The Batman (2022) is another cinematic launch of the titular character. This version is a sad reflection of the current American zeitgeist.
Robert Pattinson portrays a broken and desiccated thing: skinny, sexually repressed, with disheveled hair and runny mascara. This Batman isn’t a cavalier playboy hiding his dark persona, he is a brittle shell of vengeance. He cracks upon learning Thomas Wayne had morally questionable associates within organized crime (echoes of Kennedy?).
Riddler is an antifa agent of truth whose intelligence and gamesmanship plays the Batman to bring to light all the broken promises of the white-male oppressor class. The only virtuous character is Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), steady and incorruptible, a conscience surrounded by cynics.
This Batman manages to move past his disillusionment to become the savior “hero” but he remains a sullen and psychologically broken one – isolated and ignoring the family fortune.
Zoë Kravitz has the best role and well-portrays Catwoman. She is the strongest character, with clear maternal protective-instincts paired with sexual assertiveness and a gritty “I can do it alone” attitude. But she rejects the idea of changing Gotham for the good and abandons it.
The bleakness of the built environment is exacerbated by the constant rain. The seawall breach provides the literal deluge, a “climactic” and climate-themed cleansing that washes nothing clean.
Fortunately, Riddler is portrayed as insane – a deeply disturbed orphan whose origin story is explanatory without being exculpatory.
I watched the film over two nights, the second after attending a Political Action Committee fundraiser for local Portland candidates. The political presentations were brief and boring, they were there to fish for funding. The more interesting presentation was of the independent polling data by dhm research.
The overall confidence in current Portland officials is 8% – the lowest ever recorded.
Prime issues of concern for Portlanders are homelessness and crime – with point spreads unheard of (>30%) above other issues, which indicates an overwhelming concern.
And not a concern that we need help these people but rather that they need be relocated.
Earlier that week, while walking the industrial park near Kyrian’s dance school, I spoke with a Beaverton K-9 officer, Doc. He told me homelessness there was manageable, but the issue wasn’t displaced workers—it was addiction and migration. “They’re not locals who fell on hard times,” he said, “they’re shipped in.”
The broader Oregon data show the same divergence: economic anxiety trailing far behind the visceral fear of civic disorder. It’s Gotham in slow motion.
Nolan and Bale’s Batman Begins (2005) offered a virile, duty-bound Bruce Wayne. Seventeen years later, Reeves gives us a spectral heir, paralyzed by his father’s sins. Let’s hope this incarnation soon feels dated and that our heroes, fictional and civic alike, recover conviction.
Virtūs et Honos
Protective Arts 