I’ve played all of Arkham Asylum, am halfway through Arkham City(less than half, if you’re also counting the challenge maps and those batdamned Riddler trophies), and have gotten through one evening’s worth of Arkham Knight on a friend’s PS4. The last, however brief, is particularly memorable for how bad I was at it. I’m never going to forget trying to chase down some henchmen in the Batmobile, my clumsy fingers smashing it through building after building, in a desperate attempt to catch up. As I tore Gotham’s buildings down more effectively than any supervillain could dare hope to, out of breath with laughter, my friend turned to me and said “You’re Batmanning wrong.”
Which was true enough, but in its own way, Rocksteady Batmanned wrong, too.
I’m going to be focusing on Arkham City, though Batman appears to be characterized pretty consistently across all games. Also, let’s get one thing straight – I definitely enjoyed playing the Arkham games. They’re mechanically sound. The fighting is beautiful, I can almost feel every punch land when I’ve got a good rhythm going. I love the atmosphere, and the way the game has the environment do at least half of the storytelling work, taking advantage of the gaming medium. There is a thrill to finding its hundreds of secrets, a thrill that’s double when it’s an obscure comic book reference, I live for obscure comic book references. Despite about a dozen clumsy deaths from my lack of stealth abilities, I’ve even come to love having to clear an area of heavily armed thugs through stealth and strategy alone – I can’t think of a single other game that has forced me to be patient and then made me enjoy it(lookin’ at you, Stardew Valley. When I want fish, I want them now). The only real problem I have with the games is, well, Batman himself.
Like his Marvel popularity-counterpart, Wolverine, Batman has worked so well over the decades because of his versatility. You can drop him into any kind of story you like. He’s a detective, master tactician, gritty streetfighter, the One Guy who can stop Superman, the stalwart loner, the father with a heart of gold. There are a lot of aspects to the character, something for everyone to love.
The Arkham games pluck out one of those aspects, and ramp it up to eleven, delving into a degree hypermasculinity not seen since the 90s. There is no nuance to this Batman. No texture, no style. There’s toughness, layered upon toughness, all hiding a heart that is, in this Batman’s most private moments, really, really tough. He is intimidation, and badassery, and honestly? Not very smart. He’s an action hero with all his story and flavour leeched out of him.
The Batman of the Arkham games (I’m going to go ahead and call him ArkhBat – I’m believe “Arkham Knight” is already taken) doesn’t seem all that interested in defending the innocent. Or even in justice. What seems most intent on, more than anything else, is intimidation. In a world with obsessive maniacs slavishly dedicated to a theme, he seems to want to be the maniac in charge. He seeks less to protect Gotham and more to need to have every little aspect of it firmly under his control. He is no hero. He’s the bullying prison warden you’d ordinarily despise in every prison movie you ever saw.
The most egregious example has to be the boss battle with Mr. Freeze. Mr. Freeze knows what’s up – he’s aware that ArkhBat is probably not going to help fine Freeze’s wife unless Freeze resorts to blackmail.
Alright, I’m being a little unfair – ArkhBat agrees to help Freeze – but knot before beating the man into submission so Freeze knows who’s boss. There is no reason for the fight to happen at all – ArkhBat was always going to help Freeze out here. It seems like the only thing ArkhBat has a problem with is being in a situation where someone else holds the power.
Freeze has his doubts, of course, when an agreement is reached, but ArkhBat assures him that he’s a masked man of his word. The statement rings a little hypocritical when the mission just before Freeze’s involved ArkhBat deceiving the woman who calls him “beloved.” It’s not just any lie, either – ArkhBat tells her he’s ready to take his place on the League of Assassins. This is a dream come true for Talia. It’s been the one thing keeping her and Bruce from being with each other. ArkhBat uses this former relationship to manipulate her into helping him, which is a pretty jerk move even by his standards.
Poor Talia. First betrayed by her lover, then her own father, who holds a sword to her throat to goad Batman into killing him. One of my favourite moments of the game is where Talia walks right out of the room, telling Ra’s and ArkhBat “You deserve each other.” The fact that ArkhBat barely blinks before turning around to intimidate Ra’s some more says pretty much everything you need to know about the Bat’s unhealthy relationship with his villains.
While we’re still focused on that part of the game, there’s one more thing I want to draw attention to. There’s a moment when Talia tells ArkhBat that when he begins his trials, he’ll be completely on his own.
“Like always”he says, with all the stoic pathos a Bat can muster.
He seems to have forgotten that about five minutes earlier, dying from the Joker’s tainted blood, he had Barbara Gordon talking to him through his cowl, getting back to his feet. While Batman is flying around Arkham City, she is on the clock, full time, keeping an eye on his vitals, doing all the research and detective work ArhkBat’s too good for. When it’s not her, it’s Alfred, someone so vital to running ArkhBat’s operation that in the game, you don’t even get control of ArkhBat until you have Alfred on the radio, telling ArkhBat what to do.
It feels a little like the good people of Gotham perhaps owe a lot more to Alfred the Butler than they to to Bruce the Bat. For the people of Arkham City, though, there’s no question. When Hugo Strange’s “Protocol 10” is revealed to simply be a plan to have men in helicopters murdering every criminal in sight with missiles. ArkhBat is far more interested in pursuing his ex-lover Talia to prevent the Joker from gaining immortality – it is Alfred who refuses to give ArkhBat what he needs to track Talia down before ArkhBat gets out there to stop wholesale slaughter.
Ordinarily, a superhero finds a way to save an individual life and thousands, but that’s not the point here – the point is that ArkhBat has to be forced to save the thousands, just because he’s putting his own interests first.
There is, of course, the questions of why this matters. There have been lots of stories about Batman that only focus on his grim, his dark, his gritty – entire era mischaracterize him so completely that comics readers as a whole forget that period of time ever happened. Arkham City remains on the list of greatest games ever made, a lot of people were really happy with it, and it brings in a flood of new people ready to devour good Batman stories across all mediums. Why is it important for this Batman to be anything more than an over-the-top action hero with a theme?
For me, it’s because Rocksteady went so all-out with the source material. From knowing Two-Face always has a second gun, to hiding the Calendar Man beneath the courthouse as a reference to The Long Halloween, the Arkham series of games shows a nearly fanatic amount of devotion to the history of the Dark Knight. In a world filled with hundreds of little secrets, side missions and references to the comic books(and, in places, the brilliant Animated Series), the art and the storytelling that made Batman so iconic is done a disservice.
Let’s be clear – the Batman of the comics has nearly all the flaws I’ve mentioned above. He is territorial, a control freak, obsessed with his villains to an unhealthy degree, manipulative, and hypocritical in his self-proclaimed status as a loner. The best Batman stories, however, acknowledge these flaws as flaws, and in addition, there’s a lot more to him. He is a man who has been shown to be able to overcome his shortcomings. To accept his own mistakes. To appreciate his limitations, and to appreciate light and hope in other people, even if he can’t bring himself to be that light himself.
He is a Batman who doesn’t kill, but it’s not because he’s afraid of succumbing to the darkness and becoming as dark as the people he battles – though that fear is there, too. Nor is it simply because he believes he’s above killing. Batman refuses to kill because he believes that even the worst of all his many enemies has good in them. He’s been deep enough in the shadows to know there’s a way back from them. There’s always a chance for redemption. He will stake his life on that belief – and already has.
He is a Batman who, like the Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, could have used his means and talents to do anything – politics, business, the sciences – but instead, decided to put on a costume, help the helpless, and save the day. He is a Batman who is a good father. First to his adopted Robins, and now to his own biological son, Damian Wayne, a boy so violent and surly he could give ArkhBat a run for his money.
Batman stories get dark. They’re known for it, it’s what keeps people coming back. They get dark, violent, and psychologically scarring. The triumph Batman achieves at the end of these stories isn’t that he punched the bad guys into submission. It’s that he came away with his humanity intact. That he faced the darkness, and came back from it a good man.
And he does it with style.
That is how you Batman right.
