Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Trope Talk: Realism" video.

  1. Batman and Joker aren't the same. They aren't even opposites. The Joker is chaos. Order is... Commissioner Gordon. And Batman is the dynamic force that mediates between them.
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  2.  @nikajika4635  There's a multitude of "broken men", each with his own story. A few of them are profound, most of them are just dismal. The reason Joker and Batman have achieved the place in our legends they have, is they're archetypes. Tropes, if you prefer. =)
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  3.  @nikajika4635  Joker moves on all the time. He's so moved on from whatever situation made him the way he is, that it's not clear (or even all that important) what that situation even was. He's chaos, without a past, destroying institutions and causing pain just because he feels like it, always moving on from one episode to another. He constantly causes trouble, with a new scheme or gang all the time which he abandons or betrays for the least of his selfish whims, or for no reason whatever. Hey, at least he's "true to himself", right? Has Batman moved on, at all? Isn't his primary motivation to make sure no one else suffers what he suffered? He has at least one foot firmly planted in the past. He's obsessed enough with that past to dress up like a bat for a hobby and devote his life to Gotham's crime problem. No... "moving on" is so far from the lesson of that story, I have to wonder where you pulled that in from. Could you clarify that? Something preoccupying you from personal experience, maybe? I'm not sure "rebuilding" is a theme either. Batman is doing his best to keep the chaos at bay, but there isn't really anything in those stories to point to Batman (or Bruce Wayne, who certainly has the resources) rebuilding anything. Could you also clarify where you got that from? The scars and the tragedy run deep. What Bruce Wayne could have been, what he could have built, if the foundation of his family hadn't been senselessly shattered, isn't even addressed. A hilarious aside... when Val Kilmer's Batman hooked up with a psychiatrist, audiences hated it. I figure if she looks like Nicole Kidman they should give him a break, but audiences know what does and doesn't resonate, in a story. Seeing a shrink won't work, for Batman. Returning Gotham into the sort of smoothly-functioning city that old Commissioner Gordon represents, finally undoing Joker and the rest of the Rogue's Gallery, returning Justice and Order, is how that story is supposed to wrap up. At least, if Batman gets a happy ending. There isn't much in the way of setup, for that kind of payoff. I'm not sure it's that kind of story.
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