Like the fictional Gotham City, our Motor City Detroit has been synonymous with the acronym CCPI: crime, corruption, politics, and injustice. That is probably the Bat-signal rose downtown at the General Motors (GM) Renaissance Center in part of promoting “The Lego Batman Movie”.
It has been a year since the release of “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” with Ben Affleck as brooding billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, the Son of Gotham who declared war on Metropolis’ Man of Steel/Son of Krypton (Henry Cavill) as the brooding masked vigilante known as the Bat of Gotham. The film, which starred Gal Gadot as the Amazonian warrior princess Wonder Woman, was shot on location in Michigan back in 2014. “Batman v. Superman” was indeed the dawn of the climactic Batman-Superman-Wonder Woman trinity against Doomsday, as well as the debuts of Aquaman (Jason Momoa), the Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Come this year, the secret origins of “Wonder Woman” will be revealed on June 7, followed the secret origins of the “Justice League” on November 17.
This Sunday will rise as the nine-year anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death. Ledger, who passed away at the age of 28, won a posthumous Oscar for his scene-stealing role as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” opposite Christian Bale’s titular vigilante superhero. Released in the summer of 2008, it rose as the year’s highest-grossing film: breaking multiple box office records that led to a worldwide gross of one billion dollars.
Hailed by critics and moviegoers unanimously as the best superhero films of all time, “The Dark Knight” introduced the Joker as a different type of criminal: a criminal out to bring chaos, disorder, and anarchy in Gotham against Batman, whose spirit of vengeance served as the symbol of justice against organized crime: a symbol for the good people of Gotham. Batman is the hero that Gotham needed … but not the hero they deserved … for now – at least, until summer 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises” against Bane (Tom Hardy).
You can either die the hero … or you can live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Batman decided to become the latter in the end, for he is a silent guardian, a watchful protector … a “Dark Knight”.
