Psyche Pentagram
Wow, what a great thread. There's so much to discuss when appreciating the magic and aura of Batman.
"Batman: The Animated Series" (Fox TV) gave us a way to appreciate the pedestrian realism of a hypothetical urban vigilante.
Tim Burton's groundbreaking films "Batman" [1989] and "Batman Returns" [1992] gave us a portrait of the Dark Knight as brooding angel in a gloomy Gotham City.
The modern animated series "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" (Cartoon Network) presents a gaudy but geometric pictorial of vigilantism flowery.
"Gotham" (Fox TV) and "Batman: Year One" (Frank Miller) provide background psychology to the intellectual foundation of the Dark Knight.
However, it seems that Christopher Nolan's three Batman masterpieces offer the best portrait of urban vigilantism through the lens of true criminal mania. Batman is, after all, the ultimate crusader against criminal insanity, a legal problem very difficult to prosecute. In Nolan's films, we find Bruce Wayne (and Batman) struggling with the general psychological uncertainties associated with criminality as it relates to vengeance or vigilantism and how those uncertainties make both the Dark Knight and his maddening nemeses such as Scarecrow and Two-Face representative of self-image paranoia.
It is in the Nolanverse that we feel most comfortable asking questions like, "Could Scarecrow be like Leatherface, the fictional chainsaw-wielding merciless cannibal from the popular Texas Chainsaw Massacre American horror film franchise, and could Batman be like Michael Myers, the fictional masked childhood-ruined Halloween Eve serial killer from the popular Halloween American horror film franchise?"
I don't want to explicitly cast my vote for any single Batman rendition, since they all contribute to the vigilantism-psychology fun mosaic, but I would lean towards the Nolanverse darkness.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold
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