The Batman: A Tale of Vengeance and Healing

kid found him [Music] this was the moment i knew i would love the batman this small quiet moment where batman and this child locked eyes this moment of connection between bruce wayne and a boy who just lost his father this was the moment i knew i would love the batman and i wasn't wrong i love the batman i love the dark grounded intense atmosphere i love the way the orange glow of street lamps lights this rain-soaked bat suit i love the gotham they've built from scratch with a beautiful blend of real gothic architecture modern city landscapes and entirely original sets all at once entirely believable yet completely unfamiliar i love michael gaccino's brooding and angry score with a softness and an intimacy hiding just underneath the surface i love the performances from every actor involved robert pattinson paul danno zoe kravitz andy circus colin farrell jeffrey wright gil perez abraham otherwise known as martinez there is almost nothing i don't love about the batman except for some of its more insufficient political themes but i am not equipped to lead that discussion but what i love the most is this moment because to me this moment is reflective of everything the batman is everything that it cares about this small moment not 20 minutes in where batman looks at a boy who just lost his father and sees himself that's what i love about this movie my one true love matt reeves came into this production with an incredible cast and an incredible crew to make a film with a unique voice a film with a distinct visual style driven by the great greg fraser himself a film with distinct narrative priorities a film that felt unique in the midst of a release schedule inundated by other superhero media a film that felt unique within just the long history of batman media this is a kind of batman film we've never seen before a nearly three hour street level neo noir character study an intimate perspective driven emotional film this is a film about children and the world that failed them this is a film about trauma and grief a film about guilt anger and fear a film about punishment and vengeance a film about a boy who lost a father this is a film about batman has had a long history in film since 1966 batman has passed through the hands of five different directors and six different actors resulting in nine separate solo outings if you count batman v superman and that's not counting the two theatrically released serials in 1943 and 1949 along with the theatrically released animated movies mask of the phantasm and the lego batman movie along with the countless direct to dvd streaming batman movies that i spent like two months watching through for only like 6 000 views and i'm totally not better about it the point is that i think it's arguable that batman at least within popular culture at large is as much a film character as he is a comic book character with so many varying interpretations and tones and styles completely separate from the comics there isn't a comic that looks quite like schumacher's batman there isn't a comic that feels quite like burtons and none of this was lost on all of those who worked on the batman i find that really fun to try and find just a new way of doing something when you know a lot of your heroes have played it before yeah and then the terror the terror kicks in at the beginning of the terror these are big boots to fill there's a legacy here and there's a pressure to not only do something different something that stands out but also to do something that adds to that legacy in a meaningful way you're going to be a part of this legacy whether you like it or not so you really don't want to be known as the ones who messed it up so the question is how does this batman film differ from its predecessors and the short answer is the love of my life matt reeves i read a script that they had that was a totally valid take on the movie i just knew that when i read it this particular script was not the way i'd want to do it i said look i think maybe i'm not the person for this and i explained to them why i love this character i told them that there have been so many great movies but if i were to do this i'd have to make it personal so that i understood what i was going to do with it so that i know where to put the camera so that i know what to tell the actors so that i know what the story should be when matt reeves was announced to be taking over for ben affleck and directing the next batman movie back in 2017 i didn't know who matt reeves was i know it's hard to imagine a time where my best friend matt reeves wasn't my favorite person on the face of the planet but i didn't really fall in love with matt until i started working on my planet of the apes series because while i knew i loved those movies i hadn't really done the work to figure out why and the more i looked into reeves and his style and his storytelling priorities the more i came to realize that he was the reason and the more i learned about reeves the more excited i became at the prospect of him making a batman film because i knew that reeves would most likely be the first to make a batman film that was truly about batman looking back at previous live-action interpretations of the character despite all of their stylistic differences there was a running thread between them none of them truly prioritized the character of batman that's not to say that the character was unimportant or that there wasn't thought put into a psychology or personality it's just to say that batman has always kind of felt like a side character in his own movies the live-action interpretations of the character have always been more interested in the world of batman the atmosphere of gotham the mythos of it all than they have ever been in interpreting the actual character of bruce wayne we've simply never had a live-action batman movie that actually takes the time to explore who batman is at best we get glimmers of it essentially who batman was in these movies was more built on the question of what do we want this world to feel like batman was defined by what kind of atmosphere these directors were trying to strike tim burton's batman is a generally stoic mysterious and serious figure to better fit with the gothic fantasy of his version of gotham joel schumacher's is silly and self-aware as to better mesh with the over-the-top and colorful camp that defined his gotham christopher nolan's is understated and contemplative to better suit the big ideas that his totally realistic gotham was meant to facilitate i think the best way to think about it is that it feels like these movies built their gotham first and then figured out what kind of characters that gotham would create really it's a matter of focus what is in service to what and i think the answer to that for this movie is clearly seen in the way this world reflects the batman's genre batman films have always been genre films and reeves has since cloverfield been a genre director whether it's a found footage monster movie or a vampire horror movie or a high concept sci-fi movie reeves has really found a place within modern genre filmmaking and the batman more than anything is a neo-noir detective thriller taking as much influence from the french connection and taxi driver as it does the long halloween in year one and that originated from batman's status as the world's greatest detective along with a desire to tell a story that rocked batman to his core and neo-noirs are often movies about someone who thinks they have a grasp on the world around them thinks that everything is certain learning as they navigate their newest case that they never really knew anything at all and the world of the batman is built around that character-centric story it's grimy and gross and grounded it's raining all the time everything is bathed in this sickly orange glow it's populated by creeps and gangsters and petty criminals it's the world that batman has to dive deep into if he's going to solve this case but it's also a world representative of everything batman views as the root cause of gotham's woes its criminal element its degeneracy its moral inferiority but as the riddler's clues lead him through this world batman will be forced to confront that perspective and question what he believed to be certain the world is formed from the necessity of character not thinking what kind of characters would exist in this world but what kind of world would create these characters and what this all allows for are the stylistic expressions of who these characters are not as focused on spectacle like nolan or on aesthetic like burton but with creating something that centers a character's perspective through the lens of this neo-noir atmosphere this dirty street-level hand-to-hand action that showcases the brutality of this batman this slow-paced murder scene that captures both the anxiety and terrifying willingness of this riddler this loud visually crowded club scene that gives us insight into why this selena kyle needs to be so guarded and defensive it's not about what's realistic per se as much as it's about what feels real it's about pushing the boundaries of practical effects and sets to best exhibit the personal emotions and feelings at the heart of each and every scene by making the world with the priority of character the film has this almost mythic quality to it a sort of ethereality that is both utterly grounded but strangely unreal where every last detail of the world and the genre and the tone is meant to communicate something about the characters and their lives and their journeys where the style and artistry of burton and schumacher meets the realism and tangibility of nolan what i'm trying to get at through all of this is that what i think matt reeves is always looking for is what's authentic there's a space that lies just between the very tip of what is possible and the very beginning of what isn't where you find not what's real but what's true and it's in that space that reeves operates in every film trying to find that truth in the moment where limitless expression meets the reality of experience where a giant monster meets a man who's afraid to tell the woman he loves how he feels where an immortal vampire meets a little kid growing up in an unfair world where a hyper-intelligent ape meets a man who can't forgive himself that is what makes the batman different from every live-action interpretation before it it's not about what's realistic like it is with nolan but it also doesn't abandon that reality entirely like burton or schumacher instead it seeks to find that truth within the space in between that authenticity and i think the reason reeves care so much about character and emotion the reason this is a film about batman is because that is what lies within that space there is nothing more honest nothing more true than a person simply telling you how they feel and more than anything this is a film about what batman feels [Music] i always just get the impression that he just wants to keep recreating the night where his parents died all the fights seem very personal he's fighting a stranger as if they have personally harmed him every single time this is an imperfect batman and i don't just mean that he's not quite as good at this as other batman have been though i do appreciate that element of it i mean that this batman is a fundamentally flawed person with a fundamentally flawed process and a fundamentally flawed perspective underpinning it all this is a batman that needs to grow and that's clear from the very beginning in this beautifully atmospheric and moody introduction bruce monologues about his method and how he goes about being batman i can't be everywhere but they don't know where i am and what i want to point out here is that we see a total of three criminal acts taking place in this sequence and while batman manages to stop one of them the other two pretty much go off without a hitch sure they end up running away when they see the bat signal but not before they've already done whatever damage they were doing and even the one crime batman does stop results not only in him scaring the victim he was supposed to be protecting but also the kid who didn't want to be there but for whatever reason felt like he had no other choice his methods are indiscriminate completely lacking in any kind of nuance if you're a criminal you deserve to be punished often brutalized in fact punishment and blame are the greatest facets of this batman i'm vengeance and vengeance requires two things the attribution of faults and the distribution of punishment but as we just saw this method of fixing gotham simply isn't working and on some level he knows that i wish i could say i'm making a difference but i don't know but this is the only solution he has it's the one thing he knows to do and it's just not having an effect he can see and i think one of the biggest reasons for that is because as much as he talks about wanting to make a difference solutions for gotham aren't really what he's interested in there's a specific line i want to call attention to maybe it's beyond saving but i have to try what's interesting about this line is that it positions bruce as being hopeless about his mission he's considering the possibility that the city might not be able to change but he continues to try even if he doesn't fully believe in his own mission because what else is he going to do he's had this concept of batman which he's been building for a year and he doesn't know if being batman is going to work or do anything he's just compelled to do it that's a kind of important differentiation of this sperm basically the options are kind of death or being batman the fact of it is that being batman is an entirely personal endeavor it's not something that he does because he thinks it's really the best way to fix gotham he does it because it fulfills an emotional need a few emotional needs actually the funny thing about this batman is that there isn't really a duality here at least not in the sense that he's torn between two identities that he can't hold in tandem in actuality this batman has essentially rejected the bruce wayne identity only using it when he needs it for things he's doing as batman so even when he's being bruce wayne he's still batman or perhaps more appropriately even when he's being batman he's still bruce wayne in the seldom times we see bruce just being himself in public he acts fairly similar to how he acts as batman he's quiet and stoic and living in his head the only real difference is that he can't make eye contact when he's not wearing the bat suit he believes in it so much he believes it kind of elevates him as a creature it is transformative too bruce batman isn't the other side of bruce wayne as much as he is an extension of bruce wayne batman is effectively a trauma response a manifestation of three core emotions that resulted from the trauma of losing his parents as a child anger guilt and fear his anger perhaps is the most obvious the way that he deals with gotham's criminal element especially when they don't have information he needs is exceptionally brutal and unforgiving the work of stunt coordinator robert alonso does so much in making this batman feel just a little bit unhinged plus everything from the camerawork to the sound design to the way he walks in the batsuit gives all of his movements such a weight that makes these hits feel all the more powerful the point is that he is punishing these people this isn't just about stopping them this is about inflicting pain he wants these people to hurt just as much as he does his guilt is a bit more subtle we learn later on in the film that bruce blames himself for his parents death we don't have a lot of details as to what exactly happened to this thomas and martha wayne but i think it's safe to assume that it's similar to all the rest that in some way bruce put his parents into the position where they were gunned down and thus blamed himself for their deaths and that guilt manifests itself in batman through the understanding that it's his family's legacy you don't care about your family's legacy what i'm doing is my family's legacy and that's because bruce views his family's legacy not as the business they created but their aspiration to better gotham things like the renewal fund that was meant to get money to the people in gotham who needed it most bruce seeks to continue that kind of giving trying to make up for what he believes on some level was his fault but his anger pushes him to do it by trying to destroy the criminal element that got them killed the thing that to a little boy whose parents were just murdered by a mugger would be the only problem worth solving and finally we have perhaps the greatest underlying emotion of this batman bruce's fear to best explore this i want to look at a very specific moment during the funeral scene where bruce once again makes eye contact with that little boy from before the mayor's son it's a small moment a reminder of that kinship he feels with this kid and when that car comes barreling through out of everyone around who does bruce seek to protect the most but that little boy even though as this shot here quickly and clearly demonstrates he was probably one of the least in danger but he prioritizes this little kid he tries to protect this boy who just lost his father i think it's not a far leap to say that this child is more symbolic than anything he's less of a character in his own right as much as he represents that crucial thing bruce is trying to protect his inner child the batman is a defense mechanism it's all just a way of protecting himself from getting hurt again from feeling powerless the batman is a way for bruce to feel strong and powerful to feel in control within a world that took everything that mattered to him it's all about the fear bruce feels perhaps if he can wield that fear himself control it force others to feel it the way he does maybe then he won't even have to feel it at all and when we put all this together what we see is a sadness really a man who can't connect to people a man who refuses to look at anyone as anything but either a victim or a criminal either someone he can hurt or a reason to hurt them that anger guilt and fear results in an identity defined by his trauma whether it's the powerful batman or the distant bruce wayne but these identities are incredibly restrictive bruce wants to be able to connect to people on some level but he can only do so much the only way he allows himself to connect to alfred the man who raised him is through the ways alfred helps him to be batman but otherwise he pushes him away the only way he can connect to gordon the closest thing he has to a friend is through their partnership but otherwise he refuses to let him get close he has to keep them at arm's length these relationships are restricted by the mask the trauma that defines this man as the boy who lost his father and doesn't know what else to do he wants to believe that he has all the answers but he's at a point in this movie after two years of doing this where he's starting to realize that nothing he's doing is really working and this persona this mask it's the only way he knows to protect himself batman makes him feel safe it makes him feel less afraid less guilty less angry but the moment the mask comes off he's just that scared guilty angry little boy again he knows this isn't working but what he doesn't know yet is that it'll take a completely new perspective to change things you got a lot of cats everything about strays selena kyle has as long a history in film as batman does for almost every batman there is a catwoman for almost every bruce wayne there is a selena kyle and frankly there isn't a version of the character i don't like to at least some extent but zoe kravitz is probably my favorite i say probably because she's tied with michelle pfeiffer but those two versions are so different that they're hardly comparable this is the most grounded version of the character we've gotten heavily inspired by frank miller's iconic interpretation in year one this is a person a woman trying to make her way through a world that constantly seeks to victimize her a criminal who batman is forced to work with and who forces him to see the world in a more complex way than simple black and white but most importantly she's a character who exists completely independent of batman she's a fully formed three-dimensional character in her own right with her own psychology and motives she has her own story to tell and i want to start looking at that story by understanding selena herself and the way that she views others for selena kyle everyone she meets falls into one of two groups you are either someone she has to protect or someone she has to protect herself from she leaves no room for someone to be there for her no room for vulnerability look no further than the line she says often enough for it to be her catchphrase i can take care of myself she's had to take care of herself for years gotham is not a city where you're taken care of so she learned a long time ago that she had to be self-reliant because nobody was going to be there for her but herself and no one is going to be there for people like annika a stray like she used to be so selena takes it on herself to protect her selena wants to be the protector that she never had when she was astray herself and the closest she can let herself get to other people is by being that protector and in most if not all other interactions much like bruce she too is wearing a variety of masks to guard herself and i said you know what i'd love to do if you want to appear in this series of wigs is i'd love to have the first wig look totally real so that way we think oh this is this is the version of selena kyle and then when batman bruce follows her home that you see her remove the wig and you see her with the year one haircut and you realize oh this person is not who i thought she's constantly putting forth someone who she is not so who is that character this is a character who is having to portray herself as what other people mostly men want her to be playing the role that she's supposed to play the overtly sexualized woman who exists for their pleasure and their pleasure alone someone who isn't angry and frustrated and tired all the time but is instead all smiles and always flirtatious because if she isn't the consequences could actually be fatal the way they are veronica selena has no other option but to play this role wear these wigs these masks her only choice is to guard herself hide herself away because that's the only real way for her and people like her to retain a sense of power control and identity in a world that seeks to take all of those things away a world where she and everyone like her is constantly under some kind of attack from the gaze of those who refuse to acknowledge her as the person she is the gays of people like bruce wayne this scene is creepy it's supposed to be this should make you uncomfortable it even uses the same kind of binocular pov shot we saw at the beginning with riddler watching the mayor just before he killed him and it's a pretty clear way of showing exactly how bruce sees selena as an object both in a sexual way and also in the way that he needs her for his investigation he doesn't see her doesn't see a person he just sees what she might be able to do for him but then we get this scene where bruce gives selena his contact lens camera to c into the 44 below and there's a lot of moving pieces here so let's take a second to break this down first the obvious bruce is literally having to look at things from selena's perspective having to see the ways that people look at her the ways that looking back at someone can send completely the wrong message and on top of that the way that bruce doesn't seem to get it at all these guys have a little problem with eye contact only he doesn't seem to care about the situation that he's putting her in doesn't even seem to realize the kind of potential danger that all of this entails selena says it herself i really don't care what happens to me in there tonight do you and that leads me to the second part of this scene selena doesn't just play into that she pushes back against bruce's she has her own reason for doing this and she is prioritizing that the moment she hears about annika she abandons batman's orders entirely much to his frustration but in the end she's not here to stop riddler she's here to save her friend to save someone that she cares about and then the third part of this scene is that the moment bruce gets only an inkling that she might have a relationship with another man he immediately gets jealous and defensive he cares so little about how much that interaction with falcone bothered her only how much it bothered him how much his idea of her was disturbed by the simple notion that she had some kind of relationship with another man a notion that he assumed from very little information and then treated it like an outright betrayal and selena then rightly chose to cut things off completely from there what these three pieces do in this scene is simple they make batman feel uncomfortable they don't change his understanding of things immediately but they do force him to at least acknowledge a perspective that isn't his own selena is a challenge to his world view he wants so badly to put her into a box and she just doesn't fit she doesn't adhere to any of his pre-existing paradigms and that makes him nervous insecure and uncertain and as the movie progresses those feelings are only exacerbated as the riddler continues to kill people batman continues to be unable to stop him and bruce wayne's understanding of the world continues to fall apart there are a number of hints throughout the movie that insinuate that thomas wayne is not the perfect man that bruce wants him to have been and that his greatest legacy the gotham renewal fund is broken some would say those hints are in fact very obvious even from the literal beginning of the movie the renewal program is broken this city's been renewing for 20 years look where it's gotten us and then there's this moment during the funeral scene what good safety net didn't catch anybody didn't help my daughter when she needed it and then there's this other moment in the funeral scene where bruce talks to carmine falcone who tells him a story reminiscent of a scene from the long halloween where we learned that thomas wayne once saved falcone's life and bruce's reaction is purely defensive you don't think that meant something he did then it means you took the hippocratic off bruce's reclusiveness and isolation make it fairly easy for him to just ignore all of this it's easy for him to ignore that his dad had a relationship with falcone it's easy for him to ignore that the gotham renewal fund isn't renewing much of anything he can live in this blissful ignorance bruce can be certain that he has all the answers and all everyone else is doing is trying to replace his understanding with their lies but his interactions with selena have unsettled that certainty seeing annika's body in the back of that car has forced him to question who he understands to be a victim and the riddler's plans have led him to the words renewal is a lie the idea that his father wasn't a good man now forced on him in a context where he cannot ignore it and then that idea leading to alfred the man who raised him being put into the hospital in bruce's stead all of a sudden after everything that's happened bruce is mired in uncertainty all of a sudden he no longer knows what is true and so when selena calls him and tries to get him to go after kenzie the cop whose car they found danika's body in of course bruce falls back into old biases in a bid to regain some of that control your friend got involved with the wrong people she didn't know any better maybe you should have explained it to her what the hell is that supposed to mean it means your choices have consequences he's so attached to his labels his paradigms you're either a criminal or a victim and as far as he's concerned despite her dead body monica is more criminal than she is victim but as we've already established selena is the kind of person to push back jesus christ choices you know whoever the hell you are you obviously grew up rich and then bruce responds by accusing her of compromising herself for money that jealousy coming back in the form of trying to justify the biases he's desperately clinging to she tries to understandably exit the conversation but bruce grabs her and then i want to know why a guy like falcone would owe you anything because he's my father her mother worked at the 44 below and after she was strangled by someone social services took selena away and he didn't say a thing this is the turning point the moment where bruce has to acknowledge that his answers aren't sufficient this kind of situation is not something he ever accounted for bruce has sat up in his tower looking down his entire life and here's someone who actually had to live at the bottom make things work make money where she could regardless of whatever loss she might be breaking here is a traumatized orphan who didn't have the money or the time or the resources to dress up like a bat and take out her frustrations on the most socially acceptable group she could this is someone who had to pay rent by whatever means necessary she didn't choose this annika didn't choose this selena's mother didn't choose this this is the first time he sees her truly sees her sees the anger and the frustration and the exhaustion and the grief he sees someone that's hurting what he sees is the possibility that maybe the way he views the world is wrong through selena he's able to break free of his bubble if only just a little bit but breaking free of that bubble opening yourself up to these new possibilities has its consequences [Music] bruce learns that his father in a bid to keep information about his wife and her family under wraps during his mayoral campaign had reporter edward elliott killed when he opens up for just a moment makes himself vulnerable for a second here's the possibility that not only is his worldview wrong but his very understanding of the father he lost and so what else does bruce do but what he always does search for certainty he goes to falcone without a mask unable to make eye contact we saw a scene similar to this earlier in the movie where he did have his guard up but this time he has no choice but to open himself up to the truth he stands alone in a room with carmine falcone he tries very purposefully to maintain eye contact but his eyes are shifty he doesn't have his armor his confidence his control as falcone tells him that it's all true and that falcone's old competitor salvatore moroni was the one who had thomas wayne killed so that falcone wouldn't have the mayor in his pocket and upon that admission bruce is able to start making eye contact again but the certainty of knowing who killed his father bruce is able to regain that confidence but then falcone says that he doesn't know for sure and his eyes shift again uncertain he goes back to his parents old bedroom that he had locked up and now he's having to open that door again in his mind reconsider everything he knew about them feel the anger and the guilt and the fear surging up again reliving that trauma for the sake of regaining certainty he thought he had all the answers but it turns out he didn't know anything and at that point what's left but to go to the man that he's been pushing away this whole time he lied to me my whole life bruce is angry he feels lied to and betrayed feels like everything he's been fighting for has been for nothing and alfred responds with anger of his own at the accusation telling him that his father didn't want thomas elliot killed but that's what falcone did and then he insinuates that falcone was actually the one who killed thomas wayne when he threatened to go to the police i wish i knew for sure or maybe some random thug on the street who needed money you got scared pulled a trigger too fast if you don't think i've spent every day searching for that answer it was my job to protect him do you understand i know you always blamed yourself you were only a boy bruce i could see the fear in your eyes but i didn't know how to help i could teach you how to fight but i wasn't equipped to take care of you you needed a father and all you had was me i'm sorry in the absence of answers in the absence of certainty bruce is left with one thing an old man ridden with the guilt that he couldn't be the father that scared little boy needed bruce can't look him in the eye but he can hear what he's saying you can tell how hard he's trying to keep all that emotion in keep it repressed but he can't i realize now there's something i haven't got past this fear of ever going through any of that again influence is somebody i care about alfred reaches out a hand to bruce he reaches out of hand to that scared little boy and he takes it because in the end it doesn't matter who killed his parents it doesn't matter who's responsible or who deserves to be punished what matters is that carrying hand the one thing bruce needed but never had that simple assurance to a scared little boy that someone is there for him that he's allowed to feel that fear and he doesn't have to go through it alone and just in time for bruce to see the bat signal up in the sky he goes to it and finds gordon on the ground someone else is up there they go up and find selena who has kenzie tied to a chair she gives batman the phone kenzie had taken and they listened to the voicemail annika left the night she went missing they listened to her reveal that falcone orchestrated the drug bust that got moroni out of the drops business they listened to her reveal that falcone was the rat that riddler had them chasing this whole time they listened to anika scream as falcone strangles her selena and batman share a look as they both realized that selena's mother was strangled too upon all these realizations they questioned kenzie who tells them that after thomas wayne died the renewal fund was corrupted it was perfect for making bribes you under money huge charitable fund with no oversight everybody got a piece turns out that after all of bruce's time beating petty criminals and thugs the biggest problem wasn't on the ground this is confirmation that it's not the people that are the problem but the system that victimizes them but in the end that's not what matters to bruce right now what matters is selena who wants to go after falcone and kill him regardless of the consequences to herself she just wants to punish the person who made her go through all of this again the pain of losing somebody that she cared about after distracting both batman and gordon by kicking kenzie off the tower she runs to go and face falcone and after pulling kenzie back up bruce follows her selena puts on her wig her protection she goes to falcone's suite and almost shoots him before the lights go out batman's there too and as selena chases down falcone batman races to them from below selena's wig falls as she fights off falcone's bodyguard bruce makes his way through the darkened hallway reckless and violent falcon gets the better of selena hitting her from behind wrapping his hands around her throat but before he can finish it bruce stops him selena recovers grabs her gun goes to shoot him screaming that he has to pay you don't have to be you paid enough you've paid enough it's the simple acknowledgement that her pain is real bruce sees her as the scared and traumatized human being that she is and selena lets him take that gun away from her lets herself not be the protector or the fighter she allows herself to just be killing falcone will only cause her more hurt that she doesn't deserve she's paid enough bruce offers a carrying hand to this orphaned girl suffering from trauma she spent her entire life defined by that simple assurance to a scared little girl that someone is there for her that someone cares about her falcone is arrested selena is safe and bruce has learned something someone reached out to him and through that he learned to reach out to someone else who needed it because that's what this is all about isn't it reaching out accepting that caring hand and offering it to others in turn in many ways this feels like an end what more is there the bad guy is defeated the good guy has won we can conclude here with the certainty that good has triumphed over evil and everything is going to be okay but this isn't where the movie ends i haven't talked about the riddler hardly at all yet and that's for a very simple reason for most of the movie he is himself a riddle a riddle leading our characters through the plot towards his answers he's the character who leads them to the corruption that has infected gotham for years the one who knows why the renewal fund is broken the one who knew that falcone was not only the rat but the real person in charge of everything the riddler is the one with the answers the real answers all the answers i think i'm his last target bruce becomes convinced that riddler now caught knows who he is and that's the reason why he's been leaving letters to him that's the reason why he's a part of this because ridler knows who he is and when riddler calls for him at arkham he believes that this will be the moment where the batman ends and if we've learned anything by now it's that this above all else is bruce's greatest fear the fear that he will be unmasked and will be seen naked and vulnerable that he will lose that defense that guard that the mask afforded him and when that shield comes up and riddler faces him down bruce can barely even look his way he stays back enshrined in the shadows trying to retain any sense of that defense he believes now that he doesn't have if riddler knows that underneath that scary mask is just a scared little boy who doesn't know what to do then the mask ceases to have any power at all and in this uniquely vulnerable state riddler tells him that his pain never mattered living in some tower over the park isn't being an orphan looking down on everyone with all that money don't you tell me and bruce just takes it because riddler has throughout this entire film projected this persona of being the one with all the answers being the only person who actually knows the truth the only person who knows what to do and how to do it and i think bruce always feared that this was the answer that his trauma isn't real it doesn't matter and everything he feels is hollow all that anger all that guilt all that fear he never had any right to feel those things when someone like riddler or selena had to go through what they did this was the answer he was looking for but never wanted to find every problem he has is his fault and it always has been there's a certain character archetype that matt reeves likes to use in almost all of his movies and that archetype is the false prophet the character who claims to have all the answers who claims to know everything and what to do about it but who doesn't really know anything at all think of koba in dawn of the planet of the apes who claimed to know that the only answer to the apes conflict with the humans was outright war a solution that only got both humans and apes killed and created further problems while solving nothing or think of the colonel in war for the planet of the apes who claimed to have the answer for how humans would save themselves that answer being the total genocide of the apes and that only led to the colonel and his soldiers destruction or think of abby and let me in while she didn't necessarily claim to have all the answers owens certainly looked to her as though she did even if abby wasn't a false prophet she was treated like one as she gave owen the advice to hit his bully's back while also being herself his solution to his loneliness these characters all in one way or another claim to be or are perceived to be the ones with the answers the ones who promise certainty and truth who know more than anything who is really the villain and who is really the hero and the answers they claim to have are all very similar they're easy violent and require no actual self-reflection or challenge to ourselves they are answers that fit comfortably into our pre-existing world views and make us feel certain in a world filled with uncertainty and nuance and riddler fits this archetype perfectly he's someone who very literally claims to have all the answers who knows how to fix society and the world who knows how to make a real change but like with all of them he doesn't he doesn't have any real answers maybe he knows the specifics of why gotham is corrupt maybe he knows that falcone is the rat and thomas wayne was imperfect but in the end he doesn't know the real answer bruce wayne he's the only one we did again riddler doesn't know he never knew what he thought he knew was that batman was on his side he believed that batman was helping him this whole time and he never cared who was behind the mask all everyone wants to do is unmask you but they're missing the point you and i both know i'm looking at the real you right now for riddler that mask that trauma response is who batman is and inspired by that it's how riddler has defined himself because that mask is the only way he could ever get people to see him riddler's entire plan all he really wants is to be seen to be heard to be remembered think of the way that he's acted throughout all of this the things that he's done putting on a deep scary voice putting his victims through gruesome contraptions screaming and yelling whenever anyone dares to speak over him he is throughout all of this desperately trying to be taken seriously to be seen heard and remembered after a lifetime of being invisible quiet and forgotten this isn't someone with all the answers it's just a person without his mask or his scary voice he's just an orphan who has so fully allowed his trauma to define him that he has fully embraced his mask as his entire identity this isn't about fixing gotham this isn't about changing the world this is about him this is about his certainty and when batman realizes that riddler doesn't know his armor is restored and he retaliates against everything that ridler has said he does the same thing riddler just did to him invalidating all of the pain he's gone through calling him a pathetic psychopath and a nobody who's going to die alone not just as vengeance for riddler invalidating his pain but as a way to separate himself from the killer he inspired the only way riddler could have been inspired by him is if he's twisted what batman really is the last thing batman wants to do is recognize that riddler only exists because of all of the anger and fear he put out into the world riddler is not only someone who unknowingly took advantage of bruce's vulnerability but he's also the consequence of bruce's actions the consequences of his hope for easy answers and now all bruce wants to do is shut him down but then riddler learns that he does have an answer that batman doesn't have it was all there you mean you didn't figure it out riddler knows the rest of his plan while batman is clueless and as riddler taunts him relishes in his powerlessness batman tries and fails to break through the window that simple violence being the only answer he has [Music] searching for answers bruce goes back to riddler's apartment and using the clues riddler left behind along with some helpful info from our everyman martinez bruce pulls up the carpet and finds this realizing that a real change is the password to a video riddler posted before his capture batman watches as he explains to his followers others who have felt abandoned and forgotten by the world that he's placed explosives all across gotham sea wall set to flood gotham while his followers wait at gotham square garden where everyone will be ushered into as a shelter of last resort to assassinate the newly elected mayor bella real we watch as the bombs go off as water overtakes the city we watch gordon arrive at gotham square garden along with selena who was trying to get out of the city before this occurred we watched gordon get to the mayor and see the old america's son there too and we watched the riddler's followers inspired by that same rage that batman inspired riddler with as they load their weapons to kill the new mare they fire their guns hitting bella real in the shoulder but gordon gets her away just in time and before the riddler's followers can do anything else batman comes down from above using the only method he really knows beating them down and hurting them but the flood is still coming things are falling apart both gordon and selena see that he's in trouble and move to make their way up to him but he still keeps going a monster hunting his prey fighting them breaking them trying desperately to fix things until he hangs there as this man loads his gun bruce is helpless here unable to do anything but watch as the man goes to pull the trigger but before he can selena comes down from above knocking out the man and saving bruce's life selena pulls him up and tells him that it's done now it's done after everything it's finally done and in this unique moment of vulnerability she kisses him she kissed him before but it wasn't like this it was a way to get him to stop talking a means of reasserting that control she was always looking to protect but here it's not that it's tender affectionate vulnerable but it's not over yet the man comes up from behind and hits selena pulling her away bruce tries to get up but can't the man has the better of selena bruce injects himself with what i can only assume is some kind of adrenaline everything loses focus except for him and her he hits him over and over and over that anger pure and unhindered he's going to kill him when bruce and selena look at each other i think they both see two things bruce's fear of losing someone he cares about and just how close he was to the edge just how close he was to killing that man and stepping over that line he's wanted to step over since the start after everything that's happened in this movie everything bruce has learned all these new perspectives here he is still that angry child who just wants to hurt those who would hurt him or those he cares about because there's still one thing he has to learn to accept gordon pulls off the man's mask and asks him who he is this is what bruce has put out into the world vengeance the attribution of fault and the distribution of punishment and it's not only caused all this pain but it nearly got these people he cared about killed by allowing this trauma to define him he has only ever created and reinforced trauma in this city both for others and for himself this is what he's done and he can't stop the flood from bursting through the doors he can't stop this pain and this trauma he can't control this but he can take responsibility for what he's brought he can bring himself down from on top to where everyone else is fall into that water make himself vulnerable to that same pain he can light a flare make a light in that darkness he can wade through the water to all the people who are hurting and he can reach out carrying hand to those people and who takes that hand but the boy who lost the father the little boy who needs to know that someone is there for him that someone cares because that's all that inner child really needed he was always ready to take that hand bruce just needed to extend it to everyone including himself batman came down from above not to punish those who had done wrong but to save those who have been wronged he goes into that water and emerges as a new batman he went in as a symbol of vengeance and anger and fear and he came out as a light in the darkness a caring hand to a broken hurting city and a boy who lost a father he came out as a symbol of hope he doesn't have the power to stop the flood but he has the power to hope to reach out that hand to those who are hurting to believe that healing and change is possible for him and for gotham and it can be hard to reach out that hand especially to yourself because it's one thing to allow others to understand that you're hurting it's one thing to allow yourself to see that others are hurting too but it's a completely different thing to accept that you are hurting it's hard to hope because hope opens us up to the possibility of failure it opens us up to the possibility that we're wrong that our pain isn't real but i'm going to tell you something that you might not believe it's something that i still have trouble believing myself but i'm going to tell you because i want to try you've paid enough your pain is real and you have the power to hope and the power to heal and this caring hand reached out to that scared inner child who needs it is where you begin this was a hard movie to make by far the hardest thing i've ever been a part of never worked on anything so long we were in production because of what we went through i thank you from the bottom of my heart because i care so much about what we do this movie means so much to me but you guys showed me that you care just as much thank you so much there's a reason i've dedicated a whole channel to talking about stories and there's a reason i've spent over an hour talking about batman it's because i care about these things and at least in part i care because they always seemed to care about me they let me see things i'd never seen before gave me experiences that i would never have had they reached out a hand to me when i felt alone and it can be hard to take that hand when things feel uncertain it can be hard to believe that anyone really cares by the end of this movie bruce isn't healed gotham isn't healed the movie ends in a very uncertain place where the city is flooded crime is still rampant and people are still getting hurt and just as bruce says things are going to get worse before they get better but this is a beginning this whole film is a beginning not just of a new batman trilogy but a beginning for bruce for selena for gotham bruce isn't healed but he's finally in a place where he can begin to heal because there has to be a beginning a moment where you reach out a caring hand not only to others but to yourself a moment where you tell yourself that your pain is real and you don't deserve it a moment where you finally believe it because sometimes the hardest person to be vulnerable with is ourselves there is the person that you project yourself as into the world the person that ignores and rejects the trauma and pain of their life the person that can't make eye contact because they're afraid of what that kind of contact may mean and then there's the mask you wear when you allow that pain and that trauma to dominate you when all you are is angry and bitter and vengeful and for good reason you've been hurt and you're allowed to be angry you're allowed to be scared but who you are who you really are is at the point in between that's where you'll find the person who isn't defined by their trauma but who won't ever forget it the person with the power to endure the person with the strength to fight the person who survived and when you find that person deep inside that survivor that is when you will find the power to make a new world that is when you can truly begin to heal and it's not going to be easy healing never is and i can't say that you'll ever truly be healed i can't even say that you won't ever slide back that you won't ever feel that pain again i can't say that i'm certain because i'm not and i don't think i ever will be but i know that i'm here i know i survived and i know that if i've learned anything from the work of matt reeves it is this there is truth only and uncertainty this film ends on a very quiet note bruce finds selena at her mother's grave her last stop before she leaves gotham she's not sure where she's going just that she needs to leave there's nothing for her here anymore but bad memories she asks him if he wants her to stay and he can't answer even though he obviously does even though she may want him to she tells him that gotham will never change that it's only going to get worse and he tells her that the city can change and that he has to try saying that now not from a place of fearful futility but a place of earnest hope a true desire to help heal the city in any way he can she asks him to come with her and in response he only looks up at his signal in the sky who am i kidding you're already spoken for he goes in to kiss her but she pulls away they're on different paths now for her healing is leaving this place for him it's trying to change it two different answers and neither of them are wrong and the last thing he says to her is take care of yourself they drive together for a time the music rising as the two of them come to their choice selena goes one way and bruce the other he watches her through his rear-view mirror as she disappears over the hill her fate for now at least uncertain and he drives towards gotham its fate and his for now at least uncertain the moment i knew i would love this movie was when i saw bruce lock eyes with a boy who lost his father and see himself scared and uncertain and here at the end i see a batman who is still imperfect who's still scarred but i also see a batman who's willing to push forward into that uncertainty with the understanding that things will get worse but the hope that they can get better if that was the moment i knew i would love the batman then this is the moment i knew i could trust the caring hand it reached out to me and i hope that you can trust the caring hand that i'm reaching out to you now this is a film about children and the world that failed them a film about trauma and rage and grief a film about punishment and vengeance a film about a boy who lost a father this is a film about beginnings this is a film about hope [Music] [Music] you

Channel: StoryStreet

Views: 365,751

Keywords: Batman, Riddler, Catwoman, Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, DC, StoryStreet, Video Essay, Vengeance, Trauma, Film

Id: S948_tBP16g

Length: 61min 16sec (3676 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022