The Guard
Avenger
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I do? I thought I said that the dark, brooding, loner version of The Batman we know today didn't exist back then. Because he didn't. Bruce Wayne had a life, Batman had a life. The man was seen in public, and he didn't push his friends and family away. And yes, he did joke around a bit. He even (gasp) smiled quite a bit.
Yes, my memories are those things, too, but even in those stories, there was quite a bit of lightheartedness. Batman talked a lot, especially while he was fighting. He was friendly a lot of the time, and even polite. He was, in a word, human.
Again, I never said that. I said the version we know today wasn't around. The Batman that pushed everyone and every thing away and sought the deepest darkness without crossing over into obsession. But like I said, I can recall plenty of jokes and puns during that era. Tom Mankiewicz's THE BATMAN is, I think, a good example of what kind of Batman movie that era might have presented. Very lighthearted, very heroic, not as dark and brooding as we'd like to think.
I don't know about great decline. I never saw many Bat-gadgets in the comics to begin with, and the ones that he did use, like the Whirly-Bat, survived the "reinvention" and are still around in some form. I suppose that Batman used less gadgets than he did in the TV show, but wasn't that the case even in the comics? There have always been a few staples of Batman's aresenal: The batarang, batrope, rebreather, and smoke and gas pellets. All those were present both before and after the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams period. Batman's always been resourceful. That's nothing new, and certainly I've seen Batman throw barrel rings to capture fleeing criminals. And that was in the 40's and 50's.
Or it could have been that comic books were seen as children's fare for a very long time. After all, Superman and most other heroes didn't even get a campy TV show, and most heroes didn't grace screens again until the late 70's.
Now this I'm interested in. How so? Because I see a dark, disturbed version of The Dark Knight. Not camp. Unless we have different definitions of the word.
Let's be honest, though. There's always been, and always will be, humor in Batman stories. I don't think that makes it campy.
So the entire 30-40 year period before Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams came along meant nothing?
I don't mean things that were directly lifted out of the comics. I was referring more to things like...classic elements pulled from the comics. Things we'd seen over and over again in the pages. Some I can think of, off the top of my head.
-Gadgets. We saw the batarang/batrope in the opening scene, the batbola, and the use of smoke pellets.
-Batman using his image to strike fear into criminals.
-Despite what many people say, the same martial arts oriented Batman we saw in the comics. Up until about 1990, Batman's repertoire consisted of punches, kicks, chops, blocks, flips, and swinging down into people. All those save one were in the film.
-The Joker killing innocent people for the sheer thrill of it, and even killing his own men in clever ways.
-Batman the detective. No, he didn't tell us what chemicals The Joker used to poison Gotham, but that's because most of us wouldn't have understood it anyway. He didn't go that in depth in the comics either, and his detective work was usually something far more obvious and "gimmicky", and supervillain oriented.
-Bruce Wayne's obsession with his mission, and his desire for a normal life, and love, but the realization that he cannot have one.
-The Joker orchestrating a huge parade/party with innocent lives at stake to draw out Batman.
-The Joker surviving impossible odds, when by all rights, he should be killed. (The Batwing's attack)
-Romance. Batman was always having romantic flings in the comics. Vicki Vale, Talia, Silver St. Cloud, Rachel Caspian, even Catwoman for a while.
-The Bat-Signal. Come on, the first movie nailed the signal.
And that's in the first film. The subsequent films had some more. No, it wasn't the exact same Batman people were used to. But beneath the surface, the core of the character and his world were there.
Why? It was fairly obvious that he wasn't in it for revenge in BATMAN, but because he could do, as he told Vicki, something that no one else could. Otherwise, why would he have bothered rescuing that family in the beginning? He was clearly a Batman determined to make Gotham safe for decent people. And that only made the character richer, I think.
No one. But almost anyone could do what Keaton's Batman did, with enough drive. But then Burton's Batman wasn't the uber-acrobatic, leaping-before-he-looks version of the comics. He was grounded in reality. A man dealing with real criminals in a real world. Where some martial arts training and clever gadgets were enough.
With that suit, a modicum of training, and some gadgets, I'd say so. I don't see why not.
Keaton has a rubber suit because that's what Tim Burton and the costume designer wanted. Armor. Something to protect him, and make him look imposing, not ridiculous, as tights almost certainly would have. That's probably also why the Batsuit is black, not blue and gray. That's what early costume designs show, that's what Burton and Keaton and Ringwood have said for a long time. It was the plan from the get-go to have whoever Batman wearing a kind of "armor".
Superman is supposed to be huge. He can afford to wear tights, because bullets bounce off him.
True, but he will continue to keep elements of those years in his mythos. Things like Joe Chill, The Red Hood, Lew Moxon, his penchant for detective work, colorful villains, and even Robin.
Then why did the movies appear to have something to do with his evolution toward a darker, more realistic version of the character in the comics?
Please stop with that everyday guy nonsense.We want dc's Batman not Tim Burtons version of batman.At Least Nolan unlike Burton seems to want to bring Dc's version of batman to the screen by casting Bale as the choice.Great choice.
