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We are here on the Superhero ethics podcast, continue our conversation with Mr. Paul Hoppe about Batman-caped crusader. Those who are jumping in with this episode, we already discussed a lot of it in part one, which should be either the week before or two weeks before this episode. I definitely recommend checking that one out first. And we're going to kind of just pick it right back up. As we said in that one, you don't have to have watched the show. We're going to try and explain a lot of it as we go. So certainly I think you'll -- if nothing else, it's only a 10-episode show. I think it's really great to watch and if you can get access to it. But in a way, we hope you enjoy the conversation. Of course, always send in your feedback. So Paul, let's pick back up. We started to talk about the idea of when Batman-caped crusader is set and how this feels like a little bit of a anachronistic setting in that it is -- the aesthetics and the technology seem very much of the like detective noir stories, you know, which could be like 20s to 40s or 50s, probably with the tech being more on the 20s, 30s, 40s side. The cars are old-fashioned. All the phones are rotary dial. There's no cell phones. There's no beepers. There's no computers. But, you know, the social mores are much more of like what we think of today. And we talked about why we like that. And I want to extend that conversation a little further to say for you, does it feel like Batman should be set in a certain time period or does Batman work in all times? I wouldn't say should, but I do think Batman works particularly well in a particular time period. The modern day Batman's fine, I think futuristic neo-Gotham Batman is awesome. I think Gotham by Gaslight is a great kind of steampunk 1800s Batman. But I do think that the film noir Batman is -- if not the best Batman, you know, it's the classic Batman. And there's something that works really well partially because of just the look and feel, but also in terms of technology. I think a lower technology Batman allows -- like, there's this idea of Batman being a little more technologically advanced than the people around him, right? And like the whole utility belt and, you know, where it is, where does it get all of these wonderful toys kind of aspect? And I think the further technology advances kind of the harder it is to pull that off or kind of the further you have to go with it, right? But also just -- I think it just looks cool, you know, it's film noir. And we don't get a ton of that anymore. That's kind of Batman's origin. That's certainly the animated series look, right? And as far as this series goes, you know, they really wanted to use some of those stories from the animated series without it being a literal continuation. So I think it makes sense that they set it in that same vague time period that isn't a real place in our world. I think you're really right about the technology because when I was thinking more about this, one thing you and I have said that we liked about both this show and the Matt Reeves movie, The Batman with Robert Pattinson, as well as also the Batman and the animated series, is the idea of Batman as detective. And a lot of that, yeah, I think both are sort of iconography of the detective is very much the Gumshoe 1940s kind of thing, which, you know, obviously he's not wearing a trench coat and the like, but it's still a similar idea. But also, like, as it becomes more and more technologically focused, you know, like CSI Batman is not really what I want to watch. One thing I think is really interesting about Batman is that he does have good tech and he is often able to like, you know, lift a fingerprint that no one else could get or that kind of like technological stuff where sometimes he's able to, you know, quite literally build technology to learn something about a bullet. I think that's in the Batman movie that, you know, other people can't figure out. What I feel like what makes him such a good detective is his ability to deduce things, to look at fact A and look at fact B and then read something in the newspaper and put it all together to come up with a connection that no one else would see. And it's not harder to do that in the technological age. Well, let me say that again, I think that it's harder to do in the technological age A because watching people do the research on a computer just isn't always that interesting, but also because I think this is kind of the Zack Snyder direction, the more you make him high tech, the more you get him into high tech fighting technology. And I think there's just such a, then that kind of leads into the rock 'em, sock 'em robots idea of big superhero shows where it's all about these incredible CGI tech. And I think that's a fun and I think you can have some of that in the movies, but I think when it's modern day, there's just so much of that now that it's hard to make Batman stand out. Yeah. And it's the sort of thing where I feel it's not impossible, right? I mean, I think Matt Reeves showed pretty clearly like you can still do it. Like that Gotham isn't some old age Gotham, right? I mean, I think Gotham from the Batman this modern day, but it, there's this temptation, I think to like the more access you have to special effects, the harder it is to choose not to use them or to choose to go, you know, a clever route. You know, it's to me, it's like the difference between the Jason Bourne movies and the James Bond movies, where Bond solves so many problems through technology that Q gave him, right? He's got some device that'll solve the problem. Whereas in the Bourne movies, Bourne has to come up with some clever way of using like a newspaper or like ripping a map off the wall to know, you know, where to go. And that's harder for the writer, right? It's like easier to just say like, oh, yeah, the protagonist has a thing that works and now they can figure something out the same way. It's like, you know, oh, they do some CSI thing. And of course, there's some amount of research that goes into it. I don't want to denigrate the writing of, you know, various, various series like like Bones or CSI or whatever, I think you can still have great writing with that. I just think there can be a temptation to just rely on your tech to rely on your special effects the same way you rarely get great fight choreography when you have big effects movies, right? When you have a big effects budget. Whereas, you know, with with action movies, especially made in Hong Kong and Thailand and places where the effects budget isn't so large, like there's a level of creativity and innovation required in order to do something cool. And of course, you can combine those things, right? I mean, I think we saw in like Shang-Chi that you could take a big Hollywood movie and still have great creative, interesting action in a practical sense. But that it's, you know, it's hard not to then just be like, oh, we're just going to rely on Batman's gadgets on, you know, some kind of, he's just got something as utility belt to vell him out as opposed to like, no, let's make him think of something, you know, really, really clever. Like, I think in Mad Love, which is a story we referenced in the bonus content, just five dollars a month to become a member and listen to all of that. But, you know, there's, there's a thing where it's like, you know, I, if I recall Batman doesn't escape through, through some gadget. I think he escapes through some psychology and, and, you know, the same goes in, in one of the episodes in, in Justice League where he's dealing with Joker and Harley Quinn and, and so I, I appreciate when, you know, the, the writers basically force themselves to be a little more clever, force themselves to be a little more creative instead of being able to kind of rely on, on, on, you know, spy fi type stuff, basically, like, I remember Robert Downey Jr. once making a comment about how he thought he had it best out of all the X men, because unlike most of the other actors, he never had to do any kind of fight training or choreography, because it was always gonna be the CGI of the suit. And like, don't get me wrong, I love the Iron Man movies, but they're doing something very fundamentally different. And yes, I think that, that really works the technology here. I think another thing, and you and I talked about this back and forth, I don't think we completely agree, but have some similar, I should not prejudge it. Another thing I think that's very dependent on the time it is set is that, I think it's goes for a lot of stories, but Batman, especially, Batman was created at a time when there was, there's always been some level of social awareness that the rich are screwing the poor. And because of that, some level of critique or, you know, the rich guys are all against us. But I think at that time, there was still the sense of like, well, but the rich people give back, you know, they start the universities and the libraries and the arts and they donate lots of things like that. And like, you might also say that on the flip side that at this particular moment in time, we have a very high level of critique of billionaires and a very high level of eat the rich kind of sentiments and the idea of like, oh, they're just doing that as the tax write off to cover up. And like, I've definitely heard in the discourse that when I was first reading about Batman, the idea that a person who had all this money would then decide to use his money to help other people by becoming a crime fighter was like, yeah, that's fantastic. And then in more recent years, people have started bringing up, well, okay, if he wants to fight crime, why doesn't he fight the social, but isn't he fun, the social programs instead that helped to prevent crime instead of beating up poor people. And like, there's all of this analysis of him through our current economic understanding, some of which I think is warranted, some of which I think is very overly simplistic. But like, for example, in both the Christopher Nolan and the Matt Reeves movie, I felt like they had to be a little bit more aware of just because he's a built like we have to go a little further than just saying he's a billionaire who's using his money to fight crime. And that even today, I know a lot of people who just had no interest in the Batman movie or the Batman character, because in their perspective, it's like, oh, I don't want to glorify a billionaire, billionaires are all terrible. And again, there's a whole economics argument there that I have a lot of sympathy for, but I think can be oversimplified. But it feels to me like that by putting it in a time period that's more like this, you avoid a lot of that. The kind of Batman, here's maybe the best way to say it like TLDR, but like, Batman was written at a time when we have a very different understanding of the super wealthy than we do today. And that if you're going to take him out of those time periods, you have to have some level of accounting for that or also just doesn't work. Yeah, I think, so I'm not convinced that that's as true as you think it is, in terms of what the overall kind of public opinion was around when Batman was created. I know sometime in the decade or decades before that, there was a heavy amount of resentment towards the wealthy, especially coming out of the depression and everything. And the term robber barons is not a new term. But I can't speak to that too much. And so I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that doesn't match quite my understanding of how people were thinking at different points in time. But also I wasn't there. So, yeah. Just to add a little context, from the little book study I've done of it, my understanding is like among the working class, among the poor, that would often be the thought that there was such an effort of, oh, that's just communist thinking to write it all, but certainly that by the 50s, like there's none of that, you know, that's allowed in this course. Yeah. And so what I would say is I feel like from the 50s through, especially like the 80s, which were like the height of the greed is good idea, right? And then maybe with this being a little less true in like the 60s, like the late 60s, early 70s, right, where there was more, you know, the stronger counterculture. I think, you know, that that was more true in that time rather than like really early like 1939, right, or eight, right when Batman was created. But I do think like there is something about when you're telling a story that takes place now, it's even if it's this Gotham that doesn't exist in our worlds, right, where it's it's a different timeline from the one we live in. It's a fictional universe, even if there is a New York in Washington, DC and these, you know, places that we have, I do think it makes it harder to ignore what, you know, what you're talking about. Whereas here when you do put something in a, you know, in sort of a film noir setting, I think it does give you more leeway, especially when you kind of say, okay, this is a film noir setting and we're going to talk about things that we might want to talk about now and that people may have been talking about then as well, but also we're not going to act like the social mores of the time were what they are here in our world that were in our fictional world, right, like we discussed with, you know, race and gender and sexuality and that, you know, there's some, there's certainly some, you know, patronizing misogyny, but like not, not, it doesn't feel like the same kind that you'd expect like in a show that was just like straight upset in the 40s, right, or 30s or whatever. So I think, you know, by doing that, by setting that all up that way, they kind of gave themselves like a, you know, we can kind of just tell the story we want to tell without necessarily having to address this thing that is being addressed one way or another in the live action films. Yeah. And, and, you know, just to address the overall argument, I do have a lot of sympathy for it. I think it's super reductive and I also have issues with people critiquing movies that they don't want to see, you know, like which, which, you know, there's movies that I don't want to see that I'm like, I don't think I'm going to like that. I feel like I don't want to watch that, but also, you know, and I mean, this is, of course, you know, I have literally gone on here even our last episode that we recorded before Batman and talked about a show that I didn't see, but not in terms of, oh, I think that this show is bad because such a whatever. It's just like, you know, right, I think when you don't watch something, you have to understand that you haven't watched it and you don't have the full story. Yeah. And that was kind of like what we're trying to do with a lot of these episodes is that was, hey, this question, this show raises this question and I'm curious if I just summarize it for you, what you think of the question, which because I do think sometimes we sort of can get like, I like those deeper questions and when people want to input on the exact details of the show in order to kind of say, well, that answers the question. So like, well, but it's asking us to ask this larger question. That's right. But yeah, which going back to the origins of this podcast, like the idea of like, you know, civil war, Avengers, not X-Men, by the way, there was just a look when you're talking about Tony, but, but I'm sure he does come in at some point, but yes, Avengers. Sure. Sure. Except it's not immune, but the, well, maybe, maybe Robert Donnie Jr. is in some of these other roles, but the, you know, the basic question, like you really wanted to discuss the question of like whether there should be this oversight, right? Yeah. And I was like, but in the exact story, you know, it's like, it doesn't actually makes the same sense in the story. So I do think a lot of times it is like, I believe in being concrete and being like, this is how this issue plays out in this context and being very specific about that, because I don't think that super broad guidelines or ideas are that useful. I think they can be a useful starting place as long as we maintain the flexibility, right? To be like, oh, wait, that ghost is real, you know, now let me adjust my worldview and take this new information into account when I'm making decisions. Yeah. Certainly in that case, like when I say I'm team Tony, I mean that the Captain America idea of I know best. And so only I should be able to decide how I use my power to enforce my idea of justice. That terrifies me and so when Tony says we need some kind of oversight, I'm like, yes, you're exactly right. When he then says that Ross has come up with his perfect kind of oversight, I'm like, no, no, that's not that guy. That guy needs his own oversight. And we're kind of a tangent, but this is actually, I think really, this is kind of like we're talking about how we talk about things in a way that things really relevant and stuff. I think that there is like a level of the way you talk about this because I often think there'll be kind of an intellectual dishonesty of someone proposes a general idea and then someone points to one specific very bad application of the idea and says, therefore, the idea is bad, you know, or the reverse and says, hey, look, it worked in one specific case, you know, and I think that that's, yeah. And it's why I think I like the fact that we talked to this last episode that there are so many batmans because the flip side is we really only have one Luke Skywalker kind of two, if you take in the legends or the legends might make it up to like four or five or six. Right. We have one on screen. Right. Yeah, there's only one kind of official where is like, yeah, there's no battle about, you know, Christopher Nolan's is part of a cannon and Matt Reese's is part of a cannon and bat fleck by Zack Snyder is just as much a part of a cannon and that we get to kind of pick and choose as we said to be like, yeah, I don't think people are wrong or bad for liking Ben Affleck's version. It does not speak to what I like about the character of Batman. Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. So having that, you know, I think there are Batman stories where you might look at it and go like, oh, this seems like a very tear that dollars, right? And then there's other ones we might look at and be like, well, you know, he actually is spending most of his money or trying to spend a lot of his money on social programs. Right. You know, like that's, that's not not a thing. And you can say like, well, there shouldn't be any billionaires like every billionaires policies failure, fine, but like he's not necessarily going to single handedly change the tax code. Like, do you want Batman to be a politician, like should Bruce Wayne run for offs? Like maybe, like maybe he could get elected and like then actually enact sweeping social change. Although you might not like the sweeping social change that specifically this one guy we want to do, you know, I tend to think that billionaires running for office has not been a very good thing. In the United States. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, but like that doesn't, you know, even though Bloomberg was not as bad as the other guy, like I was still like, how about not him? Yeah. I would not either of them. You know, so. No, I think it's very true. So let's shift to another thing. The Arthur Dent of it all, the Harvey Dent, I keep saying Arthur Dent, I'm very sorry, which you phrased in our notes as the other side of the Harvey Dent coin. Yeah. Because as we said, and this is a very different version of the Harvey Dent story than we've often gotten. And, um, and in fairness, we haven't gotten it that much. It just feels like that to me, I think, because it is probably the part of the Dark Knight story, the, the triangle between Dent and Batman and Gordon that I'm most fascinated by. But tell us a bit about this version of Dent and how it feels different to you than other versions we've gotten. Right. So, you know, speaking of running for office, we meet this Dent in court as a district attorney, trying a case against Barbara Gordon's defendant, right? She's representing a defendant. She's a public defender, I believe. And he's running for mayor, you know, after court is adjourned, he like, tried to give her a campaign button. She's like, Oh, why don't you save this for someone who might actually vote for you? Yeah. You know. He's this very kind of smarmy, maneuvering, maybe wants to try and do some, like, good with the law and doesn't want to be corrupted by, is it thorn? Yeah. Trying to remember. Yeah. Right. Um, and then ultimately does become corrupted by thorn. Did you get back up, thorn is the, the, there's almost always a mob element. Right. Yeah. That has it hooks into the police and he is that's thorn and he, what, what thorn is able to help Harvey Dent get elected if he will be willing to look the other way when some of the thorns men's come up for possible prosecution, right? He basically stands in for Falcone because they're like, let's not use Falcone every time. Yeah. Right. Um, so he basically agrees to, you know, work, work with him. And essentially sell a part of his loyalty or whatever in order to get elected or in order to have a chance, a better chance of getting elected because he's losing in the polls. And right at the end of it, when he has to do a thing that he thinks is not a good thing, he decides, you know what, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to, you know, betray the, the mobster who I made a deal with and, um, and try and do what I think is justice. And then he ends up getting acid thrown in his face in the bathroom, which again, like lack of technology allows this to be a plot line, right? Like this, how's this going to happen in a modern day courthouse with tons of cameras and metal detectors and all these things? It's just not here, but here it, you know, it plays. It's like, yeah, this, this could happen. Um, so this is how he sort of becomes two face where, you know, in a literal sense, right? Because half of his face is, is kind of burnt off with acid and he withdraws his campaign. Although I feel like he probably should have just kept running and maybe he'd have a pretty good chance because he'd be like, I've been literally attacked by the mob. I'm a hero for standing up to them. Vote for me. Although the jet I have left me scarred. I was, I mean, he's not that, but yeah, that's immediately thought of it, you know. Right. Yeah, exactly. So like, I think he, you know, he definitely had a shot, but he clearly it, it, um, it hurt him, right? Like on, on an emotional level on a psychological level and he doesn't believe in himself the same way. He doesn't love himself in the same way. Like he's a very narcissistic, like good looking guy and then he has half his Facebook off and that I think challenges his sense of identity and one of the interests. I would say deeper on that, I think he, and I think another part of this is that like a lot of folks who are, you know, sort of very focused on outside affirmation for others, part of the idea is that when this happens to him in part, maybe because he's been physically scarred in part because people are like, Oh, even if the mob didn't get to him, like, I don't want to be too close to him, like he's kind of abandoned by a lot of people. And I think that's right. Part of his would feel feeds into his sense of like, who am I if all the people aren't like loving me and supporting me? Yeah, exactly. So he's abandoned by most people, but he also recedes from the world, right? Like those things are both true. And, and Bruce Wayne reaches out to him in, I think a well intentioned, but poorly thought through fashion. Yeah. Um, and this is one of the things I think is more, one of the more interesting parts of the story is that Bruce is like, Oh, come on, Harvey, let's just go out. You know, let's go out on the town. This will make everything better. We'll act like nothing's wrong and you'll just be your old self kind of. And I think Bruce doesn't really accept or understand what Harvey's going through and just like being there for him and being like, Hey, we could sit at home and watch TV, even though maybe it hasn't been invented yet. Um, although I think it has is, are there televisions? I'm trying to remember. Um, I mean, they can sit around and listen to the radio, whatever it is. Sure. Yeah. We can sit around and listen to the radio. We can just talk and whatever, you know, play cards, you know, um, which seems like that would probably be a better approach or be like, Hey, I'm here for you. Yeah. If you want to hang out cool, if you don't, I'll give you some space, but I'll be here. You know, I'll be around. Yeah. Like everyone is probably either known or Mikey has been. I've been both. But like, you know, that friend who sees that you're upset, they have their idea of what they think you need, and then becomes utterly unwilling to listen to what you actually say you need. Right. Exactly. Yeah. You need to go out. You need to go out. And good. Oh, I do think it's very easy to be critical of the person who thinks they know what you need. And I think they're wrong in that regard. And I think it is important to give space, but also let someone know you're there for them and make suggestions without being overly pushy. But at the same time, I think it's very hard. Yeah. And I think one of the hardest things is to be trying to help someone or wanting to help someone, whether you're trying or not, but just being like, that's your desire is to help someone and just like having no idea what's actually going to help or even having nothing that will help. And kind of like, I really have a lot of sympathy for both the people in the situation. And here's what I think like impacts not intention really matters. But like, I think that the idea of you always need to let a person tell you what they need is very, very valid. I also think that sometimes when people are in a really bad place mentally or with other things, they're not the best judge of what they may need. Or they're like, they're telling them, oh, I don't want to be a bother to you or stuff like that. Right. Right. And to me, the reason why all this matters, I think, and it's funny, I hadn't thought about this until I rewatched the show again over the weekend, and then also in talking with you just now. And I want to talk about what it means for Harvey Dent, to be sure. But I also think this is very illustrative of who Bruce Wayne is and how much this is still a year one kind of a story in terms of this is Batman still figuring out who he's going to be because I think in a lot of portrayals, especially the Christopher Nolan and even to some extent, and also the Tim Burton and a lot of the others like that, everything that Bruce Wayne does, Bruce Wayne is a very well thought out, meticulously planned character that Batman is playing. And that every time he has a social faux pas, it's very strategic as a way of sort of like, this is why people shouldn't be so interested in me, or this is why people play alone, or this is why everyone should leave my building so I can have a fight with Rosal Ghoul who might burn it down, you know, whatever it is, I get none of that from this Bruce Wayne. I get that he's still trying to figure out, I can help people when I wear the mask, but also can I just be a good friend and help people as Bruce Wayne? And I could see him his sort of confusion about why didn't this work, as well as like a guy who was raised by his butler in a fairly isolated setting, having a fairly bad idea of how other people work and what's going to help them, like, you know, all just speaks to me of like, yeah, this is exactly what Bruce Wayne would do. And I can imagine a Bruce Wayne thinking about this conversation going to hell with it. I'm just going to make Bruce Wayne be a stoic pulled back person and I'll help people by beating up that guys. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I didn't thought of it in exactly that way, but, you know, the idea that like maybe Bruce Wayne can help, and then trying to do that and having it go so badly, like just totally backfiring, I can certainly see being like, all right, I'm just going to be Batman, you know, enough of Bruce Wayne. I'll just put on the Bruce Wayne mask when I have to go to a fundraiser and like, you know, acted away that like people don't want to be around me that much. Or they do, but like kind of from a, you know, a distance, right? And yeah, I think that's a really good point, and makes sense. So let's now get back to the Harvey Dent of it all. So we wind up with a Harvey Dent who I think is like he is literally too faced in terms of the two different sides of his face. And he's now aware of what he perceives as the hypocrisy of all the people around him. But a lot of the other, like I feel like if this is his create, I feel like at the end of the season, the creation myth of two face is not finished. And he might have died at the end, the comic book rules, we haven't really seen a body. So who knows? We have seen a ghost. So we know that death isn't, you know, death, personally, he never becomes the, like he never flips a coin. We see him as he is as just Harvey Dent flipping the two sided coin that's heads on both sides. But never the, I'm going to decide who lives or dies, or I'm going to live everything according to chance, or everything has to be like these two different, he's not as focused on dualities as the character often becomes. Right. Yeah. He's not a, he never becomes a fully realized two face in this. And he does become homicidal, right? He does decide he's just going to, you know, he's focused on vengeance. And it's interesting because like, I feel like this season, really the main story, you know, you can say it was Harvey Dent, but I think it was Harvey Dent and Barbara Gordon. Yeah. And I think the two of them having this like very significant, but non romantic relationship, I think is very interesting, I enjoyed it throughout the season. And, you know, he's basically this, he's her antagonist in the beginning, right? She's a public defender, she's a public defender, exactly. And then she's, and then he's just like, oh, you know, I'm just doomed or whatever. And then she's like trying to save him at the end, right? And then as flass is trying to shoot her, he saves her and, you know, like by getting in the way of the bullet and getting all dead. But like, it just feels like an interesting kind of like turnaround from this, you know, compared to the Dark Knight. And this is why I described as like the other side of the coin of the Dark Knight where he is a, you know, where a woman is killed and in a way deliberately to try to turn him, make him lose it essentially, right? And it's done by Joker and very much the kind of like everyone. This is Harvey Dent's one bad day. Exactly. Exactly. And the Joker is trying to create that. And so having, you know, so it's this, that's this like Joker kind of, you know, and that's basically what the, he's doing the killing joke thing, right, of trying to be like, I'm going to give this person this one bad day just to prove that anyone can can snap like I did essentially, right? And in the killing joke, famously Joker shoots Barbara in order to try to. So like he basically tries to fridge Barbara in order to have this effect on Gordon on Jim Gordon, Commissioner Gordon. And you know, in a much, I think maligned decision because then the actual quotes from the people involved are awful and, you know, from, from like how that came about. But so here, having their two stories intertwined in a way that's like, this is his one bad day, except it kind of really is his one good day where like he, he made a decision to like do the right thing. And then that backfired on him horribly. And then again, when it came down to it, he decided he was going to do what he thought was like the right thing in a way that was, you know, fatal for him. But it's, and for a, yeah, no, no, but I mean, at the very end. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yes, before that, before that, I don't think his vengeance was trying to do the right thing necessarily. Okay. Now, I think you're saying it was. Yeah. No, I'm talking about just jumping in the way of the bullet, right? But so I feel like this is a Harvey who basically had something bad happen to him. And then sought vengeance. But then at the end, sacrificed himself in a way that I feel is like the opposite of the Dark Knight Harvey who dies a hero despite having become a villain, here he still kind of dies a villain, right? Like I don't know whether his name gets cleared or anything of all this stuff while dying a hero. So it's like, it kind of, it like flips the story in a way that, you know, while watching it, I feel like I'm aware of that, but it doesn't feel like they're like winking at you and like trying to make that point really hard. I just feel like it's kind of a nice story that's a compliment because like the idea of, you know, a two face, I think is, and Harvey Dent and two face is that like, he is, that's like, it's not necessarily just that. I mean, sometimes it's one and sometimes it's the other, but like this definitely, he doesn't become the kind of like crime boss, two face or whatever. And you know, you could say that in the Dark Knight, he becomes a version of two face, but he's not fully a fully realized two face. He doesn't really make it that far. Right. I mean, the Nolan, if you can't avoid the sort of comic book levels of like, you know, he doesn't have like the two hench women dressed all in black and all in white and. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, I think those are all really good points. And I think it's, in one regard, I'll say, I think part of it comes down to again, the time in which these stories are set because I think in the Christopher Nolan movies, one of the things that all three of them, and then Batman and Gordon, once they realized Dant is dead, are very concerned about is the public image of all of this and how it's going to play. And I think that, you know, obviously the press is a, is still a feature in like, you know, 1920s and even, you know, far before that, but it is also, it's much easier to cover things up, you know, than it is by the time of the Nolan movies. And so to some extent, that's taken off the, the plate. I also think is an, like, I feel Matt Reeves in general is one of the most hopeful images of Batman, but this also feels like one of the most hopeless and I think it's a very interesting way to set up the coming seasons that I hope we're going to get because, you know, and this is especially in the Nolan movies, but also in a lot of the comics and some of the other portrayals. Part of what Batman's goal is always is, you know, not just to strike fear into the heart or the criminals, but it's that like, you know, we shouldn't be afraid. They should be afraid. And so every time like you want the criminal to be afraid, but you also want the people to be able to be like, no, I'm not going to let Falcone boss me around. I am going to do the right thing as a judge or just a clerk at the office or a beat cop or a, or a prosecuting attorney. Yeah. And here it doesn't work. Harvey Dent does net exact thing. He's like, no, I'm not going to let myself be bossed around either at a fear or out of my own personal ambition. I'm going to stand up and he has the acid thrown in his face and you're right. He's not treated like a hero. He's not like welcomed back. You know, he's kind of put aside and as a person with a disability who remembers all the folks saying, like, it's not going to change anything in how you're perceived. I definitely think that like my own understanding of how much of a freak and a weirdo, I would be seen as because I was an amputee was way overblown, but also all the people who blew sunshine up my ass, telling me that everything was going to be just fine exactly. It was was also kind of overblown. And, and that's something that's shown where part of Bruce Wayne is saying, like, who's going to stare at you? Everyone loves you and they go to a restaurant. It's pretty clear. People are staring at him. I don't uncomfortable around him and, and also some of it that it's a lot in his head as well. I mean, it's, it's, it's a complicated mix, but yeah, it's sort of tall. Yeah. And all this is it feels like it's a very interesting version of that story of saying, like, Harvey did try to stand up but couldn't protect himself in a way that Batman could and it cost him everything. And his mental reaction to it is part of what cost him everything. But like, it definitely, you know, the acid throwing in his face, I think leads to a fairly direct path that leads to his maybe death, maybe who knows. So yeah, I was just one more way in which I think at first I didn't like it and at first I was just like, I don't want, in part because I found like the Harlequin Quinzel, Harley and Quinzel story and some of the others so interesting, I just didn't want three full episodes about date, about dent. But the more I think about it, the more I think like, okay, they were, it wasn't like, I didn't have, they were not my three most enjoyable episodes of the show by any means. But I do think that they made some interesting points that I'm enjoying thinking about now. Yeah. Yeah, and I would say I hear you for sure. I also think there's been a little more dent than like, not in the live action so much. I mean, there was a little in like, in the original Batman, right? Yeah. But you're right. We get him becoming Too Faced a lot in like some of the animated stories. Right. But also, yeah. I mean, Too Faced has, you know, one of the main villains, right, in the animated series. But also in The Long Halloween, yep, I think we get him there. So, or whether it's Too Faced or not, we get, we get a fair amount of Harvey Dent. But yeah, here I'd say, it wasn't so much that I was like, oh good, another Harvey Dent story. It was more that it was like, I enjoyed, you know, Barbara's role in this one. I enjoyed how, you know, seeing Bruce try to handle it and then not doing well with that. And, you know, so I think a lot of other characters also, and the way that they interacted with that story, I think made it, made it more interesting than if it was like, just exactly the same story. Yeah. I think it's very true. I think you're very right about that. And it is such a, there's an extent to which they've never actually put this together before. But like, I think you could look at Bruce Wayne Batman as a Too Faced character. Like, I think a lot of others would see that as very soon. No, yeah. And that like, yeah, it's not that I think Harvey Dent is essential to like the formation of Batman, but I think it's a very good point, pivotal point. And as we said before in last episode, last, last episode on this, it meant that like we're able to keep Joker completely off stage for the entire season. And I do really appreciate that and see where it'll go. Yeah. I mean, Joker and Riddler, and then Penguin was really just episode one, you know. So a lot of the villains that have gotten a lot of screen time had a lot less screen time. Yeah. And you know, I appreciate that, especially for like a first season. And we do get, you know, gentleman ghost and a firebug and things like that, which there's a lot else we want to cover and we're already going pretty long, but just five minutes maximum. What did you think of what is normally Batman, I think, is one of the most grounded characters. These fighting other human beings who have powers and abilities that would make sense in our world with some exceptions, and even then they're scientifically explained having just the straight up supernatural appear in the middle of the season. Yeah, I think it's really interesting because, and I forget the other character's name, but the like the little vampire girl, which by the way, Matt Reeves directed the American version of let the right one in. I think it's called Let Me In, which is about a little vampire girl. And then here, you know, he's one of the executive producers and there's this girl who's vampire, you know, that's one because I thought of it as kind of a reference to Ace from the Royal Flush Gang in Batman the original series. Yeah, both of those, for sure. I thought that. Yeah, especially, I mean, with Batman carrying her out, you know, under his cape after when the sun comes up, right? I mean, that was like almost like a direct parallel to the end, the thing with Ace. And actually, I thought that that storyline was really beautiful part of it, you know, and it had like a bunch of Robins in it, you know, and I just thought was interesting and different and even if it was like these other things as well. But having, I think it is a kind of modern misconception that like Batman exists in this world of just like normal people without superpowers and, you know, they're all just punching each other and they have some technology and that's about it. From the comics, from, I don't know how early on, but like, there have been supernatural elements for a long, long time. You know, there's like Gotham overrun by zombies or vampires or, you know, there are supernatural things going on in Gotham all the time, not in the more recent movies. And I guess the Tim Burton and then Joel Schumacher movies don't have a lot of like real, they have like science fiction, right, like in the way that like Spider-Man has science fiction, where there's science is doing stuff that science don't do, right? I know aliens, there's no other dimensions or, you know, supernatural or magic or things like that. Right. But in, you know, and then in the course of the vanilla one is like super grounded and then the Matt Reeves is like, I'll show you grounded, right? Like, like they've just been like one up in each other in that regard and being like, this is just a normal world Batman. But I mean, you know, the Ben Affleck Batman literally, it's him versus an alien in the versus first appearance, right? And in, in the first Justice League animated series, I mean, obviously, you know, you've got three aliens, I think on the crew, you know, and like a goddess who is basically made out of clay and then like someone with superpowers and someone with a magic item, right? And then he's like the normal tooth. But so I think Batman has had supernatural stuff that he's interacted with for a long, long time in the comics, for a long time in animation, but very rarely on screen in live action. Right. And so I think that's where, you know, this conception of I think the idea of like him not having superpowers, but contending with those with superpowers is actually it kind of ups the ante, right? On the like, no, it's just going to be like street level, like nobody has any powers. And it's like, well, actually they have powers, but he doesn't. I mean, he's got money and toys and stuff, but and sometimes a magic item. One of the few things that I think Zack Snyder got exactly right about Batman is when he is in a world with Superman and Cyclops and Wonder Woman and all the rest. And someone asks, what's your power? And he says, I'm rich because like, yeah, the money, there are things that he can do that no one of those other characters can do. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, intelligence and, you know, determination and whatever, but sure. Yes. I mean, it is essentially in our world, you know, one of the real superpowers basically just being obscenely wealthy, right? Um, and yeah, I think I had a similar feeling. I, I was really set up for it to be that he's going to show that this doesn't actually exist. Right. First, I was catching things and being like, come on writers, like, if the whole point is that it isn't really a ghost, like you're really pressing gradually here. And I was like, Oh, no, you're actually doing that. Okay. It is. It is a ghost. Yeah. Didn't call that fair enough. And yeah, I liked it. Kind of fun story about like, you know, fighting old ideas of, of, of racism and all that kind of stuff and classism, which I think is kind of one thing that helped me is that I feel like, like one of the points of his wealth that you could see very easily is the way that he calls Alfred Pennyworth, because it really comes off as like, you are my servant. So I don't see you as fully human when it's done with the rich and they're there, the people who work for them. I think it's very clear in the story that that's not why he does it. It's because of the particular, like, Alfred is kind of becoming a second, another parental figure to him. And he just lost his parental figures and is no interested in, in like, making himself vulnerable to that kind of loss again. So he keeps him at a distance by calling him Pennyworth, but yeah, yeah. But he, but he also realizes over time that it kind of looks like the other thing. Yeah. He certainly feels like the other thing, right, to Alfred, perhaps. And so that, that does actually seem like the largest character growth for, you know, for Batman and Bruce Wayne. Um, and just kind of one part of that, the connection next topic I'm going to bring up is that I think part of what through me is that, as you said, some Batman's have a lot of supernatural. Some don't. Batman in the Justice League obviously has a ton of it. And that Batman is an outgrowth of Batman, the animated series, and he has the same voice actor Kevin Conroy, Batman, the animated series, though, to me felt much more grounded. Like, I think the supernatural does exist in a couple of episodes, but not until later seasons for the most part. And it's still very, very rare, you know, every now and then Superman wants him to go off and fight dark side together. Like that's right. Right. Yeah. And there's the Lazarus pit. Right. Exactly. And stuff like that. But yeah, it just, I think because the aesthetic is so much Batman in the animated series, it threw me a lot. Yeah. But I think that's kind of the point is also kind of like, no, this isn't, we're obviously paying homage to a number of different Batman's and we're paying homage to the original animated show and a lot of our aesthetic, but that's not what the show is. Right. Yeah. And I think the, the idea of there being something supernatural as a bit of a plot twist only works if the audience doesn't know that that's the plot twist. Right. Right. Like there are, there are, you know, if, if you made a preview for signs that showed, you know, the aliens, like, you know, it would be like, you know, it'd be like, oh, that does it. Okay. I guess that's, there's no surprise there, right? Or, you know, you explained the, the sixth sense or, or various things, you know, and, so I think, you know, Batman having supernatural antagonists and, and perhaps allies is not something that should be completely surprising, but because there have been so many stories told without that, it sets you up for that actually being a surprise. And I, I as well, I mean, I know the character, you know, I've, I've seen gentlemen goes before, but I kind of half expected, oh, well, they're not actually going to do this as a supernatural thing. And then I was like, oh, they are, you know, like, I wasn't sure until he came through the thing that it like, you know, it, it was that they were going that direction, even knowing the character in the first place, you know, because they could go another way with it. They could have it be a hoax. Right. I mean, they, they changed a lot of characters. So there's no reason they couldn't take a ghost and be like, yeah, that's not actually a real ghost. That's a hoax, you know. And the thing that I'm not sure whether we mentioned it in the first episode or in the bonus content, but I do think I just want to double down on the whole, like, you know, I don't believe in the supernatural, like, I think once the supernatural's real, it's not even supernatural, it's just natural then, but like, but like, there's a lot of things that a lot of people believe in that I don't believe in because of a lack of evidence. But like, I do think it's very important to acknowledge like, once there's evidence, once there's compelling evidence, then whatever your beliefs are, you should change them. Yeah. You know, like, that's the thing. It's like, what evidence is there, okay, I don't find that convincing. Fine. But then at a certain point, it's like, Oh, no, that yeah, that's, that ghost is real, you know, like, especially in that world where there's like no technology that's going to be able to like, you know, create a hologram the way maybe you could now, you know, yeah, probably, but yeah, no, I think it's very true. I think we talked about this a bit last episode, but it's worth kind of underlining. Like to me, that is the greatest sign of Batman's intelligence, because I think, and we see this in the world all around us, and this is on everything from like, refusing to believe that like one strategy to play a video game might actually be better or, you know, refusing to believe that like something that changes your political beliefs in a fundamental way or that, you know, you're going to think that these kind of people are bad or evil and you see direct evidence of it. It's very easy for us to build a worldview so rigid that when new evidence comes up to us, we just find ways to explain it away or to, we talked about this in the Planet of the Apes movie episode I just did with Reiki, that that's a lot about how on both sides humans and apes will both be like, no, no, no, that evidence doesn't fit my worldview. So the evidence must be destroyed. Right. And that means willing to be like, no, okay, this is new information. I can objectively say no matter what, because like, I don't know if this is a comic someone told me about or an episode I saw, but I remember there being one episode where a fairly young Bruce Wayne, maybe it's came up in Gotham, I'm not sure, but like someone is trying to tell him that ghosts are real. And part of why he is like, no, I don't believe that is because then he might want to like find the ghost of his parents or something like that. Right. Part of his sort of healing is like they are dead, they are gone. I can remember them, but, you know, so. Right. Any listeners, do you remember where I got that from? Please write in and let me know so I can not feel like I'm losing my mind over this. Let's talk about the last kind of thing we wanted to touch on the voice actors, because I think they're really high quality. I agree. The Batman is played by Hamish Linklater, not certain pronunciation. I believe it's of Scottish origin, but, but who does, I think a fantastic Kevin Conroy without sounding like he's trying to do an impersonation? Yeah. Like, I really felt like this is my Batman, you know, like this is the Bruce Wayne sounded like Bruce Wayne, Batman sounded like someone different, but the same, you know, and, and had that not overdone gravelly, but, you know, kind of deep and commanding and confident and, and I just, I just think he did a great job. You know, I think really across the board, I really, really enjoyed the voice acting. We were talking about Harleen Quinselle, who's played by Jamie Chung, who's been in a number of, she's in like Batman's soul of the dragon and a number of other animated things. And it's funny because like, I, I didn't even like really notice that like Harleen Quinselle was, was Asian, but like, I think some of that's a, some of that's animation, right? Where, I mean, we've talked about this with, with Batman Beyond where it's like, Terry McGinnis, Lokes Asian, he looks like half Asian, at least, right? And, and there is a certain, you know, race in, in animation can be more ambiguous than it is in, in live action or in, in person or whatever. Even though the whole thing is there, there is a level of ambiguity in some cases when, right, you know, the whole long thing there, but like I said, in the last episode, like she looked, my first thought was that she was Asian, but then I, yeah, overall what I thought was like, she's a person of color. I think she's Asian, but if you told me she's Puerto Rican, or like Latina in some way, I would not be sure, you know, right? Yeah. Which generally then I land on like, Filipino, you know, but like, but yeah, I, I appreciate that in terms of, you know, in terms of the animation. But I also, I loved her, Harleen and Harley, you know, I think, I think it's a great character and it was, and she was really well voiced. And really just across the board, you know, they've, Christina Ricci as, as Catwoman. I'm trying to remember who I thought she was. I heard Catwoman and I was like, oh, who is this? And I thought it was someone specific. Oh, I thought it was the voice actress for Azula at first. Oh, interesting. Okay. Catwoman, Selena Kyle, really channels her like inner Azula. I feel like she's got a very similar vibe, which was, which just really worked for me. But it wasn't. It was, it was Christina Ricci. And we mentioned before many driver as, as Oswaldo Cabopod. And yeah, and just, you know, could go on, but like, yeah, I'm not sure if you want. I didn't love the Harvey dense, like, episodes, but I thought the actor playing him was fantastic. And I never had a moment where I thought, like, this doesn't feel real, you know? Right. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I just, I, I feel like DC tends to really get voice acting. I didn't see who the directors or the voice casting was. Andrea Romano did so many of those ones before, but I don't, I don't, I don't remember seeing her name. But, but yeah, anyway, it just, I feel like, oh, it's Agnes Kim and Sarah Noonan did the casting. Oh no. So, but yeah, I just think, you know, they, they really got excellent voice acting. I saw, I think it was Bruce Tim talking about how Warner Brothers approached him to, like, do a continuation of Batman, the animated series, and he was like, yeah, I don't want to do that. Like, maybe some of it's because Kevin Conroy died and it just, I don't think it would feel right, you know, to be like, let's get someone to literally impersonate Kevin Conroy, which, you know, has been done, of course, in various series, but not, not Kevin Conroy, but other other voice actors. But also just, it's like, sometimes I think it's like, you know what, like, how many episodes did they do? Like, do you really want to pick up where you left off and like, add to that exact story? Or do you want to do something fresh, you know, and, and so he had a funny series, like, in some ways you could call this a prequel, and then you have all the prequel problems that you get into. Right, right, right. Or you could say the continuation, then like, how many stories are off the board? Because you've already, you know, you can't, what you did with, do what you did with, with Harley, right? You can't do what you did with, with Penguin, like, yeah, you can't do what you did with, with Harvey, you know, you, like, you're, you really, they went through a lot of characters and they told a lot of stories and apparently there were a bunch of ideas that they wanted to do, but we're like, well, that doesn't really fit this audience, right? Because I don't know if it was like Saturday afternoon, cartoon, or morning, or whatever, but it's like, you know, it's for a particular demographic who's aimed at, and I think this one is aimed at, you know, older and or wider demographic, and, you know, some of the things are like, you know, oh, well, characters are clearly dying and this is like more mature or whatever, which I generally think is like a load. Yeah, very mature and a lot of people died. Right. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, there's an extent to which like the Batman story is about death, right? That's like his primary motivation, the trauma of two people dying right in front of his eyes, like, and I think a lot of the stories that are like, we're gonna kill a bunch of characters and that's going to be mature. And I'm like, yeah, are you actually like really dealing with death in a mature way? Or you just kind of like, look, we killed some people. Yeah, look, we got our ratings are so edgy. Yeah, exactly. But like here, I do feel like, you know, they did not like we're going to try and tell an adult story, but just like, hey, these are some ideas for stories we had. We're going to tell them the way we want because we now have license to, you know, it's on a streaming platform. You know, we don't have to. We're not we're not rained in quite the same way we were before. Right. I mean, the budget of an animated show is so much smaller than the budget of a live action movie. It's because, you know, think about the actors we just talked about, none of whom are like huge Hollywood A-listers, but are still, you know, well known people in Hollywood who I'm sure get paid well, yeah, you can ask them to commit themselves to six months of a movie shoot or maybe a total of like five, two hour recording sessions, you know, over a few months, like it's just a very different level, what you can do. Yeah. And I mean, sometimes even somebody can just record the audio in their home, right? I mean, I don't know how they did this series, but that's like a thing now. Yeah. That's what they did. Like the last dragon. Right. What the hell was that movie? Kaya and the dragon right right of the last right of the last dragon. Yeah. I mean, that most of the voice acting has done exactly that way because it's done during pandemics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I agree with you all that. I think like at first I felt to me like it was going to be a continuation of BTAS and I'm glad it wasn't that, but it. It felt like it was saying, yes, there are all of these different batmans out there. We're going to have a new take on batman, but we're starting from BTAS and the comics that that comes from. Yeah. Like we're not. Like that essence. Yeah. And like it's not like an FU to people who like Schumacher or who like Baffleck, but it's also like, if you didn't love those, don't worry. We got you. We got you. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And unrelated to this, but I want you to add like one cool thing and this was some feedback we actually got, a person that's not for their name to be mentioned, but just we chatted on the line of it and he said that for him growing up, he grew up with Batman 66, the rock 'em, sock 'em, you know, pow, all bright colors kind of thing. And that's his Batman. Yeah. And then he totally understands that, but that's why for him, the Schumacher movies are the closest thing that he has seen to that because they're campy. Very much the way that the show was and that for him, you know, as a young person growing up, that's what he loved. And so, you know, just another reminder that like something can be totally not my Batman, but it's someone else's because like we talk about how dark and gritty Batman is. Batman 66 was most people's only live action Batman for a long time. Yeah. And it is not gritty. It is not. No, no, it's not. That was the first one I saw too. I mean, I watched that as a kid. I enjoyed it as a kid. I loved it as a kid. And actually I feel like in this series, you get Onomatopoeia, who's the leader of the assassins, right? And I feel like kind of ticks that box in a kind of gentle way. Yeah. Exactly. And like, I still think Earth a kit may be the best cat woman I've ever seen. Oh, yes. Well, she's the only one that ever me out at me. Yes. Very true. Very true. All right. Well, thank you all so much, Paul. Thank you. We're gonna have some bonus content just talking a bit more about like how we kind of see other superheroes compared to Batman in the different settings that we're talking about. But for everyone who's not a member yet, please think about becoming one $5 a month, $5 a year, you get bonus content at the end of every episode, you get full bonus episodes. And of course, you get to help support what we're doing here. It's really great. It helps keep the lights on. As I mentioned, this is probably gonna be the last episode that goes live before we go on hiatus for a couple of weeks. Just gives us a time to kind of like stop, readjust, get a back on top of our schedule as well as think about how can we make even better content for you all. So especially if you have thoughts about what you would like to see more from these episodes, please let us know. Thank you so much to for Paul. Ricky, you'll be back soon. [MUSIC]
