It’s a familiar scene: a young Bruce Wayne is huddled over the bodies of his parents who lie dead in an alleyway, their lives cut short by a nameless robber. Perhaps there’s a motif with pearls from a necklace scattered all across the ground. Here’s another familiar scene: Peter Parker cries out for help as Uncle Ben’s life slips away, shot by a nameless robber. Perhaps Peter Parker has been nursing a spider bite that is altering his abilities. One more familiar scene: a baby is mysteriously found by the unassuming John and Martha Kent in Smallville. As the child, now named Clark, grows up and finds he has supernatural strength and impenetrable skin, he eventually learns of his home planet of Krypton and the sacrifice his parents made to save him.
Well-established characters in pop culture seem to be doomed to relive the worst moment of their lives over and over again. Bruce Wayne has seen his parents gunned down over 13 times on-screen in both the countless movies and TV iterations of him. Players even get to relive the experience as Batman in the game Batman: Arkham Origins, with a commercial spot for the game featuring the scene as well, albeit condensed to a few brief seconds. The scene has been portrayed on film so many times that various supercuts of the deaths of the Wayne parents have been edited together for viewing on Youtube. This doesn’t even touch upon how many times readers have borne witness to the final moments of the Wayne parents in the comics, but that number is likely even higher.
At what point do creators decide that viewers already know why one of the many established superheroes took up their mantle? Is it even necessary for viewers to pinpoint the exact moment that drove a man who inherited a vast fortune to wear a mask, spandex tights, and a cape and start punching criminals in the face?
It’s arguably impossible for someone to be ignorant of the marquee characters that are at the forefront of the superhero industrial complex. Since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man came out in 2002, superhero movies have only gained momentum, to the point where 4 have premiered in 2020 alone even after several were delayed until later. Since 2002 there have been 3 Spider-Man movie franchises, each with at least 1 sequel film under their belts. The newest reintroduction, Spider-Man: Homecoming, skips right past the tragic demise of Uncle Ben. Producer Kevin Feige has stated that they did so precisely because the previous version of Spider-Man already had that scene covered, so there was no need to retread old ground. After all, isn’t it a waste of time if a sizeable portion of a movie is basically a retelling of a sizeable portion of another movie that’s just a retelling of a sizeable portion of yet another movie?
When Star Wars first debuted in theaters in 1977, viewers became intrigued with the frightening villain Darth Vader. 22 years later, it would be revealed that the man behind the mask started out as Anakin Skywalker, a young aspiring engineer from Tatooine. Despite knowing nothing about his past or motivations for becoming the evil overlord he was, the character was a huge success and has been a pop culture icon ever since. Doesn’t this prove that viewers neither expect nor need a deep dive into the character’s history to appreciate the gravity of their actions in the “present day?” Aren’t Darth Vader’s actions just as malicious and his redemption just as cathartic without knowing that back in the day he used to really like pod racing?
This doesn’t mean a character’s point of origin is an entirely frivolous thing. The beginning act of Iron Man explains why he has a big glowing circle in his sternum, though that plot device is really only relevant in the first movie. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are giant martial arts-practicing humanoid turtles existing in an otherwise normal New York City, a situation that is going to raise some eyebrows. Even then, it’s only necessary to devote a marginal portion of the movie to explaining how they were mutated by toxic goo since viewers are already on-board to watch a movie about giant mutated reptiles. Once one digs deeper into their past they’ll start learning about the giant mutated rat that trained them in martial arts and all of a sudden that opens up more questions than it answers, like where did an anthropomorphic rat learn martial arts or is there a giant mutated tubifex worm that taught them to speak English?
That encapsulates the other downside of inventing an origin story for these characters. It’s hard enough to write a story set in one moment in time that is airtight and doesn’t have any plot holes, inconsistencies, or lapses in logic. When the distant past comes into play and has a major role in how the plot came to be, it exponentially increases the chances of things not adding up right or even being outright nonsensical. Filling in plot holes requires fleshing out certain details, something the movie has less time to do if the first 30 minutes are spent learning how somebody being mean to the main character taught them to help others. Back to the Future doesn’t devote any time to why Marty McFly is friends with a disgraced nuclear physicist, they just establish their friendship and tell audiences to roll with it.
Featuring the hero’s origins won’t save an already questionable plot, either. In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, viewers are given yet another rehash of Thomas and Martha Wayne’s murders. It’s thankfully short despite the use of slow-motion but, interestingly enough, is interspersed with shots of Bruce running from their funeral because the movie assumes viewers are already familiar with the tragedy. Despite the movie putting that pivotal moment fresh in everyone’s mind, it didn’t stop the Internet from ridiculing the scene where, fighting to the death and on the verge of killing one another, Batman and Superman become fast friends when they realize their mothers have the same name.
Still, the scenes may be a constant inclusion in an attempt to draw in a younger audience that may not have been around to watch these previous movies. Older viewers have already made up their minds on whether or not they’ll continue their patronage of all things Batman. As well, with every new version of these iconic characters, it gives the creators the opportunity to shake things up and perhaps change the backstory, though longtime fans might consider such changes anathema to their beloved characters.
With yet another reboot of Batman coming up, it remains to be seen if viewers will be shown yet another reimagining of the deaths of the Wayne parents. One can only hope that they decide to forego this scene with the expectation that viewers may have caught a glimpse of it one of the other 10 times it’s happened in the last decade.
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