Everyone knows the story. A wealthy couple and their only child exit a theatre after a happy night on the town, only to fall victim to a mugging that leaves the boy as the sole survivor. Having witnessed his parents’ murder, a young Bruce Wayne vows vengeance on all criminals, beginning his transformation into the Dark Knight of Gotham. Batman is far from the only superhero to lose his family – indeed it’s often rarer for them to have surviving relatives – but this all too ordinary tragic event remains one of the most iconic backstories in media.
Sure, each iteration of Batman probably doesn’t need to remind audiences of this childhood trauma. It’s unlikely The Batman will do it again, although there is always a chance. Yet they say the best way to identify directors is to see how they handle the same scene. You can tell a lot by how each adaptation frames this pivotal incident. Whether it was a random crime or part of a larger operations, whether it’s stylized as overwrought or underplayed. A close examination of each cinematic depiction of the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne reflects upon each Batman adaptation’s wider vision, and how they provide their individual spin towards one of the world’s most thoroughly-depicted crimes.
Note: for the sake of simplicity, this article only covers select cinematic/live-action portrayals of the Waynes’ murder. Most animated versions (whether direct-to-video comics adaptations, or TV shows or video games) are often so brief they do not warrant any analysis. Similar with Batman Forever, which shows seconds-long flashes of a young Bruce Wayne during his therapy sessions, but are essentially only recreations of Burton’s 1989 Batman. It’s also worth mentioning that while Adam West’s Batman (both the series and the 1966 film) makes fleeting references to Bruce Wayne as a “crime orphan”, it never depicts the details of such. (Probably best for a light-hearted version of Batman with Golden-Aged gallantry and campy humor.)
In 1989, Tim Burton revamped Batman for the modern era, introducing his “dark and serious tone” for general audiences. Of course, Batman fully leans into Burton’s own theatrical and Gothic sensibilities, as is shown by the first live-action portrayal of the Waynes’ murder. In a series of extreme uncomfortable angles, the group exit the cinema, a poster showing something called Footlight Frenzy – a film the Waynes didn’t necessarily see although it doesn’t seem to exist in real-life. The scene’s sound is distorted, being free from dialogue but having an underlying ominous choir and their footsteps clearly echoing as they turn into a damp alleyway. The atmosphere is hazy and dream-like, everything seeming distorted. The familiar iconography of the scene, including Martha’s pearls being torn off as Thomas moves to protect her, is included, although this is the only time the recently-orphaned Bruce is addressed afterwards. The shadowed gunman menacingly asks him “Do you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”. Later, the Joker will ask a grown Bruce Wayne the same thing, admitting (much like Jules’ Ezekiel quote from Pulp Fiction), “I just like the sound of it”.
This is the significant departure from Batman canon. Not only does Burton’s Batman have two muggers attack the Wayne family, but one of them is Jack Napier; the future Joker. Indeed, the flashback scene is triggered after Bruce encounters Joker and sees his non-makeup encrusted face. Joker’s direct involvement in Batman’s origin is part of a perennial trend that shrinks comic-book origins into ‘personal’ stories. But the Joker’s inclusion here makes sense for 1989, when Batman was still an unknown cinematic property. In structural terms, by having the Joker as part of Batman’s backstory means his defeat wraps up Batman into a self-contained bow. Having defeated his parents’ killer, Batman is potentially able to finish his war on crime. But of course that didn’t really work out.
Christopher Nolan’s “realistic” reboot of Batman delved into meticulous detail of how Batman was created. Although Bruce’s fall into a well of bats is established as his primary trauma, Batman Begins also features its own version of the fateful night. In opposition to Burton, Nolan directs the scene as a fairly ordinary, if tense, exchange. Instead of mist and shadows, Joe Chill is in plain sight before suddenly pulling a gun on the Waynes, depicted as less menacing than a typical desperate mugger. Likewise, although Thomas is again shot after moving to protect Martha’s pearls, there is no focus upon them falling here. Indeed, the editing almost rushes past the actual shooting, going from Thomas’ movement to them on the ground in a few seconds. Nolan underplays the murder to make it shocking and visceral, Batman Begins enforcing the senselessness of these deaths, and how lives can be changed so quickly.
Batman Begins also tweaks certain elements around these deaths. Firstly, the Waynes were watching the opera Mefistofele instead of a movie, enhancing the class differences and privileged Bruce has to address in Begins before returning to Gotham. It also has Bruce ask his parents to leave early due to his fear of the bat-like creatures, which both explains why they were isolated in the alleyway, and makes Bruce feel responsible. In another contrast to Burton’s version, Begins’ college-aged Bruce wants to take lethal revenge against Joe Chill, but is prevented by a mob-hit from Falcone. Instead of fulfilling his short-term vengeance against his parent’s killer, Bruce’s anger instead ferments into a crusade against all injustice.
Gotham was a somewhat confusing show. Beginning as a prequel show about Detective Jim Gordon climbing the ranks of the GCPD, it kept incorporating more and more of Batman’s lore and supporting cast, even though Bruce himself was still a child. It was similar to Smallville, only at least Clark had his superpowers, so Gotham created Batman’s world without Batman himself. Regardless of Gotham’s later unique and campy interpretations, the first scene of the show stuck close to Batman canon. Cavorting on rooftops, Selina Kyle spots a family walking down an alley, only to witness the murder of the Waynes.
Gotham hints that the Waynes were watching a musical, with Bruce agreeing with his father the “music” was “kinda lame”. But the actual mugging is straightforward, with the gunman suddenly appearing in front of the Waynes demanding their money and jewelry, framed in close-ups between Thomas, the masked mugger, and scared Bruce. Again, Martha’s pearls are tossed onto the ground with the slow-motion of Burton’s version. Although this time Thomas and Martha are not shot for suddenly moving, but rather as they stand still. In Gotham, their murder was no random attack but a planned assassination, revealed much later to be done by Matches Malone under orders from Hugo Strange.
The sequel to Man of Steel retroactively added Batman to this universe, as Zack Snyder opened the long-awaited crossover film with his own portrayal of the Wayne’s murder. As with Burton and Nolan before, Batman v. Superman’s depiction perfectly captures Snyder’s style. Melancholy piano music plays over fade-ins to slow-motion segments of the iconic shooting, playing more as a montage than a scene. Snyder’s hyper-focused close-ups of the gun and shooting is quasi-pornographic, fetishizing the floating shell-casings and Martha’s falling pearls. In this version they actually get wrapped around the gun-barrel, so that the shot itself explodes them in operatic synchronization.
Love it or not, such overwrought and glossy aesthetics are a trademark of Snyder. The scene is intercut with the Waynes’ later funeral, wherein Bruce runs into the woods and falls into a well of bats that lifts him upwards. It’s honestly a pretty effective visual of Bruce finding comfort amid the swarm as he replays the traumatic moment. Plus, although the cinema marquee does say Excalibur, close inspection of the outside posters shows one for The Mask of Zorro (the usual film the Waynes were seeing). So, as in Watchmen, Snyder’s commitment to the comic book visuals at least remains intact.
Discussions of portrayals of the Wayne murders would be incomplete without this animated film, as the child-friendly satire Teen Titans Go! To the Movies contains an incredibly dark joke about Batman’s origin. The film’s plot follows the Titans trying to get a movie made about them, with director Jade Wilson saying she will only do if they are the “last superheroes on earth”. Therefore, the Titans use some time-traveling crystals to stop the origins of other superheroes. They prevent Krypton exploding, steal away Wonder Woman’s lasso, and of course, redirect the Wayne family away from “Crime Alley”. After returning to the present however, the Titans find the world ravaged by supervillains (and nobody making any movies), and so they quickly recreate the origin stories. Including putting back Martha’s pearls before pushing her and Thomas into the alley to be shot, as a young Bruce looks on horrified.
This is a quick joke that demonstrates the rapid and surprisingly cut-throat satire of Teen Titans GO! To the Movies. Yet it also touches upon the dilemma often raised in Batman media, of whether Batman requires the trauma from his parent’s death to be Batman. Like a reverse of a baby-Hitler situation, killing the Waynes secures Batman and the lives that he saves. Depictions of Batman have gone back and forth on this issue. Tom King’s comic book run suggested Batman needs to be ‘broken’ to be himself. Other representations, including Batman Forever, suggest that while their deaths may have created Batman, Bruce continues his caped crusade not out of guilt or trauma, but simply because he wants to.
Joker was a departure from most Batman portrayals, in both content, tone and focus. In this 70s set Gotham, the Monarch cinema was showing Brian DePalma’s classic Blow Out, alongside Zorro the Gay Blade. Significantly, Joker is the only R-rated adaptation of these adaptations, which carries through into the visuals of the Waynes’ shooting. Most versions have cut between the gunshot and the Waynes’ reaction, therefore obscuring the actual impact. In Joker, the shooting of Thomas Wayne and his collapse is done in one shot, making it far more brutal. Additionally, young Bruce’s face gets covered in Martha’s blood after she is shot, her pearls being violently ripped off post-mortem.
Before its release it was unclear how much connection Joker would have with Batman, if any, or whether it would be a completely separate origin like Venom. But Joker features Thomas Wayne as a main character, whom Arthur Fleck believes to be his biological father. Their deaths are an indirect result of Fleck, after he incites a riot after killing late-night host Murray Franklin. The clown-masked assailant who follow the Waynes into the alley is specifically targeting them, echoing Fleck’s words as he shoots them that “You get what you f***ing deserve”. It’s unclear whether or not Fleck intended this, having said in the film he “doesn’t believe in anything” and never comments on the class-disparity raging around him. It’s also ambiguous whether it frames these deaths as a righteous vengeance against the rich, or a morally bankrupt murder. But Joker does come full-circle with the first portrayal of the Waynes’ death in 1989, by having the Joker responsible, if indirectly, for the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Gone but not forgotten.
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