A Thought on Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
This isn’t a full review of the incredible 1993 animated movie by that title, except to say that it’s awesome and you should watch it (it’s streaming on HBO Max currently). The late Kevin Conroy voiced the Bat himself, and Shirley Walker did the music, so you know it’s good. This is more a reflection on a line a younger Bruce Wayne says during a flashback.
To recap briefly, the movie’s premise is that a mysterious vigilante known as the Phantasm is killing off mob guys seemingly at random, and naturally Batman gets the blame for it. As he’s looking into this, we get flashbacks into his life before he officially takes up the cape and cowl. For instance, we see him attempt to thwart a robbery wearing a ski mask; he physically outmatches the bad guys, but it still goes wrong because, as he realizes, they weren’t afraid of him. He needs to strike fear into their hearts. (You know where this is going).
Meanwhile, he meets a nice young lady named Andrea Beaumont, and they begin a relationship. One night while they’re out, he sees a robbery in progress and he intervenes (he can’t just stand by, after all). All is going well, he’s in Bat-mode, but then he hears Andrea gasp in fright, he loses focus, and the bad guys get away. This leads him to conclude that he can’t do both: have a relationship with Andrea and carry out his plan of fighting crime as a masked vigilante. After all, as he says, “I can’t put myself on the line as long as there’s someone waiting for me to come home!”
As an adult, initially I hear this line and I wonder, why not? After all, lots of people in the real world do this every day, right? First responders, police, the military, all of these areas have people who serve and yet have loved ones at home. Knowing this, why would the writers have Bruce say that? Are we meant to think he’s selfish?
Then it occurred to me (and yes, I’m taking an animated movie way too seriously, bear with me.) Bruce has been through loss before. As anyone familiar with the rudiments of Batman’s story knows, his parents were murdered in front of him in Crime Alley when he was eight years old. He knows if he goes down the vigilante crime-fighting path, something like that could happen to him, and if he has someone at home, they’d suffer the same way he did. And he can’t bear to have that happen.
Of course, this probably isn’t a terribly original insight, but I like how this movie really brings out that conflict, the reasoning why he’s always alone. Also, when he does assume the cowl, it has the best scene ever in Batman history. Watch the below and tell me I’m wrong.