Category Archives: Blog

In any other context, astronomers would call this isolated, sunlike star “boring” — as nondescript as its serial number name.

But NASA scientists plucked HD84406 from its obscurity 260 light-years away, giving it an important place in history: The U.S. space agency used it to confirm the optics work on the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the preeminent conservatory in the sky.

With the announcement Wednesday was the release of a crystal clear photo of the star found in the constellation Ursa Major. It’s a little too faint to see with the naked eye on Earth, but through Webb, it’s a beacon of light, flaming red with large spikes.

• How NASA locked Omicron out of its Webb telescope control room

• The intrepid Webb space telescope reaches its distant, frigid outpost

• Why Webb’s unassuming secondary mirror makes it a telescope

• Looking for new James Webb telescope pictures? You’ll have to wait.

• If the Webb telescope sunshield doesn’t open, here’s what NASA will do

The telescope has come a long way since its first snapshot in February, showing 18 separate golden blurry blobs representing a star. NASA promised further calibration of the instrument would refine its capability to make the star look like a star.

The new photo was a delivery on that promise. One could easily read the subtext of a midweek news conference:

See? We told you so.

“All the sleepless nights I’ve had and kind of the worries I’ve had, they’re all behind us now, ” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate.

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The telescope captures infrared light, which is normally invisible to human eyes, said Marshall Perrin, Webb’s deputy telescope scientist. Engineers toned the black-and-white data in a red filter to better show off the visual contrast of the star. The sharp pointy structures radiating from the center are the result of Webb’s hexagonal mirror segments and the arms that hold the secondary mirror. They affect the way the light travels, causing diffraction.

“You see that most intensely when you have a very bright star,” Perrin told Mashable during the briefing.

The Webb team finished the so-called “fine-phasing” stage of telescope alignment on March 11. NASA officials said every optical measurement they have checked and tested thus far is performing well or better than expected. No critical issues have come up that could taint future photography.

Webb, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, will observe some of the oldest, faintest light in the universe. The powerful telescope will study a period less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, when many of the first stars and galaxies were born. Scientists also will use it to peer into the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets. Discoveries of water and methane, for example, could be signs of potential habitability or biological activity — main ingredients of life.

Astronomers anticipate the telescope will facilitate a golden age in our understanding of the cosmos, providing never-before-seen snapshots of space billions of light-years away for 10 to 20 years.

The photo released Wednesday was meant as a proof of concept. The ones coming this June, in full-resolution with scientific data, will be meant to dazzle. NASA hasn’t disclosed what celestial targets will be among the first photos.

But this first sharp look at deep space has already made scientists giddy with excitement. Webb’s optics and Near-Infrared Camera are so sensitive that galaxies and other stars appear in the background of the HD84406 shot.

“There’s no way that Webb can look for 2,000 seconds at any point in the sky and not go incredibly deep.”

“You can’t help but see those thousands of galaxies behind it. They’re really gorgeous,” said Jane Rigby, a project scientist. “There’s no way that Webb can look for 2,000 seconds at any point in the sky and not go incredibly deep.”

NASA has more work to do to get the observatory in shape for performing all of its scientific functions. Over the next six weeks, the team will align other instruments on the observatory.

But they’re priming space lovers for fireworks.

“This is going to be the future from now on,” Rigby said. “Wherever we look, it’s a deep field.”

Instagram launched its latest attempt to quell the concerns of parents and guardians Wednesday: its brand new Family Center — a one-stop shop with teen safety tools, parental monitoring, and educational resources for those worried about teen safety on the app.

The Family Center connects all of Instagram’s online safety resources in one spot. The site includes an education hub, which provides Instagram-specific safety explanations; conversation guides for guardians to discuss digital safety and wellness; and external resources from partner organizations like The Trevor Project and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Most interestingly, the Family Center allows parents to closely monitor accounts using a single dashboard. The dashboard provides access to insights and usage on profiles that have provided you access — you can visit Instagram’s explanation of supervised profiles to learn more about these settings. Guardians can see how long supervised accounts are active on the app, will be able to set time limits, can monitor who follows and frequently interacts with the account holder, and get alerts from users when (and why) they report another account or post that appears in their feeds.

The new tools were originally announced in December, and are hosted by Instagram’s parent company, Meta. For now, teens have to approve supervision within the settings on their own account. Instagram will introduce a way for parents to set up supervision outside an account’s settings in the future. Supervision is automatically removed from an account when the owner turns 18.

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In a blog post about the newly added features, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri wrote that the announcement was “the first step in a longer-term journey to develop intuitive supervision tools, informed by experts, teens and parents.” The initiative was co-created by a safety advisory board, which includes representatives from online safety organizations around the world, as well as a collaborative group made up of teens, parents, and other youth safety advisors.

Mosseri said in a video posted to his Twitter account that Instagram’s Family Center would continue to grow and change as it’s used, and that the company receives feedback from parents and teens. “We know parents are busy, and there’s a lot to do in day-to-day life, so we want to make sure these tools are as easy to use as possible,” Mosseri said.

The intent is to create collaborative, supportive relationships between parents and app users. “Encouraging informed parental engagement in their children’s digital presence is an important way to support young people’s wellness online,” wrote Dr. Michael Rich, director and founder at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab, in a statement from Instagram. “Parents can support and monitor their children’s gradual increase in independence as they demonstrate responsible and safe use, with respect for others and for themselves.”

While that’s a noble goal, it’s also a limitation for the new features. They put a lot of power and responsibility in the hands of parents, who have to be prudent enough to have continuous, active conversations about digital safety with their kids. The tools are also inherently preventative instead of fixing the harm already caused by the app’s use. And what about teens and kids who don’t have any guardian supervision, but are still at high risk for abuse and psychological harm online?

Last year, Instagram and Facebook came under fire for a lack of action in protecting young users from abuse and inappropriate content, even after discovering that the app’s usage led to negative mental health outcomes for teens. Concerns grew alongside a similar reckoning with the ever-growing app TikTok, which continues to churn up concerns for user safety. In December 2021, Instagram representatives, including Mosseri, had to testify in Congress, speaking to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security about teen safety and industry regulations.

There’s also a question of consent. Will these tools be as effective if teens don’t feel comfortable sharing their experiences on the app with their parents, or if parents take over as account monitors without the consent of their children? Where do you draw the line between fostering independence and trust, versus keeping teens away from danger on an app like Instagram?

Instagram hopes that the safety tools found in the Family Center, especially educational resources about creating healthy digital boundaries and habits, can start users on that path toward safer, healthier usage. The company’s future plans include allowing parents and guardians to apply the Family Center tools across all Meta accounts, the addition of even more safety monitoring tools, and a rollout of the same safety features to Quest VR in the coming months.

It’ll be quite the test of trust between the app and its parent company, worried guardians, and teen users themselves.

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, Crisis Text Line provides free, confidential support 24/7. Text CRISIS to 741741 to be connected to a crisis counselor. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. ET, or email info@nami.org. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.

Get ready for some hard conversations.

On Wednesday, Netflix announced an upcoming test which is sure to cause drama amongst the account-sharing set. The streaming service said that, over the next several weeks, it will begin prompting some people who share accounts outside of their immediate household to pay extra to continue doing so.

“Members on our Standard and Premium plans will be able to add sub accounts for up to two people they don’t live with — each with their own profile, personalized recommendations, login and password — at a lower price,” read the announcement in part.

Notably, the sub-account test is for now limited to subscribers in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it will remain there. When pressed, Netflix would not provide specifics on any plans to expand the test beyond those three countries. Netflix would also not confirm how many users live in the countries subject to this test.

“[Accounts] are being shared between households,” noted Netflix’s Wednesday announcement, “impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”

According to the streaming giant, the additional sub accounts will be priced at 2,380 CLP in Chile, 2.99 USD in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru. Netflix also said it will test out a new profile transfer feature, which will allow users to move their entire profiles — think recommendations and viewing histories — to new paid Netflix accounts. (Picture breaking up with a romantic partner, and taking your piece of the Netflix account with you.)

The mostly unregulated practice of account sharing has, up until this point, practically defined Netflix and its streaming competitors. Any challenge to that is sure to put fear in the hearts of users — as it did March of 2021 when Netflix forced some users to verify they had ownership over an account.

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Importantly, Netflix’s Terms of Use clearly state that the “Netflix service and any content accessed through our service […] may not be shared with individuals beyond your household.” In other words, Wednesday’s announcement merely represents Netflix enforcing its existing terms.

That may come as a surprise to some users, though. That’s because what, exactly, constitutes a household in the eyes of streaming services is often rather nebulous. Netflix confirmed that it defines a household as people living together at the same property — no ex-roommates, far-off siblings, or best friends need apply.

Like we said, get ready for some hard conversations.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Elon Musk’s satellite internet venture, but things are potentially looking up for Starlink.

Ookla, purveyor of the internet speed measurement tool Speedtest, released its latest satellite internet quarterly report on Wednesday, measuring the final three months of 2021. While median download speeds are still below fixed broadband, Starlink came closer than it ever has to replicating quality home internet with a median download speed of 104 megabits per second, or Mbps.

(Note: Ookla and Mashable are both owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis.)

The other two main satellite internet providers in the U.S., Viasat and HughesNet, came in at 21Mbps and 20Mbps, respectively. Starlink did see plenty of median speed variance in different locations around the U.S. Per Ookla’s report, south Florida got nearly 200Mbps while parts of Oregon got only about 65Mbps. The median speed for all fixed broadband providers was 131Mbps, so even the best satellite service has some catching up to do.

Still, for Starlink’s median speeds to exceed the FCC’s definition of broadband (25Mbps or higher) even at the low end is potentially encouraging for the future of satellite internet, whether it comes from Musk or not. Now it’s just a matter of stability as the service grows. Starlink’s median speeds actually decreased in the middle of last year as the service got more customers. There’s also the issue of price, with the fastest Starlink service tier costing $500 per month.

So…yeah. Perhaps Starlink works well, but that doesn’t mean it’s especially accessible just yet. But hey, if you’re in Miami and don’t trust your local broadband ISP, maybe hit up Starlink.

Jake Johnson, Ophelia Lovibond and the cast of Minx give us all the backstory on their characters from the new HBO Max series.

If you had “Mike Myers made a spin-off to his 1993 comedy So I Married An Axe Murderer” on your 2022 bingo card, well, you have an oddly specific 2022 bingo card. But also, bingo!

Netflix just dropped a trailer for The Pentaverate, which, as Mashable’s own Alex Perry sharply observed via Slack, is a conceptual riff on a joke from the almost 30-year-old movie. Now I could explain the premise as the upcoming series’ trailer lays it out, but wouldn’t you rather hear it straight from Myers himself?

In addition to Myers, who plays multiple roles, the cast features Keegan-Michael Key, Debi Mazar, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Saunders, Lydia West, Richard McCabe, and Neil Mullarkey. The Pentaverate is coming to Netflix on May 5. And if you’ve never seen So I Married An Axe Murderer, that movie is still well worth watching. Lucky for you, it’s streaming now on Starz.

A whole new slate of emoji are here, and some of them are so random.

Today (March 15) 100 new emoji became available with Apple’s latest iOS 15.4 update, but that number is a little misleading considering a quarter of those are skin tone variations of the same standard handshake (finally). We have an assortment of new faces, gestures, and objects that are truly an eclectic mix of moods and vibes — from a biting lip that screams “u up?” at 3 a.m. to an empty jar that seems a little too ominous.

Here are some of the strangest new emoji and how you can incorporate them into your digital vernacular.

Troll

Unicode Consortium slayed with this one. This ugly little freak is joining the slowly growing ranks of the fantasy emoji squad, and I can already see him being used to signal a vibe shift into goblin mode. Haven’t left the house in days or showered in while? It’s time to send your bestie a deranged text and add the troll emoji as a self-aware nod to your current state of mind.

He can also be used in a “hey, do you want to answer my riddle?” way if that opportunity presents itself to you.

Lip bite

I see the lip bite emoji as being the perfect vehicle for channelling your inner Lin-Manuel Miranda and Debby Ryan. You might know Miranda from famous works like Encanto, Moana, and Broadway’s Hamilton, but his most significant contribution to society was this 2018 selfie in which he bites his lip. This selfie has become synonymous with suggestive lip biting for the extremely online, making an already risky facial expression all the more embarrassing.

Another meme you can evoke with the lip bite emoji is the clip of former Disney Channel star Debby Ryan tucking her hair back behind her ear and staring upward into the camera in a “who? me?” kinda way. While Ryan isn’t actually biting her lip, it has BLBE (big lip-biting energy).

If you’re not familiar with those memes you can also use the lip bite emoji to put your ironic fuckboy hat on. Use it to replace the winky face that might accompany messages like “haha and then what” or “without me.”

Disco ball

I smell a hit emoji. While this emoji has some self-explanatory uses — like spicing up a party invite or adding a whimsical flair to an Instagram caption — it can also be used in a more emotional way: to express when you’re in your “‘mirrorball’ by Taylor Swift” feels. For those of you who are not of the Swiftie persuasion, “mirrorball” is an introspective track off her seminal quarantine album Folklore. You see, Blondie compares herself to a mirrorball (disco ball in Swift language) to describe her desire to entertain others, how delicate she is, and how she reflects the people around her. The emotional gravitas is palpable.

So next time you’re feeling like a mirrorball, use the disco ball emoji. (And this is one of the rare emoji that is actually cuter on web.)

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Finger heart

The Swifties aren’t the only compulsively online stans who benefit from the emoji update. Finger hearts — as demonstrated by touching your thumb and index, therefore creating the shape of an actual beating heart — have been a staple of Korean entertainment fandom for years, and now that love is easier to convey than ever before.

Slide

This one is easy: Use it to add a playful tone when you’re sliding into someone’s DMs!

Pouring liquid

Don’t cry over spilt juice? Wine? Blood? This is one of those emoji that didn’t need to be released, but now that it’s in our arsenal we might as well use it. There’s an ominous tone to the entirely empty cup pouring out a suspiciously colored liquid, so you could use it to to convey how done you are with a situation or how drained you feel. It’s a modern emoji for the modern era!

Empty jar

Ah, finally an emoji you can use to invite your crush to go firefly catching! Pair it with the sparkle emoji for maximum romantic effect. Bonus points if you listen to “Fireflies” by Owl City while sending that text.

This stretchy thermometer can be put into smart clothing to monitor temperatures, and can even measure extremes if calibrated properly.

There have been several iterations of The Time Traveler’s Wife. First, the original novel by Audrey Niffenegger, followed by the 2009 movie starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. A stage musical based on Niffenegger’s book is set to premiere later in 2022. Before that, though, we’ll get to see the (literally) timeless story once more in an HBO Max series.

Rose Leslie and Theo James play Claire and Henry, a married couple dealing with one big problem: Henry is a time traveler. Worse, he can’t control his abilities, meaning that he’ll go back in time at the most unexpected moments. Every time he vanishes, Claire wonders when he’s gone. Every time he returns, the two of them have to make the most of every moment together, because they don’t know how much time they have left.

On this much-anticipated HBO drama series, Doctor Who and Sherlock executive producer Steven Moffat joins forces with director David Nutter, known for his work on Game of Thrones.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is streaming on HBO Max in May.

The Batman — like an increasing number of aspirationally prestigious, pick-me superhero movies — desperately wants to prove it’s not like all the other superhero movies. 

Sure, it’s yet another multi-million dollar blockbuster remake of a popular comic book IP already rebooted less than a decade ago, set in a universe “reinvented” nearly every other fiscal quarter. So, to justify its own existence, The Batman hopes to be an elevation of the genre into capital ‘C’ Cinema with Serious Themes that speak to Our Times. 

Yet in its cacophony of self-importance, The Batman only capitalizes on the unique power of superhero movies that can seem to stand for something, while actually standing for nothing. On-trend with 2019’s Joker, director/co-writer Matt Reeves’ Gotham aims to be the darkest and grittiest of them yet by drawing on the grim politics of today. But instead of saying anything of substance, both only exploit the painful social ills we’re living through for the sake of grim set dressing.

Themes around classism, dire wealth inequality, widespread police corruption (complete with cops who flood low-income communities with illegal drugs, a subplot ripped right from the IRL 1980s Drug War), institutional government failures, and violence against sex workers are shoe-horned in throughout. Then toward the end, the Riddler summons now-familiar images of mass shootings, white male privilege, Qanon-style social media conspiracies, and white nationalist political terrorism. Closing with triggering images of bombings around Madison Gotham Square Garden and even a catastrophically flooded American city that descends into so-called “looting,” there appears to be no source of collective trauma this movie is unwilling to mine.

But just like Joker, The Batman evokes this litany of very real-world suffering to conclude with a big shrug about it all. Actually, if you try to follow the meaning behind any one of its IRL parallels, you just end up with a whole lotta yikes. 

That’s not an accident, either. It’s by design. As of now, no tentpole DC movie (and most Marvel titles, either) appear willing to take a stance on any of the divisive issues they raise for this appearance of relevancy. Why would they, since that risks alienating a vocal subset of their fan base, which the studio must pander to or at least placate for maximum return on investment?

The Batman evokes this litany of very real-world suffering to conclude with a big shrug about it all.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s a lot of artistry worth praise in the new Robert Pattinson-led Batman. There’s even solid groundwork laid for a more radical rejection of the vigilante hero’s fascist underpinnings. But any hope for a transgressive Last Jedi-style interrogation of the underlying hypocrisy holding back this beloved IP is promptly abandoned in the final acts. The movie must, by necessity, return to a status quo of the same old Batman mythos we keep being force-fed again and again, even though it’s antithetical to the cultural shift needed to address the injustices raised by the movie.

And, listen, no one was demanding (or expecting) Batman to suddenly become “woke.” Superhero movies are by no means obligated to serve as timely morality tales. But The Batman explicitly tries to cash in on the clout of a vague progressivism that it sorely misrepresents.

Trauma porn doesn’t get a pass just because it’s wearing a cape.

And frankly, in 2022, I just don’t need the help of a bat-suited blockbuster to be bombarded by endless images of human suffering I can neither do anything about nor make sense of. Trauma porn doesn’t get a pass just because it’s wearing a cape. Worst of all, there’s a real danger in co-opting the aesthetic of social justice as a smokescreen to bolster the heroics of a character who ostensibly embodies an oligarchical American police state.

In conjunction with Joker‘s vacuous depiction of violent white male rage, The Batman does show that a playbook is developing for Oscar Bait-y superhero movies desperate to be taken seriously: One merely needs to gesture at the existence of important social issues in order to receive heaps of critical praise declaring it a triumphantly “different,” “of the moment,” “grounded,” and “diverse” pop-culture genre film.

Nevermind that, for all of Batman’s tortured self-reflection, the movie ends with no change to his outdated worldviews whatsoever — even after Selina stuns him with the revelation that impoverished people can be backed into criminality for survival. The extent of Bruce’s character development amounts to realizing that, sometimes, his fists should be used to hold the hands of innocent victims, whenever they’re not pummeling said criminals into submission with total impunity.

To be clear, Reeves rebuffs any perceived parallels between the movie’s climax and real-world events like the January 6 insurrection. He maintains that the script was written pretty much as-is five years ago. That mostly tracks, since risk-averse big-budget Hollywood studios aren’t wont to purposefully wade into such recent, polarizing political crises. But that’s exactly the problem with giving too much credit to superhero movies made by corporate machines that only feign concern for the marginalized when it’s profitable.

It’s the reason why Joker could only end inconclusively, with a psychotic episode that calls the movie’s entire reality into question, conveniently absolving both its protagonist and creator from repercussions for the shocking acts depicted. The ending leaves the movie’s true opinions on the sensitive topics raised (mental illness, gun violence, poverty, incels, uprisings over class inequality) entirely up to audience interpretation. It allows Joker to circumvent the need to make any actual value statements about the disabused white men it purports to be about. 

Director Todd Phillips must say nothing meaningful about the controversial issues he alludes to, so the movie can simultaneously speak to a volatile male audience that feels unseen while also maintaining a “both sides” plausible deniability — all while raking in unearned critical applause for seeming daring enough to break from genre conventions. But the only artistic risk Joker takes is inviting comparison to the laundry list of far better films it mishmashes together (Taxi Driver, The King Of Comedy, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest).

Mixed political signals are not a bug, but a feature of today’s gritty superhero movie “realism.”

Riddler’s Qanon parallels, for example, inadvertently send wildly irresponsible messages if you try to take them seriously. Unlike Joker, he’s at least the villain rather than the protagonist of The Batman. But the movie still pretty much validates his belief system.

In contrast to the ludicrous Qanon conspiracy theories of our reality, the Riddler’s internet-orchestrated unmasking of Gotham’s Satanic cabal of coastal elites is vindicated as totally factually correct. That’s a level of intellectual bankruptcy that movies with 85 percent Rotten Tomato scores just shouldn’t be allowed to get away with.

Also, a huge part of what makes the cult of Qanon so seductive is that it preys on a very legitimate sense that the ultra-wealthy are corrupting our social structures. The system really is rigged to screw over underprivileged people like the Riddler in order to line the pockets of greedy politicians and billionaires.

But you don’t need a Zodiac Killer anti-hero mastermind to piece together any elaborate secret puzzle to uncover some underground criminal collusion between the rich and powerful. They do it in broad daylight, right in front of our eyes, and legally. You can read about it in any reputable newspaper that covers corporate-backed political funding and lobbying.

Unlike Qanon or Riddler’s thrilling online game, the real truth is a far more boring answer to this most mundane of conspiratorial riddles: How do wealthy elites plot against the lower classes while herding them into complacency like mindless sheep? Capitalism. It’s just Uncle Sam-approved late-stage capitalism, folks.

Then there’s the blatant copaganda that’s completely incongruous with the real-world versions of Gotham’s mob-like police gang (reminiscent of the deputy gangs discovered in the Los Angeles Police Department that sparked new legislation).

Reeve’s Batman almost finds itself chanting “ACAB,” but then softens it with a “bad apples” strawman plotline that culminates in a heartfelt celebration of the many “good cops” who were apparently totally unaware and uninvolved in their department’s decades-long criminal operation. (I mean, how much of a “good cop” can we believe those boys in blue cuffing Falcone to even be if they never once suspected that the majority of their leadership was straight-up mob goons getting the police to do a super villain’s bidding?) 

I also want to believe in the hopeful vision for Gotham proposed by new, progressive mayor Bella Reál, clearly coded as an AOC type who stands in opposition to the corrupt government systems that have failed to enact change. But her final mealy-mouthed plea to rebuild trust in our institutions sounds an awful lot like centrist urgings to get back to normal, and return to the status quo after a crisis clearly reveals how fundamentally broken those institutions are.

Her words only seem more radical because they’re spoken by a woman of color, instead of the crooked white guy she ousted, who’s a clearer visual representation of the systemic problems that remain embedded in American politics regardless of who’s in charge.

Similarly, Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman can shame Batman all she wants for being a white rich dude with zero concept of how systemic injustice and oppression works. But the movie still requires audiences believe that Bruce and Bruce alone holds the power to deliver justice to Gotham’s streets.

Selina’s words fall on deaf bat ears because the script still needs her to act the role of supportive love interest who bends to his worldview, which advocates for something akin to reform rather than an abolishment of the carceral criminal justice system. Batman (and audiences) must forget the lived experiences that Selina (and her mom and Annika, and even the Riddler) tries to impress upon him. 

The movie must also negate their salient criticism that the world only cares about the suffering of privileged white men since the studio needs us to keep buying into a franchise that only seems to care about the suffering of a privileged white man.

Most disappointing of all, the thematic foundation for a Batman movie that argues for defunding the police or at least interrogating the values of the American criminal justice system are right there. 

It throws those fascinating threads out the window to instead celebrate Batman developing an even bigger white male savior complex.

No one embodies the ineffectuality of carceral policing more than Batman. He’s a vigilante who must work outside the law to even deliver his “justice” of filling the city’s prisons with folks that society failed to help — a super cop with endless funds who only inspires more bombastic super-villainy, neither lowering crime nor making Gotham any safer.

The movie comes this close to pointing out those cyclical failures, and even de-mythologizing the lie of benevolent philanthropic billionaires like Thomas Wayne. Then it throws those fascinating threads out the window to instead celebrate Batman developing an even bigger white male savior complex.

If you follow The Batman’s line of questioning too honestly (or with too much realism), you’d have to admit that the only way Bruce could “speak to our times” is if he shut the fuck up and let someone else talk. The Catwoman would’ve been a movie much more capable of addressing the hot-button issues that The Batman fundamentally cannot. But if you admit all that, then you’d potentially have yet another toxic DC fanboy revolt on your hands.

There are ways superhero movies and stories can be relevant to real-world issues and collective cultural traumas. Black Panther, for one, unequivocally demonstrates how impactful these foundational comic book heroes can be in furthering conversations around deep-seated social injustice. The difference, it seems, lies in a film that treats those wounds as a narrative foundation rather than trendy fodder for the #discourse.

With each new release, it’s getting harder to give DC the benefit of the doubt that they don’t know whose worldview their “elevated” comic book movies speak to most — and who they sideline in the process.