7Hells said:
Bah, how can you compare Batman to a cowboy...you should be slapped for that!
Comparing Batman to a violent badass who takes the law into his own hands? You're right, my dear, HOW DARE I?!?!?
Comparing movies (especially today considering war) to comics in order to statute the publics idea of acceptable violence by superheros is stretching it a bit. Comics are a completely different medium. The intent of violence will always be toned down in movies (unless horror) because the nature of that medium is so much more graphic than comics. though you could argue that because comics are mainly for children the same would apply but I consider that a different kind of censorship.
Again I come back to Die Hard which I watched last night... wherein every gunshot that hit human flesh left a massive blood splatter on walls, windows, etc. Wherein The Bruce runs barefoot over broken glass and leaves one hell of a trail, and is then seen in a bathroom sitting on a sink pulling glass out of his feet and tossing it into the bloodstreaked porcelain. Or another of my favorites, RoboCop, wherein Red Foreman and Dr. Romano blast the living hell out Peter Weller at pointblank range and, having actually shot most of his limbs off (which we witness first-hand) they deliver the coup-de-gras and leave him for dead. Or Braveheart, where limbs were flying like a busy day at the Mos Eisley Cantina.
The point I'm making here,
Sev, is that movie violence being toned down is a fairly recent conceit, and one that I hate with a passion. It takes a singular lack of courage to make an action movie that doesn't show realistic violence. The only exceptions we get are movies like Saving Private Ryan (another movie I love, and which has the greatest, most horrifying and starkly realistic combat scenes ever put to film) but where it's designed expressly to convey the message that war is hell. Which hopefully, being intelligent individuals, we already knew.
If you are talking about the depiction of Batmans general attitude and the mood of the current comics(Miller I assume) I'd agree with you to an extent. Though it seems more of a personal issue Batman has rather than the way he deals with crime in general.
Thats what is tricky about being an anti-hero he is still a "hero" for the most part whereas someone like Catwoman is delinated more from the "anti".
If you juxtapose Batman to his superhero counterparts from around the same age there is no question which one would be considered the antihero. The costume alone lends itself to the pigeonhole. Yet its the practicalities of the way Batman dispenses his enemies that makes him an anti-hero to me. He is quite a violent guy. There is traditionally much more blood and/or defeat depicted in a sadistic nature in Batman Comics when compared to other comics from the same conceptual era.
I guess it's a POV thing here. I mean I get what you're saying - that in a sense Batman is a far more visceral, violent type of person than Superman. And I love Superman, but I love Batman more. But Batman being a bareknuckled streetfighter to Superman's saintly persona doesn't, to me, make Batman an anti-hero. Because by that standard every real-life hero is an anti-hero, and there are no true heroes. Which I suppose is an attitude that you could have, but again, one that I don't necessarily share.
To me the difference in Superman and Batman is in their level of empowerment. Superman has superhuman powers. He's like an angel. He's a Messianic figure. He has powers far beyond any human and so he must use them carefully because he doesn't want to do any real permanent harm to anyone. He wants everybody to be cool with each other, and his favorite punch is the one he doesn't have to throw. He's like a saint.
Batman is, well... more realistic. He's a human being who wants to do the right thing, and, just like in the real world, doing the right thing sometimes involves getting one's knuckles bloody, and Batman's not afraid to do that. He fights because it's the most effective tool he has. But he doesn't kill. He believes in locking the bad guys up and giving them a chance at rehabilitation. He never really gives up on them. In that sense he's as close as most human beings ever get to being saintly: he does his own dirty work, BUT all he wants is to help people. You can question his methods but to me fighting isn't a sin. Maybe I'm out on a limb on this one -- me and Malcolm X, who probably would have distrusted me due to my pinkness, but the older I get the more I believe the man may have had a point about self-defense -- when I say that even if you prefer not to throw a punch, you can't let that stop you when it becomes necessary.
A cop who's afraid to shoot his gun is no use on the street. A pacifistic soldier is worthless in the field. But cops and soldiers can be, and often are, heroes.
I will never expect you to. Just being here and posting in this forum tells me that you, as I, are a diehard fan and as such we will always have a fairly concrete vision of our
personal Batman.
Amen. I always figure that one of the main reasons for being here is to share our views with other people, and to discuss them with other people who have thought about this crap as much as we have. What makes me respect your views is that you have obviously put a lot of thought into them, and you're able to discuss them intelligently. Any time somebody does that, it elevates this place.
t: I'd say that's pretty exceptional, at least as written.
