The Riddler, Killmonger, and the trap of villains who are right

Batman’s enemies have traditionally come with baroque, colorful motivations meant to contrast with what a grim and driven character he is. Take the Riddler, whose raison d’etre has always been that he’s got a monstrous ego, a need for attention, and an irresistible compulsion to prove he’s smarter than a guy who dresses up like a bat and gets hit in the head 28 times a night.

But Matt Reeves’ new Batman reboot Batman opts to tweak the Riddler’s signature motivations to bring them in line with the new breed of superhero seriousness. If you’ve been watching superhero films and TV over the past five years, it might seem familiar.

As superhero film enters its second decade of existence, the industry seems to experiment with villains who can be sympathetic and used to create stories. But there’s a difference between a supervillain who wants revenge after being personally wronged, and a supervillain who adopts a progressive cause. Because unless it’s handled very skillfully, you can’t make a supervillain advocate for positive societal change without trivializing that advocacy. And it’s very difficult to make a hero oppose those kinds of changes without making them into the tone police of the shitty status quo.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for The Batman.]

A handy Riddler uses some duct tape to patch up a clog probably in The Batman

Batman, the Riddler doesn’t want power, personal revenge, or to best Batman. He wants to expose a ring of corruption that has been squandering funds set aside for Gotham’s most vulnerable. Superhero cinema fans might recall Karli Morgenthau (head Flag Smasher) as an inspiration. The Falcon and Winter Soldier — she wanted support for international refugees. Or you might be thinking of Erik Killmonger, who planned to redistribute Wakanda’s weapons stores to the disenfranchised African diaspora he felt the country had abandoned. Perhaps you are thinking about the Thanos debate in the wake. Avengers: Infinity War. Sure, what he actually wanted to do was murder half of the universe, but in a twist from much simpler comic book motivations, he characterized his goals as a desire for “balance,” and solving the problem of resource scarcity.

The reason these characters are villains, not heroes, according to these films and shows, is the way they seek change, not the actual changes they’re seeking. It’s unfortunate, maybe even tragic, that they choose paths that break our greatest moral codes, because that means the heroes have to stop them. They might have even been on the exact same side if things had been different.

Explain to me again why Captain America isn’t helping refugees?

Karli sits in shock next to Sam WIlson in Falcon and the Winter Soldier

If The Falcon and Winter Soldier writer Malcolm Spellman made his tweaks to the Flag Smasher concept, it meant showing the new Captain America standing against goals like “housing, food, and medicine for the poor and displaced,” while telling the audience that this was a specific, exceptional situation where it was OK for him to do so — not because of anything the victims did, but because they had the wrong defenders. Batman puts Batman in a similar situation by transforming the Riddler into a character fundamentally motivated by Gotham’s failure to care for its most vulnerable citizens.

They show the need to socially change but superficially. There are no real solutions, but only morally repulsive ones and easy fixes. These are the two routes to change. The Falcon and Winter Soldierare either murder or spur-of the-moment speeches that immediately change the direction of countries around the globe.

BatmanScreenwriters Peter Craig and Matt Reeves create a story in which the Riddler murders corrupt officials and tortures them. By the end of the movie, it seems as if Batman may even have realized that his methods and the Riddler’s are similar, and that he needs to change. But Batman also firmly establishes that Bruce Wayne was not interested in what was going on with his own father’s charitable fund, and would not have discovered it was being abused and misused if the Riddler hadn’t provided him with copious clues. Riddler’s methods are morally reprehensible, but they sure did work!

Justice, not vengeance

Mr. Freeze gazes sadly upon his frozen wife in Batman: The Animated Series.

It’s not that a story where a supervillain wants to do good in the world by evil means can’t work. It just takes a certain kind of construction, one that most of these movies and shows don’t manage. Consider the supervillain seeking revenge on a personal and legitimate wrong.

If Mr. Freeze wants bloody revenge on the callous executive who shut down his wife’s life-support freezer, then the ensuing story needs Batman to both capture Mr. Freeze, AndMake sure that the Bad Exec is brought to justice. If the executive walks away, that isn’t a triumphant ending, because we can all see that he Also committed a heinous crime.

The role of the superhero, in this case, is to defeat the villain-with-bad-methods and alsoUse your own resources to ensure that bad people don’t get the justice they deserve It’s good methods — both preventing new crimes and securing retribution for old ones.

These rules also apply to villains who are sympathetic to their cause. Captain America must stop Flag Smasher groups that use bad tactics to house and feed refugees. AndFix the refugee crisis. These stories have heroes. These are spurred to take on the villains’ positive goals, as when Karli inspires Sam to give his refugee-rescuing speech. But logistically, they can only do so after the villains are defeated, because if they’d been working on the problem all along, these villains wouldn’t have been spurred to action in the first place and then there’d be no story.

The problem is, and this is the main reason why Batman and Captain America don’t walk away from these stories as true heroes. It’s because most superheroes can’t fix large social problems, especially within the timeframes of TV series or movies. This is the reason why The Falcon and Winter Soldier BatmanTheir endings can be hung on unresolved promises via deus ex andatory or personal revelations regarding method.

Wealth inequality, displacement, poverty — these are problems that need long-term solutions, and they rest high above the level of individual action. They aren’t issues that superheroes or villains are capable of tackling in any literal way. That isn’t a critical flaw in the superhero genre. These characters are not intended to be instruction manuals but metaphors. Batman is the ability to see the good in people and deny the evils of the Joker. Superman is the embodiment of how someone with immense power, Lex Luthor representing unchecked power.

In comics, at least, the superhero genre has a number of blueprints for how to handle villains-with-a-point. Poison Ivy began her life as a mind-control and man-hating thief. Over time, her character became more closely entwined with protecting the environment — and caring for the environment became much, much less of a fringe issue. Today, she’s less of a villain, and more of a misunderstood anti-hero. She is the The Harley Quinn show makes an ongoing joke of her insisting she isn’t a supervillain, she’s an ecoterrorist. Magneto is an excellent example of this. He became a genocide survivor and no longer a mutant manic maniac. It was to stop being treated like an all-out bad guy, so the X-Men wouldn’t look monstrous for dismissing his concerns.

Just look at what we have made, Magneto says to Professor X, as they watch the X-Men party on Krakoa, in House of X #6, Marvel Comics (2019). — Magneto, Professor X and each other at the birth the modern mutant nation.

It’s also much easier for comic book superheroes to make the “cool motive, still murder” argument, because their settings actually have ironclad “superheroes don’t kill” rules — something most live-action productions have made very little effort to adapt. Ironically, keeping heroes closer to their basic roots may make it simpler to create complex villains.

So why are so many superhero movies dipping a toe into the knotty challenge of centering villains who are not only sympathetic, but arguably share the heroes’ goals? This is why we are getting into this mess. Didn’t we all really like the moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight when Michael Caine said “Some men just want to watch the world burn?”

Killmonger, I for one

Marvel Studios’ BLACK PANTHER..L to R: Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya)

It feels like the most recent shift in villain stories can be traced back to Erik Killmonger in 2018’s Black Panther. He isn’t the first sympathetic supervillain to hit the big screen, by any means. (X-Men fans have been donning “Magneto Was Right” shirts since time immemorial.) But the deftness and clarity writers Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole brought to exploring Killmonger’s motivations was a cut above — and the viral phrase “Killmonger was right” has been used since for any villain that hits the mainstream consciousness in a way that makes fans say “Hey … they have a point.” Since 2018, Thanos has been right, Joker has been right, Mysterio has been right, and if a #RiddlerWasRight campaign crops up in the coming days, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Yet Eric Killmonger remains the exception to the rule. Black Panther explores his reasons for pushing for societal change in great detail, and shows how they have their roots in his anger over what he feels he’s personally owed, not love for his fellow man. That’s a great nuance to establish. But more importantly, his goals expose the need for a specific societal change that the movie’s hero is actually capable of achieving.

The Black Panther can create immediate, broad change by revealing Wakanda’s technological advancements to the world and creating a global network of charitable embassies. That isn’t because he’s a superhero, it’s because he’s a king — the victorious, unopposed sovereign of his society.

That particular power isn’t one that most comic book heroes possess, and that’s a feature, not a bug. Because that isn’t a power that most people possess, either. One person can’t solve a refugee crisis by giving a good speech, or fix wealth inequality by tossing a few mobsters and politicians in jail (or by pouring his own wealth into Gotham, as long as we’re talking about it). Pretending that our superheroes can singlehandedly fix systemic real-world problems so we can feel nice about it is no less indulgent than gaining some catharsis from watching them beat Thanos’ face in. But Thanos isn’t real, and wealth inequality is.

Batman can solve crimes, but he’s never going to Solve All Crime, in the same way the X-Men are never going to save all mutants from prejudice, and Captain America is never going to fix all of the country’s problems. There always needs to be another Batman, X-Men, or Captain America story — a new issue next month, a new show or movie next year. Serial storytelling is what this is all about, however, it’s a feature and not a problem. The need to keep these stories in a kind of eternal, ongoing “now” has formed these characters we use to symbolize heroism and justice into the relatable, valuable metaphors they are today.

A superhero doesn’t have to create huge change to be a hero. They are able to show that perseverance is possible in spite of hardship and that it’s better to help than not. They show how people can pick themselves up and do what they can with the power they have, because all power — not just great power — demands responsibility.

Superheroes can’t show us how to win real-world wars, or solve our most complicated and entrenched social problems. And they aren’t meant to. However, they are able to help us remain strong and fight on.

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