Bruce Wayne As A Former Capitalistic Bastard

Well, all the political stuff about the rich aside, the thing that most people don't seem to understand about Batman is that he is as insane as his villains. Batman has his one rule, no killing because as he has said if he kills someone there would be no difference between him and say, the Joker. A lot of fans misinterpret this as some kind of moral statement, but in many Batman comics such as Under the Red Hood to cite a later example, he clarifies his statement. If Batman were to kill someone, he would start to like it and he wouldn't be able to stop himself from killing again and again, and eventually, he would be a murderous maniac like the Joker. The Joker knows this and that's why he's always trying to get Batman to break his one rule. He wants to drive Batman insane and prove that there is actually no difference between Batman and himself, that all it takes is that the right set of circumstances, "one bad day," for him to be just as insane as the Joker. And the Joker is right, Batman is absolutely insane. In some depictions of Bruce Wayne's parents being murdered in front of him, little 8-year old Bruce Wayne doesn't even shed a tear when the act is committed, he just looks at the murderer Joe Chill with a focused, intimidating gaze, and stares at him with those serial killer like eyes. The insanity of Batman is actually one of his more interesting character traits.

In my teens, I read a vast number of comic books, batman being among them. Comic books back then all shared the same formula for a hero's psychology. The hero was tough, but would either not kill anyone, or at least not someone defenseless, and he would never allow innocent people to get in harms way. He would also never torture anyone. Comic books mirrored what were considered to be Western values back then. After 9/11, this became distorted. There was no longer any consensus against the use of torture, and to what I hear, batman has used torture on at least one occasion in a movie. I also saw a clip where he uses mass surveillance as a tool to capture criminals. I've not watched any of the movies myself, but from the clips I've seen, he seems hard and emotionless, and gives a different vibe from how he came across in the comic books. Very often, in those stories, the most force he'd use would be to knock someone out with a punch.

By the way, this entire thread reminds me of this video.