I’d like to take a moment to raise awareness about a condition I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. I call it Myopic Shared Universe Derangement Syndrome — MSUDS for short — and it is running rampant among comic book movie fans.
The symptoms are easy to spot. The afflicted believe a film is somehow incomplete if it doesn’t end with a post-credits scene teasing three other films. They measure a movie not by whether it’s any good, but by how many other movies it sets up. They look at a standalone story the way you’d look at a car with no trailer hitch — “yeah, but what does it pull?” And they are physically incapable of seeing a Batman who isn’t somebody’s teammate as fully real. Advanced cases refer to movies as “content” and have strong opinions about films that exist only as logos.
But the most baffling symptom of all — the one that tells you the condition has reached the advanced stage — is this: MSUDS sufferers will tell you, with a straight face, that live-action Batman is in trouble. That there’s a drought. That DC has nothing.
Yet, THE BATMAN EPIC CRIME SAGA is happening right now.
Not announced. Not rumored. Not on a ten-year slate that exists mostly as a logo presentation. Happening.
THE BATMAN was a hit and a half in 2022. THE PENGUIN came along a couple of years later and kicked ass. PART II is in the final stretch of filming — as in, cameras rolled, footage exists, and Robert Pattinson has said publicly that he wants to keep playing this character for as long as he can.
And huge chunks of this fandom look straight past all of it to pine for a Batman who doesn’t exist. A hypothetical one. A connected one. It’s a man complaining he’s starving with a steak on the table because the steak isn’t part of a buffet.
How did we get here? I think we all know. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was a huge success — a genuine phenomenon, and an organic one at that — and I’m not here to pretend otherwise. But phenomena have side effects, and this one’s side effect may be permanent: The MCU forever changed the way fans see comic book cinema, and for the worse.
Before the MCU, a comic book movie succeeded by being a great movie. Full stop. Christopher Nolan’s DARK KNIGHT films didn’t need a shared universe. JOKER didn’t need one. Now? One model worked, once, for one studio, in one unrepeatable era — and a generation of fans has absorbed it as the law of physics. A film is no longer a film. It’s a puzzle piece. Its job isn’t to be great; its job is to fit. And anything that doesn’t fit — anything that’s just a filmmaker telling a complete story about a character he loves — gets treated like a malfunction. A problem that needs to be corrected by the next regime, the next slate, the next 10-year plan, the next mandate.
That’s the sickness. Batman doesn’t register unless he’s feeding a machine.
And before the comments section starts typing — yes, I know: “Hey, the comics are a shared universe!” Folks, I’ve read the comics since I was a kid growing up in Southeast Texas, so let me tell you what else the comics are: Home to some of the greatest standalone Batman stories ever told. YEAR ONE is literally Batman’s official origin — canon, in continuity — and it’s a solo Batman story, complete in itself, no guest stars required. Same with THE LONG HALLOWEEN: Sits right there in continuity, and it’s just Batman, Gotham, and a mystery. Then you’ve got THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and, more recently, BATMAN: WHITE KNIGHT — huge, acclaimed, and owing nothing to any other title. That’s the part the shared-universe crowd never mentions: Even in the comics, where the shared universe actually lives, Batman’s best stuff happens when he’s left alone in his own corner, telling his own story. The comics aren’t an argument against standalone Batman. They’re the proof of it.
Plus, comic books and films are two different mediums aimed at two different audiences. So, stop with that weak AF argument.
And now the part I wish I didn’t believe, but I do — and I’ve been saying versions of it on this site all week. THE BATMAN PART II is probably the end of the road for the SAGA. The new regime wants its Justice League and its own MCU, and a grounded, street-level, standalone Batman doesn’t fit the flowchart. I’ve made my peace with the odds, and I’ll be banging the drum for a PART III anyway, because that’s the job… the one I created for myself back in 1998.
But understand what ends if the SAGA ends. It’s not just a film series. It’s likely the end of serious Batman on film — the end of the line that runs from Nolan through Reeves (and to a certain extent, Tim Burton), where a true filmmaker with a vision and a genuine passion for this character gets to make cinema. Real cinema. After this, Batman becomes what the Syndrome demands: A component. A team player. A puzzle piece in popcorn fluff, trading quips in space, hanging out with child sidekicks, waiting for his cue in somebody else’s movie.
So, here’s my prescription, and it’s the only known treatment for MSUDS: Appreciate what’s in front of you while it’s here. There’s a great Batman on film right now — not in a press release or part of a casting rumor; but in an editing bay, being finished by a filmmaker who gives a damn. If the fans who claim to love this character can’t grasp that, can’t see that… well, that’s not a Batman problem.
That’s the Syndrome. – Bill “Jett” Ramey
