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This article is really a stretch. But I feel compelled to point out some things:
1) Just because Batman is a superhero does not "connect him to all that stuff." Being a superhero does not qualify you for science fiction. Words have meaning, you can't just willy nilly decide what they mean to you.
2) The middle part of this article, everything between "You can strip all that away, but it creeps back in" and "He uses tons of improbable gadgets - including his suit" is exclusively about the comics, and not about TDK. It doesn't do anything for your claim that TDK is science fiction.
3) At no point in TDK does science ever play a starring role. The plot is not fueled by science, and your argument that his suit is science fiction is dubious. Iron Man's suit is science fiction because it explores the "what if" nature of technology and whether or not creating the suit crosses a moral/legal boundary. Batman's suit is simply an accessory. If at any point you feel like his suit is what makes the movie, you missed out. Also on this topic, a lot of movies have science elements in them but are not science fiction. The Batpod is no more science fiction than James Bond's car in Casino Royale with the defib and CSI toxin scanner. Is Casino Royale science fiction? No.
4) The villains are not science fictional. There's no real science exploration behind the fear gas in Begins. It exists, and it makes people afraid, but there's nothing about why it works, or how it works - you are simply expected to believe that it works. It's not science, its a plot device. There's no science fiction origin to Crane. He's just crazy. Ras is not science fiction. Ninjas are not science fiction. The "kill the world to save it" is not science fiction, although it does appear as a cliche in many science fiction films. So do people in masks, but Eyes Wide Shut is not science fiction either.
Check out wikipedia for the concept of science fiction. A large part of the definition relies on the speculative nature of the story. The only speculation in TDK is "What if a traumatized rich orphan decided to wear a rubber suit and drive a big ass tank through a major metropolis?"
Comic book Batman? Science fiction.
TDK Batman? Not science fiction.
@icy_one: I address the difference between the comics and the movie in my post. So you're not even willing to recognize that Batman has comic-book roots? He's been in comics for a lot longer than he's been in movies, you know.
I think you're using a very restrictive definition of science fiction here. Take the fear gas: it's clearly meant to be a creation of science, and the fact that it's not explained doesn't change that. Do we currently have such a substance? That can be delivered via air or water? Not that I know of. "It's not science, it's a plot device," could be applied to the U.S.S. Enterprise as well. Or pretty much anything in Star Wars.
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@Charlie Jane Anders: Sure, he has comic book roots. Does it cross over? Only if the writer/director allow it to.
The Adam West Batman series turned the comic from a more science fiction base to a camp base. Would you say that TDK is campy? I would argue no; just because the comic is X or Y does not always translate to the movie. In a similar vein, do you think Freeze or Manbat or Clayface would find themselves at home in the Nolanverse? There's something intangible that makes you think not, yet certainly the comic is a perfect home for these characters who are decades old.
The fear gas isn't at all used in a way that is speculative. For Ra's, its a means to an end. He's not interested in the moral or cultural impact. The fear gas could have been cyanide, or a simple nerve gas, or any other aerosolized form of neuro-toxin. For the Scarecrow, its a defining characteristic. For Batman, its a literary technique to connect the adult Bruce to the child Bruce and allows him the chance to literally conquer his fear. The average Gotham citizen isn't affected by the choice of fear gas over a more generic nerve gas.
The USS Enterprise itself isn't science fiction - it's how the crew responds to different scenarios that makes Star Trek science fiction. In the general sense, Star Trek is the speculation that humanity now has progressed to the point where we travel to other worlds. How do we behave when we meet them? What kind of laws do we impose on ourselves, if any, to respond to the new status quo? It's not the Enterprise itself, its tubes and transporters and replicators, its how the creation of the Enterprise (and space travel) changes human culture and civilization.
As for Star Wars, well, I think you'll find more "nerd" oriented people shelve the franchise under fantasy, which brings me back around - the term "science fiction" is too often misapplied to works if its primary audience are people like us, and it waters down the term to simply be synonymous with nerdy. "That's a movie for nerds, it must be science fiction."
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@icy_one: I think our definitions of science fiction are so different, it's possibly not even worth debating. To me, something that's beyond current tecnology is science fictional, regardless of whether the person who uses it is "interested in moral or cultural impact." Your definition of science fiction is perfeclty valid, it's just much, much narrower than mine.
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@icy_one: i gotta disagree here. all comic book based heroes, including TDK fall completely in the realm of sci-fi.
even magic, that might be explained as alien technology, because even tech, sufficiently sophisticated, will appear as magic.
TDK, however 'realistic' the veneer, is sci-fi.
more over, it's just really sophisticated movie making that makes it appear real. ;)
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@X: The Eliminator: I don't think magic falls in the realm of science fiction, especially if its conveyed as magic and not alien technology.
Lord of the Rings is not science fiction. Mostly I think the whole debate is the dumbing down of science fiction, and as you can see, clearly a sticking point with me. As a genre, it has a purpose, and its purpose is not the miscellaneous shelf when you don't know how else to classify something.
It has nothing to do with realism, its the way that science is approached in the story. Take another genre - historical fiction. Would you say that any movie that takes place in the past is historical fiction? No, that would be silly. Similarly, any movie that has science in it should not be classified science fiction.
I'll drop the subject, however, because it appears the majority has spoken.
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@icy_one: I have to agree with icy_one here. You are on a slippery slope by describing anything that has futuristic elements science fiction. Under that definition, tons of what I would think clearly non-science fiction based shows are science fiction. Just look at CSI or any other procedural medical show that has some ridiculous uses of technology, especially computer technology to do some stuff in 2 secs that actually takes quite awhile to do. I mean, I understand why it is tempting to put Batman in Science Fiction, because well, he is Batman. But saying he uses semi-futuristic technologies is not really an argument supporting science fiction. It is more of an argument that Batman is fictional. Same goes for the argument that the stuff Joker does is too lucky. It is a fictional plot device. You see stuff like that all the times in romantic comedies and I don't go around calling them Sci-Fis.
I think a lot of this article just proves something we already know, that Batman is fictional. Whether he is science fictional or not, mehh, I say it is personal preference and not really such a big deal. Things always blur the lines, so no point in trying to generalize. Especially something as cool as Batman.
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@Charlie Jane Anders:
I thought they explained in Batman Begins that when the fear toxin was put in the water, Jim Gordan asked "why haven't we felt the effect" and the guy says that it needed to be inhaled through the lungs just like Dr. cranes "close up" version. That's what the whole water evaporator thingy was for Reply
I thought they explained in Batman Begins that when the fear toxin was put in the water, Jim Gordan asked "why haven't we felt the effect" and the guy says that it needed to be inhaled through the lungs just like Dr. cranes "close up" version. That's what the whole water evaporator thingy was for Reply
@Charlie Jane Anders: I've got to agree with icy_one, here. Your definition of SF is extremely broad. One of the things about Nolan's Batman series is how grounded in reality it generally is. Many of the 'SF' elements fall in the 'macguffin' or 'highly improbable' range of things. The PopSci article you reference says exactly that, in fact. Much of the article is given over to figuring out HOW Batman is able to get these items, and generally finds that it's not impossible, if Wayne has abused his government contracts and access to cutting-edge technology.
Most of the 'SF' elements you describe fall into the 'would be prohibitively expensive' or 'as far as we know, scientists have made that breakthrough, YET' category. And some of them are just 'Hollywood likes big, physics-defying explosions'. The tumbler required several 'stunt doubles' to do everything we see in the film...but that's because of filming issues, not because the tumbler is totally beyond current technology. Generally, it's just highly impractical. The tow-wire-truck stunt, for example...it's highly doubtful that Nolan thought "let's give Batman carbon nano-tube based wire". It's more likely he thought "this would be an awesome effect" and "maybe physics doesn't really work this way, but who's going to really notice?"
Generally, Science Fiction concerns itself with not just new technologies, but the ramifications of those technologies. TDK is not even slightly concerned with these kind of issues. TDK doesn't even look at the ramifications of them. The only place it DOES look at them, askance at least, is the cell-phone issue. And that, again, is proposed as highly unlikely but not impossible by the PopSci article.
TDK is Science Fiction only in the most general sense, in that someone might lump it in with that. Most folks other than geeks wouldn't even concern themselves with such distinctions.
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@icy_one: well, as innane as this argument is, fantasy and sci-fi can be argued to be the same.
however, growing up on both since the 70s here's how it's defined in my little brain:
fantasy=past
sci-fi= present/future
either way it's hard to dumb down science fiction, really. but i do find it interesting how accessible to the general public it has become. it might have to do with the common & amazing technology that's being developed that...well, seems like magic.
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