Batman leaving Ra's on the train knowing he would die in Batman Begins counts as a kill, why people didn't complain about this back in the day but everyone was up in arms when Zack Snyder made his movies is beyond me
Batman leaving Ra's on the train knowing he would die in Batman Begins counts as a kill...
Michael Hall
Parker Roberts
Because it's clever. He's not killing him directly, but he shows he's got balls and principle by not saving him either. It's like he cheated the rules or something. Normies love that, they love feeling like they've cheated but still achieved what they wanted and are still considered good boys. Zack Snyder's Batman just fucking shoots people. That's not clever or cool.
Oliver King
>throws Ra's into the Lazarus pit
>he hops out good as new
Well that mattered
Hudson Cruz
Batman manages to out autist a guy literally brainwashed by a cult of religious crazies to the point that he sees visions that aren't there.
Lucas Scott
>why people didn't complain about this back in the day
Mandullah moment
Dominic Cruz
No kill rules are fucking gay and cannot be justified without autism.
They're ok when they were just a mandate from the powers that be, but it's fucking gay when writers actually justify it in-universe and jerk off Batman over it.
I'll fucking say it: it's not an essential part of Batman and it can be disposed of in adaptations.
Angel Clark
It's not clever at all. It's the same logic that makes Bruce turn on Jean-Paul Valley in the comics. Batman is supposed to care about the absolute sacredness of human life.
Lincoln Martinez
It's not clever because Nolan doesn't understand why the no-kill rule exists in the first place
It's not because he's some anti-gun nut it's because he has a fundamental hubris in his belief that he can rehabilitate all criminals.
Batman thinks he can save the Joker, he thinks he can save Two-Face, Catwoman, etc.
This guy is only sort of right. The no kill rule should unironically be handled in the way the 30s/early 40s Batman operated. If he can save a crook, he will, but he's not above defending himself or others at the cost of another's life.
Basically standard police officer rules
Adam Ross
>Saving a villain who killed God knows how many instead leaving him to die and ponder in his final moments over his life and choices
Yeah the choice is obvious here.
The no kill rule should be only utilized towards those that are redeemable and still have a chance in life. Those that have deep down inside that doesn't make them cross the red line. Utilizing the no kill rule on everyone including the most irredeemably evil ones who will get out of the cardboard prison to kill more people, make orphans and spread misery is the biggest retardation ever. There is a difference between crooks with standards who do have a chance to abandon a life of crime and THE FRIGGING JOKER.
Batman is naive when it comes to Joker and any absolutely insane criminals. Two-Face at least can be reasoned with. Catwoman can be shown a different path (make her a moder-day Robin Hood instead of a cat-burglar). Clayface and Killer Crock can be fixed. Joker however cannot and will never be unless Batman uses actual brainwashing on him which he won't because he's too fucking prideful.
Colton Myers
How many people has Batman convinced into killing themselves?
Joseph Morgan
He says it literally in the fucking movie you dope “I’m not an executioner”. That’s why he doesn’t kill because he believes it’s not up to him who should live or die. Like it’s spelled out so simply in the movie I don’t know how you could have fucking missed it.
Jeremiah Jones
>Batman is naive when it comes to Joker
He's not naive at all. This dude has watched the Joker be stabbed to death, fall into acid, get blown up, get his face cut off, get shot in the head, etc. but the fucker keeps on coming back.
There's something supernatural about the Joker, something that can't be fixed by Arkham Asylum or the Fists of Justice. Batman needs to find a way to make Joker feel empathy for all the lives he's taken.
Really that's the secret for most of Batman's enemies. He makes monsters realize their inner humanity. It's why the "Bruce Wayne is really the mask" concept never works upon further analysis, it denies the fundamental moral of the Batman story
Cameron Green
The only way to cancel out the Joker immunity is head-shooting the clown, then chopping him up, cremating every piece individually, making powerful pacts with demonic entities to keep his spirit bound and then burying every cremated piece in different parts of the world...and even then it's probably not going to stick.
And if one day Joker does feel empathy then hell will freeze.
Ryan Fisher
When you make Batman's bad guys become so evil that its weird he hasn't snapped their necks, well that's a fault of the writers.
Lucas Allen
Some nerds complained about it. Same for Superman. But movies aren't made for them and casuals don't care and would reject that retarded logic.
Nathaniel Ramirez
They tried that in JLA: Another Nail.
Joker took over hell, gathered an army of demons, then opened a portal to the overworld just to drag Bruce back with him into the afterlife
Also in Digital Justice when Joker’s and Batman’s consciousnesses were resurrected as digital viruses years after their deaths and they both died wiping eachother from existence at the exact same time
Jaxson Adams
This.
The Joker's the most obvious one, but generally the constantly raising stakes means that Gotham more likely than not would be better off with Bruce's rogues gallery dead.
Daniel Jenkins
66 also puts heavy emphasis on rehabilitation. But no one at this point buys that Joker can get rehabilitated, and in general the public hates criminal rehabilitation.
Austin Wood
>It's not clever because Nolan doesn't understand why the no-kill rule exists in the first place
Batman has existed for 80 years and has had multiple interpretations in the comics.
Sometimes he doesn't kill because taking a life is the ultimate evil, the very action that caused him to become Batman. Sometimes he doesn't kill because he feels that once he starts, he won't be able to stop, and he'll give in to his desire for vengeance and start indiscriminately killing murderers. Sometimes he doesn't kill because even though he breaks the law to fight crime, he still ultimately wants the the law and the system to decide things, instead of an unaccountable vigilante who doesn't have power invested in him by the people. Killing people instead of just turning them and his evidence in would be undemocratic. Sometimes, he doesn't kill people because of the superstition that something worse will just take their place (validated by Batkek).
The problem with Nolan's no-kill rule wasn't so much that he "got it wrong," because there was never a single interpretation to get right. It's that it was inconsistent.
In Begins, Batman isn't so much against killing as he is against retribution. His path starts with reevaluating assassinating Joe Chill. He refuses to execute a prisoner. He doesn't want to kill as punishment or revenge. But if an enemy dies in the course of battle (like imposter Ra's), that's fine. This is also his position in TDKR. He won't seek vengeance, but if he avoids your missiles and they hit you instead, that's okay.
But in TDK, he doesn't want to kill at all. Letting Joker fall off the building would be no different from how he killed any other building, but suddenly he has a strict no-kill rule. He ends up killing Two-Face, but this is portrayed as part of Batman's tragic downfall, being forced to break his rule, and it pretty much means he can't be Batman anymore.
Connor Nelson
Continued
The inconsistency between Begins and TDK might make sense if they depicted this as Batman's code evolving, but they don't. He never mentions letting Ra's die in TDK or acts like his current no-kill rule is a re-evaluation of his actions in the previous movie. And the fact that he reverts to the code he had in Begins in TDKR makes it even less plausible that they were doing an intentional evolution.
Josiah Ward
Batman comics are also inconsistent with how much Batman believes in rehabilitation.
In some interpretations, he's the "criminal scum never changes; you're naϊve for thinking otherwise" guy. In others, he offers ex-convicts second chances by hiring them at Wayne Enterprises and actually tries to help even his supervillains.
Killing Joke begins with Batman driving to the Asylum just to talk some sense into Joker and offer him another path. Arkham Manor has Bruce giving up his own home to be the new Arkham because the NIMBYs don't want it near them. He checks in on the patients and is invested in making sure they get good treatment. He shows concern for all of them.
And then you have stories where Penguin or Riddler are released and try to go on the straight, and Batman is so convinced that they will never change their stripes that he follows and antagonizes them back into becoming criminals. You have stories where he scoffs at doctors for thinking they can rehabilitate his enemies.
I personally like the interpretation where he wants to rehabilitate people. His father was a doctor and his mother was a social worker. Even though he chose to be a vigilante, healing people is in his blood. His whole concept is "suffering tragedy doesn't mean you have to become a nihilist asshole; you can work toward preventing others from suffering the same tragedies instead." So, it makes sense that he would look at his villains who are all people who have suffered tragedies, and tell them "there's another way to respond to this."