Cryogenic said:
It's good to see you've mastered the art of respecting opinions.
Yes, and from that it must be easy for you to tell that I only respect opinions that
deserve respect, not some senseless fanboy rambling. Saying that Keaton was a great Batman in terms of physicality is like saying Batman Begins was the greatest film of all time. And I know how intorelably despicable that very notion is to Burtonites.
Naw, I get what you mean. Bale definitely looked right, body-wise.
He definitely was the only one who had come closest to the comic book interpretation as "a physical manifestation of the character".
But Keaton still fit. He had a certain litheness. And those eyes! You could always sense there was something detached about him as Wayne, yet you could also never have suspected he was Batman. Bruce's greatest disguise, as both Bruce and Batman, and as played by Keaton, was his subtle nature. He was calm, collected and quiet, but when needed, he could suddenly lash out, and then fade away again, without a trace. A *true* Batman.
No, Keaton
didn't fit. If it weren't for his amazing performance, Keaton would probably have been the worst Batman ever, even worse than Clooney. Fortunately, he gave a pretty solid portrayal of the character, but even then it's not hard to notice that he was quite lacking in many aspects. First off all, Bruce Wayne is not some slim and short guy who looks like he's sufferring from hair-loss. Rather he is someone who has spent years training perfecting his mind and body to be able to undertake and withstand his never-ending war on crime and Keaton looked nothing like that, especially when you consider that Batman is a master of a wide variety of martial arts, weaponry and athletics. Yes, Bruce is in fact a brooding, obsessive figure but at the same time, he's also a dashing playboy socialite who always stands out even in the most elitest of circles.
But Keaton's Bruce Wayne was
never the dominant, charming playboy Bruce is in the comics. Instead, his take was playing Bruce more as an everyman with slightly goofball tendencies who can easily disappear into a crowd and no one would ever notice. Heck, Burton himself admitted that one of the reasons for his choice of Keaton was that he wanted someone who could bring some of the average Joe qualities to the character. What he
didn't realize that the Bruce Wayne is the farthest thing from your regular everyman as humanly possible. As a sole heir to one of the wealthiest, most influential families in all of Gotham, trying to instill such mundane qualities in Bruce Wayne is sheer stupidity because it completely messes up the identity of *who* the character really is. If you want an average Joe, then Peter Parker is what you want, not Bruce Wayne.
And that is why Keaton will
never be the definitive Batman to anyone who wants a Batman/Bruce Wayne that is closer to the comics instead of some offshoot personal interpretation of a director. Sure, despite his inadequacies, I still hold Keaton's Batman performance as the one that set the standard, but his overall portrayal of the character will always be incomplete no thanks to a lacking Bruce Wayne. A *true* Batman Keaton may be, but let's not forget that Batman is only
one of the
three faces of the character.
