Hello guys thanks for reading this article and joining me when I dive into my own dream of my ideal DCCU. I previously posted three parts on this site, and you can read the three parts here:
Part 1 Background and Wonder Woman
Part 2 Green Lantern
Part 3 the Flash
In this article, I would talk about my dream Batman movie, the movie which would introduce the new Batman to the general audience. Now of course I would borrow certain elements from the Nolan ones, as the general audience are accustomed to that version of Batman for now; and I would make certain tweaks to the character to make Batman fit into this DCCU.
If you watch AMC Movie Talk, you would know the host, John Campea, does not want to see Robin/ Nightwing in the DCCU, as he really likes the pseudo father-son relationship between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, and if the real DCCU is to show this relationship, it would imply Batman bringing a child to fight crime at a point, which is “douchy” according to John Campea. You know what, I agree with that; therefore, I faced the dilemma of ditching the father-son relationship or making Batman a “douchbag”. In the reality I dream about, I originally had the idea of WB making a TV series, which details Bruce Wayne’s journey of wandering the world and learning the necessary skills to fight crime (I heard that someone was working on something like this before Smallville, and it failed); and Dick Grayson would show up on the second season as a street urchin or something, and he would travel the world with Bruce Wayne, learning and practicing with him. Then I think this just changes too much about Dick Grayson’s character, and I ditched the idea, and I decided to make the following movie, which ditches the idea of father-son, and adapt a new-relationship, brothers.
The Batman in my dream DCCU would be young, about 27 years old, and he had been Batman for one or two years. He is still young and a bit hot-headed, but he is 100% focused on his life mission: to fight crime in Gotham.
The introductory movie of the new Batman/ Batman 1
We start in the Batcave,with some mood-setting music going on, something like Danny Elfman or Shirley Walker’s music. The camera pans through a a bookshelf and a desk, we see books like “An Actor Prepares”, “Criminal Psychology”, “Sun Tzu”, “I ching”, and some other books on the shelf; we see a photo of Bruce and his parents, a sketch of a thug with a question mark as a face holding Bruce’s family at gunpoint in Crime Alley (indicating there is no “Joe Chill”/ “Jack Naiper” here), some drawings of new gadgets’ prototypes, and two guns in a glass casing, with a plaque with the words “never again” on it, which would be the guns he used during the first few comic issues.
We see Bruce Wayne walks out from a shower with a towel wrapped around his waist (female fan-service time, make sure the actor has abs). We see Alfred closing a closet with a wiping cloth draped on his arm, and we catch a glimpse of the batsuit inside the closet. Alfred walks over to Bruce Wayne after putting down the cloth and picking up a tuxedo, and Alfred hands a sheet of paper to Bruce, saying, “you have thirty minutes to memorize this, Master Bruce.” “I know, Alfred, just get me the make up kit so that I can hide this bruise here on my neck.” “Right away, sir.” As Alfred walks to get the make-up kit, we see Bruce Wayne holding the piece of paper, trying to read and memorize the speech, and practice smiling in front of a mirror. This is why I add in the book “An Actor Prepares” as I think there is an element of ACTING when Batman puts on a tux and appears as Bruce Wayne in front of crowds.
We then see Bruce Wayne dressed up in his tuxedo, sitting in his limousine and memorizing his speech. Then it is revealed that Bruce Wayne has organized a fund-raising event for the re-building of Smallville and Metropolis, and has invited a circus to perform in the fundraiser. We see the mayor and some other VIPs sitting on a stage, and Bruce Wayne walks up to the microphone and to deliver his speech, which mainly covers:
-his desire to rebuild Metropolis,
-his distrust of the Man of Steel (probably during a joke, saying he may organize more fundraisers if the Man of Steel have more kinsmen),
-his frustration of the fact that the two Kryptonians destroyed one of his satellites when there are hundreds of satellites out there (“not one of Luthor’s or Queen’s” as a joke, in line with the carefree playboy attitude he is playing, and as references)
-he hopes the Gotham citizens/ participants enjoy themselves in the fundraiser that night
We then see the Flying Graysons begins to perform in the tent, including Papa, Mama (don’t bother to research on this, their names does not matter anyway), and Dick Grayson, a 20 years old young man. We can see that Papa and Mama are struggling to perform their stunts of swinging around in the tent. Bruce Wayne is the only one who notices the parents being uneasy on the platforms. As the final act goes, the safety net is removed as a gimmick, the audience is silent, awaiting the final swing performed by the Flying Graysons. Bruce Wayne now notices the sweat on the parents’ arms, but not on Dick’s arms, and the frightened looks of the parents. Before he can say anything, Bruce Wayne and we all see Papa and Mama Grayson fails to catch each other, slips off the swings and breaks their necks on the ground, dead. The crowd are stunned, then immediately erupts into an uproar. Multiple phones are calling 911 at the same time, women and men (to be PC) starts crying out of fright, and Bruce Wayne is pulled to the stage to say a few comforting words to the audience by his PR managers. Bruce caught a glimpse of Dick Grayson, standing on a high platform, stunned, breathing heavily and with tears trailing down his cheeks. Notice I changed some details concerning Dick’s parents’ death, which would be significant later.
Bruce Wayne finally calms the crowd down, and seeing that the circus is unable to perform now that the police have to investigate the death in the tent, he promises to return half of everyone’s donations should they want it back, and he says that he is sorry about the incident, and someone in the crowd shouts, “no you are not! Cut this fake concern crap!” Obviously pissed, Bruce Wayne wished everyone a good night and reminded that everyone who wants his money back can get a part of it back if they call Wayne Enterprises Charity Line (something like that).
Bruce Wayne goes to the backstage (or equivalent, someone teach me some vocab about circus) and asks the other circus employees how the Flying Graysons perform in other occasions. Finding out that the Flying Graysons had never showed fear in their previous performances, and learning that someone tried to extort money from the ringmaster, Bruce Wayne deduced that the Graysons were murdered.
Horrified by the news that gangsters were able to extort money from the circus he employed, and feeling that the blood of Dick’s parents are on his hands because of the imperfection in organizing the fundraiser, Bruce offered to let Dick Grayson stay with him till the case is solved, as Bruce suspects something related to the extortion caused Dick to lose his parents. Dick has a blank face, showing no emotion as he goes to his room. I know this seemed lifted from Batman Forever, but I think I made the situation of a grown men living with Bruce Wayne more believable here.
Changed into the Batman attire, Batman tries to sneak into the morgue and investigate. Before walking into the morgue, Batman stops, and says, “I know you are here, Sergeant.” And Jim Gordon steps out of the shadows, and says, “you are doing this again, Batman? Why don’t you wait for our forensics and dissection reports?”
“What do you think happened to the Graysons, Sergeant?”
“A sheer accident, though I think Wayne should have handled the fundraiser better.”
“I was there, and judging from what I see, your science team would not be able to find what caused this murder.”
“Why not?”
“They are not looking for it, they want to prove that the broken neck killed the two Graysons and wrap the case.”
“And you want me to just let you in, and take blood and other samples?”
“You will.”
“All right, you have five minutes, and leave no traces.”
After taking the blood samples, Batman returns to the Batcave, and he calls, “Alfred!” No response. “Alfred! Alfred! ... Okay.” Batman put the blood sample into the Bat-computer for analysis, take off the Batsuit, and leaves the Batcave, into his study in Wayne Manor through the grandfather clock, and he meets Alfred right outside his study. “Alfred...” “Master Bruce, it is good to see you finally finish your work, Master Richard is worried because you have worked in your study for four hours, it is about the accident in the circus and the fundraiser no doubt. I cooked him some chicken soup, and I have left you half a pot of soup, if you would like to have some.”
Realizing that Dick Grayson may question his “irregular lifestyle” as the time spent being Batman cannot be accounted for, Bruce decides to have a little heart-to-heart with Dick, and plans to get some information about Dick’s parents in order to further the investigation during the chat. The chat should cover the following:
-Dick feeling angry because his parents got murdered, and because he was not able to do anything about it. This happens after Bruce tells Dick that he suspects Dick’s parents are murdered, and Dick agrees with Bruce before Bruce lists his reasons.
-Dick reaffirming that his parents had never behaved like how Bruce saw them, afraid, sweaty.
-Bruce telling Dick that he can talk to Bruce if he feels down because Bruce also lost his parents to crime, and “I understand how you feel better than most of Wayne Enterprises’ and Gotham’s psychotherapists.”
-Bruce telling Dick how he got over his parent’s murder, something along the lines of “I cried, I cannot do anything for a few months, I spent my time flipping through photo albums and reminiscing the past, when they are still around. Then I grew too bored, I took up a new hobby, after that another new hobby, after that a few more new hobbies, till I don’t really think about their murder. That’s why I have all those books on various subjects in my library and all those sports equipment lying around. You can read those books if you want to.”
(In my DCCU, Bruce Wayne is a “hypocrite” in this area. He is open about his parent’s murder, he claims that he got over the murder to others; and at his heart, he became Batman because he CANNOT get over it. I think the death of a celebrity’s parents would be public knowledge, and Bruce Wayne being open to it and having his explanation would be better than Bruce Wayne being hush-hush on this subject. Also, having Bruce Wayne being motivated by anger would create some space for character development, as he learns to adapt a better motivation for his crime-fighting career). The point of this advice from Bruce to Dick is that Bruce reviews his own journey from crying boy to angry crime-fighter, so that when he shifts his motivations, we can have a clearer picture.
After the talk, Batman walks back into the Batcave to read the analysis results, and the presence of a compound (later we would know that the compound is the fear gas toxin made by the Scarecrow) he does not recognize intrigues him. Walking into his library to do some research, Bruce notices several of his martial arts manual are missing, and as soon as he finds the book containing the compound’s information, he hears noise from his sparring room. Bruce took the book with him, and walks to the sparring room, and he sees Dick hitting a punching bag with wrong hitting stances and techniques. Noticing Batman watching him, Dick asks, “what? You said taking up a hobby helps, and my new hobby is called imagining punching the killer.” Putting down the book, Bruce says, “if you have to punch him, then punch him using the right way.” And then begins to show Dick some basic punching moves. While teaching and supervising Dick practicing punching the punching bag, Bruce learnt from the book that the compound found in Dick’s parents’ blood would cause immense fear. Leaving the sparring room, Bruce says something to Alfred we cannot hear.
Going back into the Batcave, Bruce tries to dig up old news where the dead person was killed by something they were known to be not afraid of (e.g. a chef not under the effect of alcohol or other medicine burns himself to death, something like what the darts do in Young Sherlock Holmes), and he found a significant number of such news, the majority of them took place in the past three months. Bruce concludes that the death of Dick Grayson’s parents are linked to these other deaths, or “murders” as Bruce would have called them. Bruce calls Gordon and asks him to get the forensics team ready to work, to dig up the dead people mentioned in the news and check their blood for the compound (the characters are yet to know it is the fear gas toxin).
One of the forensics team guy leaves the lab during the work, saying he needs a toilet break, and he secretly calls someone in cubicle, saying that the police has discovered the use of “the gas” (he is calling the Scarecrow’s henchmen). The guy on the other end says, “use it.” The mole returns from the lavatory, presses a button on a device he hides inside his coat, eats a pill, and then goes back into the laboratory. We sees the mole walk into the laboratory, closes the door (which is frosted glass on it), and after about half a minute, we starts to hear screams, things smashing, and other horror noises. We see things being thrown at the laboratory door, the frosted glass crack, and we see smudges of different color (chemicals, blood, more gruesome things?) on the glass, and then the mole rushes out through the door, blocking our view of the mess inside the laboratory, and cries “help! Help!” and runs towards the camera, and then black out.
We sees Batman talking with Gordon on the rooftop of the police station the next scene, at night. Gordon says, “all but one from the forensics team are dead. The lab is filled with the fear-inducing compound. The survivor said that all of a sudden everyone in the lab went mad, and then started to throw things around and hurt themselves, resulting in everyone’s death except him. And the security camera footage can prove that.”
“You really buy his story?”
“No, but we have no evidence that can let us charge the survivor.”
“Get his blood sample, and keep him locked up. I suspect that he has some kind of antidote to that fear-inducing compound and that’s how he survives.”
“Well he said he survives because he left the lab early enough, but I can get it done ...” Gordon say this line while writing on his notepad, and when he looks up, Batman has gone.
In another scene, still at night, we then see silhouettes of several men against a water tank, on the edge a rooftop, one man with a large hat holding another man’s throat, and the rest stands aside, watching. The one with the large hat speaks with a scary, processed voice, “you fool, you told Eric with the cops to use it? You exposed more of our secrets than you covered.”
“I am sorry boss, I was not thinking.” (the henchman which the mole called says this)
“From now on you learn from me. I think my actions through.”
“Yes, sir.”
“For example, I heard that you are afraid of heights.”
Then we see the one with the large hat (Scarecrow) sprays the henchmen with fear gas, and then releasing the henchmen, letting him stand on the ledge. The henchmen tries to walk away from the ledge, but one look of the ledge, and he becomes afraid (cue disoriented POV shots here), loses direction and falls down the building. We have a shot of the corpse on the pavement, then the camera pans upward along the length of the building to the top, where we see several figures, with one tall figure in a strange outfit (Scarecrow) looking down. The camera climbs up till we see, for the first time, Scarecrow in all its glory, in full mask, hat and suit, looking menacing and creepy. His henchman hands him a phone, and Scarecrows starts a conversation, “Mr Sionis, I have done 16 cases till now, 14 more to go as you said. What do yo think of my invention?” Listening. “If you don’t want my weapon I can sell it to our respectable former DA.” As he speaks, Scarecrow signals his henchman to follow him, and the group leaves the rooftop.
We see the next day, Bruce Wayne wakes up, hearing noise from the sparring room. Putting on a tux, Bruce Wayne reminds Alfred to “get it done as soon as possible”, and Alfred responds “two days till it is done” (with Dick Grayson in the picture, I give you one guess what Bruce told Alfred to “get it done”). Bruce then tells Dick to study the martial arts manual before hitting the punching bag/ Muk Yan Jong Wooden Dummy (for diversity’s sake), and he goes to work. After reading some reports concerning the rebuilding of Metropolis and the fundraiser (we can include some Easter eggs here, such as report on a new satellite, which would be the future Watchtower), Bruce calls Gordon, to ask about “Mr Grayson’s parents’ case”. Gordon says that it can be confirmed that this is a murder case, and the substance that caused the deaths is a fear-inducing gaseous compound. Wanting to know more about the antidote, Bruce Wayne suggests/ threatens that the press should know, saying “is the gas widespread? Are there any antidote? The press should know.”, to which Gordon says “no, yes, (some fancy compound name), they already know, read the paper Wayne, and hung up the phone.” The paper covers the story of the henchman’s death by falling to his death from a building, and there are different rumors of “fear-inducing gas”, or “a new laughing gas”(Easter egg).
That night, Bruce talks to Dick over dinner, and Dick tells Bruce that he likes the place, the fact that he can learn different abilities here, and the presence of Bruce Wayne who shares his pain. Bruce Wayne then asks Dick, “if you have your parent’s killer on the ground, with you knees on his upper arms and one of your hands on his throat, what would you do?”
“I would knock him out, then send him to the police.”
“You would not beat him? Slap him? Or yell at him for his crime?”
“What good can it yield? I cannot bring my parents back by harming him. Anyway it is not like the inmates in prison would not help me out on the beating the murderer up part.”
“Well, I used to imagine I would beat the guy up so bad that the cops would have trouble taking his mug shot, I thought you would have some similar ideas,but hey, to each his own.”
Bruce is actually struck by Dick’s response, as his motivation till now is half justice, half vengeance, punishing other criminals in place of the real murderer, and he had never thought of being motivated totally by justice.
After dinner, Bruce Wayne changes into Batman and went to the building where the henchman died. While trying to find evidence on the roof after using the grapple gun to reach the roof (more fan-service moments), he found a piece of sackcloth; and when he holds it up close to his face to observe the details, he suddenly has brief flashbacks of that night in Crime Alley. Realizing something is wrong, Batman quickly sits down, breathes heavily, and calms himself, while putting the piece of sackcloth into an evidence bag and putting the bag into a compartment in his utility bag.
Back in the Batcave, analysis shows that the piece of sackcloth has a lot of fear gas on it, and the presence of other substance suggests a specific location (docks/ factories/ whatever, details not important). As he does not have the antidote, and he knows how potent the gas is, Batman decided to synthesize an antidote using Gordon’s formula, before going to the location he found by the sackcloth.
Right after he steps into Wayne Manor through the clock, he sees Dick Grayson standing in his study with Alfred. “Okay Bruce, with all the books on all the different subjects, it is your speech of getting over tragedies that kept me from being 100% sure. Now, seeing you walk out from that cave, I am 100% sure that you are Batman. The next time you go to get that son-of-a-bitch who killed my parents, I want in.”
“No, you are not going.”
“Oh, then why is there a suit tailor-made for me?”
“That’s my suit, I used it a few years ago.”
“Quit lying Bruce, the left glove has a larger-than-normal little-finger compartment, which does not fit you; but it fits me with the extra little finger I have (just a little detail I want to add for this scene. As far as I know, I am not contradicting any canon right?) literally like a glove fits a hand, you want me to come.”
Silence.
“You are not trained yet, no.”
“You still get bruised and battered with all your training.”
“You are not experienced.”
“There was a time you were too.”
“You are not ready yet, if you get injured when fighting the killer you would be a burden for me. So that’s a no. Alfred, the next time I go out, keep Dick under watch.”
“Alfred had already told me that he would not be able to stop me, and he said he had a habit of knocking himself out, so you don’ have to worry about your liability.”
Bruce glared at Alfred, and Alfred says, “with all due respect sir, if you are forced to stay here when I go to hunt down your parents’ murderer, how would it feel?”
“No, you will not be going.”
Bruce goes back to his bedroom, and Alfred says to Dick, “you know Master Bruce is right, do you?” “I can never be ready, so I might as well start gaining experience now. Anyway, you said it is the artery below the ear right?” ‘That’s right Master Richard, you hit me there and what you do in that suit afterwards is you own responsibility.”
The next night, Batman takes a dose of antidote, and goes off to the location he got from the sackcloth. He meets Dick Grayson a block away from the location, and he reluctantly brings Dick along, after warning Dick that the gas is very potent, and Dick, being not resistant to the gas, is in danger. The two sneaks into the place, where they see a lot of chemical apparatus (something like those in Breaking Bad), and henchmen making those gases and storing them in devices that look like car keys, MP3s, etc Batman takes those henchmen down with relative ease (using whatever gadgets, these are fan-service time), and they proceed to move further and deeper into the complex. They sees the scarecrow with a bunch of henchmen planning more extortion crimes, and before Batman can stop him, Dick rushed out from the dark and yelled, “who killed (insert name here) and (insert name here) Grayson? (sorry, really don’t have time to research on this.) Who extorted money from the ringmaster?” The scarecrow stands up and says, “that would be the guy who fell flat on his face two days ago, but I guess you can say I did it, as I plan the thing, and I made the lovely bouquet that has the gas pellet hid in it. I heard that your mum and dad really like the bouquet, didn't they?” Hearing this, Dick Grayson yells and charges at the Scarecrow, and the henchmen surrounds him. Despite his lack in training, Dick Grayson managed to knock out a number of guards using his acrobatic skills mixed with the moves Batman taught him (work on that with the fight choreographer), but Batman decided to show himself and help Dick in case he gets hurt. Seeing Batman is the superior fighter, the Scarecrow picks up a scythe and starts slicing, engaging Batman. Then a fight sequence between Batman and Scarecrow proceeds, which would satisfy all those people who hates Batman Begins because the Scarecrow is not in that movie enough.
Dick Grayson meanwhile takes down most of the henchmen using his own acrobatic + martial arts technique, and then calls the police seeing that he cannot help Batman fight Scarecrow. Meanwhile Scarecrow sprays Batman with multiple sprays of fear gas, and because the compound Gordon named as the antidote is merely a retardant, not exactly an antidote, Batman begins to feel afraid as he sees flashbacks of Crime Alley, with Scarecrow as the thief holding the gun. (The retardant/ antidote exposition can be done by Scarecrow claiming that he can read Batman’s face to see what medicine Batman had taken) As Scarecrow stands on top of Batman jeering, “they say the criminals here in Gotham are afraid of you, and now you are afraid of me, such irony.” Dick Grayson knocks the scythe from the Scarecrow’s hands, and then smashes the Scarecrow’s fingers and tearing off the gas sprays from his arms so that he cannot spray any fear gas. Dick Grayson then fights the Scarecrow some more, the latter clearly suffering from pain, and gets knocked over by Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson has his knees on Scarecrow’s shoulders, his left hand on his throat, and he rips off the Scarecrow’s mask, to reveal Dr. Jonathan Crane’s face. After staring at his face for two seconds, Dick Grayson hits Crane’s artery as taught by Alfred and knocks him out. He then ties Crane up using a Bat-handcuff, and helps Batman get away. Batman is incapacitated the whole time, but he witnessed how Dick handled things.
We see in the next shot that Dick is still living with Bruce, and he goes to the Gotham university during daytime. (something like Bruce Wayne saying good bye to Dick after signing some papers during breakfast). We then see Bruce goes into the Batcave, looks at his family photo and says, “hi dad, hi mom, I think I understand now. I thought I was stopping another guy from murdering someone’s parents when I was in the suit. I was wrong to think like that. I was being selfish, and thus I was blinded by my emotions. I promise you that I would be selfless from now on, I would fight crime in Gotham with Dick by my side, and ... Dick, he is like a Robin, he is always optimistic, always tries to see the bright side of things, he is wiser than I thought. Perhaps I have something to learn from him.” Then Bruce goes to the Batcomputer to work, and we see that Jonathan Crane is imprisoned, and his use of gas has caused several scientists to start researching his gas.
So this is how I imagine the new Batman should be set up for the Justice League movie, I hope to deliver a story where the process of Batman learning to fight crime having a better motivation is his story arc, his relationship with Dick Grayson is another story arc, and I hope to set up Black Mask and Two-face as future villains in the Batman movies. I know the villain is still kind of weak, the same problem as my Flash movie, I promise I would try to improve on this area.
There would most certainly be sequels to Batman, which I would cover later. Stay tuned as my next article would be on the team-up movie, JUSTIC LEAGUE!
Please read the other parts as I continue to describe my dream DCCU that would only happen in an alternate reality.