I believe the main theme of the film, “Batman Begins,” is fear. The movie uses fear to show how it could affect the way people live and think. It shows how fear can take control of a human being, destroy them completely, and potentially destroy a society. It also shows how a person can instead take control of fear, this is what frees people, because without fear we can do almost anything. The characters that represent these effects of fear are Batman and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow). Each of them are exposed to extensive amounts of fear to start their lives.
Fear that was cause by criminals, both Batman and Jonathan lost their parents to criminals. At first the fear affects them both similarly, but in the long run the effects are completely different. The difference is their ability to control the fear, and the way they used the fear. Batman used his fear to fight crime and save innocent people to better Gotham while Jonathan used fear to kill criminals, create more criminals, attack innocent people, and ultimately attempt to destroy Gotham. Their control of fear is what resulted in them acting in these completely different ways.
Batman controls his fear enough to maintain a sane way of thinking, resulting in him being able to tell right from wrong, and villains from innocent people. He lives by rules, which include the inability to kill someone. These rules separate him from the villains, other low lives, and the league of shadows whom he learned his skills from. This makes sure he really is making a difference in the world. Then there’s Jonathan who can’t tell apart the good from the bad because of his lack of control of fear.
Which enables fear to control him and potentially drive him to try to obliterate all of Gotham. This is what turns him into Scarecrow. Jonathan so strongly wants justice for what happened to his parents that he goes on a rampage of killing people, and destroying the city. This results in havoc throughout Gotham. This is a complete and utter fail to distinguish good from bad, fueled by a large want for justice. Most would ask, how could fear drive you to doing these things? It is a proven fact that extremism comes from fear.
Some examples are obese people and terrorists. Obese people go to extreme lengths and potentially starve themselves to lose weight, while terrorists give up their lives and perform horrendous attacks on innocent people in fear of their god. Batman controls his fear, Jonathan doesn’t, which results in fear controlling him and eventually creates extremism. Fear is also used in the drug that Scarecrow uses to surface peoples’ biggest fears. Scarecrow uses this drug to make people feel how he feels inside.
We can relate this to the fact that Bruce Wayne (Batman) uses the bat suit to fight crime so he can make criminals fear the bat as he fears bats. Though Batman can control his fear, he is also susceptible to this drug. Everyone controls their fears to some point but everyone still fears someone or something. Even if it’s something that’s never brought up or never comes to mind, it’s still there. The immunity of fear is impossible. Like the fear drug did to Gotham, fear could destroy a society in today’s world through violence and chaos.
Violence is created by fear and violence results in chaos, this is what can and will destroy a society. Violence will tear apart a political structure because violence harms the people, and the political structure is supposed to keep the people safe. In other words, if the people aren’t safe, the political structure and wellbeing of society aren’t safe. The fear drug shows what would happen if people became overtaken by fear and panic. The movie suggests that it would totally obliterate a society.
Batman Begins does a great job of using fear to show how it could affect humans and society on a small and large scale. On a small scale, it could completely change a person, their morals, and their lifestyle in a good or bad way. On a larger scale its way more devastating, completely destroying civilizations and societies. Jonathan (Scarecrow) was pushed by fear, but not all criminals have the same motivation. A lot of criminals are more brutal than Jonathan, a lot of criminals just want to see the world erupt in chaos, potentially destroying society.
This makes you think, what would happen if someone with a good bit of power was to become like Jonathan? What would happen to society? Would we put an end to it or would we let it eat us alive from the inside out? We’ll never know until it happens. We can look at historical events that somewhat relate to this though. For example, what Hitler did to the Jews and surrounding countries, and what Pol Pot did to Cambodia. Both these campaigns were put to a stop so we can almost assume that if it happens again the same results will come forth. Only time will tell.
