Leave Batman's dad alone

Like every fucking blockbuster made these days, The Batman is a film with lots of tiny moments full of exciting and awesome shit - it's got the best Batmobile since the sixties - and it is easily half an hour too long and outstays its welcome, like the last people at your house party that just won't leave. And it's particularly painful because you can see where they could have made those cuts - all that crap about him losing faith in his dad should obviously go, because that shit never, ever works.

And yet, it still happens a lot. After 83-goddamn-years of Batman and his family and legacy getting deconstructed and built up again, it's been shown time and time again that making Thomas Wayne the bad guy is just a dumb idea. 

You're on a road to nowhere if you're the latest to try and sully the tragic totem the Batman is built upon, these good people he couldn't save -  they have the perfection of a nine year old who just lost his parents. Giving Batman suspicions that his Dad wasn't the spotless hero he thought he was undermines the whole idea of the Dark Knight.

Even Grant Morrison went for it during his long run, with some full-on nonsense about some jerk named Dr Hurt coming back and pretending to be Bruce's dad, and it's easily the lowest point of the writer's run, because you know they're going to clear his name at the end. Batman just doesn't work when you mess with the basics like that.

DC still never let it go ,and took this tedious concept to the next level in the Flashpoint universe, with Thomas actually becoming the Batman when Bruce is killed as a child. This seems to be an arguement that the Batman personality is inevitable and someone has to take it on, and not that it's some poor kid's way of coping with this shit he's been served. No matter how many times they bring this Batman back and have him stand around looking moody, it always faintly smells like the rotten proposition it is.

And then it's back in the movie, in this all-new interpretation of the Bat. And from the moment they introduce the possibility that Tommy Wayne wasn't so squeaky clean, it's just a long slog until Alfred conveniently wakes the hell up to provide some  reassurances needed to kick the third act into gear.

There will always be plenty of black sheep in the Wayne family tree to chose from if you need the family connection, but going for the big man's dad isn't fair play.