Content Warning: The following article contains accounts of abuse.
The Big Picture
When
The Dark Knight
was released, it found itself in unexpected fued with the country of Turkey.
Christopher nolan directed the critically acclaimed superhero movie.
The movie starred Christian Bale as the titular hero.
There are a host of reasons why countries ban films, file lawsuits, and/or edit films severely: religious grounds, moral grounds, extremely graphic scenes, and more. Even Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been banned in Vietnam over a disputed line on a map in one scene. But nothing comes close to what happened with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and the country of Turkey. But if you can’t recall a single thing that could be offensive to Turkey, that’s not surprising. The truth is there isn’t anything in The Dark Knight that is at all offensive to Turkey. That is, except for one thing: Batman. More specifically, the name “Batman” which prompted the threat of a lawsuit from Hüseyin Kalkan, the mayor of the Turkish city of… wait for it… Batman.
The Dark Knight
When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice.
Release Date July 18, 2008
Runtime 152 minutes
Studio Warner Bros.
‘The Dark Knight’ Came Out at the Right (Wrong) Time
But before we look at the lawsuit, a little history. Batman is the name of a city, the capital of Batman District in Batman Province, Turkey, and is situated near the Batman River. For centuries, it was known as Iluh, a small, unassuming Turkish village. The discovery of oil in the area in the 1940s turned Iluh into a boomtown, and in 1957 Iluh became Batman, named for the nearby Batman River. How the river got the name is up for debate. In Turkey and Persia, a batman is a unit of measure equivalent to 16.96 pounds, so that’s the first possibility. The second and more likely explanation is the river is named after Bati Raman, a nearby mountain, and that Batman is simply a shortened version of that. In other words, absolutely nothing to do with the comic book hero of the same name.
Regardless, when a columnist asked Mayor Kalkan in 2007 why he didn’t look to legal action against “movie Batman” or untold royalty amounts, especially given the economic problems the city was struggling with at the time, it moved the mayor to action.”We found this criticism right,” Mayor Kalkan was quoted, “and started to look for legal possibilities of a case like that.” Guess which Batman film came out shortly after the mayor’s investigation? You got it: 2008’s The Dark Knight. Kalkan told the Dogan news agency, “The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us… There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.” According to the same source, he then promptly sued Christopher Nolan for royalties. Not Warner Bros., the producers of the film. Not DC Comics, who had long held the character Batman as their intellectual property. Just Nolan (other sources claim WB was also mentioned).
If the story simply ended there, it would be just another wacky lawsuit, but the mayor then suggested that the success of The Dark Knight had a severely negative psychological impact on the city’s inhabitants. As a result, the film was to blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate. It was a very disturbing and untrue allegation to lay at the feet of a Hollywood blockbuster. Besides, murder and suicides plagued the city well before the film had even been released. According to a 2006 report from the Child Rights International Network, young women, whose only offenses ranged from looking at boys to wearing a short skirt, being raped, or, ironically, wanting to go to the movies, had been killed by their disgraced family, usually their brother. If the family didn’t want to see their son persecuted, they forced the girls to take their own lives, locking them in a room for days with rat poison, a gun, or a rope.
A Lawsuit Was Never Filed Against Christopher Nolan
Image via Warner Bros.
Was this the act of a mayor who legitimately thought he had a case, or a savvy political move to take the heat of mounting deaths off of his administration? It’s a moot point: a lawsuit was never filed. Even if Mayor Kalkan had moved forward, the odds were decidedly stacked against him. Batman, the character created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, debuted in the pages of Detective Comics in March 1939 years before Iluh changed its name, although Kalkan claims to have had evidence to prove the city of Batman was founded first… evidence that has never seen the light of day.
Head of the Intellectual and Industrial Property Rights Commission of the Istanbul Bar, lawyer Vehbi Kahveci, told sources the “Batman” name was registered worldwide, and if the town wanted to launch a lawsuit about infringement on its name, they missed the timeframe completely to do so. But they say any PR is good PR, and with Batman the city having hit the news with this story, people worldwide have gone to the city to have pictures taken with signs with the “Batman” name on it, and an active petition was launched on change.org to change the Batman Province border to resemble Batman iconic logo (with nearly 27,000 signatures against the goal of 35,000).
But what if the lawsuit had gone ahead, and the city of Batman won? That would set a dangerous precedent. Volcano, Hawaii, could sue Tommy Lee Jones over 1997’s Volcano. The Eastern Netherlands city of Ommen could have made a fortune suing the creators of The Omen. Why stop there? Sandwich, Illinois could sue delis from coast to coast. The town of Hell, Michigan, could sue the Devil for a cut of his collected souls. Newfoundland town Dildo could sue… well, let’s stop there. Thankfully the Batman suit didn’t come to fruition after all, but there have been instances where lawsuits have been filed against films, like a Michigan lawsuit that saw a woman sue the distributors of the Ryan Gosling film Drive because it wasn’t action-filled like the Fast and Furious films, even though the advertising suggested it would be.
Amusing, yes, but that lawsuit may have set a precedent for a recent successful suit that saw two Ana de Armas fans sue Universal Studios over the fact that the actress, despite being in the trailer for Yesterday, did not actually appear in the film as her scenes were cut. That has opened the doors for people to sue movie studios over deceptive trailers. So who knows? Maybe the Caped Crusader will eventually head to court.
The Dark Knight is currently available to stream on Max in the U.S.
WATCH ON MAX