Batman Begins rewatch

[seriousfic]

So, in the movie's timeline, Bruce Wayne disappears for seven years and Rachel Dawes is the last person to see him alive? How did that go?

Rachel: The last time I saw Bruce, we had just had a big fight. I hit him a few times and told him his father would be ashamed of him, then I stranded him in the city's most crime-ridden district... what? What's everyone looking at me like that for?

ETA: And what's the big deal with Bruce blowing up the ninja compound again? I know, "ha ha, you killed the guy you were trying to save, snark snark!" But realistically, what were his options? They told him to kill the guy, he said no, they told him they were planning a fucking terrorist attack on his hometown, he said no again, they said "We'll kill you if you don't do it" (well, okay, "There's no going back," but c'mon, we all know how it works with secret societies)... what would you have him do? He was surrounded by about a thousand ninjas!

Trust me, I've watched a lot of Chuck Norris movies, and once you're inside a ninja compound, the only way to make it out alive is blowing shit up.

ETA2: If "it's what we do that defines us," what does it say about Rachel Dawes that her big interactions with Bruce are berating him when he A. admits to grappling with some pretty big psychological issues (yes, Rachel, slap the inability to properly mourn out of Bruce!) and B. when he openly tells her that he's got more going on than boozing it up. What's she even angry about there, that he's having a good time? Is Bruce supposed to go 24/7 on the justice front? Even without the Batman thing, he's in the middle of reclaiming his company, getting it away from arms dealing and probably using it to help Gotham on the economic front. I think that deserves some fun time with double floozies. What's her big accomplishment anyway, mildly annoying Cillian Murphy?

ETA3: So Bruce and Rachel are in the car, commiserating about how a corrupt judge set Joe Chill up to be murdered so he couldn't inform on Falcone.

Bruce: Your system is broken.

Rachel: *long lecture with visual aids about how thousands of people are in poverty, crime lords are openly ruling the streets, and both the courts and police are deep in their pocket*

Rachel: So you see Bruce, the system is working perfectly fine!

Christ, this chick must be the worst-written love interest to ever show up in a Batman movie.


Yes, even worse than Robin.

ETA4: Just for comparison, Ra's al Ghul...

A. Gives Bruce a pep talk.
B. Teaches him to be a ninja.
C. Tells him his parents' death wasn't his fault.
D. Offers him an exciting new job opportunity.

WHO'S THE REAL VILLAIN HERE, HUH?

Comments

[pristineungift.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU! That's been bugging me forever.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Ariadne in Inception gives me some minor hope that Nolan might be getting better with his female characters, until I recall that this was the same film that featured The Ex From Hell as the ultimate villain (although the fact that it was the male protagonist's mental conception of his ex could arguably be considered a metafictional comment on how men reduce women to either prizes or obstacles OH GOD WE'RE GOING DEEPER).

One thing I think we can all agree upon is that Rachel Dawes was such a terrible character that she's perhaps the only instance in which the fridging of a female character could almost qualify as a feminist act, if only from the metafictional standpoint of removing such a horribly written and unsympathetic woman from the story.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I think Rachel Dawes is the Nolanverse Hush.

Think about it. Obviously, she grew up resenting him, being the daughter of a maid serving his parents (clearly, she obsesses over this, as shown by her giving him the arrowhead as a birthday present). As an adult, she sets out to break him (note how her character is explicitly compared with the Joker in TDK. "A little fight in you. I like that.") After he confesses to wanting to kill his parents' murderer, she goes into an emotionally abusive tangent about his parents' REAL killer, a gang lord, and DROPS HIM OFF OUTSIDE THE FUCKER'S PAD WITH A LOADED GUN. Surely, the very last thing a concerned friend would ever do!

Later, when he returns after seven years, she shows absolutely no sign of being pleased to see him or welcome him back in any way. She simply berates him with the arbitrary hot-and-cold judgment of the abuser. Finally, she opens up the possibility of a relationship with him only to cruelly shoot him down, then tells him to wait for her only to practically jump into bed with another man within months.

All this talk of Talia al Ghul is merely a smokescreen. Clearly, the villain of The Dark Knight Rises will be Rachel Dawes, having survived the Joker's explosion but now forced to wear bandages over her face, thus providing a plausible explanation for Hush's costume.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

well, if it's an ex-girlfriend that's easily explainable. Something ended the relationship after all and bad feelings spread from there.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

Projection!Mal wasn't so much The Ex From Hell as Cobb's Unresolved Feelings Over His Dead Wife Who He Loved Very Much. I keep in mind the fact that just about anyone in that film who was not Cobb was deliberately under-characterized, like nearly every heist movie ever, and remind myself that the movie had more women on the main cast, by proportion, than any of the Ocean's Eleven movies.

And you could make a similar argument for The Prestige. Actually, it's possible to make an argument both ways for any given movie where a guy's female SO dies; if he gets over her quickly, the woman is disposable, and if he spends a while depressed, she was fridged just to provide him with AAANGST. Creators just can't win.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Creators can win easily by not killing off female characters solely to drive emotional arcs for male characters.

1. By making more women the heroes/protagonists.

2. By having female love interests or supporting characters that aren't killed off. It's a crazy idea, I know.

3. If you do kill off a female character, at least center the motivational core of the death on that character, not their boyfriend/husband. Basically (perhaps oversimple terms) give them a heroic death or a death they choose, a death with a motivation that's true to them as a person, not them as a gender or a plot coupn. Give the death some plot meaning besides "It makes the real hero sad" or "it gives the real hero justification to kick ass."

It's just not that hard, assuming the creator isn't either lazy or unimaginative.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

Which leads straight into the argument about artistic integrity vs. social mores. Specifically; should creators alter their work to fit someone else's idea of what it "should" be? If so, who gets to decide which ideas they should kowtow to?

That's rhetorical, incidentally. I don't have an answer.

What I do find interesting is the inversion of the trope. The original list lists every single bad thing that happens to a female character. The WiR trope is based on the idea of women being so vulnerable that any villain who goes after them must really be a monster. Nowadays, creators are expected to go out of their way to avoid harm or injury to female characters, barring a range of "correct" ways to do so.

[iteari.livejournal.com]

Oh, Nolan....

And if the bland, terrible character Rachel Dawes wasn't proof enough that Nolan is, for the most part, inept at writing female characters...Nolan has the chance to showcase Barbara Gordon, right?

He could have used her, you know, the girl that is to become BATGIRL, to be the one who sees Batman for who he is, to admire him from afar, and what have you. Instead, Nolan uses JIMMY. Not Batgirl, but Jimmy, the kid of Commissioner Gordon that is not so important in Batverse as the daughter is. *rubs temples*