Batman Will Be Rebooted

[KB24]

Can't anything ever have a rest? Can't some franchises look back and say, 'hey, we did something good, let's leave it there?'

Besides the comics and some cartoons, was there another live action Batman between the sixties series the the 89 movie? How can a franchise go from camp to dark in 25 years and then need to be rebooted immediately after Oscar winning material?

Dumbasses.

 

[JacksonArcher]

Batman really should be treated like Janes Bond. That series went without an actual reboot or origin story for...40 years was it?

I think they tried to treat it that way with the Burton/Schumacher films but Schumacher killed it. I still think that's a perfectly viable approach- heck, you don't even really need to reboot the series after The Dark Knight Rises (unless the ending is as harsh as insiders are proclaiming) since you could just continue the adventures of Batman but with different blood behind the scenes and new cast.

I think the notion of "rebooting" every franchise and starting from scratch is actually kind of inherently lazy- I'd much rather just see another version of Batman that could conceivably exist in Nolan's universe but is slightly different, i.e perhaps with more fantasy elements.

 

[Greg Cox]

Batman really should be treated like Janes Bond. That series went without an actual reboot or origin story for...40 years was it?

Yeah, but there was never really any continuity or backstory to worry about there. It was just a series of standalone Bond adventures of wildly varying tone, casts, and content.

There may have never been an official "reboot" but the series went through a lot of changes over the decades. MOONRAKER has about as much as in common with FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE as BATMAN & ROBIN has with THE DARK KNIGHT . . . .

 

[Nerys Myk]

Good. That means that the next movie will offer us something completely new for a superhero movie: closure.

Like it or not, but X-Men: Last Stand provided closure for that series.

I was thinking the same thing. How can people bitch about comic book reboot movies when comic books reboot themselves every other year?

Me too-and, for example, also only a year after this one, both of Superman!

That's not so much a reboot as it is just poor timing.

I dont think the Earth One version supplanted Secret Origin. It's a seperate continuity from the monthly books.

 

[Gaith]

Can't anything ever have a rest? Can't some franchises look back and say, 'hey, we did something good, let's leave it there?'

So in other words... businesses shouldn't seek to make money?

 

[Broccoli]

Good. That means that the next movie will offer us something completely new for a superhero movie: closure.

Like it or not, but X-Men: Last Stand provided closure for that series.

Me too-and, for example, also only a year after this one, both of Superman!

That's not so much a reboot as it is just poor timing.

I dont think the Earth One version supplanted Secret Origin. It's a seperate continuity from the monthly books.

Yeah, that's kinda what I was indirectly trying to get at. The poor timing aspect, regardless if they are different continuities, is that they were still two origin stories released within one year of each other.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Good. That means that the next movie will offer us something completely new for a superhero movie: closure.

Like it or not, but X-Men: Last Stand provided closure for that series.

Oh yes. You're right.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Until the post credits scene.

 

[ColeMercury]

You know what'd be nice? If they didn't try to explicitly spell out "THIS IS A REBOOT" this time, but instead left it kind of ambiguous. Set it like ten or fifteen years into Batman's career as Batman, change the tone all you like but don't put in anything that explicitly contradicts the Nolan films, and let the audience judge for themselves whether it's a "reboot" or a sequel or whatever.

Like what "The Living Daylights" did with the James Bond series. Bond and Moneypenny had both spontaneously de-aged about twenty years each, and the tone had become a lot more serious, but they didn't actually come out and explicitly say "We are starting James Bond all over again!" (That time, at least.)

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

The strangest part I find about all this is Nolan having to take part in rebooting his own work. Which might be nice in that he and whoever he finds to be his successor could go in a far different direction. If its tied to JL they could totally have free reign to introduce some of the more fantastical elements which we haven't quite seen from Nolan yet. The Prestige and Inception probably being the closest ones.

 

[suarezguy]

Don't think it's a good idea to have too much closure, especially as the first two films so much emphasized that this was young Batman (just starting out and then one year in). You don't want to continue a franchise just for the sake of it, with degrading quality, but I think the point of franchises should be to build on what came before, at least in terms of style if not plot but preferably both.

Like Spider-Man, Batman has too many good villains and dramatic potential to limit a set of films to three, especially with the first principally an origin story and the third self-consciously conclusive.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

I'd like to see the next three be Batman already few years in kickin ass and then the next three after be a Batman Beyond era or even something like Kingdom Come.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I too would like to see the next depiction of the character be established already. I think Nolan's trilogy has done an incredible job of re-imagining the origin. As much as I'm an origin buff I don't think it's necessary to retell it in this case (and yes I realize that this kind of contradicts the comments I've made in the past regarding Superman, but the fact is that Batman has had his origin retold twice now on the big screen while Supes only once!).

 

[Greylock Crescent]

The timing is, indeed, a bit ... odd. But it makes sense to keep making Batman films to ride the success of Nolan's efforts. And it likewise makes sense to change the approach to keep the franchise away from diminishing returns on Nolan's approach.

 

[Captaindemotion]

I can't help wondering if these comments have been a bit overstated. I have no doubt that Batman movies will continue to be made after Nolan, Bale etc finish with them. As we've seen with Spider-man, Hulk, Punisher etc, the gap between one series ending and a new starting gets shorter and shorter. Funny how when Batman Begins was announced way back when, many thought it was far too soon after the end of the Shumacher/ Burton movies to start over again!

However, I'd be surprised if Nolan remains on in a production capacity. Surely if he wants a definite end to his series with TDKR he wouldn't want to be involved in a new version of Batman? He's said what he wants to say - why would he hang around if this is someone else's take?

I think that the idea of TDKR proving a first in how it 'ends' its tale is also a bit overstated. As has been said already, X-Men 3 did the same, killing off Xavier, Cyclops and Jean - mainly because of Tom Rothman's dumb idea that trilogies were essential and a series couldn't go beyond a third movie.

If Nolan goes down this line and ends with Batman dying, retiring or being crippled, then fair enough, whoever comes next will have to reboot it. But I'm with those who have said that the series should continue like Bond (pre-Casino Royale). No explicit references to what has gone before but nothing to expressly rule it out either. I would have preferred this to what seems likely to be in the vein of the Spider-man reboot.

 

[ColeMercury]

The timing is, indeed, a bit ... odd. But it makes sense to keep making Batman films to ride the success of Nolan's efforts. And it likewise makes sense to change the approach to keep the franchise away from diminishing returns on Nolan's approach.

Thing is, we're only two movies in and returns haven't been diminishing yet. For all we know at the moment, The Dark Knight Rises could end up surpassing The Dark Knight. And even if it doesn't measure up to TDK's success, that's still setting the bar pretty damn high. That's why I'm sort of wary about them trying to change everything after TDKR -- it seems to me that'd be sabotaging Nolan's films' success, rather than riding on it.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

^ To be clear, I'm expecting TDKR to be a solid film, better overall than BB. But let's face it, you can only go to the well so often before any film series begins to lose steam. So even if TDKR is a very good film, there are no guarantees beyond that. Ending Nolan's story on a high note (by that I mean a creatively successful one) before seeing the franchise diminish into mediocrity is a very respectable creative idea.

 

[SG-17]

If anything he should be making a Batman Beyond film.

 

[JarodRussell]

Will it be in 3D?

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

uhhh....i hope not. i think its WAY too soon to even ask that question. Let's just assume IMAX at the very least.

I don't even think they've started production on TDKR yet, have they?