#but all that being said i do want to repeatedly iterate that nolan is a racist piece of shit and i wholeheartedly support people

[roobylavender]

theres been a discussion of reeves vs nolan take on selina recently. someone said the nolan one was better and theyre currently getting dogpiled.. what is your take on whos better?

nolan unequivocally. i feel like people get caught up in nolan selina’s occasional sexy lines (which are cringe and i do dislike, to be clear) as a means to discredit the character altogether despite the fact that there’s so much emphasis put on selina having agency and liberty to do as she chooses, which is a quintessential aspect of her dynamic with bruce. he disapproves of her actions and methods at times but he respects her personhood and he doesn’t make choices for her bc obv he doesn’t have a right to but she would also never allow him to. their dynamic in the dark knight rises is great bc it is holistically predicated on a respect for her decisions, her bitterness, and her compassion. i do think there are other criticisms you can make as to how nolan selina sort of subtly reinforces the propaganda of the trilogy; i do not have the link at the moment but when reeves’s batman came out there was a youtuber who made a video comparing reeves selina to nolan selina and talked about how the latter’s whiteness did play into her ability to escape confinement and consequences easily, which when you juxtapose against the racism driving nolan’s casting and the recent shift to acknowledge selina as a potentially biracial character, can spark valid concerns as to limiting the potential class commentary she was actually capable of as a character (and i will address this later with respect to reeves selina). but that valid criticism aside my preference for nolan selina has to do with maintaining her character and relationship integrity, which to me is the most impt thing you can do in an adaptation. if the plot and circumstances will change, what you should at least try to do is maintain the core of the character, and nolan does that marvelously with selina and bruce (likely bc dixon, whose work the nolan movies are largely adapted from, actually tended to write these two well)

now, obv with reeves selina a huge reason for supporting her in comparison is the racial visibility, esp when you, again, consider why nolan originally rejected zoe for the role in his movies. and i do think that’s highly valid and frankly i want non-white selina, bc it makes her contentions with and distrust of the state as established in catwoman (1989) that much more palpable and worthwhile to explore. but a racebended casting doesn’t automatically do the work for you and there’s still a character integrity you have to maintain. and i think this is something not only reeves but dc writers at large tend to understand poorly. there’s so much racebending happening in comics these days and i do think it’s a useful vehicle but not as it’s actually used in practice. the changes are superficial rather than going to the root of the character. so i personally find reeves selina to be a huge insult to the character, bc rather than use that racebending as an opportunity to expand on selina and her hardline opposition to bruce and the state, it’s not really used to do much at all (which honestly can likely be attributed to the fact that everyone involved in making this script and plot was white!) and selina is instead regressed from what she was in the comic that reeves’s take on her was based on. catwoman (1989) and catwoman (1993) for that matter are huge novelties in selina’s history bc they are near insularly focused on her. we play by her rules and everyone else in the picture is a reactionary. the reeves movie turns this on its head bc now selina is subservient to bruce’s arc and to his decisions. he dictates what she does until she’s finally fed up with it, which we’re supposed to applaud despite the fact that bruce does nothing short of condescend to her and victim-blame a sex worker, and bc he ultimately saves her from her anger in the end so it’s romantic. the romance is the priority throughout the entire movie. there are brief moments of selina’s rebellion but as a whole she has no control over her arc bc bruce’s arc comes first. i also think the final scene where she says “the bat and the cat. has a nice ring to it” (or whatever it was, close enough) to be a complete misunderstanding of their dynamic at its inception. this movie purportedly based its selina on mindy newell’s work but somehow fails to recognize that mindy newell’s selina expressly disdained the idea of being associated with batman bc her independence and defiance was the entire point. even if you want to argue their dynamic in the movie is a reflection of what it has become in the comics now, those are depicting bruce and selina’s relationship with each other more than twenty years after they first met. it makes no sense to make selina so amenable to bruce in the beginning bc it completely undercuts the fact that she’s right in her class stance from the start. and it also seems to reiterate the prevalent misconception that for a romance to work between bruce and selina she has to soften her edges and anger, despite those being the exact things that made bruce attracted to and sympathetic of her