How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don’t want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
Idk, I always thought Superman was cool, but a little boring and vanilla. I normally prefer Batman. Admittedly, I’ve never dived down the Superman lore pit, but I am aware that he gets a little darker sometimes. He’s definitely one of the better role model heroes. Anyone that actually hates Superman, is a dipshit.
I dunno’, batman is cool, but he’s an ineffectual LARPer that refuses to do the ONE thing that would actually start to fix things in Gotham…
That and he’s a billionaire that decides to keep up the playboi image despite his escapades demonstrably having a miniscule effect on crime in Gotham compared to him just using his billions to actually help solve the systemic issues in Gotham’s economy that drives so many to crime in the first place.
In short, Batman is everything wrong with the American attitude about capitalism.
At least Superman has the excuse that he is not an economic powrhouse that actually could indirectly improve thousands upon thousands of peoples’ lives. … as weirdly as an all-powerful being not being an economic powerhouse is.
Batman is definitely cool. That just can’t be disputed. He definitely spends a fuck ton of money on the city. His main obstacle, is the writing. Gotham City has to be awful. It has to be, or there is no story. He can’t kill villains regularly, because of plot. If the problems were capable of being fixed, then he’d be on of the best possible people to solve them.
The problems are capable of being fixed. The people of Gotham take to crime to survive because they have been squeezed by the ruling class and it’s the only way to protect what remains of their material conditions.
The Waynes and people like them, the owning class, prop up a system of inequality that forces these conditions to endure.
Bruce Wayne, the richest and most powerful of all, is hurt back (his parents killed) and instead of solving the systemic issues, he doles out individualized corporal punishment as a vigilante.
It’s the ultimate extension of “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”: Rich people will never acknowledge that the very system that provides them power is the ultimate root of all the issues they intend to solve via violence. Batman is himself the ultimate villain of the story.
I wish. He doesn’t even dole out corporal punishment, at least as far as those words mean to the state that he continually props up.
I agree his biggest problem is the writing, because in reality, he’d be the best person to fix the problems (as you say)… outside of his freakish inability to kill irredeemable trash.
Though that’s why he sucks so bad when reconciling everything back to reality. He absolves the rich of fixing problems because not even the “cool” insanely rich and very willing philanthropist Batman can fix a single city let alone a country, and heaven forbid killing irredeemable trash!
He’s inadvertently a perfect example of how blind capitalism and boundless optimism are absolute braindead garbage perspectives.
But Batman DOES uses his billions to help Gotham. The problem is that most of his rogues gallery is composed of high ranking rich mafia bosses, and the rest are completely insane individuals (or even sane people who just LIKE being evil for no reason like Scarecrow who literally gasses people until they die of fright just to study their reactions). You can’t possibly think bribing the Joker with a billion dollars would stop him from bombing orphanages, gassing entire neighborhoods, or LITERALLY NUKING AN ENTIRE CITY.
Investing money into Gotham isn’t gonna stop the Penguin or Black Mask from running protection rackets or bribing cops, it won’t stop Poison Ivy from commiting literal ecoterrorism, and it won’t stop Victor Zsasz from gutting people to death with knives, or Deadshot from assassinating people.
Oh, and another thing: the city is actually fucking cursed with evil black magic. That’s not hyperbole. The city literally makes people evil.
Batman only is a vigilante because his work as Bruce Wayne is not enough.
The obvious solution to the irredeemable crazies I hint at is to KILL THEM. Then it would become a question of why the fuck isn’t he helping Gotham’s economy?
I get what you’re hinting at, that a lot of it is a lack of perspective by the writers, but the fact remains that Batman is one of the least effectual “heros” there is.
You’re missing OP’s point. Depending on which Joker origin story you’re looking at, then the man would never become the joker in the first place. Like if we go with the recent movie version of Joker’s origin, he became the joker in large part because of an awful healthcare system and a horrible social safety net system. If he got good care and treatment all through his life then he never would become the Joker
Depends on the comic. Sometimes he has philanthropic initiatives that get attacked by the bad guys.
Sometimes seems like a piss-poor excuse to me.
In fiction, hard agree; in reality, I’d summon super man over bat man pretty quick. I think he’s boring because he doesn’t leave much room for interesting conflict. irl, I don’t want interesting conflict lol
I’d prefer benevolent god over tech wizard bdsm billionaire exceptionalism. The guy choosing to be small is far greater than the guy buying big shoes
deleted by creator