Welcome to another edition of Writing Insights where I will look over various stories from movies, shows, games, and anime to discuss the ways writers can improve their work. Today the topic will be based on the 2022 film The Batman.
(SPOILER WARNING AHEAD FOR THE MOVIE!!!!) First off, allow me to gush a bit and state how much I love this movie! I’ve always loved Batman movies, and this would be my favorite since the Dark Knight (and I’m a huge Christopher Nolan fan). Now that is out of the way, let’s get started. One of the key components towards the making of any good story revolves around how well the story develops its theme, the main message. Such development should be a combination of subtle and overt components through the weaving of dialogue, character, setting, and more into the theme. Today, I want to take a look at how The Batman handles the first among that list, its dialogue, quite exquisitely, or rather how it handles it through one simple, yet powerful line. “I’m vengeance.” Just two words are used to capture the whole essence of who Bruce Wayne is under the cowl at this point in his crusade against crime. He is not a hero. He is simply a sharpened instrument of vengeance, lashing out against the criminal underworld in Gotham. That reality sets up one of the central themes around how ideas like “Vengeance cannot define us” or “Vengeance can’t heal us” (more so the city of Gotham in this case). That journey, that evolution or renewal from being simply an agent of vengeance to becoming a hope and light for Gotham is expertly set up with the utterance of that one line. That line is his starting point. Furthermore, it is used to define him not just to the audience but to all of Gotham. Note, that Catwoman, never once calls him Batman (outside the playful mention of the bat and cat combo at the end). She, along with everyone else, constantly refers to him as vengeance, which he never corrects her on. For Batman, he truly has become the embodiment of vengeance. Yet, it’s not enough. He says as much himself at the beginning. The start of the movie offers its own subtle riddle about how despite him being active for a little while now, crime has only gone up. So, he has changed the environment, but he has not made a difference in wiping out crime, and he has no idea how to rectify that. That’s where the true beauty of the “I’m Vengeance” line comes into play. At the end when he hears one of Riddler’s men utter the same “I’m Vengeance” line after being unmasked, it’s game-changing for Batman. Though he says nothing in response, we can see the subtle look of realization and disgust on his face. That’s when he realizes that he too, like the Riddler inspired these men. He was the beacon of vengeance to allow other citizens of Gotham that had deep scars caused by injustice to lash out. In essence, those men, the Riddler included, weren’t too different from Batman. They were all Vengeance. Like him, they saw corruption and evil in the city, and they wanted to use violence to weed it out. Unlike him though, they had no restraint. Hearing his own dialogue uttered back to him changed Batman. It showed him the flaw in his approach. He now knew he couldn’t be vengeance to change things. He had to become hope, a light for others to follow through the darkness. Two words set up that dark descent for him, and two words helped guide him on a journey of self-reflection and change. He understood for himself the themes of how vengeance can’t define him or heal his wounds. Such is the power of simple, yet profound uses of dialogue. If handled correctly, it has the power to define and energize an entire story. Comments are closed.
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Book ListThe Order: Shadows of the Apostles Archives
July 2022
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