In a world where the police and judiciary are too incompetent to either keep the joker in jail or execute him, Batman's rule makes no sense. Joker has killed hundreds, if not thousands, and Batman just lets it continue to happen.
Bruce says about as much. If he lets himself go that far, even for someone like Joker, he'd never come back.I haven't read the comics, so maybe I'm completely talking out of my ass, but it seems like the rule is a self-limiter to keep him from spiraling into becoming the Punisher, not because of some moral compunction against using lethal force against violent psychopaths.
Which is why I've never killed anyone, one of many reasons I'm so much like Bruce Wayne.Bruce says about as much. If he lets himself go that far, even for someone like Joker, he'd never come back.
There's a few facets to this:
1. Being a character that treads water and written by a hojillion writers means there needs to be some sort of status quo. So it often more feels like an editorial decision rather than a character one. Though this can be said about a lot of long running characters.
2. The people saying "he breaks their bones anyway" are being a bit too literal. While most of the Bat stories are about normal humans, this is still a heightened reality. Batman himself would probably be dead or crippled hundreds of times over from the beatings he takes, so applying the rules of logic to his willingness to hand out concussions is a bit silly.
3. The logical conclusion of the character, divorced of these trappings, seems like he would end up killing people to save lives, which is why we get it more in films and mini series rather than things that need to maintain canon. His villains themselves have heightened to new degrees of murderous tendencies depending on the writer. The audience has aged and the restrictions on comics have loosened so villains that might have just committed a robbery are not butchering people willy nilly.
I think if this were a character with a non-serialized never ending character arc, he either snaps and goes all fascist or retires before he can go too far.
In a world where the police and judiciary are too incompetent to either keep the joker in jail or execute him, Batman's rule makes no sense. Joker has killed hundreds, if not thousands, and Batman just lets it continue to happen.
It's kinda dumb because you have to use a lot of suspension of disbelief that he's not murdering random baddies left and right. The "no killing" rule seems to only apply to named villains only.
Wonder if they ever done one of those things where a doctor watches every action set piece of a Batman movie and describes the actual expected injuries and how horribly fatal they all are?
I haven't read the comics, so maybe I'm completely talking out of my ass, but it seems like the rule is a self-limiter to keep him from spiraling into becoming the Punisher, not because of some moral compunction against using lethal force against violent psychopaths.
I don't see why the argument about the rule comes from a place of utility. Batman doesn't avoid killing because he thinks doing so is better for society
They do. He doesn't choose not to kill because it helps him in crime fightingIt's dumb because these mobs will know this stupid rule of his and use it against him.
It's sort of dumb once you stop suspending disbelief and buying into it as part of some "code", but so does a lot of stuff around Batman. If you are going to beat the shit out of people without any semblance of any actual due process, you might as well take that next step and kill the Joker
I've only ever cared for any "no kill" rule as it pertains to Batman because of his psychological issues.
Any other superhero's, whatever.
It's pretty lame. He does horrid shit all the time and breaks laws all the time because the police and justice system are inept. He lives in a city with a prison system that is equally inept and yet he trusts it fully and never murders depriving the prison of their prisoners. It's written that way to keep story lines going indefinitely, but Batman the character just does not make sense in Gotham city.
It keeps his rogue gallery alive because it's overwhelmingly mortal. It's lame but I get why it's there.Turning Batman into the Punisher is just boring.
Killing does not make the character or stories more realistic. I mean it is a guy dressed as a bat who is also the world's greatest detective.