The Batman

When he takes off that mask he looks like an emo kid who lost an online argument.


Still, I am very much looking forward to this movie.

Standard these days. If you're black or Hispanic or any race other than white then your racial identity is celebrated and promoted. It's at the core of your identity, a source of pride and the basis of community cohesion and cultural development. If you're white it's irrelevant or problematic only. To express pride in it makes you evil.


Therefore changing the race of a white character is perfectly acceptable, encouraged even because diversity is good, white people are the oppressors and a white character's racial identity is meaningless. However changing the race of a black character is an appalling act and universally condemned because their racial identity is of profound importance and to alter it is a fundamental distortion of the character's identity.


Such are the bonkers times we live in...

Damn, you beat me to it...


I'm pretty underwhelmed by the prospect of yet another Batman movie and this trailer has done little to change my mind. I'll probably still go see it anyway out of curiosity.

Probably has to do with how people of colour claim pride in their race in order to defy a white-dominated social hierarchy that has deemed their race to be a source of shame whereas white people are already at the top of a hierarchy that privileges them so there's no point in them claiming pride in being "white".(which is not the same as claiming pride in a specific cultural heritage like being Irish or Italian, but even then you get jackasses who claim that belonging to the Confederacy counts as heritage or the white supremacists who lump all the white cultures together just to be able to pit as many of them as possible against the races and ethnicities they hate). The reason that expressing white pride is considered evil is because it's only ever invoked by white people who are at best disregarding this exact power imbalance between different races and at worst actively hateful towards other races - I question what other possible reason there could be to claim pride in being white that isn't fundamentally racist.

In any case, I don't see any real issue with them changing the race for either Selina Kyle (didn't they already make her black in Year One anyway?) or Commissioner Gordon. Maybe they won't be the exact same, but you have to expect that with reboots - as long as everyone does their job right, it shouldn't be a problem. If anything, I have a bigger problem with Colin Farrell being caked in ugly prosthetics to play the Penguin.

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I was concerned about the race-lifting as well tbh with Gordon.
Even in Man Of Steel they race-lifted Perry White.

But, going by DC's new approach... all DC property is now a multiverse.

The upcoming Flashpoint movie will have Keaton AND Affleck in it.

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A film that I don't understand why it is being made. Happy to be proved wrong, but it can't/won't improve on the Dark Knight trilogy and the comparisons will of course happen.
Like the flogging of Spider-man it's just needless.
That said, the trailer doesn't look bad, although I am still not convinced by Pattinson.

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"I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me" (Frank Costello)

I've got to disagree I'm afraid.


I don't see anyone deeming black people's race to be a source of shame, the exact opposite actually. White privilege is a myth. I'm ethnically English and white European and I'm very proud of that. There's nothing racist or oppressive about that, just like a African American or Chinese person has every right to be proud of their identity. I'm not part of any oppressive hierarchy and all the powerful and influential people and institutions in the western world are actually on the left/progressive side on this issue; politicians, the media, business, social media companies, music, film and television industries, schools, universities, sports, etc etc.



Everyone should be entitled to be proud of their identity, whatever their race. That's equality. We shouldn't have one rule for white people and one rule for everyone else. That's inequality.

There is a historical precedent between the centuries of colonisation and slavery and segregation and apartheid and police brutality and slurs - it may not be as bad as it was in the past, but it's not like the ramifications of these issues (or the issues themselves) ever truly went away to the point where you could genuinely dismiss them by saying you don't see them (to paraphrase MLK, to be neutral is to take the side of the oppressor). An African-American person being proud of their race is a statement against a world that has continually argued otherwise on illogical and hateful grounds (often inflicting physical or systemic violence in the process) - it is not identical to a white person being proud of their whiteness for...what reason exactly?

I'd weigh-in and critique some of this, but I know from experience that means the discussion would just unceremoniously end.

So just standard reminder to be civil (everyone has been so far) and not stray too far from the movie itself.

Yeah, well, it began unceremoniously so at least that way it would be consistent.

I'm not proud of my "whiteness", that's just my skin colour which is just one element of my ethnicity. And I'm proud because of Britain's immense contribution to the progression of mankind. Science, technology, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, theology, economics, music, film, poetry, medicine etc etc. Britain and "the West" built the modern world, literally and figuratively. Is it a perfect place? No of course not. There remains plenty of poverty and injustice but the quality of life is infinitely better than it was two or three hundred years ago. I'm not denying of terrible mistakes have been made along the way.


As for slavery, all civilizations throughout history have been involved in slavery of one form or another. It is not an exclusive sin of the west and I don't see why today's generation should be made to feel guilty for events of centuries past. After all, Britain and other western European countries were the ones who first abolished slavery despite having benefited from it the most. We can celebrate the scale and wonder of the Pyramids in Egypt without endorsing the fact that they were built by slaves.

I already made that distinction between one's national/cultural heritage and one's race in an earlier post, though - it is an important distinction to make when discussing this matter because this whole thing started off as a complaint about an alleged double standard over taking personal pride in one's race and it is better to make sure that we're both working off the same definitions here.

Can't say I see much comparability between a discussion starting suddenly and it being bailed on suddenly (particularly over and over). In fact, discussions starting suddenly is kinda how this usually works.

I hate the multiverse concept - Nonsense to me, but I realise that I may be in the minority.

I'd keep replying, but I wouldn't want to disappoint you.

Unfortunately, irreverent responses to stuff I'm trying to talk about earnestly already achieves that.

This is probably the only way to save the DCEU.

Look at how many misfires they've had, the stuff with Affleck leaving The Batman in mid production... having Justice League being a total disaster but having Aquaman and Wonder Woman do quite well.

They've gotta save the DCEU somehow... and by taking every single movie and TV show based on DC and tying them into a shared canon by using a Crisis On Infinite Earths style Multiverse, is almost a stroke of genius to dig themselves out of the incredibly deep hole they were in.

I'm kinda looking forward to it now tbh.

I was just kind of hoping that they held their hands up and said "We messed up, let's just start again"

I agree re: multiverse, but amusingly, I agree in both directions. I kinda hate it, but I also think it's all they can do now.

Copying Marvel has two problems. One, just the idea of copying by itself, which feels kinda lame and I suspect will make everything DC does feel inauthentic. These kinds of blockbusters already feel like cash grabs to people, even when they mostly like them (I mostly like them), but it hits a new level if one's just following the lead of the other.

Two, the fact that they kinda tried already and it didn't work. It doesn't seem like they have a unifying, centralizing Feige-like figure over there that can hold this stuff together, and if they can't, they're better off going the other way and having a series of interesting (and even quasi-experimental) one-offs. Maybe if they hit on something they can try to serialize a bit more, but for now I think letting directors put their stamp on these and try stuff out is probably for the best. It's a good bit of counterprogramming to the MCU, and kind of the only option available to them if they don't want to just be a pale imitation of what Marvel's doing.

It won't be as steady as the MCU films, but I suspect it'll occasionally have a much higher ceiling, too.

I like the fact that Brandon Routh is now part of the DCEU.

He played Superman alongside Hoachlin's Superman in Supergirl.
Supergirl is tied to the Flash series.
I've seen footage of Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/Flash, alongside Grant Guslin as Barry Allen/Flash.

This means Routh is part of the DCEU

I think they confirmed though that everything DC is canon now.
Hell, that means we could see Superboy TV Series John Haymes Newton and Gerard Christopher as two more Superman's's's'ss, and Dean Cain reappear as an aged 1990s Superman as well

Helen Slater come back as Supergirl, which is weird considering she's been in Supergirl playing Supergirl's Earth mother... and she also played Superman's birth mother Lara El in Smallville