For years I’ve watched movies where the good guy has to go undercover to bring down the bad guy and with the exception of a few, the same thing always seemed to happen. The good guy joins the gang, he starts to learn more about the criminals working for said gang, and before you know it, he starts to develop a soft spot for them. Suddenly, what was once black and white is now very much grey.  While I enjoy movies like this, I’ve always rolled my eyes at the premise. A trained officer is going to know what he or she needs to do. They aren’t going to start thinking that the people they’re there to take down are their friends… whoops.

That’s what makes all of the characters so interesting in this story. Even the villains are approaching their goals from an angle that’s cliche. At least in my playthrough, Batman is constantly walking a tightrope. Every choice could send him over the line, but his ability to fight the urge to make that choice is ultimately the only thing that separates him from his villains. Mr. Freeze is and will always be a great example of this separation between the characters. Mr. Freeze is simply a man in love with his wife and all he wants to do is save her life. Everything Freeze does is with the hopes that one day he’ll get to hold her and tell her how much he loves her. His fight to save his one true love is honorable. It’s when you start bringing in the fact that he will murder anyone that gets in his way, that his journey for true love becomes a bit of a problem.

But being Batman means that you can, or at least should try to, save everyone. No one is just evil. People make wrong choices, but they can be saved from those mistakes that they’ve made. It would be easy to say that Mr. Freeze or Bane are mindless murderers who just like to commit crimes. It would be easy to ignore their true motives for why they’re doing what they’re doing. And yes, I’m sure people will play this game very black and white. They are breaking the law, thus they should go to jail. What about Batman though? When you start to consider the fact that Batman breaks the law every night, then what makes him so different from the others? Is it his code? Is Batman’s one simple rule of never killing really the only thing that separates him from the criminals he tries to lock away? Is this type of mindset that causes my once black and white thinking to become very, VERY grey.

And with all of that being said, what becomes, in my opinion, the most interesting part of this group is that while they are all willing to do whatever it takes to reach their end goals, on both the inside and outside of the group, they have two individuals whose own end goals are actually determined by the success of the group. The Joker who just wants to be apart of something special and Amanda Waller who’s purpose for the group finds itself in a morality choice just like the criminals she’s hoping succeeds.