At Last! 60s Batman TV show coming to homem video!
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
- Start date
Quite so. I've never understood the complaints in terms of being unfaithful to Batman's character. And I will certainly watch these favourites with my son long before I watch the Nolan films with him (he's 8).
Nothing wrong with taking Batman seriously, it had to be done, but this was a fun show.
Seriously is one thing...way too seriously is another. He can be a grim, gritty avenger of the night...but people need to keep some perspective and remember that this is a character who dresses like a rodent and beats people up....
Adam West's Batman was the original Frank Drebin. 
I wish they would do that with everything. if they did, I just might start watching TV beyond The Simpsons again.
And I'm a decade behind on THAT.
Adam West's Batman was the original Frank Drebin.
Now THAT'S an interesting comparison that I never would have made in a thousand years.
Sledge Hammer and Maxwell Smart works too.
Adam West's Batman was the original Frank Drebin.
Now THAT'S an interesting comparison that I never would have made in a thousand years.
Sledge Hammer and Maxwell Smart works too.
Not quite. The Drebin comparison works for the version of Drebin from Police Squad!, where he was a serious, capable, well-respected cop by the standards of an insane and farcical reality. But it doesn't work at all for the version of Drebin from the Naked Gun movies, where he was reinterpreted as a Clouseau-like buffoon in an often bizarre but relatively more normative world where other people looked on his antics with dismay and scorn. Sledge Hammer and Max Smart fit that category, but they're a completely different character type than West's Batman. Batman was anything but a bungler or a fool. He was too much of a square for his own good at times, but he was definitely on the ball and extremely good at his job, and he was intensely admired by every law-abiding citizen of Gotham and seen as a real threat by every lawbreaker.
Sigh. Where to begin? I'll just say this, rather than a long reply: I don't care about the "sugarcoating" of Batman. Because you know what? There are lots of different versions of Batman and they are all equally valid.
I love the 60s Batman, I love the Burton Batman, I love the Animated Series, I adore Batman: Brave and the Bold.
There are Batmans for ALL ages and all periods in a person's life, and none of them are any more sugar coated than any of the rest. They are all interpretations of the same character.
There is no one version of the Batman.
Yeah. Thanks, Mr. Passive Agressive.
Why not? What's wrong with it going on sale? It's not like you have to buy it.
Why? What's wrong with a lighthearted take on Batman? I've always looked at it like this: Adam West's Batman was a spoof in a way similar to how Spaceballs spoofed Star Wars.
Nothing wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with a comedic take, no, but it wasn't a spoof in the sense of poking fun at something that was otherwise presented seriously at the time. Like I've said, the Batman comics of the '50s and '60s were very much like the show in their tone, telling adventure stories that were deliberately absurd and silly even though the characters treated them as serious matters. After all, the Comics Code didn't allow comics at the time to be violent or scary or dark, so that pretty much left humor and absurdity. The comedy came from the source.
This is why Batman was a comedy while its sister show from the same producers, The Green Hornet, was a straight crime drama: because both shows were faithful adaptations of their source materials. A lot of Batman episodes were directly adapted from comic-book stories. Material was added to flesh them out, some details were changed for reasons of budget or practicality, but to a large extent they played out exactly the same on the show as they had in the comic.
So yes, it was a comedy, but no, it wasn't a spoof -- any more than the comics were spoofing themselves, at least. Certainly there was a heavy dose of self-aware irony to the show, but only in the sense that it was presenting the source with great accuracy and letting its inherent absurdity speak for itself, like when Andy Warhol did a painting of soup cans or Roy Lichetenstein copied comic-book panels right down to the color dots.
Nolan's Batman is sooo overrated anyway.
Funny. I feel the inverse (or is that converse?) (with honorable mention to Burton's films).
Indeed, Fledermausman
Adam West's show is great fun. I hope the movie will also be part of the package.
It would be nice to have the show and movie in the same set. I assume the West/Ward commentary track on the movie would still be there, for it is excellent.Indeed, Fledermausman
I suspect the movie won't be involved, its available on DVD and Blu-ray. Released by 20th Century Fox. It would be nice to have it as part of a complete set but not necessary.
That sound's great. I have only seen the movie on TV, so I haven't caught the commentary.It would be nice to have the show and movie in the same set. I assume the West/Ward commentary track on the movie would still be there, for it is excellent.Indeed, Fledermausman
Adam West's Batman was the original Frank Drebin.
Now THAT'S an interesting comparison that I never would have made in a thousand years.
Sledge Hammer and Maxwell Smart works too.
Not quite. The Drebin comparison works for the version of Drebin from Police Squad!, where he was a serious, capable, well-respected cop by the standards of an insane and farcical reality.
Which is the version of Drebin that I was thinking of.
