Batman Begins

[poliphilo]

1. It's another one of Hollywood's daddy films. Bruce Wayne's daddy is killed and he grows up to be a sulky, emo kid. Then a number of older men- good daddies and bad daddies- mentor him into a shape of which his daddy would be proud. No-one seems to notice that he lost his mommy too.

2. Note to the critics: Crime and Punishment is "dark"; Batman Begins is merely portentous.

3. All those car wrecks and nobody is killed. It's just like The A Team.

4. Batman is mythic. The more you try to fit him into the real world- real politics, real psychology- the more ridiculous he becomes.

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk, Harry Potter, Batman, even Indiana Jones. Is there any heroic character who hasn't lost either a father or both parents and runs around trying to make up for it / live up to him for several movies at a time? Maybe it's the zeitgeist, too many absent fathers in our society, too many boys with no role model. No wonder "fathers for justice" are dressed as superheroes.

It's also a big motif in fairy tales. Working out who you are. but wouldn't it be great if we could be somebody different from our parents?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

True. And let's not forget Pip, Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer, Anne (of Green Gables)...the list goes on - it's not just some recent pop culture thing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Victorian heroes and heroines are often orphans- it's a way of freeing them up. But I don't think those stories show the same obsession with fathers and fatherhood.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

It's bildungsroman(spelling?) - the heroic quest of the youth-on-his-way-to-manhood.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm sick of the daddy thing. Hollywood is obsessed with it. Spielberg is a major offender. Don't they have other stories to tell?

[sovay]

Don't they have other stories to tell?

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his."
—Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1985)