Who is fiction’s greatest detective? Miss Marple or Sam
Spade? Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe? Inspector Morse or Lieutenant Columbo?
Batman or Sherlock Holmes? Hang on, Batman a detective? Well, yes actually.
Apart from being dubbed The Caped Crusader and The Dark Knight, Batman was also
known as “the world’s greatest detective,” [1]
a title that has equally been applied to Sherlock Holmes. Whether you consider
Batman a detective or not, he and Holmes are the most enduring and most
successful crime fighters that fiction has produced.
Both Batman and Holmes have been reimagined frequently and
had their stories rebooted over the years and of all of those reboots it is
probably the most recent that have been the most successful. Certainly both
have received great critical acclaim and commercial success. Christopher
Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy has
grossed US$1.1billion; The Dark Knight
and The Dark Knight Rises are two of
the top three top grossing superhero films of all time. Meanwhile Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous
detective has been updated for the 21st century in not one but two
series, Sherlock, produced by the BBC
and, in the US, Elementary produced
by CBS. The BBC version has retained the essence of Conan Doyle's character,
cleverly reworked the stories and embraced 21st century technology without
resorting to gimmicks. I can't speak for Elementary
as I have not seen it.
There are many parallels between Batman and Holmes; not all
are coincidental. While Holmes has Dr. Watson, Batman has Robin (in the comic
books at least. Perhaps wisely, Christopher Nolan eschewed Robin in his films)
and Batman’s creator, Bob Kane acknowledges that Robin was consciously based on
Dr. Watson. Batman has Alfred Pennyworth; Holmes has Mrs. Hudson while the
relationship between Batman and Commissioner Jim Gordon is similar to Holmes’
relationship with Inspector Lestrade. While Batman may have his cape and his gizmos,
Holmes is associated with the dearstalker hat, although Doyle never described
him as wearing such. The writers of Sherlock
made merry with this, having Holmes wear such a hat purely by chance. There is
however, something of the Batman cape in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes
overcoat; indeed in an episode in Series Three, as Holmes leaves John and Mary
Watson’s wedding, he dons his coat with a swirl and a swagger that suggests a
cape.
Both Holmes and Batman are outsiders, Holmes because of his
intellect; in Sherlock he says to
Watson and Lestrade, “Dear God. What is it like in your funny little brains? It
must be so boring,” while Batman is that most dangerous and misunderstood of
good men, the vigilante. Equally, among their successes, both have their
failings, their character flaws, their moments of doubt. Indeed in the stories
as chronicled by Dr Watson, there are cases which Holmes admits not to have
cracked.
Both are freaks in their way, Batman is feared by a society
that does not fully understand him; Joker says of Batman, “You’re just a freak,
like me!” and Holmes is misunderstood by society and the police, some of whom
actively mistrust him. In the first
series of Sherlock, Sergeant
Donaldson openly refers to Holmes as “freak” to his face.
Finally, and most importantly both Batman and Sherlock
Holmes each have their nemesis, Joker in Batman’s case and for Holmes,
Professor James Moriarty. The strength of these villains’ characters is key to
the success of the Batman and Holmes canons, even though they may not appear in
all of the stories. Moriarty in fact only appears directly in two of Doyle’s
stories but enjoys much greater prominence in films and in Sherlock.
Like the heroes, the villains have their similarities too
and none more so in their relationships with the heroes, which border on the
symbiotic. Holmes and Moriarty, and Batman and Joker are incomplete without one
another. In The Dark Knight, when
Batman asks if Joker wants to kill him, Joker replies “I don’t want to kill
you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no,
NO! No. You… you… complete me.” In The
Reichenbach Fall, the Sherlock
episode based on Doyle’s The Final Problem,
Moriarty says, “You need me, or you're nothing. Because we're just alike, you
and I. Except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels.”
 |
| "Did you miss me?" |
Moriarty’s rooftop monologue in The Reichenbach Fall echoes
Joker’s lines. Moriarty says: “All my life I've been searching for
distractions. And you were the best distraction and now I don't even have you.
Because I've beaten you. And you know what? In the end it was easy. It was
easy. Now I've got to go back to playing with the ordinary people.” Moriarty’s
ordinary people are Joker’s mob dealers.
Heroes and villains, having fascinated man since he first
began storytelling, come no larger than Holmes/Batman and Moriarty/Joker; how
we associate with them depends in no small part to the actors who play them. It
is in this respect that both Sherlock
and The Dark Knight films have been
so successful.
Christian Bale’s Batman has menace but with the comic book
characteristics that one expects, but his Bruce Wayne outshines others who have
taken the role. Whereas Michael Keaton as Wayne was somewhat comic and
otherworldly at times, Bale’s Wayne is a sophisticated, grown up businessman,
as hard-nosed as his alter ego. Holmes, as played by Dominic Cumberbatch, is
described by The Guardian as “cold,
techie, slightly Aspergerish,” and while Holmes has never been a character who
suffers fools gladly, Cumberbatch’s Holmes turns that up a notch or two.
The late Heath Ledger’s bravura performance in The Dark Knight was
rightly recognised with an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor; Andrew Scott
won a similar BAFTA playing Moriarty. Scott, who looks like Declan Donnelly and
sounds like Graham Norton, is mesmeric as Moriarty; completely unhinged, like
Joker, eminently plausible, reasonable almost, but totally bonkers.
The second series of Sherlock
ended with the apparent death of both Moriarty and Holmes. Series three brought
Sherlock Holmes back from the dead to foil a plot to blow up the Houses of
Parliament. The series ends with the suggestion that Moriarty too survived the
episode atop the roof of St Bart’s Hospital, despite the fact that it appeared
that he blew his own head off; we await the explanation when Series Four hits
our screens, although given the fact that the actors and writers now have such
busy schedules it remains to be seen when this will happen.
 |
| "Why so serious?" |
The success of both Holmes and Batman has much to do with
the fact that the stories of both feature charismatic criminals, criminals who are
worthy adversaries for our heroes and no matter how much we expect Batman and
Holmes to triumph, it is not without some respect and admiration for such
charismatic bad guys like Joker and Moriarty.
Without villains
there is no point in having heroes; without the threat of defeat then victory
is cheap.
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