The Impossibility of Batman

As a comic book fan, I would love to be a super hero. It’s safe to say most fans are right there with me. And when people discuss becoming a super hero it always seems to me that the hero most people say is the most possible is Batman. Well, as someone who has read many Batman comics, seen all the Batman movies, been a fan of the many Batman TV shows, and even played several of the Batman video games, I have to say Batman is probably one of the least likely heroes to ever exist. Recently I bought and played the video game Batman: Arkham Origins. Truly the Arkham games have come closest to replicating the mechanics and gadgets of what someone like Batman would actually be like. The rapid fight mechanics, the various gadgets, the solving riddles and puzzles, all of that is what I imagine life like the Dark Knight is like. But as I play the game I come to realize, none of this is possible for a normal human to do.

One of the main mechanics of the game is you get around Gotham City using your trusty bat grappling hook. Of all the gadgets in your utility belt, this is the one you’ll end up using the most. Not only does it help you ascend to the rooftops, it is also used to grab far off items, pull down hard to reach air grates and portholes, pull far off enemies off of their feet, and also pull you along on a raft made of glue (yeah, you make rafts using glue bombs). Truth be told though, if you actually used the grapple in real life as much as you do in the game, your arm would rip right out of your socket. The grapple doesn’t merely lift you off the ground; it violently pulls you through the sky. The entire force needed to lift a full-grown man in a heavily armored bat suit is distributed into your arm. True, Batman is not the only hero who gets around by swinging on a rope. Spider-Man and Daredevil are also fans of the swing. But both of them are super human so you can believe they have superior muscle structure that can take that kind of activity. Batman is just a man.

The entire fact that Batman is just a man is the core to the argument that anyone can be Batman. But when you look at Bruce Wayne, that’s not true.  Bruce Wayne, besides being a billionaire (which is hard enough to achieve) was already an intelligent child and gifted athlete. The building blocks are already there for Bruce to become someone amazing. Had his parents not been killed, Bruce Wayne would still become an amazing individual, surpassing his peers. He just would do it in some field other than heroics. The odds of finding an intellectually gifted, genetically athletic, billionaire heir, who then undergoes a personal tragedy, seems pretty long. Wanting to fight crime just isn’t enough. I keep thinking of the line in the movie Rudy “I wish I could put your heart in some of my players’ bodies.” That line sums up great what is wrong with just wanting to be Batman. You need to be Bruce Wayne first.

And the sad truth is, humans are not good at dealing with tragedy. Most people when confronted with a traumatic life event end up either lashing out inappropriately or shutting down completely. The ability to take all the rage and anger felt by a young Bruce Wayne and focusing it into such a productive and dedicated one-man war on crime is hard to believe. Most likely a real world Batman would go out to fight crime and end up crying in a fetal position as soon as he remembered his parents were dead. Or the even more likely situation is that Alfred would have gotten little Bruce to a really good grief counselor as soon as the Waynes were in the ground and kept Master Bruce doped to the gills on Xanax for the rest of his life.

Sadly the one part of Batman that does seem believable is a multibillionaire extorting funds from his company for his own personal use. We see that sort of behavior all the time in the real world. Unfortunately when such individuals are caught, it’s never crime-fighting endeavors they have devoted their stolen money to. It’s usually hookers and blow. The few times they do devote money to worthy causes it is usually just as a way to avoid paying taxes or as an act of contrition for some scandalous act they performed in their personal life. Honestly, if the people on Wall Street were using their bailout money to fight crime, Occupy Wall Street never would have happened.

The sad truth is that the character of Bruce Wayne is alive and well in our society. That image of the spoiled playboy who parties too hard is a common occurrence in the tabloids. The sad irony is that that character is a fiction portrayed by Batman in order to mask his crusade. A fictional character acting fictional. What the world really needs is more Batmen and fewer Bruce Waynes.