The Batman by Matt Reeves 2022 features the young and inexperienced Bruce Wayne, played by Robert Pattinson, in a Gotham City that has never been so dark and corrupt. If the previous Batman incarnations – leaving aside the forgettable ones – focused on the growth of the hero, without ever questioning its necessity, this film instead reveals contradictory aspects of the character, starting from the dark history of his family.
Bruce is in fact the heir of the two most influential dynasties of Gotham: his father Thomas Wayne was an important surgeon about to become mayor of the city; his mother, Martha Arkham, was instead suffering from serious mental disorders which, for reasons of reputation, had been scrupulously kept hidden from the public opinion. However, when a journalist was about to reveal this news to the world, thus risking compromising the electoral outcome, the not so upright Thomas Wayne did not hesitate to enlist the help of a local boss, Carmine Falcone, to silence him.
Of course, as Alfred points out to an incredulous Bruce, it wasn’t his intention to kill him. Falcone, however, took advantage of the opportunity to raise the stakes and make the aspiring Mayor blackmailable. And when the game became too dangerous, it seems that he decided to kill the Wayne couple too, to effectively become the true master of the city. As if that wasn’t enough, the solidarity fund set up by the Waynes to help citizens in need, after their deaths, has become the main money laundering tool of the Gotham underworld.
In short, a disaster all along the line: a rather realistic view of the worldwhere the billionaire hero Wayne himself can no longer pretend to be the fairy tale of the rich philanthropist bringing joy and progress to humanity (Tony Stark model, so to speak), but must surrender to the dark reality of an immoral, destructive and unscrupulous capitalism. A disaster that was covered up for many years by the city’s leaders, until the Riddler arrived, with his crazy thirst for justice, to bring everything to the surface.
As already seen in Joker by Todd Phillips (2019), the psychopathic villain is not simply a somewhat flashy villain to be defeated with cunning and superior moral caliber, but the bitter fruit of a ruinous policyof an injustice that has never been paid, of a social malaise that can only find an outlet through revolt, illegality, terrorism.
The objective of these negative and deviant characters is not limited to the nihilistic annihilation of the existing: in many cases, destruction can instead represent an opportunity for redemption, the possibility of identifying something positive from the rubble. Destroy to rebuild. If in Joker the social revolt is against all the rich people of Gotham represented by Thomas Wayne, and will trigger the origin of his son’s hero. In Reeves’ film the reflection on evil becomes even more complex.
The Riddler kills corrupt politicians, reveals their illicit dealings, wants to bring the truth to the people of Gotham, following a mission that draws inspiration from Batman himself. Even more than in the film with Joaquin Phoenix, the hero and villain confuse and influence each other. This Gotham City is not a ring where evil confronts good (and where good always prevails in the end), but a much more rotten place where only different types of evil clash for the conquest of power.
In this perennial conflict of forces, those who pay the price are the weakest: not only the privileged orphans like Bruce Wayne, but above all the poor, the forgotten, the outcasts of society, whose only redemption is the destruction of what exists, the end of the pain they experienced and that no one will have to experience anymore. Revenge prevails over every other value, cleansing is necessary to trace a new beginning: erase the past before writing the future.
It is no coincidence that in his first appearance, Batman/Pattinson introduces himself to the criminals by saying “I am Vengeance”. The reference to V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd it is not at all accidental: the story is set between Halloween night and the following week, and on November 5th the most important and unforgettable event occurs (“remember, remember, the fifth of November”), that is, the destruction of the dam of Gotham by the followers recruited online by the Riddler. Like Guy Fawkes, the hero must first set fire to the palace of power so that a new, hopefully better, power can be established.
V, Moore and Lloyd’s masked vigilante, after killing all the corrupt representatives of the government, sacrifices himself so that the young orphan Evey can continue to live. The same girl is forced to suffer all the violence of the old power to reach awareness of her own condition, to recognize the pain and overcome it: this path occurs through a cruel but necessary deception. Evey is convinced that she is segregated in a concentration camp, but in reality she is in a simulation built by V to make her directly experience the same traumatic experience as her. Through her deception, Evey comes into contact with the pain of the weakest: only in this way can she embody that pain and become V.
The same happens between the Riddler and Batman: the coded messages, the puns, the riddles that the Riddler sends to Batman are stages of a necessary path of growth. Like V, the Riddler sacrifices himself (gets arrested after completing his task) so that Batman can be the hero of a new and purified city. By solving the riddles, therefore thinking like The Riddler, Bruce Wayne/Batman can emerge from his desperate desire for revenge, to reach a more mature awareness of his role as a hero.
Unlike Catwoman, who runs away from the city because she believes it is now condemned, Batman does not want to give in to despair: in this he resembles the Riddler more than you think. In the purified city, completely submerged by water, Batman sees a sign of hope. He understands that even rubble can build. Indeed, only by starting from the disaster can we imagine a better city.
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