Is Batman Good for Gotham City?

By Matthew Dunn

                Since his creation Batman has become one of the most popular characters in the superhero genre.  Bruce Wayne, traumatized after witnessing the murder of his parents as a child, swears revenge on criminals as an adult.  He transforms himself into Batman, and he aims to strike fear into the hearts of criminals or those who would harm others.  Batman throughout his existence has had many changes since his character was created.  Perhaps one of the darkest interpretations has been created in Christopher Nolan’s recent Batman trilogy. 

                In the first film of the series Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne as a young man and his transformation into Batman.  At the beginning of the film Bruce is trying to learn about the criminal element and because of his great skills, intelligence, and resources, he is recruited by a secret organization known as the League of Shadows.  The League of Shadows, led by Ra’s al Ghul, is committed to stopping crime around the world.  They do this by committing huge acts of destruction and sometimes genocide in order to make the survivors re-evaluate their lives and to bring balance to the world as they see fit.  After training with the organization, Bruce disagrees with their extreme plan to destroy his home city of Gotham, and he proceeds to destroy the temple of the organization along with many of its members.  However, he saves his mentor, who we later find out was Ra’s al Ghul, who had hidden his identity.  

                When Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham he proceeds to construct his new identity of Batman.  He uses his family’s great wealth and business dealings to arm himself with a plethora of weapons including a Kevlar suit and a tank ( a great departure from the Batmobiles of previous Batman stories ).  Once becoming Batman he seeks to rid the city of corruption and crime by frightening his enemies.  While doing this he stumbles upon a plan concocted by the surviving members of the League of Shadows to unleash a terrible toxin upon the city which will put all the citizens of Gotham into a psychotic state whereby they will turn upon each other and a genocide will commence.  Batman with the aid of perhaps the only non-corrupt member of the police force, Jim Gordon, realizes a solution to the plan and eventually stops the League of Shadows from committing their terrible actions.  Although not explicitly mentioned by the police or government officials, Batman becomes a hero to the citizens of Gotham.

                However, is Batman really the solution for Gotham?  After all the League of Shadows originally recruited him in order to destroy Gotham.  Since he refused and then subsequently destroyed their headquarters, one might see their later attack on Gotham as revenge on Bruce Wayne.  Also the League of Shadows carries out their terrible plan with stolen weapons from Bruce Wayne’s own company.  Had Bruce Wayne carried out the same actions as Tony Stark in Ironman, he would have had his company stop making weapons and thereby decreased the ability of the League of Shadows to wreak havoc on the citizens of Gotham City. 

                The problems created by Batman become even clearer in the second part of the series, The Dark Knight.  In this film Batman meets his most famous nemesis, The Joker.  The Joker is a sociopathic madman who seems to find mass killing to be humorous and enjoyable.  Unlike the League of Shadows he has no wider aspirations than just causing chaos for the sake of having chaos.  In these ways he shows himself to be the polar opposite of Batman, for Batman has the goal of ridding the city of crime, and at the same time has a great respect for human life.  In the beginning of the film, the organized crime elements of Gotham give financial support to the Joker in order to kill Batman because he has severely damaged their abilities to do illegal business.  The Joker then proceeds to take that money and use it to terrorize the people of Gotham in order to confront Batman.  At the end of the film, when the two rivals battle each other, Batman wins the fight and then saves the Joker from death.  In his final speech the Joker reveals that the two of them essentially need each other because they complement each other’s needs. 

                We see in this film the true problem of Batman.  Although he may possess many great abilities he cannot stop crime.  In fact his presence leads to an increase in crime.  He may have stopped many of the low level criminals but as his trusty butler and companion, Alfred Pennyworth, instructs him in their desperation they unleash a truly destructive force.  The Joker takes crime to a whole other level threatening to kill thousands.  Also because of Batman’s refusal to kill the Joker because of his own psychological needs, the Joker will live to battle Batman again and presumably kill countless more in the process.  As the Joker says in his final scene, “I think that you and I are destined to do this forever.” 

                In the third and presumably final film, The Dark Knight Rises, we are introduced to a Gotham that has not seen Batman for several years.  This Gotham seems to be much more peaceful, due to the absence of Batman and the new criminal laws which were passed.  These laws place harsh punishments on criminals and also allow law enforcement more leeway in fighting crime, much like the PATRIOT Act or Rico laws in the United States today.  However, the peace does not last and soon Gotham is confronted with another vicious and powerful villain known only as Bane.  Bane, like Bruce Wayne, has been trained by the League of Shadows and is a mental and physical match for Batman.  With the help of a wealthy businessman who seeks to take over the Wayne business empire, Bane makes an attack on the Stock Market and gains access to a nuclear core designed by Wayne enterprises and turns it into a bomb.  After defeating Batman in hand to hand combat, Bane reveals that he intends to finish the work of the League of Shadows and destroy Gotham City.  He then imprisons Bruce Wayne in the prison where he spent most of his life, where escape is nearly impossible.  While he does this, Bruce will be forced to watch, tortured as he can do nothing to save the city. 

                Without Batman to stand in his way, Bane proceeds to become overlord of Gotham.  With the threat of a nuclear attack, he proceeds to set a government to his liking.  He releases criminals held in the city jails, steals the property of the wealthy, and sets up show trials similar to the ones in Revolutionary France or The Soviet Union under Stalin, whereby the verdicts were predetermined and the accused were always sentenced to death.  Bruce Wayne who is far away in prison is forced to watch the destruction of the city he had worked so hard to defend.  Then after hearing a story of a child who escaped from the prison he is in, he trains and eventually escapes to return to Gotham as Batman. 

                After Batman returns to Gotham he confronts Bane once more, this time defeating him.  However, he is stabbed by Miranda Tate, a woman who Bruce had entrusted with the nuclear technology his firm had created and had a sexual liaison with.  She reveals that her real name is Talia al Ghul and that she is the daughter of the slain leader of the League of Shadows.  She was in fact the child who escaped from the prison with the help of Bain.  It seems as though Bain carried out his atrocities in Gotham mainly as a labor of love for her.  Soon after this scene, Talia attempts to detonate the nuclear bomb in an attempt to destroy Gotham.  After escaping Bane, Batman manages to thwart her efforts by obtaining the bomb and detonating it from his fighter jet over the ocean.  Batman appears to have died in the blast, but it is revealed in the last scene of the film, that he escaped and moved abroad with Selina Kyle who was Catwoman during the film. 

                Once again in this film, we see how the existence of Batman leads to death and destruction for Gotham.  Bruce Wayne’s nuclear research leads to the creation of a neutron bomb and his trust in the wrong person puts the bomb in the hands of someone who seeks genocide.  Also we see Talia carries on her father’s work, but specifically targets Gotham because of the desire for revenge on Batman.  This is why Bane tortures Batman.  Lastly, the re-appearance of Batman after Bane’s attack on the stock market allows Bane to elude police capture.  Once again, we see Batman putting his psychological needs to stop crime ahead of what actually might be good for the city of Gotham. 

                Looking at Batman in this light can shed some very important lessons for our world.  First criminal activity cannot be stopped by the escalation of violence against criminals.  For example, many countries have escalated an incredibly violent war on drugs.  However, this has not stopped the drug trade, but made the drug cartels more violent and in fact in some places such as Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia the drug cartels regularly do battle with the military and win.  Next, just because someone is very skilled like Batman, does not mean that they have any grand solutions to the injustices of our time.  Batman has great skills and resources but even with the best of intentions he cannot accomplish his grand goals.  Lastly, Batman offers us a lesson about our own needs.  Batman fights crime in order to deal with the pain of watching his parents gunned down.  Therefore we see that he is in fact dishonest about his motives, which really appear to be purely selfish and not really about making the city a better place.  For if crime was eliminated from Gotham, he would have no purpose much like the Bruce Wayne that we saw at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises.  Perhaps the final lesson here, is to acknowledge that we do all in fact have needs, but we need to recognize the needs of others as well.  If the Batmans of the world did this, both Gotham and the rest of the world might be better off.