The many murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne

 

Potential spoilers of "The Batman" follow. You may also not want to read this if you don't know how Bruce Wayne's parents died.

This weekend’s premiere of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” is yet another reboot of the cinematic Dark Knight Detective. At nearly three-hours in length, the film presents a Batman who is more of an armored sleuth than his previous versions, a character who would be at home in “Blade Runner,” “Mean Streets,” "Seven," “Zodiac,” or even "Chinatown." A few critics have pointed out that, despite its length, the film is one of the few versions of the story which does not tell us how Batman came to be. Robert Pattinson’s version arrives fully-formed, confident the audience knows his backstory.

In the final moments of “The Dark Knight,” as the manhunt for Batman begins following the death of Harvey Dent, Commissioner Gordon’s son asks why. “Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now,” his father replies. Our cinematic versions of Batman have grown progressively darker over time, so that every few years we presumably get the Batman we deserve. And because of this, the way the films talk about his origin have grown progressively more complicated.

The first appearance of Batman’s beginning was in Detective Comics #33, in November 1939, “The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom.” In it, the legend of the Batman and how he came to be the “Eerie Fighter of the Night,” the “Weird Figure of the Dark,” is positioned some 15 years in the past, putting it around 1924, before the Great Depression. Thomas Wayne, his wife and son are walking home from a movie when they are accosted by an anonymous stickup man who wants Martha’s necklace. (Martha is not named in this first appearance)

When Thomas steps in front of her, he is gunned down. “You asked for it!” the unnamed killer says. Martha begins calling for help from the police, and the robber shoots her. “The boy’s eyes are wide with terror and shock as the horrible scene is spread before him,” the text tells us. Two panels later, Bruce, alone by candlelight, his hands gripped in a kind of feverish prayer, vows, “…and I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals.” After years of training, in science and bodybuilding, Bruce realizes his wealth gives him the opportunity for vengeance.

“Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible…a...a…” It is at the appearance of a bat outside his window, which Bruce takes as an omen, that the Batman is born. And thus is the character’s origin told in two comic book pages, 12 panels in all.

It was 50 years later before those moments were captured in Tim Burton’s “Batman.” The campy sixties television show only alluded to the Wayne murders without actually showing them, and Burton’s visual style was an antidote to the bright colors and in-jokes of the memorable show.

The reporter Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) tails Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) as he makes his way to an obscure corner of Gotham City, where he unwraps two roses and leaves them. Vicki relays this to the reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl), who digs into the archives and finds out why. A newspaper on microfilm reveals, “Thomas Wayne Murdered: Only Child Survives.” (Again, Mrs. Wayne’s name is not revealed). Knox tells Vale that Wayne is “really screwed up.” It is only later, after Bruce Wayne views the newest video challenge by the Joker (Jack Nicholson), that he makes the connection with something the criminal said to him in Vale’s apartment.  

It is nighttime at the Monarch Theatre. “Footlight Frenzy” is on the bill. As with the rest of the film, the look is a kind of neo-retro, a noir Norman Rockwell – it looks like the thirties even though that would make Batman considerably older. The Wayne family are dressed as the very rich, and the shot is framed so that we are looking up at them from Bruce’s perspective. There is a chill in the air as we can see the happy parents’ final breaths. This is the idealized childhood, just at the moment it is snuffed out. There are two men in overcoats following from a distance.

Bruce looks back, the first to detect something amiss. Two robbers appear, one silhouetted. The other grabs at Mrs. Wayne’s pearls. Thomas Wayne intervenes, and is shot. Another shot follows. The gunman, his face still obscured, asks, “Tell me something, kid. You ever dance with the Devil by the pale moonlight?” The gun is pointed at Bruce, as the robber steps forward, revealing his face. It is the young Jack Napier, the future Joker, smiling his even-then-rictus grin. He notices something out of the corner of his eye. The shots have drawn attention. They must leave. “See you ‘round, kid,” he says, unaware of what fate has in store for both of them.

Burton’s version, of course, is a departure from the comic, where the Waynes were killed by a low-level criminal named Joe Chill. By tying the Joker to the beginning of Batman, the film underlines its “War of the Freaks” story, as one ghastly figure rises up to combat another. But the first appearance of Thomas and Martha Wayne is seen through a mist of childlike reverence and love. Knox, who is, we would assume, a good reporter, might understandably have heard of the murder of someone as prominent as Thomas and Martha Wayne. Yet he seems unaware until he researches it. This, mixed with the visual style, reinforces the idea that the Waynes’ death was in the distant past, practically relegated to legend.

There is a fleeting image of the moment in Joel Schumacher’s 1995 “Batman Forever,” when Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer) undergoes a therapy session with the psychologist Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman). Dr. Meridian overturns a rose vase, and Bruce has a flashback to the alley and the sight of the single gunman. He explains the discovery of his father’s journal on the day of the wake for his parents, and how he fell into a pit and had his first encounter with the omen of the bat.

During the murder in Burton’s version, Martha Wayne’s pearls mingle on the ground with spilled popcorn. Each time the Wayne murders appear in screen, the pearls are significant, an obvious symbol of wealth, as well as the mystery of the feminine, purity lost. In the original comic, it is unclear what kind of necklace Martha Wayne was wearing. The cinematic image may have been borrowed from Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 limited comics series, “The Dark Knight Returns,” where the image of the broken string of pearls may first have appeared. It’s something we will keep returning to with each retelling. 

When the murder was revisited in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins” (2005), Bruce as a boy falls into what appears to be an old well while hiding from Rachel Dawes. It is instead an entrance to the underworld - the old caverns underneath Wayne Manor. There, he encounters perhaps hundreds of bats, which frighten him. He is rescued by Thomas, who draws him up by rope, foreshadowing Bruce’s future crime-fighting career. “Why do we fall?” Thomas asks his son. “So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” But Bruce is left with nightmares of bats so vivid that they make him uncomfortable later during a performance of the opera “Mefistofele,” a retelling of the Faust legend, a man who makes a bargain with the Devil. Batlike creatures dance on ropes to the infernal music. “All creatures feel fear,” Thomas told his son earlier, “especially the scary ones.”

Because his son wants to leave, Thomas encourages their departure from the theater out a side door into an alley. But the family encounters Joe Chill, who wants Thomas’ wallet. He manages the situation in a calm voice, handing it over where it is unfortunately dropped. Joe is scared; the gun shakes. He bends down to fumble the wallet into his hand, but he wants jewelry as well. Thomas jumps in front of his wife, is shot, and Chill grabs for the pearls, breaking them. But Nolan doesn’t make a show of the necklace breaking. Instead, the robber runs off, leaving Bruce alone. “It’s okay,” his father says. “Don’t be afraid.” This is significant, because Bruce will blame himself for their deaths. If only he hadn’t been frightened, he thinks. His fear will later be channeled into anger.

The death takes on more resonance later into the film and in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. When Batman (Christian Bale) says his final goodbye to Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), Gordon begs him to reveal his identity, so people will know who it was who saved Gotham City from a soon-to-detonate nuclear device. “A hero can be anyone. That was always the point,” Batman says, calling back to the murder of his parents, when young Bruce first met Gordon. “Anyone. A man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a little boy’s shoulders to let him know that the world hadn’t ended…” After a moment, Gordon realizes that Batman is Bruce Wayne.

Not to impose too much reality on the moment, but one would assume that Gordon, after decades on the Gotham police force, would have had to reassure countless children at crime scenes. Gotham is, after all, a very rough place. So we might safely assume that he had long harbored some suspicions as to Batman’s true identity, now confirmed. (Or maybe not. It is a movie, after all.) Of the many murders Gordon investigated in his career, the case of Thomas and Martha Wayne would have been a memorable one. But again, the Waynes are seen and remembered benignly. Thomas is a doctor, but he runs a billion-dollar company responsible for Gotham’s public transportation system, which is tied into Wayne Tower, and Thomas tells Bruce about the needs of the city’s underprivileged. He is mindful of economic hardship, and imparts to his son a sense of public stewardship. To borrow from another source, because of his great power, he has…you know the rest.  

When once again we see the origin story, it is at the beginning of 2016’s “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” Zack Snyder’s partly-maligned, partly-magnified grim epic. The familiar scenes play out in a montage. It is the double internment in the Wayne family mausoleum. Young Bruce runs away, called after by Alfred (Jeremy Irons). But as he runs through the forest around Wayne Manor, and falls down the abandoned well, he cannot escape the memory – he and his parents are leaving a theater. “The Mark of Zorro” is now playing, but the marquee advertises “Excalibur,” John Boorman’s 1981 retelling of the King Arthur legend, as coming Wednesday.

Casting is interesting here. Thomas Wayne is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, perhaps best known as the evil Negan from “The Walking Dead.” Martha is Lauren Cohan, Negan’s nemesis Maggie. One can assume, because of the way the origin in framed for the film, that Snyder wants familiar actors, especially for Martha, who finally gets her due in this film. But Morgan is known for portraying villains, and also appeared in Snyder’s “Watchmen” as the Comedian, arguably the most problematic of the deeply troubling heroes in that film. It is a subtle change which hints at more to come in future retellings.

The action unfolds silently, set to Hans Zimmer’s score. Thomas steps forward as the robber confronts them, and a single shot dispatches him. Martha attempts to shield her son, but the gun is pointed at her, the pearl necklace caught on the barrel. The shot kills her, but also breaks the string, sending the pearls cascading to the sidewalk. “Martha,” Thomas says, setting up the moment deep into the movie, when Batman (Ben Affleck) realizes he has something in common with Superman (Henry Cavill). As it appears he is about to kill the Kryptonian, whom he has judged a menace, Superman calls out to save his earthly mother (Diane Lane), who shares the same name as the late Mrs. Wayne. Groans follow from a segment of the audience.

Bruce’s narration at the beginning of the movie tells that his life before was filled with “perfect things…diamond absolutes.” Later, when the cloud of bats engulfs him in his dreams, he realizes he has “fallen.” The vision of bats carry him to light, but he calls it “a beautiful lie.” It suggests that the nature of Bruce Wayne’s alter ego is inherently compromised. He sees himself, like Mephistopheles, as a fallen creature, once a being of light, still fascinated by the light, but twisted by darkness. Is his vision of himself as a force for good a beautiful lie, or was it his life before? 

The memory clouds even further with Todd Phillips’ 2019 “Joker,” which, like Burton’s film, ties the Batman’s archnemesis closer to him. The film also reflects the more ambivalent nature of how American popular culture has come to view capitalism in the 21^st century. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a failed party clown and comedian with mental health issues, caught in the web of compromised social services and rampant poverty in a crime-ridden Gotham City. His mother Penny (Frances Conroy) has both mental and physical issues and, like Arthur, is unable to move up under the weight of it all.

In the background is mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne, (Brett Cullen) a billionaire who contemptuously refers to street criminals as “clowns” in the language of privilege. But Penny leads Arthur to believe that Thomas is his real father. Arthur goes to Wayne Manor and performs for young Bruce through the gated fence until he is stopped by Alfred Pennyworth. When Arthur meets Thomas in a theater restroom, he attempts to connect with Thomas, who tells him his mother was delusional, that he is adopted, and punches him. Later, Penny tells Arthur that any evidence of his adoption is false, implying that Thomas used his power and money to hide their relationship.

This version of Thomas Wayne, as others have noted, combines elements of President Donald Trump – his wealth, his political aspirations, intimations of his private life, and a certain boorishness – with Hillary Clinton, who famously mocked Trump’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables.” The portrayal of Bruce is still innocent, but the iron fence, the butler to protect him, the wealth, separate him from Arthur and the rest of Gotham. Is Arthur really Bruce’s half-brother? We don’t think so, but we get a hint at the unfairness of life. Are Bruce’s later mental health issues solely because of what will happen to his parents, or is it also the legacy of a dysfunctional father relationship? Though “Joker” goes to some length to make us sympathize with Arthur, he is still a narcissistic killer. But it makes us ask the question of just how different Bruce Wayne’s later career as Batman is from the Joker’s. Is he beating up criminals because they’re evil, or because he wants to beat something up?

When the Waynes leave the theatre, Gotham City is convulsed in a riot brought on by Arthur’s murder of Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) on live television. At the theatre is a double feature from 1981 – Brian DePalma’s film “Blow Out,” about a political assassination, and “Zorro the Gay Blade,” a comedic retelling of the Zorro legend which features Don Diego de la Vega’s twin brother Ramon, a homosexual who fights evil in a colorful vigilante costume.

Out on the street, figures in clown masks are prowling, carrying smoke bombs and signs that say “Resist." One of them follows the Waynes out of the theater and down an alley. He recognizes the candidate and shoots him, telling him he’s getting what he deserves. He shoots Martha and rips off the pearls almost as an afterthought. This isn’t an act of robbery for gain but an anonymous gunman lashing out at a symbol of wealth and power. They are killed because of who they are, with only a secondary emphasis on what they have. Meanwhile, Arthur Fleck is now the prince of the city, cheered on by all the masked clowns, finally having found his tribe.

Though we thankfully do not see the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne in 2022’s “The Batman,” it isn’t needed. The story takes place over six extremely rainy days before the Gotham City mayoral race. The city resembles what we saw in "Joker" - a place where the safety net doesn't catch anybody, as one character says. Batman has been at work for two years, but he confides to his journal that he isn't sure he's making a difference. The action begins with the murder of four-term mayor Don Mitchell Jr. in his home on Halloween by the mysterious Riddler, presumably over Mitchell's private affair. His death recalls the murder of mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne, 20 years before, in 2001. (Democratic elections are necessarily dangerous in Gotham City.) Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) fixates on Mitchell’s young son, the sight of whom stirs up obvious memories. At Mitchell’s funeral, Bruce encounters the crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), who tells him how Thomas saved his life through surgery on his dinner table to remove a bullet. Bruce feels the warmth of the memory, his father obviously feeling that even a crime boss’ life is subject to the Hippocratic Oath. 

It is because of the Riddler’s own vendetta against Gotham City’s public figures that we learn he was also an orphan, housed in a home operated by the Waynes. Once again, Gotham has a war of the freaks, sinister half-brothers cut from the same cloth. Added to this is Selena Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), the Catwoman, who is also the illegitimate daughter of Falcone. Now there are three wounded figures, orphans of circumstance. Bruce is the odd one out though, because of his considerable wealth. But according to the Riddler, Thomas Wayne hired Falcone to kill a journalist in order to shield his wife from the public revelation of her and her family’s history of mental illness. "You'd be surprised what even a good man like him is capable of in the right circumstances," Falcone tells Bruce.

The news is naturally shattering, as Bruce idealizes his late father. However, Alfred, wounded by the Riddler, tells a different story. Thomas asked Falcone to intimidate the journalist, but then decided to turn Falcone over to the police after learning of the man’s murder. He believes Falcone had Thomas and Martha killed to prevent this. Or was it the crime boss Sal Moroni, the subject of a memorable drug bust that made the careers of many within Gotham City’s power structure? Or just a random criminal? We aren’t sure. What's more, Thomas Wayne created the $1 billion Wayne Foundation, with its Gotham Renewal public works program. But after his death, the money becomes a giant flush fund for the city's criminal underworld.

The question of who Thomas Wayne was, for this film, is almost as important as that of who Bruce Wayne is. In each iteration of Batman, there is usually a moment where some confused criminal asks of the Batman the question, “Who are you?” or “What are you?” For Matt Reeves’ latest incarnation, he answers, “I’m vengeance,” a refrain that reaches all the way back to his 1939 beginning.

Our origin defines our journey – and defines us - if we allow it to do so. If Thomas Wayne was just another corrupted leader among Gotham City’s rogues gallery of the high and mighty, then is Bruce’s war on crime just as compromised? Does Thomas’ decision to turn Falcone in after the fact redeem him, then ensure his martyrdom with his death? Or is the whole truth more problematic, since Thomas should have known what might happen if you ask for help from a cold-blooded mobster? The answer is left to the audience. Being confronted with these questions is like reliving the moment again, Bruce tells Alfred. "I never thought I'd feel fear like that."

The Riddler’s campaign against Gotham draws his own masked fringe followers, much like the Joker, though that story took place presumably in another cinematic universe. (One of the drawbacks of continuous reboots is the nature of borrowing from one movie for consistency’s sake, while maintaining that this is a different film.) When one of his gunmen is asked the question, “Who are you?” he gives the Batman’s reply. "You showed me what was possible," the Riddler tells Batman at Arkham Asylum.  I am no different from you, the criminals are saying. I am the same. I have learned from you. This sparks a moment of change. The Batman descends into the chaos of the flooded Gotham Square Garden and begins rescuing people caught in the wreckage. Igniting a flare, he reaches into the darkness and pulls out the late mayor’s son, leading the survivors to safety. As the words of "Ave Maria" say:

For thou canst hear amid the wild
'Tis thou, 'tis thou canst save me amid despair

He learns something, and the character of the Batman, long mired in a humorless, grim miasma, perhaps steps briefly back from the abyss. 

"Vengeance won't change the past. Mine or anyone else's," he says. "I have to become more. People need hope."