It also does that trope where it has the revolutionary "villain" fighting to expose the systemic corruption be/act so unhinged and do evil things as to give justification that their critiques are wrong. It's a really well made, entertaining movie, but it's themes are just such weak centrist bs that I couldn't ignore it.

I wrote about it more in-depth here if you're interested: https://letterboxd.com/peytobrock/film/the-batman/

EDIT: this is a write-up by a critic I really like that's even better than what I wrote: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63389248

  • penguin_von_doom [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Most movies since forever are pretty much about that. It is either how any radical change is bad, or how the return to the status quo is good. Comic book movies are particularly bad at this. I think this is a semi-conscious decision and does teach people that whatever they have now is better than some evil "change". So you know , they become horrified from the things that can actuallly help them.

    • squidlar [it/its]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I feel like the traditional narrative structure of superhero comics basically came out of an episodic format where:

      1. you have to more-or-less return to the status quo by the end of the storyline, unless otherwise mandated (to make it less nightmarish for both writers and readers to keep up with a continuity, especially in a shared universe), and
      2. the hero basically always wins (because it's a superhero comic and for kids)

      and 'there-is-a-bad-change-and-I-must-stop-it' is sort of a natural extension of these constraints. Obviously this is no excuse and the same pattern ALSO shows up in a ton of standalone media, but I'm not surprised it's particularly bad there.

      • penguin_von_doom [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Yeah, but also the ‘there-is-a-bad-change-and-I-must-stop-it’ thing has been consciously used to bash any kind of radical change. It is not just about the return to the status quo, although this is a part of it (and we can have a return to the status quo of a socialist world hero, where the world is mostly just and good). The movie/comic book thrope is more about lumping things that are obviously good together with something bad and making them look bad and scare. It is also making the current liberal free-market rule-based whatever it is world be the one that seems just and good and everything that isnt incremental snail paced change a horrible evil. And you can see this is really internalized by people, because it then manifests not just in politics, but also in personal life, work, etc. People love to talk about changing things, but never really want to do the big changes, exactly because of this conditioning.