Why the world needs Batman

And why The Dark Knight will be the best selling and spookiest movie ever!

Batman Begins ends with the warning that the crime war in Gotham is escalating.
Jim Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds. And you're wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops. Now, take this guy: armed robbery, double homicide. Got a taste for theatrical, like you. Leaves a calling card.
Gordon presents Batman with an evidence bag, and through the clear plastic it’s obvious what’s inside: a playing card. When Batman turns it over the "Joker" is revealed.

The Joker in Dark Knight is the late Heath Ledger, whose death at 28 imbues director Christopher Nolan’s second gritty instalment with even more ominous realism. Dark Knight was designed by Nolan in the style of art noir, to be the sort of ‘hyper-real’ flick that wins prestigious awards. And Nolan has worked hard with his crew, even sparring with the Chinese government in order to gain maximum use of airspace for a Hong Kong skyscraper scene and choosing reality (and real stunts) above special effects wherever possible. Why stop there? Nolan has ambitiously shot the entire flick using cumbersome but rewarding 35 mm celluloid, in the heady and powerful IMAX format. This means the attention to detail ought to be riveting, both on the big and giant screens. Imagine those massive cityscapes, the galaxy of lights, swimming around the caped crusader who stands darkly, silently, looking down at our world.

When you think about it, it’s bizarre that Batman became a cinema hero at all. After all, isn’t Batman all about darkness, gloom and brooding melodrama? Where’s the fun in that? And worse, how do you shoot a Dark Knight in darkness?

Part of the reason there is so much hype around this flick, it has to be said, is thanks to Batman Begins. But there’s more, a lot more on offer here. Film critic Peter Travers describes Dark Knight as, ‘a thunderbolt…about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies’. The Dark Knight is the perfect remedy for what one commentator describes as the western world’s ‘vacuous solipsism’ (which is the belief in self as the only reality). Think Pop Idol and The X Factor. The state of the world today is another obvious reason superheroes are fashionable today, especially flawed superheroes. All these are part of the recipe in Dark Knight, but Batman goes further, to become so much more thanks to the introduction of an archnemesis: the crazy-happy, white-faced, purple- suited, green-haired homicidal villain. The Joker is of course everything that Batman isn’t – loud, extroverted, undisciplined, a creature that deals with reality by, well, not dealing with it. Not taking it seriously. In Dark Knight the tagline is from the Joker himself: “Why…so…serious?” It’s a fascinating and disturbing rhetorical question, because we know – and so does Batman – that there is much to be serious about in the contemporary real world.

While the first instalment was humourless, the clown villain ought to bring a twisted maniacal wit to Dark Knight. There are already murmurs of a posthumous Oscar for Ledger. This may be a ghoulish touch, but the entire flick is somehow ghoulishly appropriate for our time.
"The way the superheroes of today are presented is darker and more complex than it was in the past," says Paul Simpson author of the Rough Guide to Superheroes
Right now, for example, the escalating war in Gotham mirrors the escalating condition in the real world, both in military theatres where American ‘vigilante’ forces operate (think Iran), and in many other strata (think about the escalating impact on oil prices on ordinary economics, and the crime threat that that entails). The chilling realisation we get from Dark Knight is this: whatever you fight you strengthen. Whatever is resisted, persists. This is true of batman fighting crime, but, interestingly, it is also true of crime fighting Batman.
The $180 million Dark Knight Returns opens at a time that keys in perfectly with the reigning zeitgeist. There is tremendous unspoken, even unacknowledged fear and uncertainty in the world today. There is a darkness that is growing in the world, and somehow the popularity of this flick reveals this to us. Already dozens of midnight openers have sold out in America. Joker action figures are already selling north of $20 on eBay. Online ticket retailer Fandango reports that Dark Knight’s unprecedented popularity has caused many cinema houses to slot in additional 3am shows. The vice president of marketing for Fandango, Ted Hong said that it “…makes sense that there's a rush for tickets -- it looks action-packed and film fans are anxious to see Heath Ledger." March polls by Fandango saw customers choose Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the number one summer blockbuster, with Dark Knight second. Right now advance Dark Knight ticket sales are leaving Indianna Jones in the dark, and without a whip.
The record for best opening weekend ever is held by Spider-Man 3, Directed by Sam Raimi. So far Dark Knight advance sales are tracking much stronger than Spider-Man 3. It won’t be easy to top $151 million, although pundits are expecting Dark Knight to blow by $100 million at a minimum (Iron Man made $102.1 million in its opening weekend, just ahead of Indianna Jones at $100.1 million). Affirmative advance reviews, such as from Peter Travers in Rolling Stone, are also setting up Dark Knight to be perhaps one of the biggest box office successes ever. Travers describes Dark Knight as ‘raw and elemental’, he calls it an ‘absolute stunner… [that talks] to the essentials of the human condition.’
Well, what are the essentials of the Batman mythos?
The collective subconscious is a giant black heaving ocean. The jagged shape that bounces around the night sky comes from a family known as Chiroptera. The name derives from a Greek word meaning “hand” and “wing”. Bats are the only mammals naturally capable of flight, which accounts for their extraordinary success. The bat has associations that run deep in the human psyche. Native Americans saw bats as trickster spirits. The Chinese associate bats with harmony and longevity. Western culture associates bats with fear, darkness and immortality, with Dracula and vampires.

Then there’s The Dark. The dark that symbolizes fear, and death, and the dysfunction that festers within. Batman is a man who masters his fear, and uses the dark to beat back death itself. For Bruce Wayne, Batman is a drug, a fiery being that consumes him, as Monica Hafer explains. “The pressure to take action against the social chaos is unbearable. [Bruce] says of his Batman identity, ‘He tricks me . . . when the night is long and my will is weak. He struggles, relentlessly, hatefully, to be free". And Bruce is addressed directly in the comic by his Batman persona, who says to him, "You are nothing—a hollow shell, a rusty trap that cannot hold me—smoldering, I burn you—burning you, I flare, hot and bright and beautiful—you cannot stop me—not with wine or vows or the weight of age—you cannot stop me but still you try—still you run”. …Only an adult mind could truly appreciate those feelings of age and of the longing that is expressed here for the vigor of youth.

Beyond the dark is The Cave, that place all men go to find their power. Bruce and the Batman dwell there more than most men do, and attain dizzying strength, incorruptible power, and interestingly, fantastic intelligence. In The Cave Bruce Wayne’s super computers whirr with the world’s best intel. It is this resource, technology, perhaps more than any other that is behind Batman’s success. This is what allows an ordinary man to match the likes of Superman. Beyond the mask and the fear factor, Batman gains his advantage by utilizing a suitably armored costume (something that reflects our society’s penchant for hi-tech state of the art gadgets).

Bat-Tech amounts to sophisticated weapons systems based on Bruce Wayne’s scientific intellect and access to the world’s most secret military weapons (Wayne Industries sells armaments to the US Department of Defence).
Batman’s weaponry – gas capsules, a rebreather, monofilament cord jumplines, batarangs and grapnels – are docked in his utility harness. His points-weighted cape and the suit are lined with triple-weave Kevlar, and both are covered in fire-resistant Nomex. He has a radio link to the Batcave and night vision inserted in his cowl. Once prepped and in uniform, Batman seamlessly merges with the bleak and menacing backdrop of Gotham, with its dark labyrinths and its cathedrals.
In common with Superman, Bruce Wayne shares the experience – and the rage – of being an orphan, and his response to orphanhood is revenge, unleashed as an unremitting war on legions of criminals…in order to prevent other innocents from ever experiencing the pain and suffering he did.
There is also the Absurdity of a world gone mad. It is this recognition most of all, of the Absurd, and the Absurd world we live in, that makes Batman someone that makes sense, and someone heroic we can identify with. . The world has gone stark raving mad. When we intuit the world’s psychosis, the strands of the humorless Dark Knight coalesce into a form we recognize. It is the only sensible apparition to stalk the disturbing dystopia. Gotham embodies this disturbing dystopia: the stink, the pollution that hangs over us, infests and infects the alleyways of our cities, staining our skyscrapers, bringing twilight to our world. The shadowy murk of Gotham is the perfect substrate for the cultivation of criminal mobs. They plunder and rape, they burn men, and turn buildings to dust. It takes a special creature to deal with this level of contempt for human life. And that creature is the dark terrifying force we know as Batman.
The post-modern mindset is characterised by disassociation and fragmentation. Increasingly we create separate personas to deal with the complexities of life. In this sense, Batman reflects not just our absurdities, but our common Schizophrenia, and even the reigning cultural schizophrenia (a modern condition based on the disconnection between attitudes and behaviours, between the world we see on TV and in the media and the world we intuit). Batman – as a sort’ve eye in the sky – is also watching a world beneath the world most people see. And here the alternate reality is exposed as delusion, manipulation, madness, criminal insanity. Batman’s creators saw fit to add Arkham Asylum into the mythos, a place where not only the insane but the criminally insane end up (and often escape). Arkham Asylum’s alter ego, of course, is Wayne Manor. The manor itself is built on dark and hollow foundations; the site is condemned by the municipal authorities for its chronic sinkhole problems. And Bruce Wayne spends inordinate amounts of time down there, in his cave sunk below ground, below what we can see, and this disconnectedness transforms him.
Revenge (for the death of his parents, and the childhood that was stolen from him) has taken over his whole life. It cannot be healthy when dark obsessions consume a man. Bruce Wayne never learnt to let go of the pain of losing his parents. And his childish response: to dedicate his life to protecting others from experiencing the same pain, is, while admirable, let’s face it, tragically misguided. This doesn’t convey heroism, but a mental disorder.
Yes, it is entirely possible that Batman’s angry response to fear, to the extent that it mirrors and even to some extent co-creates the villains he opposes, may make no sense at all. The Joker in The Dark Knight says as much: "I don't want to kill you. You complete me."

We know that uncontrolled anger is unhealthy; it adversely impacts on one’s personal well-being, and it can destabilise the social order. It is possible that Batman’s father, Thomas Wayne, was on the right track from the beginning, in his fight against crime and terror in Gotham. Not to fight fire with fire, or to fight fear by scaring the bejesus out of criminals, but by a more Christ-like benevolence. Thomas Wayne used philanthropy to uplift the poor. The question now is whether society has the capacity to remain stable and incorruptible in order to respond effectively to acts of contemporary altruism. The caveat is that it is entirely possible that the social order is collapsing, and Gotham is simply a site where various groups and factions are locked in a zero-sum game called Us versus Them. If this is true, then Batman’s vigilantism may be entirely justified.
Nolan describes Batman as "the most real of all the superheroes, who has no superpowers." Batman is deeper and more complex than other superheroes; his intelligence has imbued him with a consistent sense of purpose. He pursues socially just outcomes, and in this sense, stands alone among superheroes.
Batman assures us that we will not perish without a fight, and we will not go gently into the night. He also addresses the difficult question all men face each day. What should I do with my power, and my anger? Bury it? Suppress it? When it is stirred up, we resist, we push it back. Men can use anger to mobilize important psychological resources. Anger is what drives our determination to seek justice in society, to make known our rejection of the status quo, to avenge injustice. In this sense, anger is vital. But what is there to caution, to control the passion of a raging heart? Fear. And Batman has mastered that too.

See, Batman has guts. He has no obvious weaknesses. He’s a battle scarred, lantern-jawed war horse. Here is a man that has distilled the vital qualities of masculinity: strength, cave dwelling, aggression and erratic womanizing – and made them respectable. His darkness is stark, powerful and mean, but not depressing. He’s the smartest and most rational of all the superheroes. What else but the brains of a billionaire playboy, and the brawn of a stoic, super sleuth – armed to the teeth with high tech – could bully back the shadows of this complex world we live in?

It is his lonely secrecy, his warring vigilantism, and his brilliance and strength, that fascinates young boys and resonates with real men. Batman asks us to stand up against human tragedies, and break the forces of destruction that weigh in on us.

The world needs Batman because it shares the deep black bruises of a painful past. We are voyeurs in his violent vigilantism. We dwell in dark fantasies where fears of the future are bullied into the shadows. Batman epitomizes the fear we fear to face in ourselves. When we cannot let go the dark of our hearts bursts into black flame. These flames are the shadows that haunt and burn the streets of our own dark hearts. The world needs Batman because he is real, he is us, and darkness is coming. And if he can go alone into the dark with strength that is real, and make a difference, perhaps we can too.
Dark Knight Returns opens worldwide on July 17