Near the end of the first season of Batman: Caped Crusader, I recoiled in horror from the screen. Not because of some terrifying villain, but because Batman (Hamish Linklater) was holding a gun. And Batman never uses guns. Except, historically, he has used them, and on-screen has used them many, many times. And despite online conversation to the contrary, Batman brandishing a firearm in Caped Crusader is nothing like what happens in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe).
Let’s take a step back here and break down what does happen in Caped Crusader. In the closing episodes, Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader) has turned into Two-Face thanks to an attack by one of Rupert Thorne’s (Cedric Yarbrough) thugs. Dent’s rapidly deteriorating mental state and deadly brand of vigilante justice are undermining Batman’s own sense of self… How is he that different from Harvey? And was he to blame for what happened to him? Pushing him into a situation where he did the right thing for once — and was hideously scarred as a result?
This all crests in a cat-and-mouse game on a wharf. Harvey and Barbara Gordon (Krystal Joy Brown) are hunted by corrupt detectives Harvey Bullock (John DiMaggio) and Arnold Flass (Gary Anthony Williams)… With only Batman, Commissioner Jim Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart), and Renee Montoya (Michelle C. Bonilla) standing in the way. While Bullock is arrested by Jim Gordon and Renee Montoya, Flass takes the opportunity to try and kill Barbara. Harvey jumps in the way to save her, gets shot himself, and ultimately dies.
How much of the latter Batman is aware of is not made clear. But as he confronts Flass, he turns his own gun on him… Leading to the header image at the top of this article. We then cut to the other characters as Batman fires, several times. But when we cut back, we discover that Batman fired around Flass’s head. Batman tosses the gun into the Gotham harbor, and Flass is taken into custody.
That bit of setup out of the way, let’s talk about 1939.
Yes, Batman Used Guns Back In 1939
This is brought up frequently in reference to the “Should Batman use guns?” debate. When Batman was introduced in 1939 by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, he was a masked vigilante like others of his ilk… And they all used guns. So Batman used guns.
However, he stopped using guns one year later, in 1940. While there’s no official reason Batman stopped using guns, by Batman #4 they were no longer in regular use by the character. And since then, it’s become an unofficial — then semi-official — rule that The Dark Knight doesn’t use firearms, with rare exceptions. That includes, for example, Final Crisis #7, an event comic by Grant Morrison that presented the writer’s riff on the “final” stories of characters, while still integrated into ongoing continuity. In that case, Batman used a gun to kill arch-villain Darkseid and then died. In Morrison’s telling, Batman using a gun ended his story.
The culmination of the “no guns” rule is one iconic panel from Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. There, an older, more violent Batman states plainly where his line is. “This is the weapon of the enemy,” Batman says, breaking a gun in half with his bare hands. “We do not need it. We will not use it.”
Back to 1939, though. Caped Crusader is set in the late ’30s, early ’40s, around “week two” of Batman operating as a vigilante. That’s at least part of the explanation here as to why producer Bruce Timm and company thought it was okay to bring in a singular gun… Before Batman summarily rejects it.
But what of the DCEU?
On-Screen, Batman Frequently Uses Guns
For the most part, Batman hasn’t been depicted on screen as two guns blasting, Neo-style. But he sure does have a lot of guns on the Batmobile, I’ll tell you what. Starting with 1989’s Batman, and running all the way to whichever version of Justice League you might be watching, Batman has guns on nearly every iteration of the Batmobile.
While it’s not explicitly stated in most cases whether he’s using rubber bullets or not, and you don’t see criminals bleeding to death on screen, with the Batmobile — and the Batplane — Batman in film seems to be using live rounds to fire at people. You need look no further than the massive explosions they cause to posit that he’s probably not thinking about his foes’ safety in this case.
That brings us to the DCEU, which brought Zack Snyder’s vision of a darker, more intense, more broken Batman, played by Ben Affleck. He’s got the guns on the Batmobile and the Batplane. He brands criminals, which leads directly to their deaths in jail. And in a dark, apocalyptic vision of the future, he’s carrying a big old gun.
On The Batfleck Who Kills, Snyder was indeed inspired to up the ante by both the Burton and Nolan movies — and YouTube. In an interview with HeyUGuys, Snyder said, “I tried to do it in a technical way. There’s a great YouTube video that shows all the kills in the Christopher Nolan movies even though we would perceive them as movies where he doesn’t kill anyone. I think there’s 42 potential kills that Batman does! Also, it goes back and includes even the Tim Burton Batman movies where this reputation as a guy that doesn’t kill comes from.”
For Snyder, subtlety is the weapon of the enemy. He does not need it. He will not use it. So his Batman kills, explicitly and openly. And presumably despite being inspired by Superman in Justice League, would probably have killed again if Snyder was allowed to continue his saga.
Perhaps of note, Robert Rattinson’s subsequent version of Batman in The Batman explicitly follows the “no gun” rule. During an investigation, Batman tells James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) “no guns” to which the police officer says, “Yeah, man, that’s your thing.”
Why Are Guns Okay In Caped Crusader, But Not In The DCEU?
Getting back to the original point of this piece, the question that’s been posited online is: why aren’t people as upset about Batman using a gun in Caped Crusader, as they are about Batman using guns in the DCEU?
You can probably posit this for yourself based on what I’ve laid out here, but the answer is pretty simple. In Caped Crusader, Batman is pushed to the edge, tempted by a gun, but ultimately does not use it to kill and throws it away. In the DCEU, Batman kills people, uses guns, and continues to use guns, because Zack Snyder watched a cool YouTube video about it.
I’m being glib on the last point, but without slagging off DCEU fans, Snyder’s vision is a more extreme version of the DC characters where Batman kills, Superman kills, they all kill. Eventually, they learn killing is bad, but do they still kill anyway? Like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop, I guess we’ll never know.
Full disclosure, I didn’t even like the Caped Crusader moment! We’ve done the whole tempted hero who gets too violent and has to learn to not be as violent thing to death in the modern era of superhero TV and film. But logically, you understand based on the time period they’re setting it in, and emotionally where they push Batman to, how they got there in the writers’ room.
So why is one okay, and the other isn’t? Because there was one year when Batman used guns. One. And whatever reason there is behind it… He doesn’t need them. He’s Batman. And guns are the weapon of the enemy.