They make villains who’s goals make total sense and are something to root for, so to balance that they make the villains kill innocents just to make sure the audience doesn’t accidentally side with them.
That’s the easiest way to make complex villains, give them a relatable goal with terrible means. Activates the good old “do the ends justify the means” question and tempts the audience. The best superhero movies give the hero a strong moral backbone to “save” the audience and find the truth between the two. Look at how Black Panther learns from Killmonger’s criticism but does it without war and hatred
Edit: Also The Batman is pretty solid with this aspect. He sees how his quest for revenge encourages violent vigilantism and inspires the incel-like Riddler. Because of this he decides to turn toward hope and helping others instead
I don’t disagree with the sentiment. The problem is that it gives the impression that people irl are willing to go to these extreme and illogical means to achieve their otherwise good ends. That’s not the case. Indeed it’s often the opposite. The people trying to do good things are almost always unwilling to do anything ‘bad’ to achieve their aims. They usually refuse even to defend themselves against reaction.
This kind of writing is poor because it’s easy and removes any subtlety from the equation. No reasonable person on earth is going to think a villain is right to commit genocide to fix the world’s major problems. Nevermind lesser problems. Irl it’s the billionaires who are willing to cause untold suffering in the search for profit. There are ways to make that dramatic and exciting but Hollywood is not set to to write it.
This kind of writing is propaganda. It wraps human action in individualism and builds a model of ‘villain’ that can be invoked every time imperialists want to start another war. Later, the subjects of this propaganda rarely if ever seriously question the motives of the people destroyed by imperialist war in part because they’ve been conditioned to think in a certain way about the ‘enemy’.
I absolutely agree that putting that dilemma into a story can be great for drama. I just reject the Hollywood rendition of it because it’s always the same. When I watch most action movies, I time how long it takes to reveal that the volunteer at the soup kitchen suddenly tells the audience that the best way to feed the homeless is to the lions.
I’m not talking about Poison Ivy and Batman, yet. I can’t talk to Poison Ivy or to Batman in the specific. In the abstract, philanthropy and an individual approach to solving crime can never be successful. These are palatable methods because the writers want people to limit what they think is possible. If they were serious about creating a model for helping people they’d show someone organising the workers e.g. in Gotham or elsewhere rather than thinking anyone can solve everything alone. (That said, I’m not against Batman in the way that I’m against Marvel.)
Show me the dilemma faced by all the people who, to pay their bills, are sat in an office in New York committing slow violence against child labourers being poisoned by chemicals in a garment factory in India. Then show me the workers organising themselves to improve working conditions.
In the sequel, they can overthrow the directors of the company. In the third movie, they can start a revolution. If this were written by Hollywood, those workers would be the villains, pointlessly terrorising random targets. But irl the only violence they’d be involved in is as victim of the state and the employer.
Heath Ledger’s Joker is basically the textbook example. He is… pretty much right, but the body count means you can’t agree with him.
Joaquin Phoenix Joker however did nothing wrong… until he killed his therapist, but that happens after he’s too far gone… He’s the real victim there and the movie is aware of that. Which is why the movie is so good.
Poison Ivy’s explicitly stated goals are mass genocide, how is that something to root for. She’s not advocating for moving to solar or nuclear and reducing emissions.
That’s the point. You have a Villain who wants something good (stop the destruction of nature) and then pair it with something very evil (genocide). It’s a very common trope in media. It leads to the “Hero” of the story being able to defend the status quo again and again without ever challenging it.
Harry Potter is the champion of doing this as Harry manages to support a status quo that literally does nothing but work against him.
It’s like JK insists a corrupt system is the only possible system and is perfect because some bad apple will eventually trip over some rule or clause that saves the day at the 11th hour so… “It’s all good!”
That is a can of worms about on par with a leftist asking “In what order should I read theory”? There a 1001 correct answers, and there is no exact timeline about how you can delve into the character.
I have a decent bit of superhero knowledge and I dive into it every now and then, but I will not claim that I am some absolute authority on this subject and that I can give you a definitive list.
I will however recommend “Batman: Year One” as it is a good place to start with the character and that is considered one of the best comics of all time.
For a Batman/Joker story I would recommend the “Killing Joke” series, but I will say that is is fairly mature in its content, as it really attempts to delve into the Joker’s psychology as a tragic but evil character.
The Batman stories in the “Flashpoint” Series is fun as a side story as it follows a world where the Flash makes one change and alters all of history, and Batman ends up being Thomas Wayne (the dad) rather then Bruce Wayne (the son), and this is a much more aggressive and violent Batman, with a pretty shady moral code as Thomas goes full capitalist and is pretty evil.
Not begrudging your interests, but I think this post kind of summarizes why I have never been able to read any western comics.
I like really concrete beginning/end points for fictional media. I like to be able to say “This is book 1, I can start here. This is book 4, it’s the last one”. I also hate jumping into any series in the middle, even if it is absolutely designed for it. Anytime I have thought about trying to read any western comics (or warhammer on the same note) it just seems like a massive ambigious undertaking.
They make villains who’s goals make total sense and are something to root for, so to balance that they make the villains kill innocents just to make sure the audience doesn’t accidentally side with them.
That’s the easiest way to make complex villains, give them a relatable goal with terrible means. Activates the good old “do the ends justify the means” question and tempts the audience. The best superhero movies give the hero a strong moral backbone to “save” the audience and find the truth between the two. Look at how Black Panther learns from Killmonger’s criticism but does it without war and hatred
Edit: Also The Batman is pretty solid with this aspect. He sees how his quest for revenge encourages violent vigilantism and inspires the incel-like Riddler. Because of this he decides to turn toward hope and helping others instead
I don’t disagree with the sentiment. The problem is that it gives the impression that people irl are willing to go to these extreme and illogical means to achieve their otherwise good ends. That’s not the case. Indeed it’s often the opposite. The people trying to do good things are almost always unwilling to do anything ‘bad’ to achieve their aims. They usually refuse even to defend themselves against reaction.
This kind of writing is poor because it’s easy and removes any subtlety from the equation. No reasonable person on earth is going to think a villain is right to commit genocide to fix the world’s major problems. Nevermind lesser problems. Irl it’s the billionaires who are willing to cause untold suffering in the search for profit. There are ways to make that dramatic and exciting but Hollywood is not set to to write it.
This kind of writing is propaganda. It wraps human action in individualism and builds a model of ‘villain’ that can be invoked every time imperialists want to start another war. Later, the subjects of this propaganda rarely if ever seriously question the motives of the people destroyed by imperialist war in part because they’ve been conditioned to think in a certain way about the ‘enemy’.
I absolutely agree that putting that dilemma into a story can be great for drama. I just reject the Hollywood rendition of it because it’s always the same. When I watch most action movies, I time how long it takes to reveal that the volunteer at the soup kitchen suddenly tells the audience that the best way to feed the homeless is to the lions.
I’m not talking about Poison Ivy and Batman, yet. I can’t talk to Poison Ivy or to Batman in the specific. In the abstract, philanthropy and an individual approach to solving crime can never be successful. These are palatable methods because the writers want people to limit what they think is possible. If they were serious about creating a model for helping people they’d show someone organising the workers e.g. in Gotham or elsewhere rather than thinking anyone can solve everything alone. (That said, I’m not against Batman in the way that I’m against Marvel.)
Show me the dilemma faced by all the people who, to pay their bills, are sat in an office in New York committing slow violence against child labourers being poisoned by chemicals in a garment factory in India. Then show me the workers organising themselves to improve working conditions.
In the sequel, they can overthrow the directors of the company. In the third movie, they can start a revolution. If this were written by Hollywood, those workers would be the villains, pointlessly terrorising random targets. But irl the only violence they’d be involved in is as victim of the state and the employer.
Heath Ledger’s Joker is basically the textbook example. He is… pretty much right, but the body count means you can’t agree with him.
Joaquin Phoenix Joker however did nothing wrong… until he killed his therapist, but that happens after he’s too far gone… He’s the real victim there and the movie is aware of that. Which is why the movie is so good.
Poison Ivy’s explicitly stated goals are mass genocide, how is that something to root for. She’s not advocating for moving to solar or nuclear and reducing emissions.
That’s the point. You have a Villain who wants something good (stop the destruction of nature) and then pair it with something very evil (genocide). It’s a very common trope in media. It leads to the “Hero” of the story being able to defend the status quo again and again without ever challenging it.
Harry Potter is the champion of doing this as Harry manages to support a status quo that literally does nothing but work against him.
It’s like JK insists a corrupt system is the only possible system and is perfect because some bad apple will eventually trip over some rule or clause that saves the day at the 11th hour so… “It’s all good!”
I understand, but the villain doesn’t lead with “Let’s stop the destruction of nature”, they lead with “Everyone should die”.
I don’t think Poison Ivy ever actually makes a compelling argument for conservationism and anti-capitalism. They just really REALLY hate people.
That might be the case. You seem to know more about Batman than I do so I will do as Mao suggests and shut up before I haven’t researched the topic.
Any Batman comics you could recommend?
That is a can of worms about on par with a leftist asking “In what order should I read theory”? There a 1001 correct answers, and there is no exact timeline about how you can delve into the character.
I have a decent bit of superhero knowledge and I dive into it every now and then, but I will not claim that I am some absolute authority on this subject and that I can give you a definitive list.
I will however recommend “Batman: Year One” as it is a good place to start with the character and that is considered one of the best comics of all time.
For a Batman/Joker story I would recommend the “Killing Joke” series, but I will say that is is fairly mature in its content, as it really attempts to delve into the Joker’s psychology as a tragic but evil character.
The Batman stories in the “Flashpoint” Series is fun as a side story as it follows a world where the Flash makes one change and alters all of history, and Batman ends up being Thomas Wayne (the dad) rather then Bruce Wayne (the son), and this is a much more aggressive and violent Batman, with a pretty shady moral code as Thomas goes full capitalist and is pretty evil.
The Long Halloween is also pretty good!
Not begrudging your interests, but I think this post kind of summarizes why I have never been able to read any western comics.
I like really concrete beginning/end points for fictional media. I like to be able to say “This is book 1, I can start here. This is book 4, it’s the last one”. I also hate jumping into any series in the middle, even if it is absolutely designed for it. Anytime I have thought about trying to read any western comics (or warhammer on the same note) it just seems like a massive ambigious undertaking.
Warhammer at this point have like 1000 or more books.