue?s Gallery.
But again, if you want to see something that is the ultimate expression of this theme, it?s already been done in a comic called ?The Killing Joke.? In this tale, the Joker attempts to drive Commissioner Gordon insane to prove to Batman that the only difference between himself and sanity is one bad day, which cements how everything the Joker does is about Batman. The final battle of the comic takes place in a carnival funhouse, visually representing how Batman and the Joker are distorted mirror images of each other. Both are the products of a random tragedy and both seek to escape that tragedy, but while Batman tries to build a meaning out of that tragedy, the Joker dives into total moral nihilism, yet neither could really complete their existence without the other and would ultimately fall into self-destruction.
This has been an element of many Batman stories since it?s telling. The Joker explicitly states it in The Dark Knight and the animated film Under the Red Hood also centers a large part of its conflict around this and I couldn?t even begin to tell you how many comics there are that use this, but none of them capture the fact quite as succinctly as Alan Moore?s original story. In that sense, then, we already have the perfect expression of the Batman/Joker relationship and any further discussion of it can only retread old ground.
All then that may be left for the Batman franchise is its other villains, but even then, many of them got their ideal expressions in the Batman animated series of the 90s. Mr. Freeze, for example, had a complete arc told in two episodes and a one hour movie. The first episode, Heart of Ice, reinvents Mr. Freeze from the goofy, lesser known baddie of the early comics to a tragic anti-villain by adding the tale of his dead wife and his quest for revenge against her killer. The second episode, Deep Freeze, Mr. Freeze, who had previously been content to remain in his frozen cell at Arkham, learns that his wife actually still alive and has been cryogenically preserved, waiting for a cure, which drives him to adopt his villainous persona in search of a cure. The capstone is the movie, Sub-Zero, in which Nora Friez?s cryogenic chamber is broken, forcing Freeze to once again adopt his alias to quickly find a cure before she dies and ends with her being saved by a life-saving organ transplant. Yes, there are a few problems that I could bring up, but the overall arc of it is pretty much the perfect telling of Victor Friez?s story. It is impossible to imagine a story involving Mr. Freeze that does not retell this arc that is any better than it is. True, there was a third episode after the movie, but it had nowhere near the impact of the previous instalments and only further cements how there is nothing further to say concerning the character and that attempting to continue that story will never add anything worth telling.
While not of the other characters in the Rogue?s Gallery have finished arcs, at this point we?re straying away from Batman. The story is no longer about him, but about the villains. At this point, Batman is no longer necessary and these villains could easily be pitted against any super-hero and have their stories be just as satisfying. Furthermore, most of the other super-villains of the Batman mythos do not really have much thematic weight to them and exist only to provide conflict for Batman. Riddler has a psychological compunction to pit his intellect against Batman, Penguin is just a crime boss that Batman deals with from time to time, Catwoman is a sort of rival/love interest for Batman, so on and so forth. There is nothing unique about there stories that needs telling and, even then, at this point, the only thing really missing to their stories is a conclusion of some sort.
Therein lies the proof of what I see as a self-evident conclusion: that Batman as a franchise is all told out. There is nothing more to say about Batman that hasn?t already been effectively said and done. All that we can do now is retell the same stories over and over again with minor variations that add nothing to the story as a whole. Even the retirement of Batman has been done through Batman Beyond, in which we see that Batman is so unable to let go of the trauma that created him that even when he becomes too old to fight personally, he finds others to carry on for him (although this had been hinted at by how Batman takes on Dick Grayson and later Jason Todd as Robin, but Batman Beyond more or less directly states this point). Batman has nowhere left to go as a franchise.
In short, Batman is dead. Perhaps its time we let him rest.
