Nolanverse Batman Reflections- The Ill Made Knight

Some ramblings in anticipation of The Dark Knight Rises:
In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne refuses to execute a murderer on behalf of the League of Shadows. His reason? He believes compassion is what separates the just from the unjust. A noble and true claim. However, when we reach the climax of the first film we see Batman refusing to save Ra's al Ghul from fiery death. Now we have a problem. Bruce fails to live up to his ideals of justice and compassion. He refuses to save Ra’s, the man to whom he once professed the importance of compassion. Bruce once thought killing was unjust because it lacked compassion but now he rejects the spirit of compassion in order to observe his “no killing” code in a way which ultimately makes him feel better. He has become a very theatrical and very well dressed vigilante.  Beyond that he is demonstrating the same lack of compassion which he once chided Ra’s and the League of Shadows for. What's going on here?

Nolan is continuing the tradition of the imperfect hero. Like T.H. White's Lancelot, Batman proves to be an Ill-Made-Knight. Though by his superhero profession a man striving after goodness, Bruce Wayne’s choices reflect those of a flawed human-being and a citizen of the same broken city that took his parents. He is fundamentally a child of Gotham. Forged in grief and pain in Crime Ally, Bruce Wayne spent most of his life striving after vengeance. After having the opportunity for revenge stripped away by Carmine Falcone, and his understanding of vengeance shaken by Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne attempts to become a just hero—to no success.

For whatever reason, Nolan wanted his audience to have an imperfect hero. Someone who is very much a part of the same city he hates. Who commits the same fundamental mistakes which he judges and criticizes his opponents for making. This version of Batman seems designed to support, at least for now, Harvey Dent's pessimistic idea that, "you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." He may not be a villain yet but Batman keeps failing to be the hero Gotham really needs.

And given the circumstances of Dark Knight we are tempted to agree with Harvey to an extent. Harvey fell into Two-Face. And Bruce...well Bruce actually saw himself become the villain in the eyes of Gotham; maybe Harvey was wrong! Maybe there is--in Bruce's noble lie--salvation for a city and the means of preserving the purity of his soul through sacrifice! Or not.

Nolan is clever. We almost fall for his bait and accept that in spite of what the public may believe that Batman has overcome his brokenness. But once again the director has given us too much coincidence for this to be the case. As it was with Ra's al Ghul so it has been with the Joker. Batman reprimands Joker for wrongly believing that the people of Gotham city will make the easy, selfish choice when faced with an unpleasant reality. The Gothamites refused to play the Joker's game. Batman, on the other hand, was more compliant. After Harvey's corruption, Batman and Gordon agree that the people of Gotham would be unable to handle the truth of Harvey's betrayal. Batman takes it upon himself to become the living lie, a story and scapegoat meant to save Gotham from the unpleasant truth that their great White Knight was undone by the harshness of reality. Batman and Gordon so believe that the people of Gotham would, like Harvey, be unable to cope with the harsh truth of reality. Like Harvey, Bruce and Gordon choose to follow the Joker all in the name of defeating the Joker.  They choose to compromise rather than to embrace chaos completely as Harvey did. But they do compromise. In an attempt to keep the Joker’s success and Harvey’s failure under wraps the heroes also buckle under the strain and become little Two-Faces. We have a hero selflessly sacrificing his own reputation...but for an unworthy cause. He deceives Gotham, protecting them from truth and adds a failure to live up to the ideal of truth to his previous failure to live up to that of Justice. If Batman goes on to renounce the American way he will essentially become an anti-Superman—but that would just be bizarre.

I constantly get flagged as being a fiction conspiracy theorist by my friends and family. Sometimes they are joking and other times they mean every word. In all honesty I deserve it, in retrospect some of my ideas have been rather... shall we say far fetched? I get asked--isn't it all a little too coincidental? Isn't that out of character for the author or director? This is one of those happy times when I can easily support my theories with hard evidence. How do I know this was Nolan's intention? Honestly I don't. It’s a bit of a gamble. But if you're asking why I think someone like Nolan would have his hero broken and conflicted and why he might choose to pile on misdirection after misdirection to make you lose track of whether or not Batman is a hero or a failure; all I can say is look at the man's track record. Inception. The Prestige. Insomnia. Memento. Nolan shows a penchant for messing with our perspective and shaking us up, for writing characters and events which aren't quite what they seem, and for resting the truth of entire movies on a single scene. He truly believes in the power of theatricality and deception. The man is a cinematic magician.

So what's next? Will Batman fail to meet some ideal in this new film or will he "rise" as the title suggests? Is our Dark Knight destined to commit an error similar to Bane's or will he somehow manage to pick himself up from this fall which has continued since that night in Park Row behind the opera house? All trailers and promotional signs point to our hero's redemption but looking at Nolan's track record I wouldn't be surprised if a tragic flaw is slipped in his final victory. Perhaps Bruce won't be redeemed. Perhaps he can't really save Athens. I mean Camelot! I mean Russia! I mean Gotham! Maybe Nolan doesn't see Batman as a true hero. Maybe Bruce is just the prophet and Noland would prefer a character who, like Nightwing, can better balance light and dark to save the city. Or maybe humans aren't good enough! Perhaps only a Superman could truly and completely save the day. We will see. It’s been a long run and I’m looking forward to the finish.

Post-Holy Week(s) Reflection 2

In continuation of my Post-Holy Week(s) Reflection series I want to go back to the evening of the Lord's Supper. A night when religion was forever changed. Progressed and perfected from potentials and soon-to-comes to an active realization of communion with God

As I write this post I'm listening to John Williams' scores from Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade… one part thematic choice, one part casual nerdiness. As I listen I’m struck even more by the connection and separation between the Old Testament with its Law and animal sacrifices and the grace upon grace which is the new covenant in Christ Jesus—the Absolute Sacrifice. For Christianity to be what it claims it must be perfectly bound to the history of the Old Testament while being perfectly separate and new in its religious significance. In all of Holy Week perhaps no event is more significant in illustrating this point as the Lord’s Supper.

Passover is remembrance of the night of the tenth plague where the firstborns the Egyptians were slain and the Jews were spared. The conditions were that a lamb was to be sacrificed and its blood placed in the entryway of the house according to certain specifications (for more see Exodus 12). Along with the practice of lamb offerings in Jewish Law, lamb was a symbol of forgiveness and covenant with God and part of traditional Passover dinner’s Seder plate. It was food Jesus and the Twelve likely ate or could have eaten which had long served as a powerful symbol of God’s faithfulness to Israel. Perhaps the meat was non-existent but this is unlikely as they were guests of a man wealthy enough to shelter and feed them at a table for thirteen. More likely the lamb, like the rest of the dinner, was insignificant in that context. The Lord chose a lesser food, humble unleavened traveler’s bread, and some wine with which He worked a wonder. Doing something new with an old thing, God’s Lamb passed on lamb.

That night and ever after bread and wine would serve as the noblest of meals. This mundane meal, chosen by God, became the deepest and most noble feast ever served. It’s clear this decision was made not for dietary reasons or because Jesus didn't understand the significance of lamb in Jewish tradition but because it was to serve a unique purpose. But why exactly? Why pick the mundane elements of bread and wine to symbolize the death rather than a previously established symbol of sacrifice? Again, clearly something new was being done. Several things actually.

1.     On a purely practical level Jesus was again ministering to even the least of these. Lamb is pricey. It’s a privilege food. And while there indeed are those who do not even get bread and wine they are among the most common of foods. Almost every culture uses some form bread as a staple food. Likewise wine was the most readily available drink in that room and, saving water, it was perhaps the most consumed beverage of the ancient Near East and certainly the chief beverage of the Roman Empire. It was readily available for the early church and could follow Christians into new lands to serve as the sacrament.

a.      *As a side note the use of wine rather than water keeps the chief sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist wholly distinct from one another. Though all persons of the Trinity are involved in the sacraments because of their perfect union with one another, Baptism is more directly the gift of the Holy Spirit while the Eucharist is primarily concerned with the sacrifice of the Son. As the difference in sacramental elements helps distinguish sacraments from each other the recognition of the different roles of the Trinity is essential in Christian theology.*

2.     The similar appearance in color between unleavened bread with the Jewish Jesus’s Galilean skin and red wine with blood helps appeal to the senses in a way which aids the imagination to help one on the essence of Christ.

3.     The use of bread and wine as a two part sacrament allows for specificity in the work of Christ and the details of His death.

Apart from these practical concerns there remains one reason which currently stands out to me. There is no lamb because no lamb is needed. While this may sound a bit circular consider the theology. For the Jews animal offerings were necessary for to cover sin as they waited in hope for the coming Messiah. For the Christian the Messiah is come already and His sacrifice covers all sins. They need kill no beasts to observe there religious ceremonies because a sacrifice has already occurred. The religions practice of communion is tethered to the specific death of Christ. While the Jew had to repeatedly kill subhuman creatures in recognition of their guilt while they hoped for the Messiah, Christians know that sin is forgiven because Jesus Messiah came and died. Religious practice no longer requires death no because religion is no longer about what we have done and what God will do, but about what God did in spite of us and what He continues to do. There is no lamb in Communion because the Lamb of God was sufficient.

Hopefully this examination of a question which nobody seems to ask will help illuminate my future investigations on the role of the Old Testament, the nature of grace, the role of the sacraments, and the person of Jesus.

God loves you.

Post-Holy Week(s) Reflection

So now that both the Western and Eastern Church have finished the celebration of Holy Week I think I'll ease my way (back) into blogging with a series of short reflections.

It is the unique position of Christians that we can say that humanity already went through its darkest day with the 2nd Adam's crucifixion. More splendid is our ability to look at that the suffering and injustice and still call the day good. We are the one philosophy that seems to have truly reconciled absolute comedy and true tragedy which intersect at the cross.

Incarnation: A Very Deep Truth

My friend James ask me and my buddy Mackenzie to be part of a guest series of Incarnation related posts for his blog http://longawaited.wordpress.com. You can read my contribution here but I would strongly suggest taking a look at his blog when you get the chance.

There is a depth to the Incarnation which goes well beyond what we can comprehend into the realm of divine mystery—that age old place of theological duality where restlessness and comfort coexist in loving harmony. While there is much that can be said about the Incarnation, it is the simple truth of its mysterious depth which seems its most revealing quality. Humans cannot understand Incarnation fully, for the same reason they cannot understand the Trinity completely—human beings are simply not deep enough. Nor will they ever be deep enough. There are truths which are simply beyond the depths of reason because of the nature—and the simple fact—of our beginning.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and eventually even man and woman, whom He blessed with His image and likeness. Leaving the particulars of this likeness for another day, we can infer that it was not an exact copy of God’s own Image for the simple fact that humanity has a beginning dependent on a pre-existent Creator; whereas God Himself is eternally self-sufficient without end or beginning. Scripture teaches about unending bliss or damnation depending on the choice of the individual human which proves the unending nature of “human eternality” yet it is impossible for human beings to be without beginning. And therein lies the rub.

Adam and Eve wanted to be more like God than was appropriate for them. In their attempt to know ‘good and evil’ they rejected the deeper relational knowledge of harmony. Knowledge of such lesser things does nothing to nurture the individual if one divorces themselves from the Deepest Truth to it. Adam and Eve were left like two trees rooted into themselves. Withering. Dying. Humanity blew away from its home, across the world they had destroyed, carrying the accursed disconnected knowledge they paid so much to steal. Knowledge which only served to make it more difficult for them to deny themselves and fruitfully live lives of willing submission to God.

We broke ourselves by trying to fix ourselves when we had no need of repair. As a result we ended up without the simple thing which kept life livable. Faith. The simple ability to experience God and His creation and to innocently accept the truth of both without having to box it up and own it. To read a story without having to covet authorship. Mankind became twisted by Satan’s lie and needed a way out of its fantasy. The only way for men to get out was for God to step in.

This is the mystery of Christ. That the second person of the Trinity can be something as limited as a human being. That the Word can be contained within space and time, while simultaneously existing beyond the spatial and temporal universe, giving life, motion, and being to all things. The Word was in the Virgin womb while the Virgin lived and moved and had her being in the Word—and yet there was only one Word! We can try and understand this but the simple truth of the matter is that the Word of God is so wondrous that He can be the Firstborn among Creation even though He ‘existed’ before existence.

Christ can be born generations upon generations after creation outside of Eden and somehow still be more the Man than Adam ever was. And the sheer beauty of it all is that this is not a change in the laws of the universe but a revelation of their true nature. The laws of time and space are subject to God so that when the Word of God, at the behest of His Father, enters the physical world its laws seem to wrap around Him. Miracles happen, same as more common laws of physics, simply because the higher reality of God Himself wills that they do so. All this because we have Someone bigger than the universe inside the universe. And yet all this revelation of creation’s relation to God is still secondary to the principle purpose of the Incarnation: Restoration of the unity of humanity and Divinity.

Christ came both to show man the way out and to be his way out. Remembering the ties between Christmas and Easter, one knows that Jesus was born to die. He came to pay the debt of mankind and to bring mankind into Him. Because there is something “new under the Sun” as my friend Mackenzie Mulligan has pointed out, humans have a means for a return to bliss. We have the Son beneath the Sun. Under the Son there is new life. There is hope for the future and forgiveness for the past. There is the opportunity for active unity by the Holy Spirit with the fullness of God even in this present earth.

Incarnation: The Son of God became Man and dwelt among men so that they might in Him become sons of God. Among them He lived and moved and had being so that they might do the same.

Movie Review- Captain America:The First Avenger

Anyone who knows me or has had a conversation with me for over thirty-five minutes knows I’m something of a fan of the Superhero genre. That being said, this has been a great summer for me. Thor, Green Lantern and most recently Captain America: The First Avenger. I’m a longtime fan of both Marvel and DC and I always love seeing the classics brought to life, particularly those who haven’t had the cinematic success they deserved. That’s why I so appreciated Captain America. The movie brought to life a hero who has stood the tests of time and proven himself over and over again. It was a pleasure to see him in one of the awesome new Marvel Films.

So far I’ve heard several complaints about the movie: the character is too traditional, unlike Robert Downey Jr.’s Ironman, the character interaction is poor (not like Ironman) and the dialogue lacks wit (unlike Ironman). So basically the vast number of complaints is this: Captain America isn’t Ironman.  All I can say is good. I like Ironman, I’m a big fan of the comics and when I was little I used to get up hours before the rest of my family to watch the old cartoon show. As for Robert Downey Jr. his interpretation of the character has been nothing short of brilliant, but I hardly want to watch the same hero with a different face every time I go to the theater. No, one of the best things about Chris Evans’ interpretation is that he didn’t try to copy Robert Downey Jr. Instead of trying to make a sort of flawed quasi-Byronic superhero, Evans portrayed Cap as exactly what he is: a big super-powered boy scout. This is the way you play Captain America or Superman, they deal with the same problems as Ironman or Batman but instead of getting snarky or brooding these heroes power through with an overall sense of duty fueled with hope.

Captain America is not likely to be as popular as Ironman. It’s strange, Ironman is someone whose natural talents greatly outshine the abilities of most people, yet the vast majority feel they can relate to him because of his sarcastic witticism. It’s familiar, relatable, and the fact that he does it so well makes him all the more admirable. Strange, when so many of us are naturally more like Steve Rogers, weak, small, surrounded by bullies and obstacles which just keep coming. While it is admirable the way Tony Stark is able to deal with the obstacles, both those he helped create and those thrown in his path, Stark’s bouts of narcissism are hardly healthy and tend to undercut his heroic tendencies. While his flaws make for a character which has people saying, “he has all these problems but still does good stuff” it becomes far too easy for us all to confuse the good with the bad and to begin treating those character flaws, which can be so great for certain types of storytelling, as if they were actual virtues. While not without his own issues, Steve Rogers’ hopeful devotion to duty, ability to see beyond himself, and his attempt to do what is right even when he is out matched make him a more effective heroic figure. I love both heroes greatly, that being said, I believe that there is something modern America can learn from the down to earth, blue collar patriot; something which is more readily available in him than in any other movie hero at the moment. Duty. Compassion. Hope. Humility.

Up and Running

Without any demand whatsoever! You didn't ask for it now you've got it! Kyle's personal blog. Now you to can hear the voices in my head talk about the weird theology, history, philosophy, literature, life, comedy and comic book stuff. All the stuff that crowds the corners of my mind and manages to seep out in my conversations with friends, loved ones and people I've just met. I don't have a sweeping Jerry Maguire style mission statement. No intense thesis on the need for thinking, writing Christians to seize this (relatively) new frontier for news and information. If my lack of natural literary talent and my dyslexia don't get the better of me we may have a good thing here. I don't know how often I'll be doing this but I know its something I've wanted to try for a while. Who knows? It just might work.

Jesus loves you,

Kyle