Opinion: A Longtime Batman Fan's take on Nolan's Batman Trilogy

Note: This is not about video games (obviously). It is, instead a collection of thoughts on Nolan's Batman trilogy.

I've always been a Batman fan. Having read numerous comic books and owning over twenty of them, I'm well aware that my knowledge of Gotham's protector extends further than the average Batman fan's (though not nearly as far as the die-hard DC enthusiast, so if I misspeak, please correct me). One semester, I used Alan Moore's The Killing Joke in a freshman writing class in order to discuss how we read comics, and just this past weekend, the groom's cake at my wedding was adorned with the Bat Signal. Needless to say, Nolan's movies stay on constant rotation in my blu ray player, and bout midway through what was likely the twentieth time I watched The Dark Knight, I realized a possible logical terminus for the story Nolan had begun with Batman Begins. Speculation surrounding the fate of the Dark Knight abounds, and, since the first trailer released last summer, fans everywhere have been wondering whether Nolan will kill his titular hero. I must confess, though, don't find this question as tantalizing as most loyal fans do. I cannot wait to see how it all ends, but I don't really care if Nolan's Batman lives or dies or passes the mantle or any other scenario in terms of its narrative importance; the movie's going to be awesome, that's a given. Nolan's said repeatedly that this is going to be his last Batman film. He's explained that he's looking to early film epics like Metropolis or maybe Birth of a Nation in terms of cinematic scope. We know he's going big, also, because the movie is nearly three hours long.. Perhaps a more useful question than "Is Batman or Bruce Wayne or both going to die?" would be "Why would Nolan feel compelled to kill off the Dark Knight?" The key difference is that the latter question broadens the discussion of of the films in dialogue with not only other incarnations of the Batman but also discussions of American ideologies. Nolan's changed the way we perceive one of the most influential and persistent contemporary American icons, and I think it's about time we talk about what exactly that means.

"But They never talk about the mean one. The cruel one. The one who couldn't fly or bend steel in his bare hands. The one who scared the crap out of everybody and laughed at all of the rest of us for being the envious cowards we were." (Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns)

Nolan's movies are not as divisive among comic fans as one might expect. He grounds his project in a reality that asks us to think semi-realistically about what would happen if Batman would enter a real world scenario, and few people with whom I've discussed the films tell me that Nolan's tampering with the Batman universe borders on blasphemy--and we all know how loyal fans can be. I like to view his films as Elseworld's type stories (i.e. Thrillkiller or Gotham by Gaslight), a type of alternate Gotham that gives the auteur a large enough sandbox to play in. The result is a movie that "feels" like a Batman movie even though it's not the same Batman as the one ("ones"?) in the Post-Crisis continuity. The Dark Knight entertains as both a cape and cowl caper and a provocative crime drama. Nolan's films can have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.

Placing a comic book concept in a very serious, real-world context, though, should call attention to how weird it would be for a guy in a costume to swoop around the city and attempt to stop crime, but that rarely (if at all) happens in Nolan's movies--at least not explicitly. Sure, people have discussions about whether the Batman is "doing good" for the city or whether he is simply, as Gordon puts it in Batman Begins, "Just some nut." But the overall seriousness of the film suggests that its world could (or ostensibly does) exist. In this way, Nolan's trilogy offers the best experiment with the Batman mythos I have ever seen, but it yields problematic results. The films are so damn good that casual fans begin to think of Batman as a real character rather than a pop culture icon, and I'm not sure Batman can withstand the seriousness. I think the Joker in The Dark Knight calls attention to this problem directly with his (painfully over-quoted) mantra, "Why so serious?" The famous line is a meta-question not just to his victims but to the fans. Why do we need such a serious hero in a serious movie that deals with serious subjects like murder on massive scale simply to cause societal chaos?

"No, I don’t keep count. But you do. And I love you for it." (Joker to Batman in Miller's The Dark Knight Returns) 

Christopher Nolan's Batman is played seriously because he's in a serious universe that would never involve Killer Crocs, Clayfaces, or have the main hero hanging with aliens, yet fans are willing to forget (or they just don't know) that the universe(s) of the comics contains these characters and incidents. As a comic book character, Batman is no more grounded in reality than Spider-Man or Superman, nor is his origin more tragic--hell, as much as I don't like Superman, he lost an entire planet along with his parents. Nolan, however, draws on the aspects of the Batman mythos that humanize rather than immortalize the Dark Knight, and, by doing so, deceives the viewer into thinking of not just his Batman but the character in general in terms of his realism. Others, of course, have tread this territory before, but they did so by exploring Batman's humanity in an unreal universe. One story that comes to mind is Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, in which the inmates of the titular madhouse take over, and Batman wanders Arkham's halls, battling inmates and his inner demons. But the difference here is that Batman is humanized in a world where the supernatural (aliens, mutants, Solomon Grundy, etc.) exists alongside the natural, whereas Nolan's Batman attempts to become "more than a man" in a purely natural world. At any rate, it's made it much more difficult for me to recommend Batman comics to friends who just know the Nolan movies...though everyone should read the top five graphic novels in IGN's list.

"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol … as a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting." (Batman Begins)

So what happens when we introduce Batman to real world besides bad ass action sequences and damn good storytelling (despite the fact that three men can meet on a rooftop while one wears a bat suit and no one takes a step back to say "Wait a minute...what the fu....")? We get a world of consequence. In Batman Begins, the main conflict is about administering justice to preserve balance. Gotham is a functioning system of political corruption and underworld crime, and Batman serves as a destabilizing element. When Batman stops Ra's Al Ghul's League from dismantling Gotham's infrastructure, he does so to give himself time to destroy the criminal structure of the city, but the increased pressure on the mob prompts them to employ a mercenary psychopath who, in turn, spreads chaos through the city in a way that neither the mob nor Gotham's protector could have anticipated. It's textbook chaos theory, in which a single alien element introduced in a system has the potential to ramify unpredictably. By the end of The Dark Knight, Batman understands that in order for the system to be reset, he must remove himself from the equation, giving the police someone to hunt (himself) and someone to idolize (Harvey Dent). Then, eight years later, something ambiguous happens (though the trailer in which Selina Kyle cryptically warns Bruce Wayne has clear overtones of the occupy movement) which awakens the Batman from his eight year slumber--Bane brings hell itself to the streets of Gotham. And we all know why Bane's dangerous...

  

I am Bane -- and I could kill you... but death would only end your agony -- and silence your shame. Instead, I will simply... BREAK YOU! Broken...and done. (Knightfall: Broken Bat)

It's only appropriate that Nolan endshis trilogy with Bane. The Joker essentially "wins" his battle against Batman at the end of The Dark Knight when the Gotham police hunt Batman just as the Joker predicted:

Don't talk like you're one of them! You're not... even if you'd like to be. To them you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out. Like a leper. See, their morals, their "code"... it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these uh, these "civilized people", they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.--The Dark Knight

Since Batman has had his struggle with Ra's al Ghul and the Joker (my two personal favorites in his rogue gallery), the logical terminus for this trajectory is brutal, punishing agony. Bane provides Nolan with the perfect vehicle to kill the Batman, to kill Bruce Wayne, or, on the other hand, to provide the greatest physical and mental challenge for the Dark Knight. Ra's al Ghul strives for order and obedience. The Joker thrives on chaos. Bane utilizes pain with surgical precision to break Batman physically, mentally, and spiritually. He is a brilliant tactician and a juggernaut of hurt. If there is anyone capable of delivering the killing blow to the Bat, it would be Bane, and that seems to be Nolan's goal here: to punish the Batman for upsetting the system that keeps not only the microcosm of Gotham working, but also the macrocosm of the perceived real world.

Thus, my long belabored point emerges: I think Nolan's films illustrate that being Batman in the real world is a potentially bad idea, and we're about to find out if Bruce Wayne's choice to become the Batman was the right one. By that, I don't mean it's a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't dress like a bat and fight crime--that's a terribly obvious lesson. The lesson runs much deeper. Much like Alan Moore's Watchmen, one way to read Nolan's films is to say, "Thank God all we have to deal with in real life is nice, clean organized crime. Because when people actually become superheroes, things...go awry." Batman enters a fragile system as a chaotic element, and we see these repercussions in The Dark Knight more clearly than any other Batman story I've encountered. It'll be interesting in The Dark Knight Rises to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. All in all, I think Nolan's films are about consequence rather than about character. Perhaps people do need a dramatic symbol "to shake them out of apathy," but Nolan proposes a scenario that explores what happens after the system that symbol disrupts fights back. Whoever wins, fans will have a lot to chew on and debate for years to come.

Cheers,

--David

Existential Horror and Gameplay Compulsion in Dark Souls

Horror in video games is a fairly well-trod region. Some developers approach the genre through grotesque enemy design, pitting the player against hordes of disgusting monsters, often with a fair degree of gore (e.g. Splatterhouse). Others focus on place and time, building games in Gothic settings (e.g. Castlevania). The best, though, strive for an atmospheric approach to horror that combines narrative, setting, action, and gameplay mechanics to provide a totalizing horror experience. When used to its full potential, the video game medium provides an authentic horror experience that film and literature simply cannot achieve.

Like so many others, I had my first taste of horror in the medium when I played Capcom's Resident Evil in 1996. After watching a ridiculous cut scene in which unintentionally hilarious B-movie style actors delivered some semblance of story my young could not care less about, my friend handed me his controller, gave me a brief rundown of the controls, and set me loose in a mansion infested with walking corpses. Unused to the Playstation controller, I took a while to learn how to move Jill Valentine across the screen, but, after some practice, I began navigating the halls like a pro--until my first encounter with a monster whereupon I forgot what any of those damn buttons did. In that moment, everything came together--the shambling corpse, the lack of ammunition, the limited visibility of awkward camera angles, the knowledge that my character's death would lead to a restart that would undo what felt like significant progress--and created not just a great moment in my subjective gaming history, but also a sincere state of panic. This, I thought, is what horror feels like: hopelessness in the face of a foe that I knew meant certain death. Jill Valentine did not survive the encounter, and it was purely my fault. That instance would never be duplicated for me in a survival horror game. Sure, I had my fair share of scares in Dead Speace, and I felt the bizarre atmosphere of Bioshock. But nothing came close to replicating that moment of genuine terror...until I started playing Dark Souls.

I had played it's predecessor, Demon's Souls, but I never got into it. I gave it two serious tries, but I found that the game required more time to put into it than I actually had to give. But something about Dark Souls' open world and disturbing beauty drew me to it. In Dark Souls, the player's character is a nameless undead who wanders around landscape ripped straight from someone's darkest, depraved nightmare. Beginning at a place called the "Undead Asylum," the player journeys beyond the walls of his/her prison to fulfill some prophecy about something because some demons did bad stuff and it needs fixing, maybe. And that's about all you get, if you don't go to great lengths to find out the story, and it, like so many of the game's oddments, is, by design, withholding. I have no idea why my character must do what he does, and the game gives little to no direction (so much so that an internet community has grown up around trying to help newcomers and experts alike). The player must find his/her way through a demonic hellscape, and damn near everything out there is hunting for blood. It is this initial feeling of despair and unknowing that sets the tone for the game.

I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing /
Looking into the heart of light, the silence. --T.S. Eliot

The tone of utter hopelessness is not the only link the game has to the horror genre. Dark Souls offers a vast array of demonic creatures and terrifying bosses that leave the player literally shaking after a narrow victory. They attack with ground-shaking power, and they outmatch the player at every turn, if he/she is not careful. The game is not merely content with providing a borderline insurmountable challenge; the developers designed the character models to be visually revolting and intimidating. One look at the Gaping Dragon guarding the key to Blighttown is enough to turn the stomach of any seasoned player:

"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies
of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.
But I do not think my life will be long. " -- H.P. Lovecraft

The Gaping Dragon plays off the player's initial disgust at the creature as it emerges slowly from an abyss, and, while the player's shock at seeing the demon has not subsided, it advances on the player with devastating attacks, leaving the player helpless. It will kill you numerous times before you kill it. Another ungodly creature is the Butcher, a large masculine-looking creature, which the player finds out via an NPC is actually a female. She carries a giant cleaver--a Freudian symbol for castration if ever there were one--which she uses to hack and slash at the player, and a burlap sack obscures her face. This faceless giant is quite reminiscent of Silent Hill 2's Pyramid Head, largely believed to be the most horrific video game monster ever created (likely due to his own status as a metaphor for perverted masculinity). These two examples of the horrors the player elects to face when he/she boots up the game. Everything wants nothing more than to eviscerate the player in the most brutal fashion possible.

Though I have mostly compared Dark Souls to games in the survival-horror genre, Dark Souls is not a survival horror game. Its mechanics stem from a strict RPG tradition, so much so, in fact, that the game can easily alienate the unseasoned gamer--which is, of course one of the game's many goals. Casual gamers need not apply. The game is so alienating, in fact, that its multiplayer component (a complex system of entering others' game worlds for good or ill, cryptic messages, seeing ghostly apparitions of other players, and replaying the last moment's of another player's in-game by touching bloodstains left on the ground) is only hinted at through NPCs and item descriptions. Since player is almost always alone, seeing the specter of another player reminds the player that others share his/her fate--but they remain separated by some force that has sundered the world. The ultimate payoff is that the player must evaluate what it means to play with someone online. The connection online gameplay provides is only fleeting and superficial, but when strangers team up to take down an impressively difficult boss, the feeling of gratification is on par with beating an entire game. Players blink in and out of each others' worlds, and as well, each others' lives, inviting a metatextual pondering of existence and connection in a world of abject despair. Can we really know the people we play with? The game posits that we cannot, that they are just hollowed shells of people projected on a screen--bodies turned into ghosts by ones and zeroes. These interactions, nevertheless, are meaningful in that they help us traverse some virtual wasteland, and maybe that's all we can ever ask for in online interaction. The game offers a grim truth, beautiful in its bleak frankness.

"Those who have crossed / With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom /
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost / Violent souls, but only /
As the hollow men / The stuffed men." --T.S. Eliot

It is here in which the true horror of Dark Souls stirs, opens it jaws, and howls.  Whereas most horror games choose to keep the elements of horror within the game itself, Dark Souls dares to reach out and infect the player's psyche.  In her review of Dark Souls, Keza MacDonald writes, "It appears to be FROM's mission to send you into harrowing spirals of despondency and self-pity at every opportunity," acknowledging that game is designed to infect and twist the player's psyche.  Should one choose to play the game, he/she will inevitably ask the question, "Why the bleeding hell do I keep playing?"  And then it strikes.  The player no longer plays because it's enjoyable; he/she plays because success after repeated failure is an addiction.  Gaming becomes compulsion, not unlike gambling, except the player constantly bets hours instead of chips.  The player willingly undergoes the constant threat of failure in a world where respite is a luxury not afforded when it is often most needed.  Danger lurks not only around every corner but also long after the system is powered down, as the player constantly wonders about better strategies to get past that one boss that seems impossible.  Losing thousands of souls due to a misstep or an unknown ambush is certainly cause for despair and anger, but the persistent player continues to fight, using each failure as a teaching tool.  Death and punishment serves as the game's central pedagogy, turning the player into a student.  The game actively trains you to rethink what it is to die in a virtual space.  Through some perverse game coded witchcraft, the developers turn failure into progress, an uncomfortable inversion of what we assume video games should do.

The horror influences in From Software's Dark Souls are clear in creature design and Gothic architecture, but it is the horrific nature of punishing gameplay that pushes the bounds of what video game horror can be.  A novel or film can linger in the reader/viewer's mind, but only in games can the player actively participate in his/her own waking nightmare.  As I make my way through the dilapidated hellscape of Dark Souls, I can't help but be reminded of the poet T.S. Eliot's poems The Waste Land and The Hollow Men (both from which I have quoted in the picture captions above) which are both known for their beautiful bleakness.  The same could be said of From Software's Dark Souls (as well as its predecessor, Demon's Souls), as the game design is both elegant and horrifying.  It's a journey into a Nietzschean abyss that doesn't just stare back.  It rends the player with claw and fang and leaves him/her with questions as to why he/she continues to play while spurring the player downward into a world of unspeakable horror, only claw back out again.

Cheers,

--David

Video Games and the Legacy of Genre Fiction

When most people think of the word "literature," their minds conjure up images of Shakespearean tragedy, of epic poetry, of large books about white whales and national revolutions, of the Romantics (Byron, Shelley), of the Victorians (Dickens, Eliot), and of modernists (Joyce, Hemingway, Woolf). Unfortunately, most also think of crippling boredom and tweed-clad professor types who talk ad nauseum about the cultural importance of these works and writers in front a group of people who would rather be somewhere else. I've been on all sides of the classroom--a rapt listener, an exhausted teacher, a bored student. This post, however, is not about the canon or instruction of English or American literature. Hell, it's not even about literature (that part is for context), but rather a discussion of genre and how it fits in with current video game trends.

Just as great artists like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were writing great works that would greatly influence and define early 20th century art, other writers churned out books as quickly as they could, forsaking linguistic complexity in favor of fast-paced plots, cheap laughs, or easy thrills. This tradition is called "genre writing," and it was often viewed as vulgar and amateurish by the high art literati--but it sold. The genres of mystery, adventure, vaudeville comedy, horror/gothic, and science fiction (still in its infancy) became established, and with them, so did the rules that governed each genre. For adventure, a group of men needed to explore a remote corner of the world, meet the natives, and reify the importance of civilization. In mysteries, the detective investigates his case with mathematical precision and dizzying intellect. A horror story worthy of H.P. Lovecraft needs a blend of psychological terror and supernatural influence. Genre fiction is comfortable, predictable, safe, and, above all else, profitable.

The influence of these generic formulas in the video game scene is more than evident. Gamers no exactly what they're getting into when they pre-order a science fiction, war epic, fantasy, adventure, or horror game. It's a brilliant marketing tool, and it's always effective. Just take a look at a few games' cover art juxtaposed with covers of novels from the same genre:

Adventure

Uncharted 3 cover art (2011)

One More Step, Mr. Hands from a 1911 edition of Stevenson's Treasure Island

Both Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Naught Dog's Uncharted 3 fit nicely into the adventure genre. Each involves a cast of rogues outside of their own countries and cultures, a fair bit a violence, and, of course treasure. The images, then, are noticeably similar, giving the consumer a quick look at the product. We can easily tell that these will contain the tropes of adventure fiction--violence, action, set pieces, etc--as well as key plot points (a plane crash and an encounter on the ship).

Horror

Resident Evil 2 American cover art (1998)

Stoker's Dracula book cover (1902)

Here, both covers achieve more in atmosphere than they do in plot--a hallmark of the horror genre. The character on the front of the book cover (presumably the titular count) evokes a threatening, and intensely gothic, feel. The same could be said of the game cover, though a bit more modernized: the source of fear looks directly at the viewer, intensifying the threat of danger. We know what we're getting into when we buy either of these products.

Mystery

Heavy Rain cover art (2010)

Dorothy Sayers' Clouds of Witness (1926)

I find this pair to be the most interesting of the three. Both contain an object in close proximity to blood. We know these objects will be of great importance to the overall plot, but what that connection is remains...well, a mystery. Mysteries and whodunits often involve a single item wanted by multiple people that is the central cause of the conflict--this object is often referred to as a MacGuffin. (Note: They're also called "plot coupons" by people who look down on formulaic writing) Here, the MacGuffins appear to be the focal points of the artworks, letting the viewer know that the plots revolve heavily around these objects.

Obviously these three examples do not entirely encapsulate all of gaming and genre fiction traditions into a set of rigid instructions. Indeed, one of the most interesting facets of genre writings is not how each work fits into its generic category, but rather how they deviate from the established paradigms. Even some of the most widely respected novelists of the 20th century worked within such paradigms to test their own experimental writings. Joyce's Ulysses, for example, is well known for (among other things) transforming one day in the mundane life of an Irishman into an exploration of language and literature worthy of an epic poem, while simultaneously interrogating the division between "high" and "low" art styles.

Also, that same Irishman masturbates in an episode
written in the style of contemporary woman's magazine.
Literature, folks.

I posit that video games often function in very much the same manner. A "good" video game challenges the constraints of its genre. Uncharted 3 addresses Nathan Drake's compulsion to complete his adventure even if it means the death of his partner, Sully. Resident Evil 2 asks the player to subject him/herself to the horrors of the game universe by employing controls that limit the onscreen character's mobility. Heavy Rain affords the player the opportunity to not follow Ethan Mars through the physical and psychological torments of the Origami Killer. These games play with genre convention in ways offer interpretive insight into the inner workings of gameplay and narrative.

My goal is a series of posts that discusses games (hopefully with help from fellow IGN community members) about how games employ and challenge the paradigms of their respective genres. Complicating the matter, however, is the fact that gaming culture has invented its own system of classification, lumping games into categories of first-person shooter, role-playing game, survival-horror, third-person shooter, dungeon crawler, sports simulator, fighting, etc. Looking at games from the perspective of generic convention reveals how they--just like novels, films, dramas, and poetry--toy with such restraints, often testing the limits established archetypes. Video games have become one of the most culturally important avenues of interrogation of contemporary values, and writing about their connections to genre fiction can make more evident the importance of adhering to and breaking from paradigms. I hope you check back soon to read about and discuss this topic.

Cheers,

--David