Should Batman Kill?

Recently, I been combing over some statements made by director Zack Snyder in regards to his point of view of Batman being allowed to "kill" criminals rather than just incapacitate them until the authorities arrive. One of his quotes are as follows. “People are always like, ‘Batman can’t kill.’ So Batman can’t kill is canon. And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, the first thing I want to do when you say that is I want to see what happens,'” Snyder continued. “And they go, ‘Well, don’t put him in a situation where he has to kill someone.’ I’m like, ‘Well, that’s just like you’re protecting your God in a weird way, right? You’re making your God irrelevant.'” Credit - Variety.com Now, there is a lot packed into that statement, but I'll try not to go too far off in a tangent on this because I want to stay focused on the original-question. The crack he made about equating people agreeing what has already been established by the creators of the character as canon with idolatry, to me is a little bit of a red-herring and a lot of Ad-Hominem. We all know that at various points in history, creators that have used the Batman character in numerous publications and forms of entertainment have had some measure of creative license with the character. Batman has killed before. However, it is a huge leap to go from Batman has killed before to saying Batman SHOULD kill from now on. Or, to suggest that Batman is predisposed to kill simply because he often finds himself in situations where that option is available to him, and him not doing so makes him "irrelevant." It's a very obtuse point-of-view to be quite honest. 85 years into Batman's existence, I think Batman not killing hasn't hurt him very much. Just sayin'... The thing that made Batman so elite in the first place and separated him from other comic book characters was the fact that he perfected the science of incapacitating criminals in the most efficient ways possible WITHOUT killing them. It's not hard to kill. Anyone can do that. To me it's like comparing pro-wrestling to real-life fights. In real-life fights, you are in a situation where anything goes. There are no rules, and it can all end abruptly. A REAL fight with a martial-artist is over in less than 10 seconds. You train to be able to end a fight before it begins. It takes tremendous discipline, perseverance, dedication, and hard work to achieve that. In pro-wrestling, you are giving the illusion of real combat between competitors. It also takes tremendous discipline, perseverance, dedication and hard work to achieve that. While the imminent threat of "death" is greatly diminished, it is NOT eliminated and putting on the performance of the illusion of violence is far more dangerous and harmful to the body in the short-term and long-term than the vast majority of real-life fights. It is human nature to make excuses for things that we wished to be true, and I suspect that Zack Snyder WANTS Batman to be a killer, and he is trying to find ways to bring his desires into justification and even trying to make that justification retroactive. Not to say that he is insinuating Batman was always a killer, but that he SHOULD have been. When you look at the dark, cold, and dystopian feel of his films, he certainly resembles that remark. There is a place for that, and I have to admit that I liked the Batman portrayed by Ben Affleck in the Zack Snyder DC movies. Did I like the killing by Batman in the movies? No. Did, it rob me of any enjoyment of the films? No. Does that mean Batman should kill going forward? NO. If he wants to do that with Batman in his movies and he is allowed to do that, I have no problem with it. However, you can miss me with the suggestion that Batman killing does not go against the canon of the character, because it does. Or, suggesting that not wanting to see his character kill is being inflexible. As I stated before and as I close here, Batman NOT killing is a virtue that goes very deep. There are those to fault Batman for not killing and in particular The Joker and have blamed him for all of the people that The Joker has killed afterwards. Batman is not a government official (e.g. CIA, FBI etc.,) a police officer, or a military solider. He is a civilian. Therefore, killing criminals is murder punishable by law. Also, how many times has Batman turned in literally every villain in Gotham to the police only for them to be back out on the streets. If the justice system in Gotham cannot "kill" these criminals, why it is Batman's responsibility to do so? Isn't it the fault of the justice system that these criminal are not executed? Thank about that. Batman not killing is one of the major reasons why Superman and others in the Justice League respect him so much, because they know that he can easily do it with no one ever finding out it was him. Even in that act, he is leaving the door open for redemption for each criminal he apprehends and rehabilitation (if possible) is more useful than execution. Having Batman kill just makes him like every other vigilante and in turn that.......is what truly would make him "irrelevant." Nah, you missed the mark on this one Zack.

Switch 2 "delayed" until 2025?

While Nintendo themselves have not given us any tangible information regrading the plans for their next-generation console, speculation continues run rampant about what it is, how much it will cost, the form-factor, what possible games are in development for it, and when it will release? The latest report suggests that their next console (for the sake of this conversation let's just call it the "Switch 2" although I suspect there could be more than meets the eye to this elusive-device,) will not release until 2025, but still within the window of Nintendo's fiscal-year. This means based on the report, anytime between January and March of 2025 we could see the Switch 2.

The reason why I say "report" rather than "rumor" is because this has been corroborated by several credible sources. On February 16th, 2024, Brazilian game journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe is the one that broke the story. Afterwards, VGC News along with Eurogamer (the ones that correctly reported the form factor of the Nintendo Switch back in 2016) backed up that story with their own sources. Finally, Bloomberg chimed in on this story to back it up further. Now granted, Nintendo has not said anything at all to confirm or deny these reports and as of the time of this writing don't seem to be in any type of a hurry to do so, but when you have an organization such a Bloomberg reporting on information regarding your plans and congruently the Nintendo stock price has dropped over 8% largely in reaction to this report, it is grossly irresponsible and negligent as a company to allow misinformation to carry this long without a response. This is why I feel this information has some truth behind it. How much truth we won't know until Nintendo stops all the subterfuge and just reveals the Switch 2. There are times when silence is golden. This is not one of those times. Even if these reports are 100% true, Nintendo owes it to their fan-base as well as their shareholders to explain why even in a cursory-sense. We don't need to know the final specs of it yet. We don't need to know the official name yet. We don't need to know the main launch title and any other intricate details. Even just a code-name would be nice. Just an official acknowledgement of the device from Nintendo. I'm closing in on 50 and I've see all of Nintendo's consoles. I can never remember being this late in the game and not even having so much as a code-name for Nintendo's successor yet. The first time I remember hearing code-names for Nintendo console was with 'Project Reality' back in 1993 which was an experiment of Nintendo toying around with Silicon Graphics computers. That eventually was developed into a console form-factor with the Ultra64, and then that finally became the Nintendo64. With the Nintendo GameCube, it had the code-name of 'Dolphin' in 1999. Two years before the release the console. In 2004, then Nintendo President the late Saturo Iwata announced Nintendo's plan for the 'Nintendo Revolution' which was the code-name for the Nintendo Wii which was revealed at E3 2006. In April of 2011, there was a leak that Nintendo was working on a new console with the code-name of 'Project Cafe.' It was only two months later that it was revealed at E3 2011 to be the Nintendo Wii U. Finally, in 2013, the late Saturo Iwata stated in an interview that Nintendo's plan for their next-gen console was to release a family of devices that shared a common OS. In 2015, Nintendo official gave the code-name for their console which was 'Project NX.' That was revealed to be the Nintendo Switch in 2016, and released in 2017.

So, with the last three consoles Nintendo has kind of been all over the place in terms of it's timing on releasing information officially about their next-gen console. While there was only one case of this (with the Wii U,) the precedent has been set for Nintendo to go from 0-to-10 at the drop of a dime, meaning going from having no information at all to a full reveal. However, even with the Wii U we still had to wait a year after the full reveal of the console. The Switch 2 is "allegedly" going to release in early 2025 and we haven't even seen the blasted-thing yet! Hopefully, Nintendo doesn't keep us waiting much longer.

Having Fun With Nintendo Patents

Recently, a new patent filed by Nintendo surfaced online entails a device that looks a lot like the Nintendo 3DS XL. Apparently, this design has a two screens that are detachable from one another can be played by two people.

Now, it should be noted that patent filings usually are much ado about nothing. It is reasonable to suggest that companies have special groups assigned to come up with ideas regularly. Ideas that actually fit the vision of what the top-brass are looking for make it to the showroom floor. The other ideas that may not be what they want to do right now, or cannot do right now because the idea is too ambitious or expensive, get filed as patents. This basically protects those ideas just in case they want to come back to them later. The vast majority of the time, they don't. We still however can have fun imagining things just for conversation purposes. In regards to this particular design, I have some ideas/theories that may be completely impractical, and difficult to explain to the average consumer, but still something cool to think about. What if, the new Nintendo console is actually an amalgamation of the last 4 pieces of hardware from Nintendo? These drawings indicate a device that looks a lot like a DS in design and shape. The DS family was very successful for Nintendo selling well over 225 million units altogether, and despite the runaway success of the Nintendo Switch, a lot of Nintendo fans miss the DS design. Finding a way to incorporate the DS functionality into the new console I think would be a good idea. The idea that this device can be snapped into two pieces and two people can play off of one device suggests many things. It is foolish to think that Nintendo would put full processing-power in both halves of this machine because that would make it extraordinarily expensive. I think that one piece may have the hardware, and the other piece might be a receptacle, much like the Wii U. Following that, the half with the hardware could be slapped into a dock like the Switch so that you can play it on a TV, but the other piece essentially becomes a Wii U Gamepad, and the docked-portion can take the Joy-Cons off so that others can play with motion-control, or multiplayer much like the Wii and Switch. Now, I must reiterate that this is just fantasy-booking here. NONE of this will probably happen. This is just me free-styling based on a couple of drawing from patents filed by Nintendo that may never see the light of day, and most likely will be buried underneath tons of other patents they have filed over the years.