How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don’t want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
But Batman DOES uses his billions to help Gotham. The problem is that most of his rogues gallery is composed of high ranking rich mafia bosses, and the rest are completely insane individuals (or even sane people who just LIKE being evil for no reason like Scarecrow who literally gasses people until they die of fright just to study their reactions). You can’t possibly think bribing the Joker with a billion dollars would stop him from bombing orphanages, gassing entire neighborhoods, or LITERALLY NUKING AN ENTIRE CITY.
Investing money into Gotham isn’t gonna stop the Penguin or Black Mask from running protection rackets or bribing cops, it won’t stop Poison Ivy from commiting literal ecoterrorism, and it won’t stop Victor Zsasz from gutting people to death with knives, or Deadshot from assassinating people.
Oh, and another thing: the city is actually fucking cursed with evil black magic. That’s not hyperbole. The city literally makes people evil.
Batman only is a vigilante because his work as Bruce Wayne is not enough.
The obvious solution to the irredeemable crazies I hint at is to KILL THEM. Then it would become a question of why the fuck isn’t he helping Gotham’s economy?
I get what you’re hinting at, that a lot of it is a lack of perspective by the writers, but the fact remains that Batman is one of the least effectual “heros” there is.
You’re missing OP’s point. Depending on which Joker origin story you’re looking at, then the man would never become the joker in the first place. Like if we go with the recent movie version of Joker’s origin, he became the joker in large part because of an awful healthcare system and a horrible social safety net system. If he got good care and treatment all through his life then he never would become the Joker