Bruce Wayne is heir to the vast Wayne Empire, run by his billionaire father. Mr. Wayne is a philanthropist with his money, building a new system of public transportation in an effort to help rebuild Gotham, a city torn apart by poverty and crime. He is a major role model for Bruce, who looks up to his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, our first introduction to Bruce is in a prison in Asia. He is a man filled with anger and fear because of his childhood. One of his most frightening memories is of a time when he fell down a well on his father\u2019s estate, and was attacked by bats. This has given him a deep fear of bats which will remain with him for the rest of his life. More deeply affecting, however, is that his father and mother were killed coming out of an opera theatre, gunned down by a mugger, the very type of desperate person that Mr. Wayne was trying to help through his philanthropy. Bruce is thus left an orphan at a young age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, he blames himself for his parents\u2019 death, since they had left the theatre because of his fear of bats. His anger and guilt stay with him and eat away at him so much that, several years later, he plans to kill his parents\u2019 murderer. Bruce is furious because the murderer has been given a lighter sentence in return for providing information against Gotham\u2019s mob boss Falcone. However, Bruce is anticipated in his killing attempt by Falcone himself, who has the man shot so that he can\u2019t testify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce confronts Falcone, who taunts him with his fear. In addition, Bruce loses the respect of his childhood friend, Rachel, who tells him that his father would be ashamed of his plan to get revenge. Bruce insists that his desire to kill his parents\u2019 murderer is simple justice, but Rachel declares that justice and vengeance are not the same thing. Torn apart by his anger and fear, Bruce leaves the country, delving into the criminal lifestyle in order to understand the criminal mind. Thus he ends up in prison in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here he is approached by a man named Ducard, who offers him the possibility of confronting his fears by joining a mysterious group called the League of Shadows. Bruce accepts the invitation, and Ducard helps train him to confront his fears head on. Ducard declares that the League shares Bruce\u2019s desire that criminals be brought to justice, and that the only way to escape the anger and fear that Bruce feels is to fight for this justice. Ducard goes even further, and declares that Mr. Wayne\u2019s death was his own fault because of his attitude of compassion towards criminals, whereas hard justice is what is required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through this training, Bruce manages to master his fears, and thus becomes ready to join the League of Shadows. However, he must first prove that he is willing to do what it takes to see justice done \u2013 namely, to execute a murderer. Bruce refuses, but Ducard insists that this is necessary. He now reveals to Bruce that the League\u2019s purpose is to purge Gotham of evil by destroying the city. Bruce cannot accept this as the right process for justice. He escapes from the League, destroying their fortress in the process. However, grateful for everything Ducard has done for him, he saves Ducard from the burning building and leaves him unconscious with some nearby villagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce now returns to Gotham after a seven year absence. With the assistance of Alfred his butler and Lucius Fox, an old employee of Wayne Enterprises, Bruce sets out building the character and legend of Batman to inspire fear in the hearts of Gotham\u2019s criminals. He also finds out that Sergeant Gordon is one of the few trustworthy policemen. In addition, Rachel is still trying her best to fight crime in her position at the DA\u2019s office. However, because of Bruce\u2019s devil-may-care playboy cover, Rachel loses all respect for him, feeling that he has thrown aside his father\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, shady dealings are afoot in Gotham. Falcone is working together with psychologist Dr. Crane to smuggle drugs. Crane also works to get any of Falcone\u2019s thugs who are caught transferred to his asylum. However, what Falcone doesn\u2019t know is that Crane is actually smuggling in a pathogen and dumping it into the water system. Further, a cargo ship from Wayne Enterprises is attacked, and the prototype of a microwave emitting weapon has been stolen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce manages to track down Crane\u2019s drug shipments, but in the process Crane infects him with his poisonous gas. Luckily for Bruce, Fox is able to come up with an antidote in time to save him from permanent neurological damage. Meanwhile, Rachel continues to put pressure on Crane, leading him to gas her as well. Just in time, Bruce arrives to break up Crane\u2019s gang, discovering in the process that Crane has been dumping his poison into the city\u2019s water supply. Bruce inoculates Rachel against the gas, and gives her two more vials of the antidote, one for Gordon and one for mass production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Bruce\u2019s birthday party at his mansion, he is shocked by the reappearance of Ducard, who has gathered the League of Shadows together again and is determined to destroy Gotham city. His plan now becomes clear \u2013 with the pathogen released into the water supply, he will fire off the microwave emitter, thus releasing the gas into the air. This will drive all of Gotham insane, and they will tear the city apart as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce tries to fight Ducard, but is knocked unconscious in the midst of his burning home. Fortunately, Alfred comes in the nick of time to save him. Meanwhile, Ducard\u2019s men release all of the criminals at Crane\u2019s asylum. Ducard fires off the gun on the island called the Narrows, with the bridges having first been raised so as to trap all the police on the island. His plan now is to use the Wayne train to access the rest of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce catches up with them as they set out on the train. He and Ducard fight aboard the train. Meanwhile, Gordon, in the Batmobile, races to cut off the train before it can reach the central water main at Wayne Towers. Gordon shoots down the supports of the train, causing it to crash and explode. Ducard and the microwave emitter are both destroyed in the crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the movie, Rachel knows that Bruce is Batman. Her faith in him is restored, although she is sad that the man she loved seems to have gone, hidden behind the new, \u201creal\u201d Bruce Wayne, the man criminals fear. Bruce decides to rebuild the Wayne mansion, with improvements to the Batcave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Analysis<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce is a man in search of himself, trying to find his place in the world. He is infused from an early age with a passion for justice, at first because his father is a passionate advocate of assisting those less fortunate, and then because of his parents\u2019 murder and the seeming injustice of the light sentencing of their killer. However, because of his anger about his parents\u2019 death, he confuses justice with vengeance. He sees himself as being the bringer of justice when he decides to kill his parents\u2019 murderer, but, as Rachel points out to him, this kind of eye-for-an-eye retribution is not the answer to evil in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ducard offers Bruce another possibility of how to approach justice. Ducard too was consumed by anger and fear after the death of his wife, but he was saved from self-destructive anger by joining the League of Shadows. Ducard argues that justice means \u201cbalance\u201d, which for him means that if some people must die in order for evil to eliminated, then this must be done. For him, there can be no compassion towards criminals, whether individuals or entire corrupt cities like Gotham. Once a man or a city has become corrupt, it needs to be destroyed, like a cancer. For Ducard, compassion and justice cannot be mixed, because compassion invites weakness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, in order for Bruce to become the hero he is meant to be, the saviour of Gotham, he needs to reject both kinds of justice \u2013 the vengeful type and the merciless type. Ducard helps Bruce to overcome the former, but Bruce refuses to accept Ducard\u2019s conclusions. Having failed in his earlier attempt to execute a criminal (ie, his parents\u2019 murderer), Bruce is now offered another chance to take justice into his own hands when the League of Shadows demands that he execute a murderous farmer. Bruce refuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ducard challenges Bruce, declaring that \u201cyour compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share.\u201d Bruce\u2019s response is absolutely crucial: \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s so important. It separates us from them.\u201d Bruce recognizes that justice without mercy can be even worse than the evil it is attempting to solve. Later on he will protest to Ducard that Gotham has some good left in it, that it is worth saving. This is the attitude that saves Bruce from becoming like Ducard, someone who believes that he alone can pass judgment and execution on other human beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Bruce also has to struggle to keep his efforts for justice from becoming a personal vendetta. After he destroys parts of the city and several police cars in an effort to save Rachel, Alfred warns him not to let his personal feelings for Rachel overcome his efforts for justice. \u201cIt can\u2019t be personal,\u201d Alfred says, \u201cor else you\u2019re just a vigilante.\u201d Without a guiding adherence to a moral code, the single-minded pursuit of justice can become simply a tool for revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movie then involves Bruce\u2019s discovery of his place in the world, of what he is being called to do \u2013 one could almost say that it is a discovery of his vocation<\/em>. Having been given certain talents and certain resources, the question now becomes \u201cwhat will Bruce do with them\u201d? Will he use all of his skills and money for good? Or will he be nothing more than a billionaire party animal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is precisely what Rachel wants to know. She finds herself dismayed at Bruce\u2019s apparent lack of concern for the welfare of Gotham. When he protests that he\u2019s still the same old Bruce, she correctly refutes him: \u201cIt\u2019s not what you are underneath \u2013 it\u2019s what you do that defines you.\u201d No matter how good our intentions are underneath, if we don\u2019t act on them, then we are failing in our duty. People are never praised as heroes or as saints for how they felt, or for how good their intentions were \u2013 instead, our legacy will be based on what we do<\/em> with what has been given to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is in this light that we can reflect on the movie as regards vocation. A vocation involves a call, but not a call that is somehow divorced from who we are, but that instead is a call to become who we really<\/em> are meant to be. Thus, our call comes within our circumstances, and will not be beyond our talents or abilities. In addition, it is a call not simply to self-improvement, such as Bruce\u2019s personal victory over his own fears, but it is a call to action<\/em>. First, our heart must be changed, but it can\u2019t stop there. Our changed heart must lead to outward action, whatever that action is. This is what Rachel tells Bruce, and what Bruce succeeds in achieving. Once he has overcome the fear and anger that paralyzed him, and once he recognized how true justice ought to be pursued, then he was moved to act, to fulfill the vocation that had been given to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also where another central theme of the movie comes in \u2013 that of fear. The dying words of Bruce\u2019s father are \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid Bruce.\u201d This fear is what Bruce needs to overcome in order to become the person he is meant to be, in order to fulfill his vocation. This is true for us too \u2013 remember that Christ says the same words to us, to \u201cBe not afraid.\u201d Fear paralyzes, it prevents us from acting. We might have good intentions, have nice comfortable feelings of love, etc., but sometimes we are prevented from doing the right thing, from acting<\/em>, by fear \u2013 fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of looking like \u201cgoody-two-shoes\u201d, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Bruce discovers is that only by overcoming this fear is it possible for us to discover and live our vocation, which is what we have been put on this earth to do. Notice how the villains in the movie all play on the fears of innocent people \u2013 Ducange\u2019s plan is to have Gotham tear itself apart through fear, the Scarecrow\u2019s gas taps into people\u2019s worst fears, and so on. The only answer to this fear is the one that Bruce provides, which is confidence in doing good and in pursuing one\u2019s vocation. Thus, by conquering fear, we can act<\/em>, which is the means by which we fulfill our purpose in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Questions<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Bruce\u2019s journey is ultimately one of discovering his vocation: overcoming fear and vengeance in order to pursue true justice through compassion, mercy, and selfless action. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200],"tags":[201],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie","tag-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viavirtutis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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