i know im the only person who thinks this but im so sick of gritty realistic batman
his name is batman. its okay for him to be goofy. he probably should be given hes just a billionaire cop with a bat theming at this point. when you get to the core of the character in modern times, its not really someone i would consider a hero. sure, he saves gotham, but is throwing them in arkham really addressing the root of the larger issues in the world? that criminals need to be put into the prison system to break out and cause trouble again?
not that i really expect a batman story to ever address the grander issues of the world at large but theres something inherently flawed about the concept and opposed to turning away from those elements by making more fantastical stories, the live action movies just tend to make these issues feel like they should be more in the forefront by treating this shit so seriously.
for me, a good batman story is the ones not focusing on batman. they keep going back to the well that is his dead parents shot in an alleyway mostly because thats really the only thing about batman inherently that has the pathos needed to form a story that's about something. but it's been more than played out at this point and they gotta find something different. im not sure if i really see that from everything so far.
Well the reason you don't consider Batman a hero is because he's an authoritarian bordering on fascist (depending on the story). There's certainly a sizable chunk of the audiences that does find authoritarian superheroes noble and admirable.
The only way a "serious" Batman story could actually do what you wish is to effectively show that Batman's method is wrong, which would break the nature of the character, which is to be reused and recycled over a century's worth of different stories and mediums. While I think Matt Reeves is a great director and the perfect fit for a Batman movie, I'm not sure we're going to get anything too deep into the meta narrative of who or what Batman is, without it ending on a resounding "okay maybe Batman does work after all."
There are certainly some superhero stories that are willing to go in the direction of "maybe just punching the bad guys and killing them/locking them up over and over won't do anything to solve society's problems" but it won't be in 200 million dollar blockbusters.
But hey shame about Lego Batman, it was a cute movie.
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