Batman: Arkham Knight Critique - Red Hood Story

            I guess, the best place to start with the character known as the Arkham Knight’s story problems is with his name. What a bizarre and unnecessary choice it was to not just call him by his comic-book name – Red Hood. While Red Hood is a significant character in the Batman comics, he is not a widely known one. If they had referred to Arkham Knight as Red Hood in the game he would have been just as mysterious and as much of an unknown to the majority of players. For those like myself who did know the Red Hood’s identity prior to playing the game it is painfully obvious from your first interaction with the Arkham Knight that he is the same guy as Red Hood – Jason Todd. The only thing that kept a 1% doubt in my mind when playing was that Rocksteady had stated Arkham Knight was a completely original character.

Ever since the first trailer Arkham Knight had evoked thoughts of Red Hood, but I doubted it until release because I wanted to trust Rocksteady’s word. That doubt would have been put to rest prior to release if I paid attention to one of the game’s pre-order bonuses. In what I consider to be a major marketing and planning error they made a pre-order bonus a mission where you can play as Red Hood. Gee, I wonder why he is in the series all of a sudden when there is a character just like him called Arkham Knight in all the trailers?

Going back to what made the Arkham Knight’s identity so obvious in that first encounter, aside from the fact that he has the same physical build, moves, weapons and knowledge that Red Hood has. When you first encounter Arkham Knight he speaks with a faint voice modulator that implies his voice is being masked, but it’s not really changing the voice at all. You can totally tell that the voice actor is Troy Baker. In that moment I thought it was pretty obvious they had lied. This imparted to me that the modulator is for Batman and not me – as if it was for me I wouldn’t be able to recognize the voice and if it wasn’t for Batman it wouldn’t be there – meaning Batman knows Arkham Knight, meaning it’s Jason Todd A.K.A. Red Hood. If you didn’t catch on right away or even beforehand who the Arkham Knight was, then you might figure it out from the Jason Todd torture scenes. In them you can hear his voice, the voice of Troy Baker – arguably the most recognizable voice in video games alongside Nolan North. They had the right idea with a voice modulator; they should have actually made Troy’s voice unrecognizable when he is Arkham Knight.

In addition to the fact that the name and costume change up for Red Hood was unnecessary and poorly handled, they didn’t even make the mystery of the Arkham Knight’s identity interesting from a story telling perspective for those who didn’t know. The game never asks you to use your detective mode and/or wits to solve mysteries in an attempt to narrow down the possible suspects, and no red herrings or alternative avenues of investigation are used. All that happens is a couple of times Batman gives Alfred some parameters to narrow down Alfred’s search for who the Red Hood is, like check recently released criminals and cross reference with those that have military training. The results are never shown to you so that you might engage with the mystery that is supposed to be one of the biggest elements of the game’s story. The experience is completely passive, which – in case it wasn’t obvious – is not the way you should do things in an interactive experience. The only thing that could possibly throw you off the trail or make it less obvious is unintentional and that’s Two-Face. Two-Face is once again played by Troy Baker, so you could do his side quest and think that they are just reusing actors, making the fact that Arkham Knight & Jason Todd have the same voice seem like a mere coincidence. After all, Two-Face has that same voice and he can’t be the Arkham Knight because he doesn’t fit the bill at all and is dealt with in a side quest.

            Not only should Arkham Knight have been Red Hood simply because that’s who the character is and the attempt to hide that was horribly executed, it works better from a story standpoint as Red Hood. Batman fighting someone who looks like himself sort of falls into the popular trope of a hero fighting a dark version of himself, but that’s not very interesting or ever explored and the costume’s similarities to Batman posses problems. For Jason Todd, a former Robin, to grow up and design a costume similar to Batman’s makes sense. That is, if that former Robin is still a good guy. Do the villains of Gotham really want to work with a guy dressed like Batman? Typically, dressing up like a hero speaks to an idealization of and desire to be that hero or at least like that hero. If I were a villain, I wouldn’t want to work with a guy who wants to be like Batman. In the comic “Batman: Battle For The Cowl” Jason Todd dresses up like Batman, but the story doesn’t feature him trying to kill Batman. Instead, it features Jason trying to take up the mantle of Batman and be a better one than Bruce ever was following Bruce’s death. When you take all of that into account it doesn’t make much sense that in a story where Jason only wants to destroy Batman at any cost he would choose to dress like him.

Now, as for the Red Hood costume the reasoning is the same as in the comic. The Joker dawned the costume of the Red Hood prior to the accident that turned him from a normal man into The Joker. Batman is responsible for that accident. Jason’s return as the Red Hood acts as a reminder of Batman’s greatest failure – the one that created the Joker – and it is being worn by his second greatest failure – Jason Todd –, a sidekick whom he failed to save. Making Jason Red Hood deals with the villain trust problem as they would have no reason to take issue with Red Hood’s costume, since no one outside of the Bat Family & Joker know that he was originally Red Hood. Even if they did, dressing up like a villain should be acceptable to villains. What’s more important, however, is the costume’s impact on the story and themes of the game. In a tale that takes place after Joker’s death, in which Batman is hallucinating Joker’s ghost, the fact that someone would show up with a persona that is an homage to The Joker further extends the idea of Joker not being fully gone and still haunting Batman. It also further pushes the connection between Batman, Jason and Joker, which is of particular importance as this series that is all about Batman and Joker. Connecting them more closely makes Jason more relevant and brings him into the crux of the series, where as he is currently only tangentially tied to it. Not to mention, Joker’s origins as Red Hood were already established and given a focus in “Batman: Arkham Origins”; bringing Jason in as Red Hood would help bring things full circle. You also can’t dismiss the story of “Arkham Origins” just because it wasn’t Rocksteady, since it establishes the beginning of Batman’s relationships with Joker, James Gordon and Barbara Gordon all of which are important parts of story in “Batman: Arkham Knight”. Why not have it set up Jason Todd as well?

Then we have Jason Todd’s reveal. Troy Baker did a good job of conveying Jason’s pain, but the script didn’t bother to flesh out this important interaction between Batman and his former protégée, now turned killer. A big issue I had was that he never explains his motives or attempts to justify his actions. We are supposed to accept that because the Joker tortured him and messed with his head his actions make sense, but they don’t. He wasn’t brain washed or indoctrinated to the point of becoming loyal to Joker or wanting to follow in his footsteps. Jason clearly became disillusioned with, and grew to hate, Batman for not saving him from Joker. It is possible he never went after the Joker himself out of fear, but to go after Batman now and in the way he did doesn’t make sense. And I’m not referring to the use of unmanned tanks, which was like pulling out a regular rock on Superman while claiming to have found his weakness. In the comics, Jason Todd hates criminals. He sees Batman’s no kill rule as a weakness, an unwillingness to do what is necessary to protect people and stop criminals. If Batman had simply killed Joker during one of the many times in which Batman defeated him, Jason would have been spared. There is a great interaction between Jason and Batman in the movie “Batman: Under the Red Hood” where Jason says he thought that if there ever was a crime that would cause Batman to kill Joker, surely it would have been murdering Robin and you can see it pains Jason that Batman didn’t avenge him. You don’t get anything like that in “Arkham Knight”. Instead you get a hero who was a victim of a villain who decides he has no problem teaming up with villains and killing countless innocents, all to hurt Batman. He doesn’t even say that he intends to turn against and kill Scarecrow and the others when it is over or that he has been trying to minimize the damage they have been causing. For instance, they could have said he convinced Scarecrow to give the warning that caused the evacuation in the hope for less casualties.

On top of all of that, he avoids the biggest elephant in the room; the one thing that makes “Batman: Arkham Knight” different from any other Red Hood introductions: The Joker is dead. Not only is Joker dead, but he died fighting Batman. No one knows the full story, but as you can overhear from thugs around Gotham, it is presumed that Batman killed Joker. Why doesn’t Arkham Knight bring that up? Why doesn’t he ask Batman what made him finally stop Joker for good, since his own presumed death clearly wasn’t motive enough? Or, had Arkham Knight been depicted more in line with traditional Red Hood stories, he could have been a murderous vigilante and used Batman killing Joker as a way to say that Batman can’t judge him because they are the same. Jason could be happy that Batman finally gets what needs to be done, maybe now they can be a team again and truly clean up Gotham and that is why he returned. I think having Batman’s story end on a tale that brought up whether his methods work or just perpetuate a cycle by showing Jason’s alternative methods and philosophy behind them would have been good. With the Joker infection making Batman more violent and potentially homicidal, it would have been interesting to have an old friend nudging him in that direction and providing him with incentive as resisting the Joker infection would mean fighting his friend and going along with it would mean working with him again. It also would have been interesting in any version of the story to have Jason learn that Batman is turning into Joker and see how he deals with that. For instance, if Jason was an anti-hero rather than a villain he could have become an antagonist with a clear and understandable motivation; as he only decides to try to kill Batman to stop him from becoming the Joker. Jason’s story was a great one to try and bring in to the conclusion of this series, but it was utterly wasted. 

The earliest point in this series’ storyline, “Arkham Origins”, is the beginning of Batman as not just a vigilante, but as Gotham’s hero.  It’s the first time he is captured on camera and shown to the world as well as the point where he earns the trust of Jim Gordon and to an extent the GCPD. This is the last story we experience before “Batman: Arkham Knight”, which is about the end of Batman. The Joker, Batman’s greatest villain, was created because of a mistake Batman made prior to Arkham Origins – prior to being a hero. Jason Todd was captured by Joker and has now turned into the villain known as Arkham Knight because of a failure on Batman’s part while he was a hero. Because Joker is responsible for Jason’s downfall, this second failure can be seen as a reverberation from Batman’s first one. For Batman to face Jason and try to not just beat him up, but fix him is a test for how far he has come. At the end of his journey as a hero, is he able to save Jason when he couldn’t before? Is he able to undue the darkness in Jason that he is responsible for, like he wasn’t ever able to do with Joker? As a hero, can he stop the rippling consequences that are still going from that mistake he made before he was one? Batman has always been driven by his inability to go back and make things right – his inability to save his parents. That is why he dedicates himself to trying to prevent others from facing the fate that he did. At the end of Batman’s journey can he finally not just be a bandage that stops the blood from spilling for a time before falling off – as those he puts away get back on the street –, but a cure that heals the wound – changes someone from bad to good? Can he be a force for rehabilitation rather than punishment, something Arkham Asylum could never succeed at? These are the sort of questions and ideas “Batman: Arkham Knight” should have gone for with Jason Todd’s return. Instead they settled for throwing him in because he hasn’t been used yet and he knows Batman’s identity. You would think the latter of the two is important because Batman’s identity is revealed in this game, but Arkham Knight doesn’t end up having anything to do with that. Like I said, Rocksteady wasted the opportunity for a great story with Jason Todd.