If Batman was killing people, criminals or not, the local and federal government would eventually have to come after him. If Bruce killed criminals it would become much more difficult to continue his mission and he would probably be locked up within a month.
I also really like the way Geoff Johns wrote Bruce’s explanation in Batman: Earth One. I don’t have the book on me but it’s something to the effect of… A lot of criminals have families and children. And criminal or not, the last thing Bruce wants Batman to be is the murderer of some boy’s father.
Yes and no.
On the one hand, Batman’s devotion to saving lives serves multiple purposes:
It helps keep the violence down, which might be essential, depending on what rating you’re required to maintain.
It helps him keep the blurry line between what he does and what a straight up vigilante does more distinct. He acts outside the law, but he doesn’t impose sentence. 3. Once he started making exceptions, it would be all to easy to make more, with increasingly lower standards.
By not killing people, he keeps himself from becoming a higher priority for law enforcement and other heroes.
The dichotomies of Batman are one the the things that make him interesting. He’s a loner who surrounds himself with surrogate families. He acts outside the law in order to ultimately uphold it. He channels his desire for revenge in order to serve justice. He’s a warrior who doesn’t want to kill.
That said, it’s more complicated than it seems:
Realistically, it would be difficult to do what Batman does and never kill someone. Anytime a situation becomes violent, the potential for death and life-altering injury exists. Tasers and rubber bullets, for example, have killed people. They are less likely to be fatal than some other weapons, but the potential is still there. Similarly, unarmed does not mean non-lethal. Batman could go to great lengths to avoid killing, but it would eventually happen. Granted, superhero fantasies don’t have to be realistic, but if you’re trying to more realistically present a superhero world, it would be something to keep in mind.
I feel like a distinction should be drawn between wanton murder and killing “in the heat of battle” so to speak. Batman throws himself into combat with violent criminals and supervillains, many of whom would kill him or others given the opportunity. Pulling your punches isn’t always going to be a viable strategy. Sometimes, to save your own life, or the lives of others, you may have to do what you have to do.
Specifically concerning the Joker, he’s too valuable to kill. It’s really that simple. In real life, no matter how brilliant he is, nor how devoted Batman is to not killing, the Joker would have been killed, either by someone else or accidentally due to one of his various schemes backfiring, if not for his overpowering plot armor. No matter the justification, that’s the real reason.
So, a realistically modeled Batman would go to great lengths to avoid using lethal force, but he would do so as a last resort. He’d also have to accept that accidental deaths and permanent injuries sometimes result from his actions. He wouldn’t be happy about it, but he’d have to accept that “you live by the sword, you die by the sword.” He doesn’t punish people, he’s not judge, jury, and executioner, but, when intervening in violent situations, the results can be lethal, even if he does everything right.
@J3D, very well said, so much truth. Overall I think it depends on the medium and the intended audience. For me, the second you put Batman in live action you can throw the rule out the window. He should never be a murderer at all, and I’m glad you can make the distinction as many if our fellow fans dont seem to comprehend this very important detail. When people say “then he’s no better than the villians he fights” it ignores every aspect of the realities and history of conflict. Its lazy writing, patently false, and empty as a moral stance.
Again, fine for stories aimed at younger people. Murder, Manslaughter, use of lethal force, when its justified and when it’s not, are all too complicated for a children’s story.
I just think that if you stray too far away from traditional depictions of characters they are no longer the same character. If “Batman” is killing, is it really even Batman at that point?
It would be like the Punisher NOT killing. That just wouldn’t would be the Punisher anymore.
I’m not against characters killing, but if a character doesn’t kill then making them kill turns them into an entirely different character.
I actually think Batman does kill. He tries not to, but he punches people over cliffs, crashes their getaway cars, punches their heads into walls. You telling me none have died and that their deaths were not foreseeable? Given another choice, he avoids killing, but he has a body count.
I look at it as the “no deliberate kill” rule. Yes it’s possible that driving the batmobile into a building MIGHT cause some injury that lead to someone dying. Or letting a villain be hoisted on their own petard.
However, if you have a Batman that deliberately takes a life, it changes who he is. It betrays the vow to his parents, which is what fundamentally drives him both physically & psychologically. He becomes no longer a hero but an anti-hero. If Batman is an anti-hero, he isn’t Batman, he’s the red hood in a Batman costume.
@msgtv Obviously, if Batman were to do what he does in the comics in the real world, people will die. But there’s some suspension of disbelief that comes with reading a story. If a writer says Batman didn’t kill anyone, then he didn’t kill anyone. Because the writer dictates the events of the story, not the human body’s actual realistic durability.
@Redhood
Yes, I do. There have been a number of stories where Batman has saved villains even though he could turn a blind eye, but, he doesn’t. That’s what makes him The Batman.
The important thing here is to consider the setting and the desired level of realism. In a fun Silver Age romp, sure, Batman never killing is possible. But, when you try to ramp up the realism, absolutes tend to be more difficult to maintain, simply because absolutes are difficult to maintain in the real world. In the real world, nothing is simple or easy. Issues that you may think are simple (like use of lethal force) turn out, on closer inspection, to be complex and nuanced.
Don't get me wrong, there's a place for fun escapism. It's just good to remember that that's what it is. It's also good to remember that there's also room for more realistic portrayals, and that more realistic portrayals may grapple with difficult issues, issues that, ultimately, can't be said to have simplistic, black and white answers. I don't think that this turns them into different characters, it simply explores different facets of the character, and examines how they'd react to different realities.
For example, let's look a the infamous "neck snap" scene from Man of Steel. Superman can't just start summarily killing criminals on his own initiative without some dark Elseworld re-imagining: but, what if he had no choice but to take a life? Zod wasn't a monster, but he'd done terrible things, like murder his friend and mentor, for the sake of Krypton. Now, thanks to Superman, his last effort to bring back some vestige of Krypton was thwarted, and he had to confront the fact that; one, the planet he was devoted to serving was truly gone; and two, that every terrible thing he'd done had been for naught. He had nothing to live for, and opted for what amounted to "suicide by cop," pushing Superman (seemingly the only person who could kill him) to the point where he had no choice but to do so, or he'd just keep trying to kill humans. "Stop me this time, next time, the time after that, it doesn't matter. I'll never stop trying. I'll succeed eventually, and it will be your fault for not stopping me when you had the chance." It's like the famous trolley problem, there's no point going Kobayashi Maru on it, because the point isn't to give you a chance to prove how clever you are or how you "don't believe in no-win scenarios." The point is about considering what you'd do if you had no choice but to take one life to save others.
Again, there's nothing wrong with fun escapism (I loved the Brave and the Bold cartoon), there's nothing wrong with valuing fictional characters as representatives of ideals, and there's certainly nothing wrong with having preferences for how you like to see certain characters portrayed. But there's room for more serious interpretations as well, and, as I pointed out in my previous post, there's a difference between wanton murder and killing "in the heat of battle." Frankly, I think that having Batman grapple with trying maintain his ideals as best as possible in the face of terrible necessities makes for fertile storytelling ground. In the end, the only reason any of use are here is for the storytelling, after all.
Also, Squid now that I’ve reread your missive. The writer does not control what occurs in the story, the writer’s filtered through the audience dictates what happens. I’m sure you’ve memorized all my previous posts and will recall that I state that art is composed of the creator and the audience. That’s why I get to decide what Jack and Dianne ultimately means to me not John Jacob Cougar Mellencamp Smith.
@msgtv You said “for me”. That means it’s headcanon. None of the writers’ stories actually support that. If a writer writes that Batman never killed anyone, then objectively he never killed anyone. And if that’s unrealistic, that’s too bad. The writer decides the level of realism in their stories. You can choose to interpret it more realistically than the author intended, but your interpretation has no bearing on what actually objectively happened inside of the story.
Squid I’ll take head canon. I’ve also decided that half the twists they’ve put into Hawkmans origin didn’t happen. He’s an Egyptian destined to be reborn and find his true love. They keep messing with that and I keep discarding it.
@msgtv You can have your headcanon. I just don’t like it when people act like their headcanon is objectively what happened in a story when it was never written.