Why I Don't Like Batman Movies: About the Correlation Between Characters & Their Environment

Some time ago, I watched a Batman film. I am not a great fan of that sort of films, and – in spite of my interest in bats - not of Batman. In my opinion, the film was terribly bad. Afterwards, I thought more about the reason why. I have been into all sorts of writing and visual art, and I have considerable experience of all stages of film-making as well. I dare say that I know how to tell a good story – and quite frankly, the Batman stories are not all that bad. So why was the Batman film, all Batman films, so bad?

In my childhood, there were Batman comic books. They were at least readable. The stories were typical superhero stories of the time, quite average, but I remember that the graphics fascinated me. There were also small collectible cards with Batman scenes distributed as premiums in chewing gum packages. During a time, those Batman cards fascinated me immensely. They were colourful, often with a dramatic composition. Today, I would deem them as rather primitive, but I was 4-5 years old at the time, and those cards were “Batman” to me; they shaped my view of this character more than the comics and their stories. To me, Batman became, visual art, not literature. And that's where it stopped. Batman, especially the cards, might have influenced my graphical development at an early stage, but otherwise he left me quite indifferent.

Yet, the story of Batman is a modern myth of a sort that is quite well suited for comic books, with its unique combination of text and pictures. It doesn't really work in any other medium, and it definitely doesn't work well as a film.

In order for a story to be credible - and it must credible to an extent to be a good story - the characters must be credible in their specific environment. It doesn't mean that a story must be realistic, just that there must be a correlation between characters and environment that, however imaginative, makes the story credible just there, in that imagined “reality”. “The Lord of the Rings”, for instance, is by all standards unrealistic and fanciful. But it is a masterpiece, and here I refer to Tolkien's literary original as well as to Peter Jackson's film trilogy. The story is perfectly credible in that specific environment.

For Batman that works fairly well as a comic, but comics have a high tolerance to such imbalance. When making a film with real actors (not an animated film), however, this factor becomes crucial. Peter Jackson managed it perfectly in “The Lord of the Rings”, but for Batman it became a catastrophe. Everything seems just ridiculous. Indeed, a fancifully dressed or masked superhero in a (relatively) contemporary, American city has no credibility at all. That's why, in my opinion, Batman, Superman, and Spider-man are all artistic failures as films. The characters are not compatible with their respective environments.

Graphically, however, Batman is the most interesting of these, due to the bat symbolism. It is very suggestive. But why has Batman, or his civil ego, Bruce Wayne, chosen the bat as his symbol? It is not entirely clear. Several explanations have been indicated.

In the movie, Batman Begins, Bruce claims to choose the symbol because he feared bats as a child. Either he wanted to instigate the same fear in the criminals he fought against, or he would use his own fear and get stronger by controlling it.

There is also a story of a bat flying through the glass of a window, inspiring Bruce to the symbol.

On the other hand, one explanation is given in Detective comics 235, 1956, where it is shown how Bruce finds a masquerade costume which has belonged to his father - a bat-man suit.

Despite my documented interest in bats, Batman has never been a part of that specific interest. Not even for the symbolism. As a symbol, the bat for Batman is graphically effective, but the connection is vague and not quite credible.

Finally, it should be noted that originally Batman was created in 1939, by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.

(Searching for images of Batman for this article, I found nothing interesting that was free from valid copyright, so I refrain from including illustrations. Those who are interested can easily find images on internet.)

(This article is based on material previously published in Meriondho Leo and in my e-book “The Promethean Fire”, 2018.)

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