My New Year’s Resolution was to not waste a single opportunity to talk about Batman, so I present you with the trailer for the new Batman game, Arkham City.
So. How do we feel about the song they use there? At first I was feeling pretty “nyggeh” but then I started feeling pretty “Yes” about it. The obvious route would have been to ape (or at least emulate) the Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard score from The Dark Knight, but I’m glad that Rocksteady decided to go their own way with it.
Melancholic pop is actually very appropriate for Batman, if you give it a moment’s thought. The character transforms a little with every new writer/artist (and more recently actor/director) who touches him, and the icon we have today is an agglomeration of all the different thoughts and opinions various people have had about the “idea of Batman” for decades.
The “idea of Batman” is a topic for a different post (or perhaps a psychological journal), but any of you with an interest in reading about Batman on the internet probably already know what I’m talking about. In the interests of accessibility, however, here’s a thoughtful post by the internet’s preeminent Batmanologist, Chris Sims, on the notion of whether or not Bruce Wayne or Batman is the “mask.” It’s a good place to start.