This article contains SPOILERS for ‘The Batman.’ If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you’re curious about it, go read our spoiler-free review. Otherwise, get out of here.
Hey! We’re serious…
***
Batman’s got a Joker problem. No, I don’t mean that he has a “Joker problem” in the sense that the Clown Prince of Crime is pulling boners or killing his sidekicks or whatever, but rather that every piece of media related to this particular superhero is almost wholly defined by the presence of his most iconic supervillain. Sure, most characters have a primary archnemesis — the X-Men have Magneto, Superman has Lex Luthor, etc. — but their rogues’ galleries are oftentimes stacked with weird and wild characters ready to give them hell at a moment’s notice. It’s somewhat understandable that this is the case: With the exception of the Man of Steel, Batman’s by far the superhero with the longest-lived cinematic presence. He’s been headlining matinees since the ’40s, and has more distinct iconographic style eras than almost any other major franchise, so it makes sense that his ur-antagonist would lurk in the background as a harbinger of bad shit yet to come for our lead.
But, like many of the responses I’ve seen in the past few days, I’m sick to fucking death of him popping up somewhere in the middle of another adventure to either tease further installments of a franchise or, god forbid, hijack the narrative entirely and become the primary antagonist. It was bad enough that every high school junior spent the ’10s dressing up as Heath Ledger’s version of the character in an attempt to latch on to his sense of anarchic abandon for a night slamming beers at their boy Brody’s house but, by the time Rocksteady’s Arkham Knight hit consoles in 2015, it felt like things hit a tipping point. See, folks like myself were psyched to have a Joker-free narrative where we could interact with Batman’s colorful cast of villains, most of whom were previously neglected to side missions and mostly minimal narrative involvement thanks to the presence of Mark Hamill’s (second) iteration of the character being the primary antagonist for the first three games. And, of course, once you got through with the first third of the game, our boy showed up and basically wrecked the experience, transforming the narrative into yet another mind-fuck brought about by the tWiStEd jester.
Since then, in practically every bit of media involving Batman, the Joker’s been a key presence or at least healthily teased. Batman v. Superman featured a graffitied Robin suit displayed in the Batcave in the basement of Ben Affleck’s equivalent of the Playboy Mansion, implying that Jared Leto’s methed-out take on the character who would later debut in Suicide Squad (where Affleck would cameo) had murdered his sidekick. Thanks to pandemic-era reshoots, he popped up for a few minutes in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and his vibe, for which ICP should file a copyright infringement suit, can still be felt everywhere when Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn appears in, say, Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Then there’s the matter of Todd Phillips’ Joker, which is a discourse that should be avoided in practically any situation if one values their sanity. From critics wetting their pants over incel-driven domestic terrorism should they shell out the $20 to see it in 70mm at their local arthouse, complaining all the way that they’re even showing a first-run superhero feature there in the first place, to over-eager fans thinking it’s the greatest cinematic achievement since Avengers: Endgame (what can I say, their mindsets operate on a pretty short time frame), enough ink, with tasting notes of “stupid,” “hyperbolic,” and “exhausting,” has been spilled and consumed in equal measure. But it is notable that the character had as many solo features as his bat-eared counterpart in the last decade, clocking in at one each.
A quick comparison, for contrast’s sake: Spider-Man, who had five features hit in the same time frame (jesus christ). He, like Batman, has a diverse and compelling team of foes worth fielding but also has a single “iconic” antagonist in the minds of comic book fans: The Green Goblin. Outside of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, where Chris Cooper played an elderly version of the character and whose son, played by Dane Dehaan, took up the mantle briefly near the end of that film, the Brillo-headed Norman Osborn took a backseat to the likes of the Lizard, Electro, Vulture, Kingpin and Mysterio. It may not be the kind of cinematic diversity that anybody is hoping for their cinematic media diet, but it is, at least, kind of varied, like switching up your chocolate-only diet for a Payday every now and then. Hell, even both of the video games featuring Spider-Men didn’t even feature Osborn-in-suit. You can do the same with nearly every other superhero franchise, and though I normally lament the idea of killing off your villains at the end of a narrative, one would be hard-pressed not to suggest that Marvel was on to something, at least when it came to ensuring variety in the make-up of their ensembles.
All of this is a very long way to say that I totally understand where you’re coming from if you, upon seeing Barry Keohghan’s take on the character sitting in the cell next to Paul Dano’s Riddler at the conclusion of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, pulled a Kel in the theater as you walked out. That’s exactly how I felt, and it was something that Warners themselves weren’t totally sure about: I’ve heard plenty of rumors over the last few months that the studio was testing two versions of the film, one with that scene and one without. It seems, on the surface, to break with the style that Reeves established, an overt showing of one’s hand when it comes to the overarching direction of the narrative where the whole film sort of lives and dies on inferred references that aren’t bolded and underlined in that standardized way that you see in the MCU or in other DC films angling to set up multimedia franchises that will last. For instance, I’ve heard that plenty of folks just assumed that vial of green liquid that Batman pulls out of his belt and injects into himself to save Catwoman from a Riddler goon during the film’s finale is just adrenaline, which is a testament to Reeves’ restraint: It’s fucking venom, which is the substance that makes Bane hulk out and, in addition, was at the center of a whole storyline that saw Bats get addicted to the stuff. In other media, there would be a full-on additional tease of either of those storylines, but here’s just lightly applied, something for the nerds to geek out over and speculate without really interrupting the entire flow of the film. One can live without that knowledge and still enjoy the movie.
Now, we can disagree on the character’s styling or the writing of the scene itself or whether or not Keohghan will be a factor in any of these films going forward (in interviews, Reeves has been non-commital about that and has said he’d prefer to just do a sequel with Mr. Freeze as an antagonist), but I thought I’d offer my perspective on why this cut prevailed over the other, one that tries to see it as just a little more than a pure shot of dopamine to the brains of both devoted nerds and Hot Topic goths with Rick and Morty shirts and faux-JNCOs. In fact, I think the film would be incomplete without it.
Let’s recap where exactly our characters are at that point in the narrative: Robert Pattinson’s Batman has discovered that his fear-and-intimidation theory of heroism isn’t enough to save the city he cares about and, worse, his actions have directly inspired folks like Ed Nashton and his followers, one of whom even goes to say that he’s “vengeance” directly to Gordon and Batman as they’re looking at his smashed face atop the rafters in Gotham Square Garden. It’s after this moment that he decides that, instead of simply throwing himself suicidally into fights and investigations for some elusive absolution, helping people might be the way forward. After helping the mayor-elect and a coterie of political dignitaries escape from flooded rubble (including the son of the former mayor murdered in the opening by Riddler), he’s seen helping first responders in evacuating folks from the top of the dome in an echo of footage from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it’s also one of the first times we see the character in the daylight, bathed in the glow of a new dawn, caked in mud and grime, but endowed with a new sense of purpose.
At the other end of the spectrum, Nashton’s in Arkham, watching footage from behind bars on a guard’s TV of his former hero help the very people that he was supposed to join he, the Riddler, in killing and maiming for all the pain that he was put through as an orphan. The entire film is defined by a sense of parallelism between protagonist and antagonist, which is never exactly stated out right in an obvious “We’re the same, you and I” fashion: rather, it’s implied. The De Palma-style spying that Nashton does in the opening is echoed later on when Batman surveils Catwoman’s apartment, they record their thoughts in journals ala Paul Schrader protagonists (and from what we hear from Riddler’s, the development of his ethos is eerily similar to the “Yes, father, I will become a Bat” bit from Year One) and, what’s more, the city’s power structures were the cause of their childhood trauma. Nashton’s time in an awful orphanage was directly caused by corruption, with organized crime and compromised politicians pilfering the Renewal Fund, which Thomas Wayne set up before he was killed to try and make things just a little less terrible for the less fortunate. Bruce, meanwhile, became an orphan after his parents were killed by organized crime figures who wanted leverage over a mayoral candidate like Wayne and all the favors that would come with and were surprised by the fact that the guy would be potentially honest and head to the cops after a “favor” became a murder. Hence, Nashton’s confusion with regards to Batman’s motives: given the entanglement of crime and politics in Gotham, one man’s crimefighter looks like another’s political vigilante.
Nashton is, at his core, a follower, full of the kind of rage-fueled narcissism that only a certain amount of righteous ignidation can provide. It’s also important to note that the narrative only fully disagrees with Riddler’s motivations when he begins including innocents in his targets: there’s a certain amount of “Well, these corrupt assholes got what was coming to them” naturally built in. Bruce is somewhat the same, but he’s a leader, and has the ability to change his mind when he’s wrong, to doubt the efficacy of his mission or the methods that he goes about trying to affect this change. They also have different views of their mission in the macro sense: Bruce sees the world in terms of innocents and perpetrators, where folks are assumed decent until proven otherwise, and has a real sense of justice, whereas Nashton sees only himself and those aligned with his goals, mostly his goons and Batman, specifically as The Chosen, of which he is a quasi-messianic figure to. Unlike Travis Bickle, he has the means to see real waters sweep across the streets of his city and an inability to care about the horrors that it will unleash on those just like him for months to come while the rich and powerful avoid it all, and he’s not willing to put himself on the line in the same way that Bickle did: he is, at his core, a coward, striking his victims by surprise and maneuvering so that he can watch the chaos from an island away while his followers do the grunt work of actually murdering innocents.
So when he’s looking out of his cell at this, it’s basically pure ego death: not only has his plan not worked out how it intended (much like Bruce’s), but it’s fundamentally altered his relationship with his idol, who is now torchbearer for a resurgeant Gotham as literally implied in that now-iconic overhead shot. He’s wailing and crying, with good reason: He’s lost, consequences are coming (and he’s behind bars), he doesn’t have the luxury of being a martyr, and worse, he’s been betrayed. So when a smooth voice offers comfort and the suggestion of friendship — through a riddle, for God’s sake — Nashton’s frown turns upside down. If Bruce is ascendant and resilient (if not triumphant here), Riddler has encountered the Sweet Tooth-like visage of pure anarchic evil (and depending on whether or not you take Killing Joke as a canonical text or not, a similarly greviance-based nihilism) and decided to submit to it, substituting one failed hero for another with whom he can believes he can trust. It’s the first seemingly genuine kindness he’s received in eons, as well, outside of his digital entanglements with his followers, and that has to mean something to him as well. His newfound friend and him share a laugh, before we leave them for good, with one wondering what might be behind it: Nashton’s joy at newfound submission and connection, and if the man who he laughs with is doing so with him or at his expense.
Again, as you probably can tell from all that shit above, I don’t think this was ever intended to be a post-credits treat for Batman fans, unlike how the finale of Captain America: The First Avenger was retroactively reinserted at the conclusion of that film because it provided a satisfactory conclusion that recognized the human element of the character despite his extraordinary circumstances, which was, after all, the whole damn point of the movie. Nor do I think it’s market-driven corporate cynicism, where Warners demanded that the Joker be present or they wouldn’t let Reeves make the movie, given that they seemed willing to see if it would work in context. In other words, it’s Riddler’s most satisfying ending, where he becomes a victim of his own form of manipulation. Could this have probably been done without the Joker? Sure, but I can’t think of a villain in Batman’s roster that could have the same (implied) effect. Hell, for my money, this is probably the best on-screen representation of him that one could hope for right now: Lurking in the shadows, taking advantage of dumb criminals for his own ends. That’s a pretty good joke.
Let’s talk about that scene at the end of ‘The Batman’
This article contains SPOILERS for ‘The Batman.’ If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you’re curious about it, go read our spoiler-free review. Otherwise, get out of here.
Hey! We’re serious…
***
Batman’s got a Joker problem. No, I don’t mean that he has a “Joker problem” in the sense that the Clown Prince of Crime is pulling boners or killing his sidekicks or whatever, but rather that every piece of media related to this particular superhero is almost wholly defined by the presence of his most iconic supervillain. Sure, most characters have a primary archnemesis — the X-Men have Magneto, Superman has Lex Luthor, etc. — but their rogues’ galleries are oftentimes stacked with weird and wild characters ready to give them hell at a moment’s notice. It’s somewhat understandable that this is the case: With the exception of the Man of Steel, Batman’s by far the superhero with the longest-lived cinematic presence. He’s been headlining matinees since the ’40s, and has more distinct iconographic style eras than almost any other major franchise, so it makes sense that his ur-antagonist would lurk in the background as a harbinger of bad shit yet to come for our lead.
But, like many of the responses I’ve seen in the past few days, I’m sick to fucking death of him popping up somewhere in the middle of another adventure to either tease further installments of a franchise or, god forbid, hijack the narrative entirely and become the primary antagonist. It was bad enough that every high school junior spent the ’10s dressing up as Heath Ledger’s version of the character in an attempt to latch on to his sense of anarchic abandon for a night slamming beers at their boy Brody’s house but, by the time Rocksteady’s Arkham Knight hit consoles in 2015, it felt like things hit a tipping point. See, folks like myself were psyched to have a Joker-free narrative where we could interact with Batman’s colorful cast of villains, most of whom were previously neglected to side missions and mostly minimal narrative involvement thanks to the presence of Mark Hamill’s (second) iteration of the character being the primary antagonist for the first three games. And, of course, once you got through with the first third of the game, our boy showed up and basically wrecked the experience, transforming the narrative into yet another mind-fuck brought about by the tWiStEd jester.
Since then, in practically every bit of media involving Batman, the Joker’s been a key presence or at least healthily teased. Batman v. Superman featured a graffitied Robin suit displayed in the Batcave in the basement of Ben Affleck’s equivalent of the Playboy Mansion, implying that Jared Leto’s methed-out take on the character who would later debut in Suicide Squad (where Affleck would cameo) had murdered his sidekick. Thanks to pandemic-era reshoots, he popped up for a few minutes in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and his vibe, for which ICP should file a copyright infringement suit, can still be felt everywhere when Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn appears in, say, Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Then there’s the matter of Todd Phillips’ Joker, which is a discourse that should be avoided in practically any situation if one values their sanity. From critics wetting their pants over incel-driven domestic terrorism should they shell out the $20 to see it in 70mm at their local arthouse, complaining all the way that they’re even showing a first-run superhero feature there in the first place, to over-eager fans thinking it’s the greatest cinematic achievement since Avengers: Endgame (what can I say, their mindsets operate on a pretty short time frame), enough ink, with tasting notes of “stupid,” “hyperbolic,” and “exhausting,” has been spilled and consumed in equal measure. But it is notable that the character had as many solo features as his bat-eared counterpart in the last decade, clocking in at one each.
A quick comparison, for contrast’s sake: Spider-Man, who had five features hit in the same time frame (jesus christ). He, like Batman, has a diverse and compelling team of foes worth fielding but also has a single “iconic” antagonist in the minds of comic book fans: The Green Goblin. Outside of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, where Chris Cooper played an elderly version of the character and whose son, played by Dane Dehaan, took up the mantle briefly near the end of that film, the Brillo-headed Norman Osborn took a backseat to the likes of the Lizard, Electro, Vulture, Kingpin and Mysterio. It may not be the kind of cinematic diversity that anybody is hoping for their cinematic media diet, but it is, at least, kind of varied, like switching up your chocolate-only diet for a Payday every now and then. Hell, even both of the video games featuring Spider-Men didn’t even feature Osborn-in-suit. You can do the same with nearly every other superhero franchise, and though I normally lament the idea of killing off your villains at the end of a narrative, one would be hard-pressed not to suggest that Marvel was on to something, at least when it came to ensuring variety in the make-up of their ensembles.
All of this is a very long way to say that I totally understand where you’re coming from if you, upon seeing Barry Keohghan’s take on the character sitting in the cell next to Paul Dano’s Riddler at the conclusion of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, pulled a Kel in the theater as you walked out. That’s exactly how I felt, and it was something that Warners themselves weren’t totally sure about: I’ve heard plenty of rumors over the last few months that the studio was testing two versions of the film, one with that scene and one without. It seems, on the surface, to break with the style that Reeves established, an overt showing of one’s hand when it comes to the overarching direction of the narrative where the whole film sort of lives and dies on inferred references that aren’t bolded and underlined in that standardized way that you see in the MCU or in other DC films angling to set up multimedia franchises that will last. For instance, I’ve heard that plenty of folks just assumed that vial of green liquid that Batman pulls out of his belt and injects into himself to save Catwoman from a Riddler goon during the film’s finale is just adrenaline, which is a testament to Reeves’ restraint: It’s fucking venom, which is the substance that makes Bane hulk out and, in addition, was at the center of a whole storyline that saw Bats get addicted to the stuff. In other media, there would be a full-on additional tease of either of those storylines, but here’s just lightly applied, something for the nerds to geek out over and speculate without really interrupting the entire flow of the film. One can live without that knowledge and still enjoy the movie.
Now, we can disagree on the character’s styling or the writing of the scene itself or whether or not Keohghan will be a factor in any of these films going forward (in interviews, Reeves has been non-commital about that and has said he’d prefer to just do a sequel with Mr. Freeze as an antagonist), but I thought I’d offer my perspective on why this cut prevailed over the other, one that tries to see it as just a little more than a pure shot of dopamine to the brains of both devoted nerds and Hot Topic goths with Rick and Morty shirts and faux-JNCOs. In fact, I think the film would be incomplete without it.
Let’s recap where exactly our characters are at that point in the narrative: Robert Pattinson’s Batman has discovered that his fear-and-intimidation theory of heroism isn’t enough to save the city he cares about and, worse, his actions have directly inspired folks like Ed Nashton and his followers, one of whom even goes to say that he’s “vengeance” directly to Gordon and Batman as they’re looking at his smashed face atop the rafters in Gotham Square Garden. It’s after this moment that he decides that, instead of simply throwing himself suicidally into fights and investigations for some elusive absolution, helping people might be the way forward. After helping the mayor-elect and a coterie of political dignitaries escape from flooded rubble (including the son of the former mayor murdered in the opening by Riddler), he’s seen helping first responders in evacuating folks from the top of the dome in an echo of footage from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it’s also one of the first times we see the character in the daylight, bathed in the glow of a new dawn, caked in mud and grime, but endowed with a new sense of purpose.
At the other end of the spectrum, Nashton’s in Arkham, watching footage from behind bars on a guard’s TV of his former hero help the very people that he was supposed to join he, the Riddler, in killing and maiming for all the pain that he was put through as an orphan. The entire film is defined by a sense of parallelism between protagonist and antagonist, which is never exactly stated out right in an obvious “We’re the same, you and I” fashion: rather, it’s implied. The De Palma-style spying that Nashton does in the opening is echoed later on when Batman surveils Catwoman’s apartment, they record their thoughts in journals ala Paul Schrader protagonists (and from what we hear from Riddler’s, the development of his ethos is eerily similar to the “Yes, father, I will become a Bat” bit from Year One) and, what’s more, the city’s power structures were the cause of their childhood trauma. Nashton’s time in an awful orphanage was directly caused by corruption, with organized crime and compromised politicians pilfering the Renewal Fund, which Thomas Wayne set up before he was killed to try and make things just a little less terrible for the less fortunate. Bruce, meanwhile, became an orphan after his parents were killed by organized crime figures who wanted leverage over a mayoral candidate like Wayne and all the favors that would come with and were surprised by the fact that the guy would be potentially honest and head to the cops after a “favor” became a murder. Hence, Nashton’s confusion with regards to Batman’s motives: given the entanglement of crime and politics in Gotham, one man’s crimefighter looks like another’s political vigilante.
Nashton is, at his core, a follower, full of the kind of rage-fueled narcissism that only a certain amount of righteous ignidation can provide. It’s also important to note that the narrative only fully disagrees with Riddler’s motivations when he begins including innocents in his targets: there’s a certain amount of “Well, these corrupt assholes got what was coming to them” naturally built in. Bruce is somewhat the same, but he’s a leader, and has the ability to change his mind when he’s wrong, to doubt the efficacy of his mission or the methods that he goes about trying to affect this change. They also have different views of their mission in the macro sense: Bruce sees the world in terms of innocents and perpetrators, where folks are assumed decent until proven otherwise, and has a real sense of justice, whereas Nashton sees only himself and those aligned with his goals, mostly his goons and Batman, specifically as The Chosen, of which he is a quasi-messianic figure to. Unlike Travis Bickle, he has the means to see real waters sweep across the streets of his city and an inability to care about the horrors that it will unleash on those just like him for months to come while the rich and powerful avoid it all, and he’s not willing to put himself on the line in the same way that Bickle did: he is, at his core, a coward, striking his victims by surprise and maneuvering so that he can watch the chaos from an island away while his followers do the grunt work of actually murdering innocents.
So when he’s looking out of his cell at this, it’s basically pure ego death: not only has his plan not worked out how it intended (much like Bruce’s), but it’s fundamentally altered his relationship with his idol, who is now torchbearer for a resurgeant Gotham as literally implied in that now-iconic overhead shot. He’s wailing and crying, with good reason: He’s lost, consequences are coming (and he’s behind bars), he doesn’t have the luxury of being a martyr, and worse, he’s been betrayed. So when a smooth voice offers comfort and the suggestion of friendship — through a riddle, for God’s sake — Nashton’s frown turns upside down. If Bruce is ascendant and resilient (if not triumphant here), Riddler has encountered the Sweet Tooth-like visage of pure anarchic evil (and depending on whether or not you take Killing Joke as a canonical text or not, a similarly greviance-based nihilism) and decided to submit to it, substituting one failed hero for another with whom he can believes he can trust. It’s the first seemingly genuine kindness he’s received in eons, as well, outside of his digital entanglements with his followers, and that has to mean something to him as well. His newfound friend and him share a laugh, before we leave them for good, with one wondering what might be behind it: Nashton’s joy at newfound submission and connection, and if the man who he laughs with is doing so with him or at his expense.
Again, as you probably can tell from all that shit above, I don’t think this was ever intended to be a post-credits treat for Batman fans, unlike how the finale of Captain America: The First Avenger was retroactively reinserted at the conclusion of that film because it provided a satisfactory conclusion that recognized the human element of the character despite his extraordinary circumstances, which was, after all, the whole damn point of the movie. Nor do I think it’s market-driven corporate cynicism, where Warners demanded that the Joker be present or they wouldn’t let Reeves make the movie, given that they seemed willing to see if it would work in context. In other words, it’s Riddler’s most satisfying ending, where he becomes a victim of his own form of manipulation. Could this have probably been done without the Joker? Sure, but I can’t think of a villain in Batman’s roster that could have the same (implied) effect. Hell, for my money, this is probably the best on-screen representation of him that one could hope for right now: Lurking in the shadows, taking advantage of dumb criminals for his own ends. That’s a pretty good joke.