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Why was Tim Burton so content on making Jack Napier responsible for the murder of Bruce's parents?
posted by Mrs.peacockSTAFFMOD on November 24, 2018 at 8:47 PM
I'm not going to go into the fanboy purist perspective of how Joe Chill was really responsible for Thomas and Martha Wayne's deaths. I get that Burton was trying to get across the whole "we created each other" dynamic between Batman and Joker, thus making their feud more personal. But at the end of the day, one of the driving motivations behind Batman’s mindset was the fact that his parents’ killer would never be brought to justice. Plus, having him bring the killer to justice would fundamentally change who he is (you could even argue that Bruce would go so far as to stop being Batman). We already know that Joker is the bad guy and we want Batman to stop him, so we shouldn't have to deal with all of this extra baggage being heaped upon us to cemented that point.
Reply by A-Dubya
on November 24, 2018 at 9:15 PM
Yeah, I agree with you. If Batman stopped the person who murdered his parents, he really would have no motivator to continue his crusade, I suppose. I can see that, and especially by technically killing The Joker in the first Burton film (which is not really a Batman trait).
I can only surmise that these liberties were taken by Tim Burton just to do his own thing. A good number of people probably were introduced to Batman via this film. It wasn't the campy Adam West version, and it tried to be more dark in tone, yet doesn't follow the source material totally at times. They have the opening credit that says something like 'based on characters in DC magazines'.
It's the same story in Batman Returns, where Catwoman wasn't a thief/burglar, but just some meek secretary who got possessed by cats after she died, and gained supernatural extra lives. Penguin wasn't a crime boss, but just some perverted freak trying to be mayor and kill all the first born children of Gotham, on some Old Testament Moses s***!
Now that is not to say that I didn't enjoy both of the Burton films immensely, but I just view them as alternate retellings, much like the Arkham video games, Batman: The Telltale Series, or the Gotham By Gaslight movie. They aren't 100% honest to the origin of Batman. They just are their own entities.
Reply by Mrs.peacock
on November 24, 2018 at 11:11 PM
Batman doesn't fight crime just because he can't bring his parents' killer to justice, that would be a pretty selfish reason for being Batman. The fact is, even bringing his parent's killer to justice doesn't change the fact that his parents are dead, and it doesn't change the fact that Gotham is still a screwed up city even without the killer of his parents walking the streets and that if he stands by and does nothing, other people would suffer the pain and injustice that he and his parents suffered. Bruce may have been inspired to become Batman by the loss of his parents, but what keeps him going is he hates all crime, not just the crime that personally affects him.