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Bruce Wayne, AKA The Batman, is an enduring character that first emerged in 1939 from the pages of Detective Comics and has been with us in some form ever since. Recently, I have been noticing a number of posts that seem to place the version of the character presented in the Zack Snyder films as the ‘best’ version. Now, Snyder’s fans are vocal and intense just as fans, which is a perfectly fine expression of devotion, but I cannot find myself in agreement with them on this. One of the clips that they post and re-post is the fight between Batman and a number of thugs in a warehouse where Batman has come to rescue a woman held under a threat of being murdered.( I am being vague for those who have not seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.) This to me, and that film in general, do a disservice to the essential nature of the character.

Batman, despite predating the term’s general use in fiction or film, is for all purposes a noirdetective and that is what resides at the heart of the character. He investigates and exposes crimes and criminals with his brilliance, but like another fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, is adept at combat in all its forms because his opponents are never shy about employing violence. It is perhaps a strange quirk of fictional evolution that over time the two characters, Holmes and Wayne, who shared so much in skill and ability, diverged until what is glorified in each comes at the cost of their full skill set. Holmes, despite in the text as being proficient in so many forms of combat, becomes primarily an intellectual and Wayne, despite being brilliant, is noted for an impressive array of martial arts, his devotion to deduction mostly forgotten.

This reaches its apotheosis in the clip posted and re-posted by the Snyder fans. It is from a film in which Batman’s intelligence and detective skills are utterly forgotten as the character is manipulated and led to plainly false conclusions by the film’s principal villain.

Perhaps this is why my favorite cinematic Batman is Matt Reeves The Batman which, while showing elaborate hand-to-hand skill, is much more of a film noir than a martial arts experience. Even when Bruce Wayne fails to grasp the true nature of a clue he remains at heart a detective, untangling a complex web of cause and effect and ultimately not only uncovering the villain but his true self at the same time.