BATMAN

It’s almost midnight and I’m still thinking about a word to start this text. In fact, I’m not looking for a word, but for THE word. Now, among Broken Embraces and American Pop music, I guess I finally found it, I have three.

HEART. Batman is a superhero that I have never liked. Never, until one year ago, when I watched the last movie: “The Dark Knight”. Today, it’s such a triviality to say that the movie was good, very good or excellent… Everybody knows it. Some agree, some don’t… But the fact is that everybody, with no exception, understands that the series (a little deteriorated) reached a new level after that movie.

He, the “Dark Knight”, is just one more person in a big world. He doesn’t have special powers, he doesn’t come from a distant galaxy, he is simply a man, an ordinary man. Bruce Wayne is just a person like you and me. As well as everybody, he has his history, and, when we understand it, we realize that Batman could be anyone, because, more than anything, ha has a living HEART.

STRENGH. Batman has strength to fight his own phantoms from the past. He is able to become more than the world asked him to. Destiny doesn’t choose its victims, and he was one of them. But he knows he doesn’t need to listen to destiny: he makes his way through life. I think he understood that being a hero is more than saving people, more than flying in the sky and being good, it’s a question of finding a way to save yourself from the internal monsters. And to do this, it’s necessary to remember that they can’t be beaten, just numbed, and the fight never ends. Batman summarizes the whole human history: we always lose, it doesn’t matter how much we try, we’ll still lose something… That’s why we need STRENGTH!

FEAR. Batman doesn’t fear his classical enemies, in fact, they need him, and he needs them. His fear comes from deeper…

In the movie, I learned that a villain is much more than wickedness; it’s the fear in itself. Fear destroys anything that lets it in. Batman could control his fears, and it makes him superior. He doesn’t fears others, he inspires FEAR.

In the end, I can see good elements in Batman, but they are his ruin. He is human, he isn’t good or bad, he isn’t too powerful or weak, he is just himself: a man, an incomplete man. In the minute he accepts himself as one more in the boat, he loses his magic.

Is he original? Yes, he certainly is. But he is too real too. A hero can’t be like this. A real one needs to exist just in the limits, having problems like ordinary people, but being able to do something more… Feel something more! How is it possible to find fun in someone that is so real…? So close to average... These are his biggest trumps and his worst problems! A paradox.

He is Batman, just Batman. Super powers don’t make a hero, but they help to create it.

I like him, but I can’t feel him as THE HERO, he is just a hero.

THAT’S WHY I BELIEVE IN HARVEY DENT.