The Hero We Deserve

 "Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place." 

- The Stranger, Big Lebowski

We've just collectively witnessed the greatest comic book movie franchise of our time. It's not conjecture, it's fact. Whether you want to do a frame by frame comparison of the technical/aesthetic/cinematic merits of this trilogy versus every other superhero film ever made, or if you prefer the box office numbers' reductive quality, it's not even close. Also, no other series has done more for the comic book movies as "real" "cinema"  (...and labored quote fingers there) conversation than any other franchise. There are so many measurables to point to and say, these are the reasons Batman is the best, but Nolan's brilliance or financial returns or what critics think seems to small. This iteration of Batman is the visceral form of some postmodern distress we've projected into our hero worship.  

Since 1989--when Tim Burton's Batman hit so big it knocked the planet of its axis--a slow poison of darkness and humanity has crept into comic book films. We want our heroes to have our shitty problems. We want them to be sort of awful like us. We want our heroes to struggle with doing, and sometimes knowing the right thing. Superman isn't commercially viable because the franchise is missing some mythic ideal star or director. There just seems to be little this generation has to identify with an indestructible, alien being. And yeah, no...Bryan Singer's version super sucked.  

This golden age of comic book films has been all about the humanized hero. Iron Man--a dark horse comic book character, especially for the John Q. Public these films are intended--emerged as a huge favorite. Does Robert Downey Jr. playing himself give Iron Man an unfair advantage? Well, considering you can use every Robert Downey Jr. film as an analog for his life at that exact moment, I'm going to say no. Tony Stark is kind of a drunk dick. He's really selfish. He's meltdown prone. But when the clutches of circumstance close in around him, he rises to the occasion. He's a human being just like you and me. Captain America and Spider-Man were humans with super powers heaped upon them. Magneto and Professor Xavier battle to reconcile where human and mutant pieces fit in society and themselves. The modern hero must know how to suffer like we do, and Batman has emerged as our ideal.

So this article was originally going to be about Michael Uslan, a man without whom--no foolin'--Batman on film would not exist as we know it. Uslan bought the rights for Batman in 1979 and his goal from the beginning was to make a serious Batman film. He has been an executive producer on every Batman film since. I ended up not writing anything because this interview pretty much says it all, but as I read the following passage, a hope of 1000+ words of baseless speculation sprung anew: 

"[Nolan's] vision was to come at it with a complete sense of reality, in which audiences would completely believe Bruce Wayne was a real person, highly traumatized, on a lost horizon journey...Chris needed to convey that this is our real world today, which is grey – it’s not so much good vs. evil today as it is order vs. chaos." 

Are we beyond good and evil, Superman? It's an oversimplification, but the Man of Steel is a useful character from our mythology to represent this shift in perception. Superman is inherently right. He's right because he was raised by good people from Smallville, Kansas, USA. Superman models a complete kind of good and the evil in his world is the proportional reaction. Evil has a name and a face and a reason. Evil has a uniform and a border and way in which it can be unequivocally beaten. Superman is the kind of pervasive correctness designed to defeat such neatly defined badness. Superman has no limits or burdens and as such he is an omnipresent cloak around the innocent. No matter the severity of the situation, Superman can uncover some new found ability, save the day, and set all things in the world back to their natural state of good. It is an idealistic kind of hero to ascribe to as the definition of ourselves, and a hero perhaps better suited for a generation irreproachable enough to be considered the "greatest".

Batman knows the pain of having to stand by helpless. Batman is locked in endless struggle with dangerous and complex enemies, perhaps the most compelling one within himself. He's battled those who claim to be the righteous hero sent to cleanse the world, and others who have no agenda at all except to spread disorder like plague. The Dark Knight is often perceived as the enemy of the people he's out to protect. Gotham City is bloated with corrupt power brokers who use public office and the justice system like marionettes. Batman is an extension of his world, an imperfect place where hero, villain, good, and evil all know some fragment of the other.

The tragedies of today's world are in plain view. Senseless inhumanity from every corner of the globe churns through the endless information stream. Our heroes seem designed to fail, fated to derail in some self made scandal. The sowers of discord have no bottom, no basement where their evil ceases to uncover new and more despicable kinds of horror. Good intentions are dissected down to ambiguities, and bad deeds resonate with asphyxiating fervor. As this version of the world can seem so inescapable, Batman emerges as the outgrowth of a sick society.

When our cynical vision of hope is a masked vigilante forced into the shadows, driven to dangerous extremes, it is a vote of no confidence. Our faith in our leaders and our system so profoundly eroded, we accept a figure who has to operate outside societies values in order to save them. Batman seems like an idol built to commemorate our failure, but this is not our man and this is not our time. Batman is a rejection of our failure, a manic howl of resounding optimism. The man in the cape and cowl embodies what is and always will be our cinder of hope: It only takes one human being. This is not a generation in need of a superhuman savior, but one person still bound to the belief we can do good. Batman is the manifestation of uncountable acts of decency and kindness performed in unheralded silence one anonymous human at a time--the secret order of the invisible good lurking in the shadows. A champion of a world not made to be saved, but worth the fight. The cathartic titan of a flawed people, born into a flawed world, who can stare into the torrent of irrational evil and still dare to make something good in its place.