After Midnight and The Batman

Now that I am discussing After Midnight, while watching it I couldn’t shake this feeling like I knew the teacher (Professor Edward Derek) in the movie. Not personally, obviously, but like I’ve seen his character before in some other movie or novel and sure enough I was right. I saw him first in a comic book and later in a movie that was based off of the comic book he was in and yes I’m talking about Batman. But what Batman comic and movie could it be? Strangely enough it was from issue #3 of World’s Finest Comic and later Batman Begins. Still don’t know what character I’m talking about? I’ll give you a big hint. Think scarecrows. Yes, Prof. Edward Derek is probably the first live movie incarnation of The Scarecrow villain from the Batman comics. How are these two seemingly unrelated characters the same, well below is a short list that I have comprised to show the similarities of the two. Not only do they look the same but their background and personalities are as well.

- They are both professors of psychology at a university.

- The psychology class they teach has to do with fear.

- They both have teaching techniques that are radical and unappreciated by their colleagues leading them to be ostracized in the teaching field.

- They both end up getting in a lot of trouble with the university for firing a gun in the classroom.

- They both love scaring people, particularly their students.

- They both have a very disturbing yet true theory on why fear is different from all other emotions.

- They both are very emotionally erratic and unstable.

- They both are on the borderline of being insane.

- They both have killed somebody.

- Physically they are both not very imposing men.

- They both love how the mind can be manipulated through fear.

- They both have very calm, contemplative, yet foreboding voices.

- They both have long brown hair and blues eyes.

Sure, I’m leaving out the fact that one dresses like a scarecrow and uses hallucinogens to commit crime while the other one just scares kids with stories but this is more of an examination of each characters personality. Strictly speaking, they are both essentially the same character only except Derek is more like Crane before he decided to dawn the scarecrow outfit. It’s uncanny on how the two are closely similar.