Originally published March 13, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
Anghus Houvouras on whether Batman should kill…
Short answer: absolutely.
I can’t think of a comic book character whose life has been more adversely affected by his perfectly tuned moral compass. Batman doesn’t kill. At least, he doesn’t anymore. The original Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger carried a gun and seemed to have no problem with the occasional bad guy getting the short end of the murder stick.
At some point creators applied a simple rationale to Batman: Batman doesn’t kill, and Batman doesn’t use guns. The murder of his parents at the hand of a gun-toting thug left an impression on young Bruce Wayne. So not only did he spend his formative years learning how to be the world’s most ass kicking detective, he also developed a hard-line stance against killing and the use of firearms. Batman doesn’t kill, and Batman doesn’t use guns. Unless they’re used to launch a grappling hook. Or fire an EMP to disable electronics. Or fire sticky bombs onto targets too far away to throw. But other than that, Batman does not use guns.
And Batman doesn’t kill. No sir. He will not kill a villain no matter how diabolical. Take The Joker for instance. He has killed hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people. He cut off Alfred’s hand. He paralyzed Barbara Gordon by shooting her through the spine. He beat Jason Todd to death with a crowbar. No matter how many times Batman defeats The Joker and plants his alabaster ass in Arkham, the Joker manages to find a way out and kill again.
Batman’s moral code seems a lot sillier than Superman. Superman exists to be an icon to the people of Earth. He’s a standard of morality. A flying Boy Scout who tries to show the world the power of righteousness. Batman on the other hand exists to make criminals afraid. To strike fear in the hearts of those who would do harm to others. That fear is kind of pointless when you realize that no matter how diabolical your actions, the worst that’s going to happen is a one way ticket to the revolving door that is Arkham Asylum.
The Batman of the movie world is a little more liberal about the ‘no killing’ rule. Batman let Joker plummet to his death in the Tim Burton’s Batman. He also strapped a bomb to a fat clown and let him die. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever featured a Batman who was willing to let Two-Face fall to his death after throwing a handful of coins to distract him. Christopher Nolan’s time with Batman featured less outright killings but some questionable moral choices, most notably the famous scene where Batman tells Ra’s al Ghul “I won’t kill you… but I don’t have to save you.” While it was a bad ass Batman moment, it moves the needle closer to “murder” than “not murder” on the Bat-Morality scale.
The Dark Knight is a masterpiece and does an excellent job of examining Batman’s moral code. There may be no better examination of the purpose of Batman in Gotham than Nolan’s film. While it works in the movie world, the comic book Batman is tasked with a Sisyphean task of battling the same villains over and over again. While Batman’s reluctance to kill allows his popular rogue’s gallery to remain terrorizing Gotham and perpetuating more comic book adventures, it certainly does little to help the citizens he’s sworn to protect.
Much like Superman, I don’t think Batman doesn’t need to kill indiscriminately. He’s not the Punisher. He doesn’t need to be dropping criminal scum off the top of tall buildings for fun. However, his ‘no kill’ policy allows the worst of the worst to continue to plague Gotham. There’s no reason Batman shouldn’t have murdered the Joker by now or a serial killer like Zsasz. If Batman is to truly keep Gotham safe, he needs to untie his hands and go into battle unshackled.
It’s probably why I like the moral code of the movie Batman so much more. Batman isn’t out there killing people for sport, but if a villain falls to their doom or Batman exits a crashing train car while the dastardly villain ends up dying in the subsequent fallout, it’s fine.
In The Dark Knight, Batman saves the Joker before he hits the pavement because he doesn’t want the Joker to be right. But in truth, the hero that Gotham needs is one who is willing to get his hands dirty and put crazed psychopaths like The Joker into the ground before they kill again.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker and the co-host of Across the Pondcast. Follow him on Twitter.
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