Just, "ninjas" sounds like the kind of big fat lie movie-people use instead of realistic texture.

It's true that Batman never flips out like a mammal and kills people. But I still suspect he has real, ultimate POWER!

Like, with ninjas?

Well, that's what you call people trained in ninjutsu, so it would be a good place to start.

In some far-off wilderness?

Hey, my friend talked his way into a teensy Muay Thai camp. He had to do some sweet talking to only stay for weeks instead of months, but training with Eastern martial arts experts somewhere far off is the most attainable part of the Batman mythos. Well, other than losing parents to violence.

(Where the master of this very Japanese art is an Irishman?)

Don't know. Never actually applied.

Just, "ninjas" sounds like the kind of big fat lie movie-people use instead of realistic texture.

Which, no doubt, offends actual ninjas, but that doesn't mean they don't exist and don't include white guys. Studying Muay Thai would hardly give Bats what he needed. Ninja is a wide-ranging art of stealth, deception and fear. Muay Thai is mostly hitting people really hard.

If Bruce Wayne is a recluse, suspicion falls on him

Everyone's alter egos are safe with me. In that I'm never going to suspect, without evidence, that you're the masked villain or hero. Because, come on. How random and unlikely to happen near me! If you're a vapid flake, even less likely. It's a thing.

Those ninjas. They're whacky.

If I was a flesh and blood Gothamite I would probably assume that Batman is someone I don't know, rather than Bruce Wayne. ETA: I would assume this guy was some kind of superfreak.

Also, while I agree training with ninjas is a bit cliched, I'm having trouble thinking of a good analogue for it, when we're talking about a martial arts lifestyle.

Ninja is a wide-ranging art of stealth, deception and fear.

You pretty much have to be a ninja to be Batman, don't you. He's not like Superman, all bright colors and flashy life-saving.

Well, I kind of like the idea of Batman just being a great big freak, and inventing some of his stealth techniques all by himself. I didn't need anybody to teach me how to hide things in my bra.

If I was a flesh and blood Gothamite I would probably assume that Batman is someone I don't know, rather that Bruce Wayne.

This is possible. But, with all the l33t gear he has, he would need money. And, I bet he is not usually concentrating on crimes in Bedford-Stuyvesant. And, in the few comics I've read, there was always the problem of Bruce Wayne being at some tuxedoed soiree and having to disappear, leading to the part where Bruce Wayne has to come across like a coward.

Overall, I think it would be physically possible to lead a double life and for nobody to find out. But most of the time, that's not how it works out, even when you are filthy rich. So, I will want to see some serious effort go into the not-finding-out part.

I kind of like the idea of Batman just being a great big freak, and inventing some of his stealth techniques all by himself

Batman? Invent? That seems so out of char... wait, no it's completely not.

But if you show me a guy who spends ten years devising what took decades (if not centuries) for a group of people to hone, then you've completely lost me.

If you show a guy get obsessive and gain expertise and take all that and make his own way, then you've got me.

I didn't need anybody to teach me how to hide things in my bra.

Batman doesn't wear a bra.

....

....wait for it....

....

That's why he has Robin.

Batman doesn't wear a bra.

I think the costumes of the previous movies had a similar lift-and-enhance effect. And I don't mean just on the chest.

Everything I'm seeing for this film makes me think they based it on a great line by Neal Stephenson: "Until a man is twenty-five he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world."