The Better Detective: Nolan Batman or Ace Ventura

Nolan Batman.

Ace. Which is actually quite sad. Dude was able to find that piece of super bowl championship ring, which was about the size of a Damn crumb. The fact that he even knew what it belonged to...

He actually did research to track leads.

He could tell what people had been doing earlier just by looking at their clothes, marks on their body, etc.

Everyone who voted Nolan Bruce are fooling themselves. "WHERE IS IT?!!? WHERE ARE THEY?!!? WHERE IS HE?!!? Does not a detective make.

good point, mate

Ace.

@ganon15: Why thank you kind sir.

Nolan Batman wasn't a detective.

Wait, Nolan's Batman was a detective?

@fuzzylittlerodent: lmao

You've obviously never seen interrogations. They are not as cloak and dagger as they are made to be in films.

@fallschirmjager: I watch 48 on occasion . Point is we a talking film/fictitious detective work. Where Ace is king between the two character choices.

I'll just leave this here.

@guardiandevil83: And again. If you want your Batman movie to be a comedy, than I'm sure those types of scenes would work.

Ace was pulling stuff out of his ass because they have a script to write from. No actual detective work took place.

Batman did plenty. Cutting bricks out of the wall and running forensics for the shell is detective work. Running a person's prints that you had gotten from your safe and running their history is detective work.

Real detectives aren't 1 man armies. They have databases, specialists to call on, etc.

@fallschirmjager: And again, it's not the tone but the feats we are discussing. Jack Reacher, Red Dragon, Maltese Falcon, and even the damn Glimmer Man showed far more competent case work.

Except the tone matters. Nolan's Batman wasn't suppose to be a deus ex machina that could pull random crap out of his ass to make Batman look like a superhuman detective in order to move the plot along.

They wanted it to be as real as possible. And he acted like a real detective.

The feats aren't apples to apples.

@fallschirmjager: I can agree that Nolan tried to be as realistic as possible, the point I was making is that Batman wasn't as effective in film as the character he is challenged against above.

Joker gave him the locations to Harvey and Rachel.

Salena lead him to Bane.

Lucius figured out Al Ghul's water supply plot, etc.

I was just saying that as far as the two characters go, one got things done better than the other.

I can promise you real cops have people like Lucius to help them. Perhaps not as rich or all knowing, they may have several people like that, but they do.

And I'm not necessarily taking issue with you or your stance personally, just this ludicrous thing that goes around comic vine that people like to claim he wasn't a detective, when he was far more of an actual detective than even how he is in comics when he's just a walking know it all.

People are confusing fictional detective with real detective and then claiming the latter isn't real.

Ace, who could solve crime without the tried and true method of punching someone repeatedly and yelling

"Where are they!?!?"

Now this is how gentleman debate. I also wanted to admit I was wrong. Batman didn't learn Ra's plot from Lucius.

@guardiandevil83: Tbh, I can't really argue that point either way since its been awhile since I've seen BB - and worse, I've been binging movies for Oscar season so all I can think about is indie movies this year (there has been many, many excellent ones btw).

Either way cheers.

@fallschirmjager: The question isn't who's the more realistic detective, it's who's better at being a detective; a person who investigates and solves crimes.

Agreed.

Who's better a lifting weights? The real weight lifter who can bench 500lbs, or the fictional person who isn't real and isn't really lifting 1000 lbs?

The feats don't matter if they're not legitimate demonstrations of skill.

What Ace did was heavily comedic based and was only possible because he was reading from a script. It would have been completely ridiculous if Batman ever did or does that on screen. If you want a Batman focused comedy, fine, but I doubt that will happen.

(I'm not hating on the movie either btw. I love AVPD)

I'm trying to argue who's more realistic, I just don't see how you can legitimately call what Ace does feats of skill when his skills are hollow.

Neither of them are real or plausible when you put it that way

@fallschirmjager: I was a big independent film buff at one time. I still search here and there. Some of my favorites are

The Ginger Snap series

Attack The Block

Clerks

Seal Team 8

B-13

To name a few. I'm a simple man..lol

@guardiandevil83: Have you seen Boyhood? That was an indie film that was released last year and it was fantastic.

@ganon15: The numbers I used were irrelevant. I'm just making the case that Batman did plenty of detective work. He cased scene, collected evidence, ran forensics, turned to experts when he otherwise didn't have the information himself (no body knows everything), used technology to help him...etc. That is detective work, period.

And yes, asking where people or things are from suspects is interrogation. Real interrogations are not as cloak and dagger as they are in movies. You don't ask 10 questions and then talk circles trying to get the guy to put his foot in his mouth. Especially if a dude has a lawyer, the lawyer will call you out and tell you to cut the shit.

I've seen interrogations where really all they could do was ask him where he was and what he was doing and that's it (I have family who work in crime).

Ace being able to instantly recognize that the door is soundproof is what you call script. No body just knows random facts like that. If he had taken note of the brand, then went and googled it THEN came up with his scenario, you can call it a real feat.

@frozen: I'll check it out. Oh, stay away from Krumpus the Christmas Devil.

As you know there is independent. Then, there is "Jesus please! Make it go away!"

Ace, easily.

Most of his detective work came from Rises. Re-watch the first 30mins and see how much detective work he does in that space. Its a lot.

Ace Ventura, end of story.

Ventura. Not to put down Bats, his detective work in the films was still solid (finding prints from the brick for example), but Ventura is a cartoon character.

@silverpool: Yeah. See that was the entire basis of his character. He was suppose to come off as a witless buffoon but was suppose to be the smartest one in any room.

Yeah. This is actually a mismatch, given Nolan Batman isn't a detective at all.

@fallschirmjager

So your argument is that because Nolan was attempting to be more gritty and realistic, the detective aspect was downplayed and more realistic?

Maybe, but to me it seems like the detective aspect was all but omitted for the sake of simplicity. The two feats you mentioned were not feats showing him to be a detective. Yes, real detectives will have evidence analyzed by a computer, that isn't the problem. The problem is detectives are not limited to that, and that is literally the only detective work he did aside from the interrogations.

Detectives tend to solve crimes, follow trails, investigate evidence etc. The closest Nolan Batman came to being a detective was having his computer analyze evidence.

Ace Ventura is a guy from a comedy movie. He is a way better detective just because he has luck.

But, yeah. Ventura is better. Mainly because Nolan's Batman hasn't really shown any form of detectivness ( yeah, i know this word doesn't exist ) during his three movies.

Ace.

People underrate Nolan Batman too much.

Just because this Batman wasnt the best at everything and human, dont mean he was a loser with no skills.

Batman take down Ras AKA Liam Neeson.

Batman Destroy The League of Shadows Twice.

Take down a SWAT team.

Even when he was pretty old and hurt beat Bane.

Find out The Joker plans.

Fixed The Bat.

He was in control of the whole clean energy for Gotham.

He does surveillance on judges and other public officials to give the DA's office leverage to prosecute mobsters.

He does the forensics on the bullet in the TDK.

He also knows the nature of the Arkham escapee that Harvey plays Russian roulette with.

He also develops a city wide surveillance system using cell phones.

In TDK he used irradiated bills to help track down and trace the mob's money.

When the money-man in TDK ran off with the money anyway Bats developed an ingenious plan to capture Money Man by involving both new technology (the cell-phone scanner that Lucius left behind in the building in Hong Kong) and old tech (the CIA plane thing... Sky Hook?).

In TDKR he lifted prints from the safe Selena broke into.

In TDKR he employed deduction to discover the whereabouts of Bane.

In BB he did a lot of surveillance to observe his enemies before he even had a proper uniform.

They both seem invulnerable to guano.

this, also I think the point of ace ventura was that he was a bad directive

No way in Hell that Batman figures out Finkel is Einhorn... Not a chance in Hell