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Wonder Woman headed to the small screen

^Yes, it was neither fish nor fowl (Bass nor Bat?); at least the West series embraced camp whole-heartedly. B&R tried for the odd bout of seriousness and genuine derring do.

It's been a long time from I've seen it - and I've no desire to see it again - but I remember not liking Clooney's performance. He was too smirky, there was no distinction between his Wayne or his Batman. Just didn't work for me. I much preferred Val Kilmer.

There, I've said it!
 
Captaindemotion said:
It's been a long time from I've seen it - and I've no desire to see it again - but I remember not liking Clooney's performance. He was too smirky, there was no distinction between his Wayne or his Batman. Just didn't work for me. I much preferred Val Kilmer.
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Well, I'm biased in Clooney's favor because he's a local boy, and because his father Nick was not only a friend of my father, but the all-time best TV news anchor who wasn't named Cronkite. George Clooney takes after his father -- increasingly, the older he gets -- and I think that speaks well for him.

As for Kilmer, I just don't see it.
 
^ Oh, I like Clooney in pretty much everything else and I like him as a person (not that I know him, but I find him genuinely likeable in interviews and pretty sound politically). But his Batman just didn't work for me.

Kilmer didn't look like Batman/ Wayne but had a certain athleticism, playboy charm and some of Keaton's little boy lost vulnerability.
 
^See, comparing him to Keaton doesn't sell me on it. Even after twenty-some years, my reaction to the casting of Michael Keaton as Batman is still, "What the hell were they thinking?"
 
I read somewhere that Val Kilmer was Bob Kane's favourite screen Batman, for what that is worth (probably little as it's an unsourced based-on-memory observation).

And Keaton's bland, sterile Wayne really is what sold the character in the Burton films.

I mean, they're Burton films. His protagonists are peculiar loners with a Gothic tint far more then they are muscular, athletic heroes. More in common with Edward Scissorhands then Superman, to put this another way.

And Keaton embodies that well enough. He's not the perfect expression of this trend in the way Johnny Depp in Ed Wood is, but he manages to feel uncomfortable with his human skin (he's so unremarkable Vicki Vale doesn't realize she's met Bruce Wayne when she meets him) and more comfortable in his dress up role. I'd draw a connection to Ed Wood again, but that'd be too obvious.

I can see why a purist of Batman comics might have a problem with this, but since I never read one and only know Batman via his media incarnations, I judged it on its own merits and found it... alright. Giving Keaton a romance in his uncomfortable Wayne role in the first movie is a miscalculation; it makes far more sense for him to have a relationship with a woman when he's in his true self, hence Catwoman, Returns, etc.
 
I'm not a purist; I like Adam West's Batman and Diedrich Bader's as much as Kevin Conroy's. But I just have a hard time seeing the character in Burton's films as Batman. I think they're perfectly adequate superhero movies; I just don't think they're good Batman movies.
 
Christopher said:
I'm not a purist; I like Adam West's Batman and Diedrich Bader's as much as Kevin Conroy's. But I just have a hard time seeing the character in Burton's films as Batman.
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Alright. In what way is the Michael Keaton character more out of touch with Batman then, say Adam West?
 
^ Actually, Adam West is pretty much like how the comic character was depicted in comics of the late 1950s and the 1960s. Square-jawed, serious, deadpan, handsome. Batman has never looked like Keaton - potato faced, receding hairline, small jaw, nor has he had the sort of borderline personality defect ADHD that Keaton seemed to be suffering from. The 'real' Bruce Wayne wouldn't be absent from that press conference at the start of the movie, nor would he fail to be recognised at his own party.

But having said that, it's a perfectly decent performance in its own right. As you say, it's a Burton movie first and a Batman movie second. Burton envisaged Batman as not being the muscular, square-jawed tough guy but being an ordinary man who needed the costume and toys to be able to fight crime. Taken in that context, Keaton is the right actor for Burton's vision of Batman. His vision just doesn't tally with mine - though I do like that little boy lost thing Keaton had, which chimed with the look on the face of the child actor playing young Bruce after his parents' murder.
 
Captaindemotion said:
^ Actually, Adam West is pretty much like how the comic character was depicted in comics of the late 1950s and the 1960s. Square-jawed, serious, deadpan, handsome. Batman has never looked like Keaton - potato faced, receding hairline, small jaw, nor has he had the sort of borderline personality defect ADHD that Keaton seemed to be suffering from.
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Right. The Adam West series faithfully adapted the comics of the time, even if that faithfulness was taken to a parodic extreme. Sam Hamm's script for Burton's Batman basically went back to the 1939 origins of the character and developed him in an independent direction from there.

I'll grant that it's a subjective assessment that Keaton is less Batman-like than West, and I don't claim to assert it as an objective truth. It's just that Keaton's and Burton's version doesn't fit my personal mental image of what Batman can be. It's too great a departure on many levels. He's short. He needs molded latex to appear muscular. He's willing to kill. And he's played by bloomin' Mr. Mom. I just can't get past Michael Keaton's fundamental Michael-Keatonness.
 
Too many of you has gone off thread,and this discussion was about Wonder Woman on the small screen.
Anybody got casting ideas in mind to discuss via the thread. Or that discussion about which Batman actor was your favorite IMO should be a separate thread.
Lets renew the discussion on Wonder Woman,then talk Batman actors on a separate,and equal thread.
Signed
Buck Rogers
 
Captaindemotion said:
Am I the only one amused by how Dusty Ayres can boast of only ever having watched one Smallville episode, then present a list of what's wrong with the series?
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I happed to see a bit of the show on the DVD documentary about Superman released around the time of Superman Returns-what little I saw of it didn't endear me to it at all. This opinion also comprises what else I've heard from others who hated it as well, plus the basic description of it that I've read.

Christopher said:
"Amused" isn't the word that comes to my mind.
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Because I have an opinion against Smallville, you're disgusted? At least unlike others on this board, when I'm disgusted with a show, I stay disgusted and don't watch it-period. Most of you guys and gals come back and bitch about Voyager & Enterprise for even longer than that.

As for what I said about mundanes-sorry, but they're the ones that separated themselves from sci-fi fans like us with the insults 'geek' & 'nerd'. The sci-fi fan community responded in kind by coming up with the word 'mundane' (the actual description of the word in this context as described by the Ann Arbor Sci-Fi Society is 'People who keep asking you if you watch/read that silly Sci-Fi garbage' (mostly friends, family, and co-workers). I've suffered this in my life in many instances-one time, a lady accused me of being addicted to science fiction! So, as you can see, I come by this feeling honestly.

If mundanes don't like Sci-fi TV that much, or can't stand any of the tropes, then they shouldn't be watching the shows in question. Forcing TV producers to de-Sci-fi-ize a SF/F show does nothingfor the show except take it away from what it was in the first place to gain a wider audience that most likely won't give a shit after it's gone (just what happened to the X-Files, it seems.)
 
Dusty Ayres said:
Christopher said:
"Amused" isn't the word that comes to my mind.
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Because I have an opinion against Smallville, you're disgusted?
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Uhhh... since when does "not amused" leave "disgusted" as the only possible alternative? I don't know where you're getting that from.

And the issue wasn't that you have an opinion, it's that you have an opinion that's evidently based on a nearly complete lack of information.
 
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