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Batman (1989-1997)

  • Batman (1989):
    • It's perfectly acceptable to kill everyone in your way, curb stomp anyone, and give mixed signals to your girlfriend if the bad guy killed your parents when you were a wee boy.
    • Smitten with someone else? Go ahead and drop your girlfriend out the window, the police won't go after you anyway.
  • Batman Returns:
    • Girl Power is always a good thing, and so in the end everyone else is either a fat-head, a horrible butcher, or a corrupt corporate executive. All Hell is therefore acceptable if you're a woman that just got pushed out the window.
      • That being said, if a woman who's weaker than you gets sexually harassed, it's her fault for not being strong like you. You should still help her, but make sure to make fun of her afterward.
    • The Upper-Class Twit is always morally above the sewer freak even though they both kill people with little remorse, extra points to the rich guy cuz' one these victims was a fat mook.
    • The best way to resolve an argument with a politician you can't buy is to push for a recall vote using a sewer-dwelling recluse as a potential candidate.
  • Batman & Robin:

The Dark Knight

  • Batman Begins: If you're an initiate in a secret warrior society and you find your final test—killing a person in cold blood—morally repugnant, be sure to demonstrate your repugnance by killing everyone else in the room instead.
    • Or, "murder is okay, as long as it's done through massive explosions." Or maybe "to ninjas".
    • Flipping over police cars and causing uncountable potential deaths is necessary if you have a sick person in the car with you.
    • Murder is wrong; but letting someone die when it's well within your capabilities to save him is perfectly acceptable, especially if you deliberately put him in the life threatening situation in the first place.
    • Systemic social problems do not arise from a complex combination of good intentions, prejudice, and flawed systems. Instead, an evil cabal's sinister conspiracy is behind crime, poverty, and urban blight.
  • The Dark Knight: Never take action against a psychopathic clown plaguing your city with the murder of innocents because he wants you to reveal your secret identity until he kidnaps someone you care about. Then you're allowed to destroy as much public property as you want.
    • If said psychopathic clown kidnaps you, murders your fiance, and burns half your face off, the best thing to do when he hands you a gun is hear out his talk on philosophy.
    • If said psychopathic clown turns your city's handsome beacon of hope into an insane murderer, and you don't want the city to find out lest they despair, simply take the blame for the murders yourself and stalk off into the night as a hated outlaw. Under no circumstances should you let the police blame the Monster Clown who's actually responsible.
    • People are better off if they have somebody to hate and fear, rather than somebody to respect and admire. If you lose your shining beacon of hope, don't try to find another one, just turn against the one who's trying to help you. (Sadly, this is also a Truth in Television)
    • Government and other authority figures that lie to their people are only doing so to protect them!
    • Dressing up as a bat and fighting a vigilante war on crime is wrong if you're not a rich orphan.
    • Killing is wrong for YOU, not me.
  • The crazy murderous lunatic is the only person who has noticed that the constant death of poor people and soldiers sucks. Also that money isn't everything.
    • It's okay to commit an act of arson (and at least a few second degree murders) to avoid executing a criminal, let your corrupted former mentor die in a train crash, push your tortured former friend to his death off of a building, but killing the evil clown who murdered dozens of people including the love of your life is crossing the line and must not be done.
    • If you take an oath that you'll never kill anyone, it's ok to follow that when confronting a murderous sociopath holding hundreds of people hostage, and also ok to throw it out the window when confronting your mentally disturbed friend armed only with a handgun. I mean, he did move in on that girl you were planning to get with.
    • Even if they seem like a good person, never trust a lawyer.

DC Extended Universe

  • Man of Steel:
    • Always do what your father says, even if his way of thinking got him killed and ultimately gets in the way of saving the planet.
    • Politicians and the military are incapable of understanding environmentalism, no matter how much damage they've obviously done. (That’s actually Truth in Television, sad to say)
    • If you wear an abstract symbol as tribute your long-lost culture and it looks like a Roman letter, people will ignore your explanation and misinterpret it for decades to come.
    • Meta: If you've destroyed a machine that could wipe out all life, prevented an alien race from breeding out humanity and killed a bloodthirsty warlord to save a frightened family, you'd better be either Batman, played by Christopher Reeve or a member of the Avengers. If you're none of these, everyone will accuse you of being a violent sociopath and possibly an Ayn Rand fanatic.
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:
    • Your boyfriend will solve all of your problems, so push your luck for all it's worth.
    • Scrawny redheads are evil. Hunks are just misunderstood.
    • If you suspect an all-powerful but benevolent alien that can be reasoned with might snap and turn against humanity, even if you yourself admit that the odds are very low if non-existent, start planning to kill him and execute said plan as soon as possible. Don't try and talk it out with said alien or figure out what events would cause him to snap and prevent said events from happening, or even develop plans to deal with him but keep them dormant until it looks like he will snap - Murder Is the Best Solution.
  • Wonder Woman (2017): You can't stop a war just by killing one bad person, so keep killing bad people until the war ends.
  • Wonder Woman 1984:
    • If your body has been possessed by an undead spirit and your consciousness supplanted, consent doesn't matter.
    • Meanwhile, fat ugly men who won't take no for an answer are totally repugnant. Rapists are only sympathetic if they're gorgeous women.
    • At the same time however, defending yourself from a rapist - even if it's the fat ugly guy - is something only violent sociopaths do. Got whiplash yet?
    • Wishing for things to be better takes the beauty out of reality. You should learn to value what you already have. This message brought to you by a demigoddess princess that has a cushy job and no physical imperfections.
    • Humans Are Bastards and most of our deepest desires involve causing suffering to other people.
  • The Suicide Squad: Those government-issued injections that you got in 2021 contain explosives that will literally blow your head off if you don't march in lockstep with the establishment.
    • Violent criminals and cannibals are decent if misguided people with standards. US soldiers, however, are not.
    • Lazy people are kinder and will ultimately save us all.
    • If you want to save the world, you have to hate your mother.
  • Black Adam (2022):
    • Killing terrorists who have no defining traits outside of being evil falls into a morally grey zone, but swinging a mace at an unarmed man who lived under the heel of tyranny is what heroes do.
    • You know what else heroes do? Take assignments from shady figures who abuse civil liberties and throw their own daughters to the wolves to deal with disenfranchised aliens.
  • The Flash (2023):
    • Batman can kick Superman's ass and survive a confrontation with Doomsday, but needs help dealing with an armed robber.
    • Reclusive old men understand precisely how cosmic anomalies function.
    • A microwave oven that's just been used is a safe place to store a newborn baby.
    • Women aren't bothered by strange men chatting with them in the supermarket. They'll even show them physical affection.
    • Rewriting history for the sole purpose of erasing the doom and gloom demonstrates a weak character with no consideration for the big picture.
    • Orphans are better people. Having living parents makes you an annoying Spoiled Brat.

Other

  • Watchmen:
    • Don't bother to even try to make any part of the world or even society in general a better place. Even if you had God-Mode Sue level powers its wouldn't stop or change the events of history (even though it should) because the future is set in stone and absolutely Nothing can truly change it.
    • The smarter you are the more forever alone you are.
    • Prostitutes are horrible people who abuse their children.
    • Free will absolutely, positively does not exist.
  • Joker (2019):
    • Buy a gun holster.
    • All wealthy people are scumbags.
    • You shouldn't take care of your elderly mother — she probably secretly abused you.
    • Don't believe women when they claim to have been manipulated by powerful men. They're probably delusional and/or covering up their own crimes.
  • The Batman (2022): Who could have guessed that wearing a scary costume, committing violent acts of vigilantism and failing to communicate so as to preserve your mystique would lead to misguided copycats?
    • The system is too corrupt to be reformed, but trying to overthrow the system through radical action is evil. The best solution is waiting for eccentric billionaires and charismatic politicians to save us.

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