Batman: Year One (2011) A DVD Review

Two men come to Gotham City: Bruce Wayne after years abroad feeding his lifelong obsession for justice and Jim Gordon after being too honest a cop with the wrong people elsewhere. After learning painful lessons about the city's corruption on its streets and police department respectively, this pair learn how to fight back their own way. With that, Gotham's evildoers from top to bottom are terrorized by the mysterious Batman and the equally heroic Gordon is assigned to catch him by comrades who both hate and fear him themselves. In the ensuing manhunt, both find much in common as the seeds of an unexpected friendship are laid with additional friends and rivals helping to start the legend.

-Written by Kenneth Chisholm

That a summary of the video Batman: Year One (2011) which I saw on DVD a couple of weeks ago. I saw and subsequently reviewed the 1989 Keaton/Nicholson Batman film on the same weekend, but I couldn't summon whatever I needed to write my "Year One" review at the same time.

Maybe that's because the video reminded me so much of the Batman: Year One graphic novel (2007 -- originally published February through May 1987 in the regular Batman comic book series) by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. The graphic novel gained rave reviews if you can believe Amazon (and most people do), and I remember the work favorably as well. Why do I feel so "cold" about the video based off the graphic novel?

Maybe because it was so similar to its 136 page source. I mean, having read the graphic novel, why did I need to see the 64 minute video?

Don't we want films made from books to be true to their source? Well, yes and no. If I were talking about a text-only novel, there'd be no visual component except what was generated in my head as I was reading. With a graphic novel, you get words and pictures. With an animated video you get spoken words and moving pictures, but it (in this case) looks pretty much the same.

It was as if the makers of the animated film said, "Let's make the graphic novel story again but make it move." In other words, I didn't learn anything new or have much of a different experience than when I read the graphic novel a few years ago. Any film should be more than just a moving, talking version of its source. I want to have a different experience, related enough to the original to recognize it, but different enough to be worth my while.

If I had a choice, I'd probably just read the comic book version again because print typically includes more story detail that's cut for time in a film presentation.

This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the animated film. It was watchable and entertaining. I could certainly see the portions that linked into Batman Begins (2005), such as Batman "calling for backup."

You see the less than honorable side of a relatively young Jim Gordon, cheating on his pregnant wife, struggling to rise above his failures, fighting criminals with almost the same darkness as Batman. You see a young Bruce Wayne donning the mantle of the Bat for the first time, making rookie mistakes that almost get him killed, nearly killing the legend along with him. You see a different "Catwoman" with a (apparently) lesbian twist (it's only hinted at, but you get that vibe).

If you've never read the graphic novel or the original series of comic books, you'll enjoy the film. If you've read the graphic novel, seeing the film will be like deja vu. It's that simple.

If I watch Batman animated films, I'll try to pick those that don't follow the print material so closely. I want to be surprised as the story unfolds in front of my eyes.

Graphic Novel Review: Batman, the Return of Bruce Wayne

An odyssey for one of the most iconic figures in comics stretches from prehistory to the end of time, revisiting and reimagining Batman's mythology through a complex narrative. Writer Morrison and a team of artists pick up from the end of Morrison's Final Crisis and Batman: RIP. Bruce Wayne is lost in time after killing Darkseid, a godlike being of pure evil. Piecing together the memories of his past that he's lost and slowly realizing he's been turned into a human booby trap meant to destroy the universe by Darkseid, Bruce is pulled through eras of Gotham City's history that include confrontations with cavemen, witch hunters, pirates, cowboys, and 20th-century cultists. These adventures culminate in a return to the present where he must rely on his fellow superheroes to save him from Darkseid's curse. Morrison's story is designed to add to Batman's aura as a timeless, mythical hero, but the time jumps and Bruce's amnesia sometimes create an uneven narrative. The story also asks readers to possess a wealth of familiarity with the character's decades-long history, making the book not as accessible to newer fans. Different artists—all strong, colorful storytellers—give each time period its own mood.

From the product description of
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne
at Amazon.com

I had originally intended to review the graphic novel Final Crisis and "Return" back-to-back, but "Crisis" had such a vast scope and such a twisted plot to follow, that I felt that reviewing it would be an injustice. I didn't like it very well. It assumed that the reader knew just about everything there is to know about the DC Universe going back decades (although I actually knew about the Miracle Machine from the old, silver age Adventure comics (featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes). For the first half of "Crisis", I had no idea what was going on, if I was seeing events on different "Earths" or just different places on one Earth or whatever.

However, reading "Crisis" was necessary to get the background for understanding how Bruce Wayne ended up in the stone age in The Return of Bruce Wayne. I love time travel stories and I love time travel mysteries. I figured this was going to be good.

It was. But it had its flaws.

I hadn't intended to read it all in one sitting, but a bout of insomnia changed my plans. My review is based on going through all of the pages of Morrison's product well after midnight and, writing this the following evening on three hours sleep, I'm still a bit punchy. But I digress.

The storyline is much more straightforward than "Crisis" but it's not completely straight. There is the little "side-trip" to Vanishing Point taken by Superman, Rip Hunter, and a few other JLA members to try and figure out where and when Batman is/was. I must have missed something, but Vanishing Point was on the verge of being destroyed at the heat death of the universe, so there wasn't a lot of...time (yeah, I know...that's going to come up a lot) to investigate.

There was mention made of the clues in history Batman left behind but no mention of how the JLA knew even to look. As far as they knew, Batman was dead. Why suspect that he was really back in time and how convenient it would be to suddenly start finding suspicious cave paintings just after his disappearance into the past? It would have been cleaner if we were told how and why anyone thought to look for a time traveling Bruce Wayne and what told them that A.) he was capable to traveling forward in time and B.) that he was accumulating Omega Energy as part of Darkseid's plot to posthumously destroy Earth.

Of course, maybe that was in the book and I was just too tired to pick up on it.

I liked the stone age. I'm still wondering how the rocket ship (which did not contain Bruce's body but just his stuff) ended up in the exact time and place that Bruce's body did when zapped by Darkseid's Omega beams. I may have missed the connection in "Crisis", though. There was so much going on in that book, it was hard to keep all the details straight.

It was a little campy to have "Boy" of the Deer People become "Boy" (Robin) of the Bat People, but endearing nonetheless. I did find it really incredible to believe that someone who probably lived about 10,000 B.C. could have started a legend that would be remembered by a small tribe native Americans in 1640 A.D., but it was also kind of cool.

I kept wondering why Bruce took such a big leap in time at the first event, tens of thousands of years, and afterwards, jumped forward only a few centuries or a few decades? Of course, there was all that time in between when he wouldn't have had any sort of adventure and we do want to keep the action moving.

I enjoyed all of his time leaps, but my favorite was when Bruce "played" private detective investigating the allegation that his father murdered his mother (the man with her that fateful night wasn't supposed to be Thomas Wayne). Batman was originally created in the late 1930s, so pulp fiction dieselpunk is his natural element. I did have a tough time figuring out the year though, since there were video stores in existence, which would have placed him in the late 1970s or early 80s, but his grandfather was in an iron lung, which would have put it more in the 1950s.

Oh well.

When Bruce showed up at Vanishing Point and stole Rip Hunter's time machine, stranding Superman, GL, and the others just minutes before the end of the universe, I was definitely thrown a curve ball. It's all eventually explained, but I'm still trying to figure out who that guy Carter was, how he invented a time machine and why, if this was supposed to be in the 1940s or 50s, he was wearing a "Have a nice day" t-shirt, complete with smiley face.

A few things really bothered me. One was how many times Bruce came really close to death. If he was that easy to kill, he would have died a hundred times over just by being Batman. Of course, he didn't have his memory and he was way out of his element, but as the book says, Batman is a survivor. That's what he does.

The one thing I hated more than anything happens when Bruce steals Hunter's time machine and strands the JLA members in a force field (which turns out to be a time machine in the making). Superman panics. He has a real look of fear in one panel followed by him pounding impotently on the force field while practically wailing. No one else loses their cool, not even Booster Gold. Superman would not have panicked, no matter what. He'd be the one everyone else looked to for courage. I felt sorry for him.

I kind of liked it that a 17th century witch put an everlasting curse on one of Bruce's ancestors (and in this book, his ancestors were less than noble). It kind of explains why his life and his family is always in such a mess. He's got a lot to make up for.

Like the "Crisis" story, there's a bad guy and a worse bad guy. In this case, Wayne arriving in the 21st century and blowing it up isn't the only problem. There was also that evil thing in the Bat Cave in 1640 that passed on an "infection" of evil (hey, I don't make this stuff up). It definitely plays a part in why Bruce is so messed up when he finally reaches the present, mentally and physically, although I'm not sure how it ended up becoming the "bat-thing" Vandal Savage killed in the stone age right before Bruce arrives (and which becomes the basis for Bruce's first "costume").

"Return" is a book that assumes you know what's going on. Although it's still exciting and compelling all by itself, there are too many questions it raises if you don't buy 50 DC comic books every month for ten or twenty years in a row and memorize all of the details. In spite of what I just said, it's still more or less a "clean" story that contains most of the answers to the questions it raises. It held my attention and was even a page-turner when all I wanted in life was to get a few hours sleep.

There's a lot I left out of the review, but if you haven't read "Return" yet, you'll need to get a copy and find out about the other connections that have now become part of the Legend of the Dark Knight. Despite all of my "complaints", I really liked it. I'm glad it was at my public library and it's a shame I have to return it. On the other hand, I have to give the next person a chance to experience the dilemma, the mystery, and the anguish of "the Return of Bruce Wayne."

Underneath the Mask

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me. -Wayne (as Batman)

You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. -Ray Bradbury

Who am I? The person you see here isn't all that there is. This is a place where I can be all of the things people don't want me to be and I can say all the things people don't want me to say. I speak cynically but proceed hopefully. The rest of me lies elsewhere.

The above paragraph encloses the words I choose to define myself on my blog, yet as the quote from Batman Begins (2005) shows, it's behavior that defines a person, not anything they may be under the skin, or the mask.

I talk about masks on this blog. What is it that people see when they look at us, our face or our mask? Are we always transparent to our family, friends, and acquaintances, or do we put on a mask for their sakes or for our own? Chances are the latter. According to social role theory:

This is the principle that men and women behave differently in social situations and take different roles, due to the expectations that society puts upon them...

Wikipedia defines a role as:

...a set of connected behaviors, rights and obligations as conceptualized by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society.

Bruce Wayne took on the persona of Batman, not just to be something scary to the bad guys, but because as Bruce Wayne, he couldn't create the impact on his environment that was required to achieve his goals. Clark Kent took on the role of Superman in order to be able to compartmentalize the different ways he needed to express himself, with Clark as the "normal" human persona where he lives his day-to-day life, and Superman as the demonstration of his need and duty to use all of his abilities in the service of humanity.

While you and I are not such dramatic or nobel beings (at least for the most part), we too take on different roles, different masks, depending on the situation and circumstance.

I once had a police officer ask me why he was a confident public speaker while in uniform but such a total klutz at speaking to audiences when in plain clothes. The answer was immediately obvious to me and should be to you if you've been following along with my theme of Masks.

While our masks or our roles are built in for the most part, we do choose to use them or not use them. An extreme example is the character of House on the TV show of the same name, who will say and do just about anything that comes into his head without regard for social norms and expectation. He often reaps the consequences, but not as much as the rest of us might. I guess that's one of the benefits of being (at least in fiction) one of the world's top medical diagnotic experts. People have to put up with you.

Of course, the rest of us don't have to be accepted by anyone. There are those people who feel they should put up with you, regardless of your behavior, but they're usually family and beyond a certain point, even they will push you aside. Even if they do accept you after some completely amazing social gaffe, they are likely never to let you forget what you've done and how they suffered terribly as they "stuck by you" through the mess you caused. So much for "forgive and forget". Even if you're forgiven (provisionally), people, unlike elephants, never forget.

But if you dig around the edges of our social masks, isn't it really cowardace that keeps us hiding who we really are? Is it actually our behavior that defines us when we behave in a way that others expect, rather than the way we want? Are we sacrificing ourselves for the welfare of others or just making sure they'll keep being our acquaintances and friends (and family) by doing what they want and expect?

If the latter is true, then most of us are cowards most of the time. I fall into that category as well, which is why I maintain this blog, so I can write about what I want without the social barrier of my mask.

In the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode Masks it was indeed the masks that defined the characters. The story goes like this:

While the Enterprise makes an astronomical study of a 87 million year old rogue comet, it discovers a ship-like construction, possibly the nucleus, which contains alien artifacts constituting the 'archive' of an Ancient culture. From then on the aliens take over, 'possessing' Data's positronic network to give him several of their personalities, including the talkative Ehad and the feared queen Musaka. Alas they also transform matter and even genetics aboard, so as to turn the ship into a city their style. Picard resolves to stop that by understanding and playing the key alien characters. -Masks Plot Summary

Captain Picard resolves the problem and banishes the Masaka personality dominating Data by donning a mask and posing as Masaka's consort and counterpart Korgano, but it's the mask of Korgano that defines him so that he's no longer seen as Picard (who Masaka/Data would not be influenced by).

Another way then, to look at our social masks is as a means to be able to behave in necessary ways. If what we do, rather than who we are, is our true defining attribute, then the masks we wear are the costuming or armor we need in order to express that behavior.

We learn most of our masks as we grow up. Everytime children display "inappropriate" behavior, their parents (or some adult) usually says "No!" Hearing "no" enough times and really wanting to hear "yes", we modify our behavior, regardless of our internal desires, to elicit that "yes". In other words, we start making masks.

Our masks aren't perfect, because people aren't perfectly socially compliant. We don't always defer our internal wants and needs in the service of social requirements and occasionally, that causes pain and anguish. If the mask cracks or even shatters, we have to perform damage control, get out the paste and clay, form the mask again, or construct a new one.

However, I don't think of masks as cowardance. Sure, people say "honesty is the best policy", but "excessive honesty" comes at a high social price. That price isn't paid just by the individual but by everyone around him or her who's hurt by the "unmasking".

How many people would become vulnerable to Superman's enemies if Clark were to tell the world of his Kryptonian origins? Who would get hurt if Batman were to unmask? Who gets hurt if we unmask ourselves, even if we think it's in secret?

Life is a balance between our "secret" and "true" identities. No one survives or at least survives well by completely and totally suppressing their personal wants and needs, but unlike toddlers, we don't have the privilege of saying and doing everything we want all the time, expecting our "parents" to save us from the consequences.

The masks are necessary. The masks are important. If what we do defines us, then we need the masks in order to fulfill the definition. The Tony Stark of the movies blurred the lines between mask and face when he said "I am Iron Man" at the climax of the first Iron Man film, yet Stark and Iron Man remain separate "personas", each appearing when a particular role needs to be fulfilled.

That's probably the most real-to-life depiction of a super hero relative to us. We don't literally change identities (for the most part) when we take on a role. People still know who we are, regardless of the mask we happen to be wearing at the time, yet we can only behave as the situation requires when we wear the "matching" mask. Tony wears his Iron Man mask when he's battling some armored or robotic foe, but dons his "Tony mask" when dazzling an audience with his wit or trying to seduce a woman (the latter would be hard to do encased head to toe in a titanium alloy shell).

I sometimes don't like the demands of the mask, but I probably am still having trouble balancing the inner and outer person. I suspect we all encounter that issue from time to time. The masks aren't bad, as long as we don't let them rule us. It's how we manage our roles that defines us, giving us the ability to do what we need to do and what we must do when we are called upon.

Why did I write this today?

You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. -Ray Bradbury

Don't Let the Blues Make You Bad

Times when I know
you'll be lonesome
Times when I know you'll be sad
Don't let
temptation surround
you
Don't let the blues make you bad
-From the Song "We'll be Together Again"
by Carl Fischer and Frankie Laine

I've been thinking about how sadness, grief, and depression can sometimes be expressed as anger, rage, and vengence. It seems almost justifiable to commit any sort of violent act and blame it on some tragedy in our lives. How many people have been injured or killed by some university student not happy with his grades or some employee who had just been fired? We see it expressed in our fiction and fantasy and it even seems sort of acceptable.

Bruce Wayne's parents were gunned down during a robbery. Their young son Bruce was allowed to live, but had to watch his parents be executed, right before his eyes. Over the long years between a mournful childhood and becoming an adult, vengence and justice waged a battle for Wayne's soul and the result twisted sideways to become Batman.

Peter Parker was a tortured high school student, brilliant, but shy and unathletic, the target for bullies. Having few friends, and with his parents having died years before, he was only loved by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. When Peter was accidently gifted with extraordinary abilities from the bite of a radioactive spider, he used his newfound powers to become an entertainer for profit and to thumb his nose at the rest of the world. When he discovered that his own arrogance resulted in his Uncle's death, he changed his mission to one very similar to Wayne's, though not quite as dark. Still, he's perpetually driven by guilt and remorse, and can never put down the mantle of the spider for as long as he lives.

Frank Castle's family was also murdered, in this case, by "the mob" to eliminate their testimony as witnesses to a gangland killing in New York's Central Park. In some ways, he's the most brutal example of how personal disaster can turn someone into a terrifying vigilante. Coercion, extortion, kidnapping, and even murder are not beyond the man who became the Punisher. Need I go on?

Everybody experiences some shadow of these feelings, at least briefly. The kid who is punched by the school bully on the playground feels momentary rage at the pain before fear takes over. Secretly, he nurses fantasies of pummelling and humiliating his tormentor, but as the months and years pass, the fantasies fade away and the kid eventually finds his own competancy and validation, and no longer needs to dream of punishing those who hurt him.

It seems to hinge on the level of pain and the ability to let it go. Grief never completely vanishes, but it manages to allow itself to drift into one of the back closets of our consciousness, only making a reappearence on an anniversary or the experience of a similar event. Most people can live with that process. Some people can't...or won't, as we see in the film Batman Begins.

No, *this* is your mask. Your real face is the one that criminals now fear. The man I loved - the man who vanished - he never came back at all. But maybe he's still out there, somewhere. Maybe some day, when Gotham no longer needs Batman, I'll see him again. -Rachel Dawes

At first, Batman was an instrument of Bruce's need to retaliate against the force of evil that killed his parents. Even though (in the film version) Joe Chill had died years before, the process that created Chill and victimized the innocent still thrived. Batman was the expression of Bruce's response to that process. At least at first.

In the sequel The Dark Knight, Bruce pins all his hopes for putting down the mantle of the bat and leading a "normal" life on District Attorney Harvey Dent. Dent was the White Knight to Batman's Dark Crusader. If Dent could be as effective at quelling the tide of crime in Gotham in the courts as Batman was in the shadows, Bruce could finally give up his mask (or his "face"), and journey from darkness into light.

But when the moment came, Bruce found that he couldn't do it. He couldn't give up the Bat. It had worked its way into his soul years ago without Bruce really noticing. Of course Dent gave Bruce the "out" when he "confessed" to being Batman, but that's because both men told themselves they could never surrender to a murder's extortion plot. But was that really the truth?

It seems that once grief and pain drive our anti-heroes into the vengeful identity of a costumed warrior, there is no turning back. Many times even death doesn't stop them. In the comic book version, while Bruce Wayne wasn't actually killed, Darkseid sent him so far back into the past, that no one could reasonably believe he'd ever return. Now, we are about to see the 6 issue saga of The Return of Bruce Wayne across the long millennium, from the era of prehistoric man to Pilgrim-era to western to pulp detective, as Bruce struggles to regain the present.

The mask asks so much of all these people. There will always be one more villain to defeat. There will always be one more injustice to fight. There will always be one more victim to avenge. When is it enough? How long will rage and guilt continue to erode the soul and spirit until you can put down the costume forever, one day die at the hands of some criminal, great or small, or turn into this:

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. -Bruce Wayne

Wayne never considered that, after the night Dent died (assuming he did die and isn't being held secretly in some locked and hidden cell in Arkham), he could just give up being Batman. Let Batman be the villain Gotham needs and let Batman "die" so Bruce Wayne could finally live.

All the times Peter has tried to give up being Spider-Man, circumstances or fate dictated otherwise. Would the Punisher ever consider that his job was ultimately complete, and let others take over the role? I suppose they'd give up if all crime were ended but unlike any individual war, where your goal is to get the enemy to lose hope and surrender, there seems no end to crime, terror, and evil.

What makes one person give up hate and blind pain and another person surrender his or her soul to the abyss? The title of this article and the lyrics I quoted are from a song called We'll be Together Again. While Billie Holiday may be more associated with this song, many famous vocalists have sang it over the years. This morning, I heard a version sung by Lena Horne as rendered during a 1994 performance at New York's The Supper Club.

The final lines of the song probably make the difference:

Some day
Some way
We both have a
lifetime before us
For parting is not goodbye
We'll be together again.

If you have hope that there's something beyond the pain and loss, you can go on. If hope eludes you, or you refuse it, then you remain in the shadow of your pain, continuing to serve its dark desires. Lena Horne had a similar period but she finally came out of the shadow:

Her father, her son and Hayton all died in 1970 and 1971, and the grief-stricken singer secluded herself, refusing to perform or even see anyone but her closest friends. One of them, comedian Alan King, took months persuading her to return to the stage, with results that surprised her.

"I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters," she said. "It was a long time, but when it came I truly began to live."

-From Ms Horne's obituary

Ms. Horne overcame not only the shadow of death, but of racism and injustice as well. In many ways, she's a greater hero than Batman or Spider-Man, because she put away the mask and went on to walk in the sunlight.

How long you or I continue to walk in the shadows may be a matter of choice, too. Not that it's easy to overcome.

Vengeance blackens the soul, Bruce. I've always feared that you would become that which you fought against. You walk the edge of that abyss every night, but you haven't fallen in and I thank heaven for that.
-Alfred Pennyworth
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

While Bruce, Peter, and even Frank walk the edge of the abyss and even occasionally fall in, we sometimes walk the same line. Our lives are likely not as dramatic and certainly not as adventurous or dangerous as theirs, but the damage to our souls can be just as severe if we allow it. Without hope, we are slaves to the shadow, battling for justice and for ourselves every day and night. With the hope "that we'll be together again", we can find the courage to put away the mask, and the faith to live and to trust that whatever we need to do, we can do it without hiding.

I am more

In the 2005 film Batman Begins Bruce Wayne, caught by his would be love interest Rachel Dawes on a night of debauchery with a couple of "European swimmers" (if you've seen the film, you know what I'm talking about), tries to explain to her that:

This isn't all I am. I am...more.

Her response becomes the code phrase that lets him tell her (as Batman) who he really is later in the story.

I'm also more than this, but this is becoming a more insistent part of my personality. This is the part of my personality who is depressed about life, misanthropic, agoraphobic, and generally wants to wad up the world and throw it in the toilet. Frankly, I think I'm just about too late. The world is already in the gutter and being swept in the flood of blood and pain toward the open grating leading to the sewer.

I am more than this, but I don't always want to be. I need a place to retreat from trying to be better than I am. This is it. Maybe I'm just hoping that I am more, and this is just a part of me who emerges when I feel particularly beaten down, ignored, discounted, and feeling like crap. I hope that's all this is. My fear is that this is who I am at the core and ultimately, this is all that is left of me after you strip away the veneer of civilization, political correctness, and everything else the world expects of me.

In Batman Begins, near the end of the film, Rachel refers to Bruce's face as his mask. The Bat mask becomes his face, "the one the criminals now fear." In the film (and comic book version of) Watchmen, the character Rorschach refers to his rather unique mask as his "face". There's a blurring of identities both characters endure as a result of the paths they've chosen, or the paths fate chose for them.

Is this a path I've chosen, or does fate or God control what happens next? Am I more, or am I only what you see? Who am I, the mask or the face?