The Batman: A Retrospective

One of the things that surprised me the most about watching The Batman was how effortlessly Matt Reeves was able to sell Selina Kyle and Edward Nashton as foils to Bruce Wayne and each other, without losing anything fundamental about their characters. 

For a long time now, Batman stories have struggled to construct meaningful foils and parallels for the titular Caped Crusader. Bruce is a character of extremes, and many of his most iconic relationships exist by pairing him with an equally extreme character on the opposite end of the spectrum. His non-nonsense, brooding attitude juxtaposes with Selina’s playfulness in most stories; his dark justice contrasts Joker’s colorful anarchy; and his grounded detective work stands out with the rest of the Justice League’s larger-than-life adventures. The few times DC has tried to make meaningful foils to Bruce Wayne, they’re either blatant copycats defined only in relation to Bruce who cannot exist as characters on their own (Prometheus, Owlman, Wrath, etc.) or they’re such breakout characters they lose much of what made them similar to Bruce as time goes on (Jason as Red Hood being a notable example). 

The Batman never falls into this trap. Reeves uses two characters who don’t seem particularly similar to Bruce on a surface level, but he frames their experiences through the other themes of the story, then presents each one in contrast to Bruce in some way to further those themes. 

These themes are:

1. First, traumatic childhood experiences and the environment we grow up in shape who we are. 

2. Second, acknowledging our current actions as a reflection of our past allows us to evolve and become better people. 

3. Third, the more honed and specific our thirst for violence is, the easier it is for revenge to destroy us. 

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The first theme requires very little explanation. The effects of trauma and environment on upbringing have been incredibly well-researched, and Reeves wastes no time in showing how our three main characters were all shaped by the worst parts of Gotham City. Bruce witnessing his parents’ death has made him a reclusive adrenaline junkie, using Batman as an outlet to take out his rage at the world that orphaned him.

Selina growing up in the shadow of the Falcones—knowing full well that Carmine was her father but never acknowledging her, even after her mother died—has made her bitter towards the criminal element of Gotham. She’s constantly in survival mode, constantly looking out for herself and the handful of people she cares about. 

Finally, Edward growing up as a poor orphan in the shadow of Martha and Thomas Wayne’s death made him resentful of the ultra-powerful, the elite, the wealthy. He grouped the Waynes in with the rest of Gotham’s elite and then blamed the elite for his upbringing, which leads 

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Explaining the second theme requires a little more detail. At three different points in the story, these characters must confront a fatal flaw that’s risen out of their childhood experiences.

1. Bruce’s fatal flaw is his tendency to self-isolate as a defense mechanism. He does this so that when he inevitably loses people close to him, it doesn’t hurt as bad—but when Alfred is nearly killed by Riddler’s bomb, it forces Bruce to confront this flawed mentality. Even though he’s been pushing away Alfred, it doesn’t make Alfred’s near-death experience any less painful. The hospital scene is Bruce’s turning point. He realizes that to truly heal his broken heart, he has to let others in, not push them out. 

2. Selina’s fatal flaws are impulsiveness and her desire to fight on behalf of others. She’s been in fight-or-flight mode all her life, and the movie shows us how rapidly she can switch between the two states when Annika is kidnapped. When Bruce stops her from killing Falcone, it’s the first time in the whole film that she’s actually stopped to think about what will happen to herself in the long run. 

3. Edward’s fatal flaw is his black-and-white morality. Growing up in an orphanage neglected by the city has led him to view the corruption of the elite as the source of suffering in Gotham—a fair assessment, to be sure, but he keeps extending his definition of what “corruption” means. He blames Bruce for his father’s mistakes, blames Bella Real and Gordon based on the mere assumption they’ll be as bad as their predecessors, and by the end of the film, he blames all of Gotham’s innocents. When he thinks that Batman will kill Bruce for him (not knowing they are the same person) and Batman refuses, that is Edward’s turning point. 

Bruce and Selina ultimately come out of the movie as better people because they can acknowledge how their flaws emerged from their childhood and amend them. Bruce stops being so isolated and rageful, and he becomes a symbol of hope. Selina works with him in the climax to defeat Riddler’s goons, and she ends the film no longer seeking revenge, but wanting a better, more peaceful life. Their romance is tragic because their character arcs are fundamentally at odds with one-another: Bruce’s arc is about protecting other people and learning how to love again, but Selina’s arc is about taking care of herself and considering her own safety. Just as Bruce begins to realize how much she loves and values her, Selina learns vengeance is futile and leaves Gotham forever. 

Edward is the villain of this film because even when confronted with the flaws of his worldview, he cannot accept the truth of things. His lost faith in Batman shatters him mentally, and the final scene with the Joker—an avatar of anarchy and chaos in most Batman media—represents how far Edward has fallen from his good intentions. 

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The third theme is one of the most interesting to me. All three of these characters are united by a thirst for revenge born from their childhoods—Edward wants revenge against the elite, and Selina wants revenge against the Falcones. But Bruce? Well, Martha and Thomas’ killer was never caught, so Bruce is rebelling against the criminal element of Gotham. Bruce wants revenge against the very idea of injustice and suffering, but he uses violence to accomplish this. He’s fighting an unwinnable battle because his methods and goals are at odds. 

As we see in the beginning of the film, this sort of broad, wide-sweeping revenge is a recipe for disaster. Bruce’s life is in shambles because he can’t be everywhere at once, fighting every injustice at once. He’s sleep-deprived, covered in scars, his public persona is a mess, and he’s been mismanaging his family’s funds for years. But by the end of the film, Bruce has taken that drive for change and turned it into something constructive. Instead of fighting crime, he is helping its victims, and instead of battling every injustice, he is paying more attention to those affected by injustice. 

This is the key, distinguishing factor that separates Bruce from Selina and Edward. Selina’s revenge against the Falcones may be a noble one, fought on behalf of her lover/roommate/friend Annika; but once Riddler kills Carmine, it leaves Selina with nothing. Revenge feels hollow and empty, and she’s left to consider what to do with her life. 

Meanwhile, Edward’s story could have gone down a route similar to Bruce’s, because both are raging against the very concept of injustice. This is why Joker says that Edward thinks the same as Bruce in the deleted scene—both are lone men trying to keep society from collapsing in their own ways. However, Edward’s own bias as both an orphan and a forensic scientist made him focus on the Waynes, the District Attorney’s office, the Police Department and the Falcones specifically. The desire for revenge against such a specific group of individuals blinded his judgement, making him target Bruce for a crime he was never guilty of and Real based on the mere assumption she’ll be as bad as her opponent. 

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Ultimately, The Batman is a story of growth in the face of fear and rage. It’s three main characters are all vengeful orphans opposing the very systems that created them, but what distinctions the heroes from the villains in this dog-eat-dog world is 1) the self-awareness to realize their methods are flawed and that they need to change, 2) the realization that the world isn’t black and white, and 3) the willingness to change the world through means other than violence. 

The brilliant thing about this narrative is that it only works by pairing all three of these characters together. In the beginning of the film, Bruce views the world in black and white, openly condemning the people Riddler killed and victim-blaming Annika for getting kidnapped, and he believes that his methods are the only way to help Gotham. Working with Selina—herself a criminal, but fighting on behalf of others—makes Bruce realize things aren’t as simple as they seem, and he can’t condemn criminals like Selina while being the same as her. This realization makes it easier for Bruce to cognitively adapt his worldview when he learns he inspired Edward. By the end of the film, Bruce has fully processes his childhood trauma and internalized Edward and Selina’s childhoods as well, which fuels his desire to change Gotham through means other than violence.