News Variety Reports Robert Pattinson is the new Batman

You could say the same about pretty much every other cinematic adaptation of Batman; they just ignore different parts. Nolan's Batman is based on the gritty, grounded Batman comics of the early post-Crisis era, just as much as the Adam West show's take was based on the comics of the Silver Age, while Zack Snyder's take was mostly based on The Dark Knight Returns. Burton's and Schumacher's takes didn't really connect to any specific era of the comics; the first Burton film consciously went back to Batman's early beginnings and branched off in a distinctly Burtonian direction, and overall those films just took a few character names and ideas from the comics but did very idiosyncratic things with them that came mainly from the directors' own imaginations and sensibilities. And all of them pre-Affleck ignored the larger superhero universe that Batman inhabited in the comics.

And I'd say they definitely qualify as superhero movies, in that they're about a protagonist who devotes himself to protecting people and saving lives through exceptional methods. They're very much about heroes and heroism, about what it means to be a hero and how heroes can inspire people. That's more than I can say about a lot of other comics-based movies -- like Fantastic Four (2005), in which the only actual life-saving the FF do is in a crisis that they accidentally caused, and in which the climax features the "heroes" recklessly risking the lives of everyone on Earth to win a fight that's exclusively about saving their own skins -- the diametric opposite of what heroes are supposed to do.

 

The first Superman movie was great until Luthor showed up. His silliness brought it all down for me. His idiotic "master plan". And the "Spin the World Backwards" thing wasn't done terribly well either because it made folks think that Superman turned time back just to save Lois instead of traveling back in time to stop the missile completely so it was to save everyone.

That and I still think Kidder's Lois wasn't that great a love interest.

 

Superman 78 is only a classic as a product of it's time. Seen now it's quite flawed.

 

I actually consider Superman 78 to be my favorite Superman movie. I didn't have any problem with Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor or his plan. For that era, that was probably the best way to portray him. As for the whole spin the world backwards thing, I kind of took that as being more symbolic than anything else. Just the way to indicate to the audience that he's traveling back in time. Yeah, I may be stretching like Reed Richards on that one, but that's my headcanon.

 

If you go really really fast I guess you'd travel forward in time due to relativity. I don't know how you would ever go backwards in time...

I know I know, it's a movie about a flying man...

 

At the time, Time Travel backwards and forwards in time was one of Superman's powers. I always took the world spinning backwards as a symbolic representation of Superman traveling back in time.

 

When I saw Tim Burton's Batman I was in disbelief at the miscasting of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne. Buck teeth, balding, old, skinny and had this weird, looney, Howard Hughes persona. I had the chance to see most of the Batman movies and for me I thought Adam West was a great Bruce Wayne and Batman; despite the campness of the series and the movie, he portrays a good father figure as Wayne and a compelling Batman. Val Kilmer, I thought, fit the part and reminded me of Adam West in the persona of the character but I hated the movie. I liked Bale's aloof public persona of Bruce Wayne it reminded me of Christopher Reeve's in joke persona as Clark Kent with the audience. Privately this alter ego is not the character but his peers are completely fooled by that persona; it would be impossible IMO for his peers to believe he could be Batman. This was brilliant work by Bale, what I didn't like at all was his Bat-Voice creation which happened in The Dark Knight. It was ridiculous.

Ben Affleck, like George Clooney, never had a chance at fleshing his Batman out, his stuff looked like a work in progress. I didn't like what was done to him in JL; felt more like Robert Downey Jr. than Bruce Wayne.

 

OK, that's a fair point, I guess I should say that it was not really my preferred style of superhero story. I much prefer things like the Arkham Games, or the Arrowverse and DECU that fully embrace the more SFF elements of the comics.

 

But in the comics, it was just used to move between times, not to change history. Giving a hero the ability to just pop back and undo any failure is a really, really terrible idea from a storytelling standpoint, because it takes away all suspense or stakes. Okay, the movie made a token effort to have Jor-El say it was forbidden and Superman was breaking some cardinal rule by doing it, but still, it was unclear what was stopping him from doing it again anytime. "Oops, I broke my favorite coffee cup. Hang on, just let me rewind the planet..."

For me, it's cool when different superheroes aren't all alike in the style and focus of their stories. Maybe it's because my introduction to the comics version of Batman was from The Dark Knight Returns onward, but I like the idea of Batman as a more grounded, street-level crime/detective noir series as a contrast to the more sci-fi stuff dealt with by Superman or the Flash or the fantasy stuff dealt with by Wonder Woman, say.

I mean, Batman is supposed to be the World's Greatest Detective, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, but that detective angle is one that's usually been overlooked in live action -- except, after a fashion, in the '66 series, where Batman and Robin were constantly conducting scientific analysis of clues, deducing hidden meanings to code names and riddles, and so on, working as consulting detectives and forensic examiners for Commissioner Gordon the same way Holmes did for Scotland Yard. (I realized a few years back that they were basically the GCPD's unofficial, unpaid CSI division.)

They say that the new Batman film will focus more on his detective side, and I hope they can do it well, giving us a proper mystery instead of just an action movie with some token detective work.

 

Looked better than colored halos with years on them.

 

Ahh, such great detective work...

(Not disagreeing that the show made an effort to show investigation, mind you, I just can't let any discussion of that effort go past without getting a laugh at the ballpoint banana...)

 

Keaton and Bale both made some mild attempts at detective work too, but it wasn't much. Some chemistry here, some ballistics work there...I'll be stoked if the new Batman really does finally use his brain for more than fight choreography.

Since when has Michael Keaton ever had buck teeth? As for old, Adam West was 38 when he first played Batman, Keaton was 37. His forehead was starting to get pretty tall though, I'll give you that.

 

For me, the biggest reason I love the Nolan movies is because they were about Bruce Wayne and his struggles, not about Batman kicking as. Which he did plenty of though.

And that's my problem with most versions of Batman on screen. They often forget it's about Bruce Wayne, dealing with a shitton of trauma he never processed in a healthy way and actually created a whole new persona with a misguided concept of justice and truth to desperately try and fix his childhood.
The first Burton film touched on that, but the rest 90's movies forgot about that completely, I felt. The DCEU movies focused a bit more on Wayne than the 90's movies, but for me, Nolan was the only one he truly made it about Bruce, not Batman.

 

I utterly reject the idea that Batman is based on a "misguided" concept of justice. On the contrary, the point of Batman is that Bruce found a positive way to cope with his trauma, letting it inspire him to help others, using his massive resources to protect the helpless and ensure they didn't have to suffer the kind of loss he did. It's totally missing the point to say he's trying to fix his childhood. He's not that self-directed. He's trying to protect others' childhoods. He sacrifices everything for the benefit of others, and it makes me profoundly sad that our culture has become so egocentric and cynical that we can look at such pure selfless generosity and dismiss it as mental illness. Earlier generations would've seen it as saintliness, the courage to embrace total self-abnegation and work tirelessly in service to others.

The greatest proof that Batman is a healthy, positive response to grief is Dick Grayson -- someone who suffered the same childhood loss that Bruce did, but who grew up happier and healthier because he had Batman as a father figure and inspiration. Also Barbara Gordon, who doesn't have any such trauma but is still inspired by the positive example Batman sets. Batman's existence, his example, made them better people. Bruce will always be living with his pain, yes, but he uses that to inspire him to protect others from pain, to create something positive that he can give to others. This is in contrast to his enemies, who use their pain and grief as an excuse to lash out and inflict the same pain and grief on others. They're the ones who are misguided and unhealthy. Batman is the one who had the same kind of formative trauma but found a way to turn it into something good rather than something evil.

The hoary bromide that "Bruce must be crazy because no sane person would wear a mask and cape and swing from rooftops" is a category error, because it forgets that Bruce Wayne lives in a universe where lots of people wear masks and capes to fight crime. In the DC Universe, it's no more crazy for a crimefighter to wear a flamboyant costume than it is for an athlete to wear a jersey with a number printed on it, or for a nun to wear a habit. It's a commonplace practice in that reality.

The problem is that most screen adaptations of Batman put him in a world without other superheroes and without a Robin or Batgirl to show the positive impact he has. They take away that context and make it easier to make the mistake of seeing him as some deluded nut. But I think the Nolan films (at least the first two) did a terrific job of compensating for that. They told the story of how Bruce chose justice over revenge, how he constructed Batman as a healthier, more constructive way of coping with his pain than just going around shooting criminals. They showed how the costume and iconography were not the result of derangement, but a calculated application of theatrics and symbolism to achieve a specific goal. And they showed how the public image of Batman that he created served to inspire the people of Gotham and make them better.

Although this has been built into Batman from the beginning, or at least from the time they finally got around to giving him an origin in 1940. His decision to adopt a bat persona is not because of any personal obsession with bats or anything like that. He's spent maybe the past 15-20 years training relentlessly to fight crime, and he reasons, "Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts." And a bat just happens to fly through his open window at that moment. It's merely a convenient symbol he happens across, one he chooses not based on his own psychological issues, but on his understanding of the psychology of the criminals he targets. Nolan got it exactly right: it was a calculated use of symbolism, a psy-ops tactic against the enemy.

 

It's still seen as a classic now and a benchmark movie to Directors like Nolan.
40 years later 'Endgame' won't be.

 

As well as to Patty Jenkins, who cited it repeatedly as THE cinematic touchstone for her approach to Wonder Woman.

 

Well, it will be in the context of being a strong ending to an accumulation of 11 years, 21 films, and countless characters (or more specifically, the big three). But I agree that on its own terms, it won't serve in the same vein as a benchmark as Superman.

 

What I didn't like in The Dark Knight were hints that Bruce Wayne wasn't in on being Batman for the long term; it progressed onto TDKR. This movie will have a series of classic villains, it may open the door to introduce Batman's rogue gallery for a possible sequel.

 

As expected, none of your ridiculous post removes the fact that you are indeed forever enraged that the Nolan/Bale Batman films are considered among the very best superhero films ever made--far above that cartoon dreck you worship, so yes, of course you would try to pump up the miscast Keaton over Bale (and his films).

Still too easy.

Among the best, to be sure.

 

To date, Keaton is the textbook example of the worst miscasting of a superhero character. Burton was more concerned with his own issues leading to casting a short, balding, out of shape comedic actor than presenting a believable comic-to-film adaptation. Bale and Affleck captured certain comic source behavior and motivations (not to mention being physically believable), and have left Burton/Keaton's trip into the Ripley's Believe it or Not realm in the dustbin of bad adaptations.

All true.