Getting To "Yes"

Via Tyler Cowen, the best Spiderman 3 review I've seen:

I bet that if the Sandman and Spiderman could have just gotten away from their positional stances (“I need to take money” and “I need to catch crooks” respectively), to their underlying interests (“I need to help my little girl” and “Dude, I’m all about helping the people”), they could have found some common ground. There was opportunity there, and it could have saved a lot of expensive plate glass and I-beams and cars being thrown about.

Indeed, since Peter Parker just so happens to have considerable scientific talents, it's not clear that his Spider-Man persona need have entered the picture at all. Similarly, it's often seemed to me that Bruce Wayne could do more to help Gotham if he stopped wasting time in the Batman suit and focused on deploying his business and philanthropical assets more effectively.

Comments

The one downside to the Sandman going legit is the whole "captured by the government and studied/forced to become a weapon of mass destruction thing". Still, a great review.

P.S.
Where the hell is the national gaurd in all these movies. I bet an Apache has more missles than mister flying scateboard dude. And they could have fired them from miles away in New Jersey instead of getting within punching range.

Posted by WillieStyle | May 19, 2007 12:18 PM

If it were that easy, we'd be seeing superheroes with names like Single Payer Insurance Man or Low Deductible Girl. For better or worse, broken plate glass is essential to superheroism.

Posted by RSA | May 19, 2007 12:20 PM

I just couldn't get past the idea that this asteroid with the black suit goop just happened to land right next to the guy who also just happened to get bitten by a radioactive spider. I mean, they couldn't have come up with something besides an incredible coincidence?

Posted by Freddie | May 19, 2007 12:56 PM

They actually tackled this in the book, over several year and as comics evolved in storytelling frameworks. Gotham is both rife with institutionalized corruption, and as a major seaport burdened with a large and active organized crime element. While Wayne has overtly backed reformers (see Harvey Dent), the enemy is ruthless and will kill or destroy any such public figures (see Harvey Dent).

While Wayne Industries is well known for its philanthropic work and political liberalism, Gotham itself is highly resistant to change. Short of a Bloomberg-like run for Mayor, how much change could, say, a random billionaire bring to New York?

On a side note, Green Arrow just DID make a Bloomberg-like run for Mayor and won. He has discovered how constraining the political system can be.

Now throttling back down from Geek Factor Nine ...

Posted by jonrog1 | May 19, 2007 12:59 PM

I'm sorry, I just can't get interested in analyzing that utter turdkey of a movie.

Posted by Mr. Noah | May 19, 2007 1:01 PM

Of course, there is already the perfect superhero name out there for what Matt is proposing. Her name is Wonkette.

Posted by Pat | May 19, 2007 1:44 PM

Bruce Wayne could do more to help Gotham if he stopped wasting time in the Batman suit and focused on deploying his business and philanthropical assets more effectively.

And it would have the added advantage of being the Most.Boring.Movie.Ever

Posted by Fledermaus | May 19, 2007 2:19 PM

Why would Wayne want to run for Mayor of Gotham? Isn't the case that they last in office for about a year until they're killed?

Posted by Rob | May 19, 2007 2:29 PM

The whole point of the modern Batman mythos is that there is no real Bruce Wayne -- "'Bruce Wayne' is the real mask" being the unsubtle way this tends to be driven home. The purpose of the Bruce Wayne alterego is to make Batman's life possible through the liberal application of billionaire's privilege.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | May 19, 2007 2:36 PM

Matt, this has actually been brought up several times in the comic -- Bruce Wayne casually losing ten thousand dollars on a stupid golf bet (because he wants his golf partner to think of Gotham as a place where he can make easy money); Leslie Thompkins, a long-running figure in the Batman canon (Bruce's boyhood doctor), telling him that Batman can't help her but Bruce Wayne can; Wayne Industries' role as a significant source of philanthropic funding in the city and a company willing to hire rehabilitated cons, etc. As Aaron says, though, for the last twenty years at least, the writers have been making the point in small ways and in large that Bruce Wayne is sociopathic and insane, and beating the crap out of purse snatchers and mob goons scratches his itch in a way that funding a charter school really can't.

Posted by Steve | May 19, 2007 2:55 PM

In Dini's Batman: War On Crime (I think it was Dini, but I'm too lazy to look it up), Bruce Wayne actually spends a great deal of time deploying his "his business and philanthropical assets" to battle crime in Gotham, while literally fighting criminals as Batman by night. And it is actually quite surprisingly not the Most. Boring. Comic. Ever.

BTW, should I be embarrassed that I read a ton of political blogs, yet a good portion of my comments are related to comic books?

Posted by Eric the Political Hack | May 19, 2007 4:27 PM

That's clever. Anthony Lane, as usual, did the best Spider-man 3 review, though. He's by far our best film critic. Most film reviewers sound like they've had labotomies. There's no discernible intelligence there at all, just a collection of ad-hoc adjectives: "Knock-down drag-out fun!", "highly erotic!", "profoundly moving", "a deeply satisfying cinematic experience", and on and on. They must just have rolodexes and randomly flip through spilling out their adjectival diarrhea in a rotating torrent.

Posted by Warren | May 19, 2007 4:48 PM

Similarly, it's often seemed to me that Bruce Wayne could do more to help Gotham if he stopped wasting time in the Batman suit and focused on deploying his business and philanthropical assets more effectively.

Except that Batman is totally crazy. It's no longer fashionable in comics-fan circles to point this out, but it's pretty obvious that Bruce Wayne isn't really trying to fight crime so much as he's working out some serious PTSD/daddy issues.

Posted by Christmas | May 19, 2007 5:36 PM

A big part of being a superhero is self-actualization, realizing to the fullest what makes you special. Sure Peter Parker could have started a dialogue, but a lot of other people could have started a dialogue, and a lot of other people would have been a lot better at it than Peter Parker. Now, swinging on webs and fucking shit up, that's Spiderman's area of strength.

Posted by ploeg | May 19, 2007 6:43 PM

Christmas -

That interpretation of Batman is a popular one, beaten to death over the years. It's also the Most. Boring. Interpretation. Of. Batman. EVAR. Partly because it has been so beaten to death and partly because once you've done it there's nowhere to go with it.

The real answer of course is that Batman is a fictional character who lives in a world where he actually does do more good as an angst-ridden vigilante than as a billionaire businessman. Because that's just how the fictional world that he lives in works. Were Batman a person in the real world he'd either be long dead, or long ago captured by the police and tucked away in some nice psychiatric ward for rich people with severe personality disorders. (Much as James Bond, Jason Bourne, and a lot of other tough-guy fictional heroes).

Posted by NonyNony | May 19, 2007 8:09 PM

NonyNony, you are the Enemy of Fun.

Posted by jonrog1 | May 19, 2007 9:13 PM

Your Batman argument makes no sense. Is there any reason to think that Bruce Wayne has any specific, unique talent for allocating his philanthropic resources? He has a specific, unique talent for Batmannery. If he doesn't do it, no one will. But he can just pay someone to run Jason and Stephanie's Fund or whatever his foundation is, and someone else to run WaynePAC.

Posted by aeroman | May 20, 2007 1:02 AM

Going the other way around, I've always said that if I were a superhero, I'd be rich. None of this slumming it in NYC Spiderman stuff. Imagine the money you could make on endorsements... Just got to keep the clean image up. But a few exclusive interviews for some premium media outlets should help out there. The extreme prejudice of a manager of a 3rd rate daily should hardly dent your reputation.

Posted by mpowell | May 20, 2007 1:26 AM

Not Batman/Spiderman, but I think the books to name-check here are Ex Machina (superhero is elected mayor of NYC & tries working through the system) and Wildcats 3.0 (superheroes give up the whole superhero-ing thing and try to improve the world by running a corporation).

Posted by Stephen Frug | May 20, 2007 10:16 AM

I've often thought Bruce Wayne would be the perfect person to sit down with Lex Luthor, one bazillionaire to another, and say: "We both know that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. But the spandex crowd isn't the IRS or the SEC and I'm authorized to tell you on their behalf they won't bother themselves about what you've done in the past -- homicides excepted, if the can find any -- as long as you stop the nonsense now. You're filthy rich, you have, from what passes for legitimate sources, all sorts of power, you actually do enough good by accident that you could easily get people to do what you want willingly, and yet you lose billions and sully your reputation trying to take out the Boy Scout from Krypton, who would be happy to leave you alone if you stopped screwing around. Lex, we know how the game is played, and the capes aren't interested in tax evasion or white-collar crime, if that's what you're into. Just stay away from the rough stuff and they'll leave you alone. Deal?"

Posted by CJColucci | May 20, 2007 11:36 AM

I don’t want to wait till the end of Summer :( , I want it now. Who with me?
save your time and join me. ;)

Posted by BustyBoots | May 31, 2007 5:59 PM