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Without going into overdrive over covering every minute detail of the life of the mass murder which took place during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises , it is very slowly being revealed that there was a Batman connection:

A computer, homemade explosives, a Batman mask and other Batman paraphernalia all seized at the Colorado apartment of James Holmes could help shed light on the mind, motive and modus operandi of the suspected mass killer, a federal law enforcement official said Sunday.


The police are playing all of this extremely close to the vest, but it was previously reported that the shooter announced that he was the Joker before opening fire. If you take the NY Post as a reliable source, Holmes’ behavior in prison has been right out of Arkham Asylum:

Holmes — who’s “totally crazy, he’s walking around talking like a Joker” in prison, a source told The Post — was being held in solitary confinement in the women’s section at the Arapahoe County Jail, another source said.

Tasha Taylor visited a relative who told her “they brought him in a restraint chair and they put all the women on lockdown.’’ The relative quoted a guard saying, “Once they got his armor off, his whole body was painted red’’ and they had to put him in a shower.


Meanwhile, Warner Bros., out of deference to the 12 people killed and 58 injured at the theater shooting, has declined to release has declined to release the box office totals, and other studios have also declined in solidarity. However, estimates put it as the third biggest opening ever, with $162 million.

Although all sympathy should be going towards the victims and their family and community, I do feel bad for Warners here. While Marvel has been racking up the score with their box office busting superhero films, the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy is the one sure thing in the WB stable. Earlier this year discussions over which which would do better, The Avengers or DKR were common. The one thing no one could have imagined in a million years was a national tragedy tainting the new film and its deserved success.

1 COMMENT

  1. These post spree-killer attack pseudo character profile articles often take me back to the final minutes of Alfred Hitchcock’s (1960) Psycho, after all the twists and turns and reveals.. to where the psychologist is talking to the crowd of cops and reporters, summarizing what exactly drove Norman to do the things he did, and the psychologist makes the whole thing sounds so clear and neat/orderly, and then the camera drifts into the adjacent room, where the cops have Norman Bates himself, and Norm starts talking in his mother’s voice, sounding convincingly innocent, pointing out that he wouldn’t even harm a fly, and then he looks right up at us and smiles — seems Hitch is leaving a final thought as his story ends: if you really think your going to understand this guy and what he did — then you’re probably as crazy as he is.

  2. the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy is the one sure thing in the WB stable. Earlier this year, discussions over which which would do better, THE AVENGERS or DKR, were common. The one thing no one could have imagined in a million years was a national tragedy tainting the new film and its deserved success.

    >>

    @TheBeat:

    WB has been developing LOBO for years– WB can do LOBO if it needs increased cash flow.

    100 Bullets most be in WB’s pipeline as well — that one doesn’t sound so impressive anymore, though .. how bout 100,000 Thousand Bullets ?

  3. “If you take the NY Post as a reliable source”

    I don’t. And I’d just as soon wait for reliable reports, from named sources actually involved in the case, before drawing any conclusions.

    It could well be that the shooter is a deranged Batman fan acting the part of a villain. Or it could just be he picked a movie where he knew there would be a lot of people. I think Horatio’s got a good point — people are going to try to make sense of this because that’s what people do, but there’s no making sense of it no matter WHAT inspired him.

  4. people are going to try to make sense of this because that’s what people do

    >>

    @Thad:

    But this is not just about “this” — that’s why a lot of my posts reference financial issues and seeming other unrelated things — it’s not that I’m obsessed w/ those issue over others, as much as I see this all as one big issue– having to do with the way the (modern) world regards RISK.

    “Risk” for me is not simply what we are going to guard against – because we simply can’t guard against everything – it’s about how much are we going to admit to ourselves about what we don’t know.

    Me thinks If we go around telling ourselves we know everting –or otherwise can fix everything — then we are going to get a fast and hard lesson from which we may find it very difficult to recover (or has that already happened?)

  5. You know, I get it. I get that people want to take this moment to defend comics, that there are no answers, and that comics don’t do this. But is now the right time for that? I’m not saying Batman stuff caused this — what the heck do I know? — but to suggest that it couldn’t ever be part of what happened seems naive given the circumstances. If someone dressed like Batman saved a bunch of people then wouldn’t we be praising the influence of comics right now?

    There may not always be 100% satisfactory answers to things like this, but that doesn’t mean you don’t search like mad for them, even, especially, if we don’t like the answers. I want to defend “our Batman” too but this is an argument that will come later. When it’s time. Not now. Right now it means next to nothing. Batman and The Joker were never real. This is.

    Just my two cents.

  6. If anything this should start legislation making it illegal to answer your friggin cell phone in a movie theater.

    Though it does make me wonder if and when they’ll actually get real about security at Comic Con. That place is an outright catastrophe waiting to happen and anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.

  7. Though it does make me wonder if and when they’ll actually get real about security at Comic Con.

    >>
    My best guess (I maybe all wrong) :

    It doesn’t matter – if it’s not CCon it will be somewhere/something else. You can outlaw guns, knives and slingshots – it does not matter…Too much is too big and too tide together..Financial institutions are too big .. movies open too big… all the same.

    Bin Ladin said he wanted to bankrupt America. He put five guys on planes with box cutters. Greenspan over reacted and flooded the financial system w/ dollars–the banks used that loose money to blew up American housing – and now 40% of middle class wealth is gone (according to all the economists I read) .. and, as people really see the results of this but don’t know why, and get angrier and angrier –we may come apart. Bin Ladin is dead but did he win? Batman is fiction; Bin Ladin is reality .. Fragility is the problem.

    FRAGILITY comes from too much being tide together. It is the result of extremely left brained anti-compititive, arrogant corporate thinking –it is the result of a bunch of people who have been given credentials to show that they know the answers to everything – so they have been and continue to be allowed to take enormous, self-serving risks — w/ all of our lives!

  8. There’s informed speculation about Holmes’s state of mind, and there’s uninformed speculation. What’s certain is that whoever ends up as Holmes’s defense attorney in a trial will try to come up with a specific type of disabling condition, if the plan is to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. No court will accept “He just flipped out; we don’t know why, and never will” as an explanation. Holmes will be examined; his blood chemistry will be tested. I doubt that fMRI brain scans will be accepted in court, and might not even be tried, but the technology is available. We might not be at the point yet where courts have access to foolproof lie detectors, but the brain isn’t a mysterious black box, and hasn’t been for years.

    SRS

  9. the NYpost and “reliable source” should not be in the same sentence together unless the words “is not a” are inbetween them.