Movies I own: "Batman" and "The Dark Knight"

Ever since I was a kid, I loved one superhero and one superhero only: the Batman. Sure, I dabbled with reading Spider-man and Superman, and I appreciated what they were, but the Batman was the only one that reached out and grabbed me, that pulled me alongside him in his travails. He felt to me more real, not only in his not having true superpowers, but in the simplicity of his mission, summed up in 1989's "Batman" by a single line: "Because I'm the only one who can."

Batman is a hero of sacrifice. Clark Kent is nigh invulnerable, and often in the movies consumed by his own perception and acceptance as an alien among men. Peter Parker is more down on his luck, but he has MJ, and friends, and a life. The Batman is a zealot, wholly devoted to the cause. Stories of the Batman, at least the pure ones, are not about a tension between what Bruce Wayne wants and what Batman wants; they want the same thing. The Batman is a creature of single-mindedness, of devotion -- maybe an over-the-edge devotion, a borderline-crazy obsessive, but he is undeniably passionate. I usually relate more to the characters of Peter Parker and Clark Kent (especially in his "Smallville" incarnation), who are more like me in their vacillating and indecision, but the Batman is who I admire. Batman is sheer will (something I find I lack in spades).

When I first saw Burton's "Batman," I thought it would never be topped. It had all the iconic lines, the beautiful imagery, and in particular the brilliant interpretation of Keaton's Bruce Wayne, who didn't play the typical playboy role to the hilt but instead made him an absentminded cypher, his head so clearly in Batman mode that he could barely remember to play the debonaire role for more than twenty minutes. It nailed the central Batman tenet: here was a man who was going to bring every resource to bear in combating evil; every dollar, every hour, every muscle, every emotion. As the old sports adage goes, he was going to win because he wanted it more.

As a Christian, it is so easy to opt out of responsibility. Our churches are designed to make sure that all the bases are still covered even if you step away, as long as we consider the bases in question to be largely regarding a functioning church service and functioning church ministries. I have left and joined enough churches, and seen people leave and come in, to understand that we have a plug-and-play mentality: the responsibilities of one person can be filled by another. But that's not true. Each of us has a unique opportunity and responsibility to speak into the lives of the people around us, and that's not duplicatable by anyone else. The pastor and the church leaders have their part to play, but the work of Christ is the task of all of us who follow him, and we cannot assume that someone else will (or could) do our job. God has placed us in our particular context for a reason, and we must embrace its possibilities for unyielding love.

So when the Batman says he does what he does "Because I'm the only one who can," he's not asserting that his wealth or strength or knowledge makes him better than anyone else, but that he has a unique contribution to make given his opportunities. That's Batman to me.

Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" was an entertaining story I thought, exploring the previous untold story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman. It still didn't overshadow the 1989 version in my mind, but it was intriguing in its own right. It stuck with the mythos of Batman that I loved so much, the idea that he more or less has to die to self to become what he needs to become. There is nothing half-measure about this Batman, no attempt to balance a "normal" life with a devoted one. He goes into the transformation whole-heartedly, holding nothing back, risking obscurity and failure and death. Still, it didn't feel like a definitive Batman because Bruce Wayne spent barely any of the movie as the final-product Batman. I would have to wait for the sequel to see how it panned out.


"The Dark Knight" upped the ante on what constitutes a good Batman story beyond my wildest expectations. In particular, it was the vision of the Joker by Nolan and Heath Ledger that raised the bar. Unlike virtually every movie villain in history, Ledger's Joker doesn't have a revenge plot, a world-domination plot, an attention-seeking plot. or any plot at all. "Some people just want to watch the world burn," as the butler Alfred says. The steadfastness, drive, and relentlessness of Batman meets the capriciousness, chaos, and uncertainty of the Joker. The Joker is, simply put, the personification of uncertainty. And that is a foe that we all face, every day. What do we do in the face of the unknown?

The movie, wisely, makes this more than just showdown between Batman and the Joker, but between the Joker and Gotham City. The citizens of Gotham are the one on the hook to react and respond to a chaotic whirlwind of fear and uncertainty; Batman still has his zeal and tenacity, as required, but his existence does not absolve anyone else from making up their own might of how to react. Toward the beginning of the movie he says he wants to serve as an example to the citizenry, not in tactics but in spirit: in not giving up. He does not imagine he can do it all, only his part. We are each to do our own part. There are more heroes in "The Dark Knight" than just the Batman; the cast list is virtually replete with them. It's the ultimate "pick up a shovel and do your part" movie.

The Joker, in his twistedness, continually offers people the opportunity to be safe, or to make a loved one safe, if only by giving in a little to his madness. Some succumb, others don't. Safety is supposed to make the fear go away, in theory, but the illusion of safety is really just a way for fear to get a foothold. It's a psychologically astute way of addressing the frustrations that we all feel in a post-9/11 world where we of course have so little real assurance of safety (not that we ever did), but we would still rather seek illusions of safety than come to grips with raw facts. "The Dark Knight" is in that way a gut check, and I have no trouble believing that the movie was so enormously popular, beyond any other comic-book movie, for precisely that reason. It asks you to test your mettle, to question how fully you desire safety and assurances over sacrifice and right. To me, that is what the character of Batman has always been about: never an escapism, never an adventure, but a challenge to face life with a sense of deep conviction.