Batman : The Dark Knight — Forensic Aspects

[rat­ings]

***Warning, Spoiler in Last Paragraph ***

I went out and watched The Dark Knight this week­end. Good movie. I’m not sure it’s as good as all the buzz sur­round­ing it, but worth the ticket price.

Let me explain a lit­tle about my past expe­ri­ences with Batman. I grew up watch­ing the Adam West/Burt Ward 1960’s tele­vi­sion series. I have a pic­ture (and mem­o­ries) of me get­ting to meet Batman and Robin at a very young age. My mom grew tired of me ask­ing her to read me the same Batman books over and over again, so she recorded her­self on a cas­sette tape so I could lis­ten when­ever I wanted. Funny anec­dote — my grand­mother was con­vinced I could read at about three because I recited to her my favorite Batman book that I had mem­o­rized from my mom’s tape. I read the comic books reg­u­larly from about the time the Joker killed Robin (Jason Todd), until the mid 90’s. My mom wrote me a slip to get out school to watch the first Michael Keaton Batman movie.

I’m not a Batman expert, but I have a deeper under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ter than most. Batman is a com­plex, mul­ti­fac­eted char­ac­ter. A vic­tim at an early age. A dri­ven stu­dent. A trained mar­tial artist. A crime fighter. A super-hero. Most impor­tantly, and most often over-looked in movies, a detec­tive (he did orig­i­nate in Detective Comics # 27). Remember that Ra’s al Ghul, per­haps Batman’s great­est foe, always referred to him as “Detective.”

It’s the detec­tive aspect, specif­i­cally the foren­sic sci­en­tist aspect, of the char­ac­ter that I have always found the most inter­est­ing. Batman is a thinker. He ana­lyzes the evi­dence, per­forms sci­en­tific test­ing, and then takes action. Or at least sometimes.

Adam West’s 1960’s Batman was a camp com­edy, over the top, live action ver­sion of the Batman por­trayed in the 60’s and 70’s comics. That’s not even a bad thing. What it did, bet­ter than any movie to date, was show the detec­tive aspect of the char­ac­ter. Certainly it was devoid of any aspect of the brood­ing Dark Knight, but it showed Batman in the Bat-lab “doing sci­ence”. An ex-coworker of mine once joked about see­ing a scene from the Adam West show where Batman was pour­ing a col­ored liq­uid from a flask into a beaker. The Bat-phone rang and Batman said, while in cos­tume with a white apron and sur­gi­cal mask, Robin get that “I’m try­ing to solve a crime.” The deliv­ery was price­less, with enough dra­matic pause to make William Shatner jeal­ous. Throughout the series, Batman and Robin would fig­ure their way through puz­zles and rid­dles. Eventually they would meet up with the vil­lain and the clas­sic fight scenes would ensue.

In the comics, we would see the Batman using sophis­ti­cated equip­ment to solve crimes. Once again empha­siz­ing his intel­lect. His brains were what made Batman a super-hero.

The Michael Keaton “Batman” movie did a decent job of por­tray­ing the foren­sic sci­en­tist aspect of Batman. They lightly glossed over Batman crack­ing the Joker’s binary per­sonal hygiene prod­uct “Smilelex” poi­son. It didn’t high­light Batman solv­ing the puz­zle, but it had it in place as an impor­tant plot point.

Then Batman suf­fered through a series of three hor­ri­ble movies. From Tim Burton’s crim­i­nal direct­ing of the follow-up Michael Keaton movie “Batman Returns” all the way through “Batman and Robin” and “Batman Forever”, the foren­sic sci­en­tist aspect of Batman was absent. That, cou­pled with Tim Burton’s let’s-completely-divorce-ourselves-from-Batman-mythos-by-having-Batman-kill, Joel Schumacher’s campy-over-the-top-neon-inspired-shallower-than-a-Phoenix-rain-puddle vision of Batman, George Clooney’s crap­tas­tic act­ing com­plete with a let-me-smile-while-I-tell-Dick-Alfred-is-dying, and Val Kilmer’s…well…actually Val did a pretty good job, made for poor Batman movies.

The only redeem­ing non-comic book por­tray­als of Batman from 1992 — 2005 was in the var­i­ous Batman ani­mated series. Especially some of the Justice League series where Batman would forgo beat­ing up bad guys in favor of fig­ur­ing out a solu­tion to the impend­ing doom. Really, if you want a brain­less super-hero who pounds bad guys go check out Superman.

Then in 2005 Christopher Nolan directed “Batman Begins” star­ring Christian Bale. While the foren­sic aspect to the char­ac­ter was some­what trans­ferred to Lucius Fox, it was still present when the anti­dote to the Scarecrow’s fear gas was devel­oped (com­plete with a cameo appear­ance by a gas chro­mato­graph — there’s sci­ence for you). This install­ment was the first, and only, movie to get by with the now tired two major Bat-villains per movie rule.

Really. Two vil­lains per movie pre­vents any chance of hav­ing any seri­ous char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. Major Bat-villains are com­plex, and wor­thy of spend­ing some time in char­ac­ter devel­op­ment so we under­stand why they do what they do.

Finally The Dark Knight (TDK) was released in 2008, with the same direc­tor and Batman as “Batman Begins”. I haven’t made up my mind yet about this movie, but it’s cer­tainly bet­ter than the three movies pre­ced­ing “Batman Begins”.

TDK did a good job of high­light­ing the foren­sic sci­en­tist aspect of Batman. Getting 10 min­utes alone in the crime scene before Gotham PD con­t­a­m­i­nated it was enough for me. Add to that the fan­tas­tic depic­tion of per­form­ing bal­lis­tic test­ing and I don’t even mind the implau­si­bil­ity of com­put­ers recon­struct­ing a frag­mented bul­let and from that 3-D mod­el­ing being able to get an AFIS qual­ity fin­ger print from the guy who loaded the mag­a­zine (if you don’t know, fir­ing a bul­let will gen­er­ally burn off fin­ger prints).

***Spoiler Below***

Where TDK fell short was falling into the two major Bat-villains per movie rule. It would have been much bet­ter for the movie to end set­ting up the next movie with Harvey Dent/Two-Face to be the major vil­lain. They could have done an excel­lent job expand­ing Two-Face’s psy­chosis, and hav­ing Batman solve var­i­ous puz­zles revolv­ing around Dent’s obses­sion with the num­ber 2, and that coin of his. As it was, they rushed through and killed off a major Bat-villain before his time, ala Tim Burton’s Joker, depriv­ing the audi­ence a poten­tially rich and reward­ing future script.