Before reading this, please be aware that my tone is meant to be respectful. The situation that happened in Aurora, Colorado, is one of great tragedy, and one of disgust. My thoughts and prayers go to the victims and their families.
I just finished watching an episode of
Doc Zone from CBC all about conspiracy theories, and how it is human nature to try to make sense of the chaos, to seek patterns. Once I heard of the situation currently unfolding, the grim similarities below came to mind...
For those of you unaware, there has been a sickening tragedy connected with
The Dark Knight Rises - at a midnight premiere of the movie outside Denver, Colorado, a gunman entered a movie theatre and opened fire, killing 14 people, and injuring another 50. He wore bulletproof gear, apparently a variety of weaponry, and had some sort of smoke bombs.
You cannot Google
The Dark Knight Rises without coming across various news encounters of this event. It will now be forever seared into the movie - much like the tragic death of Heath Ledger and
The Dark Knight.
At this point, nobody knows the motives of the gunman. In fact, it doesn't end there - upon capture, he mentioned something about "explosives" and his apartment building. Police have vacated the building and are cautiously performing a sweep.
What bothers me the most is motive. Why Batman? Was it because it was a heroic movie? Was it because of the actual hero himself?
Although
Batman Begins shows the murder of the Waynes occur after leaving an opera, the traditional, comic book version actually occurs after Bruce and his parents leave a movie theatre, after viewing a movie featuring the masked caped hero, Zorro (which movie it is changes from tale to tale, and is for the most part irrelevant).
Once again, we have a life imitates art/art imitates life situation. But I ask this: Was this the gunman's motive?
In M. Night Shyamalan's
Unbreakable, a comic book themed movie, Bruce Willis learns he has some sort of super strength and invulnerability due to his encounters with tragedy. And in Shyamalan's "What a twist!" moment, it is revealed that Samuel L. Jackson has orchestrated these events because he believed a hero like Willis existed in the world, and he was trying to inspire him by causing such tragedies.
Moreover, my much-beloved DC Animated Universe (consisting of
Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Batman Beyond, etc) unleashed a surprise reveal during the first season of
Justice League Unlimited, in an episode titled
Epilogue. Terry McGinnis, the Batman of the future, finds out Bruce Wayne - through genetic twists and machinations, not traditional intercourse - is his biological father. Outraged, McGinnis locates the source to seek answers, and discovers that beyond
nature, there was an intent to
nurture this path by mimicking Bruce's past, and have Terry witness his parent's gruesome murder. The only problem was the gunman couldn't pull the trigger, so to speak, and the plan was aborted. Years later, however, fate intervened, and Terry's father was murdered by another party, igniting the flame within Terry in the end.
Bruce Wayne becomes Batman because of a tragedy. Other stories mimic this idea. Could somebody actually be that insane to try to inspire this event?
Do I really believe this is the cause? No. And would it actually make it any better? Of course not. Lives are lost, and people will mourn them all the same.
It's just during these tragic times, sometimes, you'd like to think there's more of a purpose than some random event, some coward with a gun, that can just upset these people's lives and cut them short - a theme Bruce deals with constantly.
In the end, whether or not there is some sort of sick motive or not, you cannot ignore the similarities.
