Your favourite Batman...

[Christopher]

Gojira wrote:

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^ Am I crazy because I like the movie Batman & Robin?

Here's a pretty good argument that you're not:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...-movie-review/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...-movie-review/

I don't entirely agree with it, but they make a good case.

[JD]

Another Batman that I like that I haven't heard much about in this thread is Bruce Greenwood. I really liked him in Under the Red and in Young Justice. He's good as the older, more experienced, mentor figure Batman.

[JarodRussell]

Christopher wrote:

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Here's a pretty good argument that you're not:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...-movie-review/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...-movie-review/

I don't entirely agree with it, but they make a good case.

Batman and Robin is what I call comic book film. It's a live action animated film. All the stuff you'd easily accept in a comic and cartoon is in there.

[Warped9]

Depends what you want in a comic or animation. If Batman comics of the '70s-'90s had been continuing what we saw on '60s TV I wouldn't have bothered with them. And while I enjoy B-TAS there is stuff in there I'd have a hard time accepting in a live-action feature.

Dialing back the grittiness we got with the Nolanverse could work, but if you dial it back too far then it's a question of whether you start turning some people off. Are audiences now ready to accept a Batman feature done in the tone of the Marvel films? Probably. Any lighter or sillier than that? I don't know.

This brings Game Of Thrones to mind. Most sword-and-sorcery leaves me cold because I can't believe in the setting. But GoT shows a world that is much more credible even if it's a fiction. It's quite easy to suspend disbelief.

Superheroes by their very nature are also a fantasy. But Batman is one of the few exceptions because he isn't superpowered and so it becomes easier to put him into a more realistic setting. I emphasize realistic as opposed to real because we're still dealing with fiction and extraordinary elements.

I really enjoyed The Avengers but I do recall thinking along the same lines as a lot of other people after the big climactic battle: where was the reference to the extensive casualties among civilians that such an attack would have wrought? The Avengers was sanitized to make it accessible to a broad audience, but some of the omissions were hard to swallow.

If you're going to go goofy then how about something more like The Incredibles? Or Kick-Ass if you really want irreverent parody?

[Christopher]

^Well, after Batman: TAS, conventional wisdom was that animation audiences would never settle for a "silly" approach to Batman again. But The Brave and the Bold proved to be very popular and admired and scuttled that conventional wisdom. As I often point out, category doesn't determine quality -- quality determines quality.

So if someone developed a silly approach to Batman for the movie reboot, it might work or it might not, depending on how well it was done.

[Warped9]

I freely admit my bias. Batman done in lighter tone like The Brave And The Bold I could accept in animation. Done live-action then I'll likely stay home and spend my money on something else.

[Christopher]

^But before you weren't talking about your own personal preferences, you were talking about whether "audiences" were "ready to accept" a lighter Batman. Those are two completely different conversations.

[Gojira]

Christopher wrote:

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Here's a pretty good argument that you're not:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...-movie-review/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...-movie-review/

I don't entirely agree with it, but they make a good case.

Thanks for the links! I do agree with them. They really do understand the movie and what it is about. I liked Silverstone as Batgirl much more than they did.

[Warped9]

Christopher wrote:

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^But before you weren't talking about your own personal preferences, you were talking about whether "audiences" were "ready to accept" a lighter Batman. Those are two completely different conversations.

Right. Maybe general audiences will accept it. But I can't speak definitively for them. But I can speak for myself and I'm not interested.

And lets differentiate between "lighter" and "silly." A lighter tone in a live-action feature might work for me, lighter as in current Marvel film style. A silly tone in live-action I'm not interested in.

[Gojira]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Batman and Robin is what I call comic book film. It's a live action animated film. All the stuff you'd easily accept in a comic and cartoon is in there.

Exactly! I also see the movie as a homage to the 60s Batman TV series. I also think there is some good character development underneath all the campy corn.

[RandyS]

Gojira wrote:

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Exactly! I also see the movie as a homage to the 60s Batman TV series. I also think there is some good character development underneath all the campy corn.

Batman historian (and producer) Michael Uslan agrees with you. And so do I.

Batman & Robin is nowhere near the best Batman movie, but it's not complete garbage either.

[Christopher]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Batman and Robin is what I call comic book film. It's a live action animated film. All the stuff you'd easily accept in a comic and cartoon is in there.

Well, that depends. If you mean the comics of the '50s and '60s, then yeah, okay. But the actual comics and animated interpretations of Batman that were coming out at the same time as Batman and Robin were far, far more serious, plausible, and intelligent than it was. That was part of the problem -- at the time, the feature-film interpretation of superheroes was lagging decades behind comics and animation. It wasn't until Batman Begins in 2005 that live-action Batman cinema caught up with where the comics had been since the mid-'80s and where animation had been since 1992. B&R was actually about as far as you could get from what a contemporary Batman comic or cartoon would have been.

[Gotham Central]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Batman and Robin is what I call comic book film. It's a live action animated film. All the stuff you'd easily accept in a comic and cartoon is in there.

Batman & Robin is what I call worst movie ever made. Ed Wood made better films and at least his were enjoyable for the sheer awfulness. Batman & Robin was so bad that everyone involved was embarassed to be associated with it.

It was like a new version of the Adam West series without the excuse of it being made in the 60s on a low budget.

[Gotham Central]

Christopher wrote:

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On the one hand, I'd almost like to see the next Batman go the Brave and the Bold route and embrace the wild, retro, comedy/fantasy/sci-fi side of Batman. But on the other hand, the Schumacher films tried to do campy, funny Batman and they didn't entirely work out well, since they took it to too much of an extreme.

I swear...you're all over the place man. in the 60's Batman thread you got all insulted because I suggested that you like camp. And here you are saying that you prefer the Adam West series and that you want a campy Batman. You clearly DO like camp and siliness...just run with it.

[Gotham Central]

Christopher wrote:

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^Well, after Batman: TAS, conventional wisdom was that animation audiences would never settle for a "silly" approach to Batman again. But The Brave and the Bold proved to be very popular and admired and scuttled that conventional wisdom. As I often point out, category doesn't determine quality -- quality determines quality.

So if someone developed a silly approach to Batman for the movie reboot, it might work or it might not, depending on how well it was done.

Though I enjoy Brave and the Bold...it was NEVER very popular. Hell the show itself admitted that it struggled to find an audience. It never enjoyed anywhere near the level of success that B:TAS did (hell that series spawned its own universe).