Memento Mori wrote:Skarjo wrote:
Fair points, one and all, but I disagree.
Except for the Rachel death. All 'Girlfriend in a Fridge' arguments aside, I still think having to listen to your girlfriend die is justification enough for anyone to lose their moral compass.
The fridging and disfigurement was justification to kill the mobsters and corrupt cops who were involved, most definitely. I say Dent would have needed even more motivation to kill the innocent children (of his sort of friend, again LH goes into their relationship better) who weren't involved. Even if Dent had his twin children get fridged I'm not sure he'd still try and kill Gordon's kids so quickly.
I absolutely disagree. I mean, let's be fair, this is an entire franchise built around the ideas of how one event (by the way, at this point, I feel the need to add, I am totally ripping off stuff Pedro has told me over many a bottle of Desperados) can make or destroy a man. Batman had his hopeful, privileged world torn apart when he witnessed his parents die, and everything about his character boils down to that. The Joker, well, all arguments of 'multiple choice' origins aside, still was born from one horrific event that made him lose his mind. So to establish Dent as a man driven by plans and control, to force him to sit there and helplessly witness all that being ripped apart in one moment is exactly the kind of character birth the Batman franchise thrives upon.
He's a tragic character, and to have him wreaking appropriate vengeance upon mobsters would, in my opinion, actually be less effective as a character than the path of destruction he actually carves. This is a man who has lost everything, so rather than strive to make the world a better place as Batman does, or just become a force of chaos as the Joker did, he takes his revenge on those
he holds responsible. And, as evidenced by him sparing the Joker in hospital, he forces this new worldview through a perversion of his previous rejection of chance (with the coin) and so makes himself into a man with a cause and with nothing to lose in achieving it; an excellent recipe for a villain. He's a good villain because, like the Joker, he reflects all the flaws and darkness that reside inside Batman himself. He is, for want of a better term, exactly what Batman could have been had he not chosen a different path.
That is why TDK gooseberry fools all over BB. Neither villain in BB is the slightest bit interesting. Ghul is part of some random cult that destroys sinful cities or something and Scarecrow... Well, I haven't got a strawberry floating clue why he's supposed to be interesting. BB might have had better pacing, or editing, or a more coherent story or whatever, but it was strawberry floating
boring because I didn't get why his villains were anything more than the WHAM-POW-KAZAMALAWANK baddies of yesteryear; they were just things to get in the way of Batman's fist. The only thing BB is good for is establishing a good Batman so that we care when he's our vehicle for exploring the two excellent villains used in TDK.