Tuesday, 5/6/97 Filmmakers betray original Caped Crusader
Writers, directors don’t recreate Batman’s true image as darkly
brooding antihero
A funny thing occurred to me the other day. I was forced to sit
through the trailer for "Batman and Robin" for the 48th time (once
upon a time, I’d see a movie just to see the Batman trailer, now
whenever I see the new trailer, I have a sudden urge to get up and
do something more stimulating, like make sure there’s soap in all
the men’s room dispensers), and to my delight, I heard a chorus of
boos and hisses go up once the garish trailer had finished. In
fact, one of those hisses was mine. What the hell happened? My
writing desk features a cheesy plastic statue of Batman, my key
chain still has the oval bat logo from the first film’s
merchandising blitz. I’ve always been a Batman fan, but now the
films have reduced the greatest hero in comicdom to a pathetic
embarrassment. To figure out why Batman has turned into guano, it
helps to backtrack to the beginning … at least to my beginning
with the Caped Crusader. Even as a kid, I knew that Batman was the
best of the Super Friends, because he was just a regular guy; not
some freak from another world, not some mutant, nor the recipient
of a bite from some radioactive critter. Batman is Batman through
his own intense (all right perhaps insane) dedication to ridding
the world of scum and villainy. He traveled the world and forged
himself into a badass, both mentally and physically, and it’s safe
to say my own ambitions and determination to realize them have
enabled me to relate to the brooding hero. Perhaps I’m jumping
ahead of myself, because as a child my image of Batman was from the
’60s TV show, and the aforementioned animated series, and the
campiness of the Dynamic Duo didn’t bother my juvenile
sensibilities none too much. But as I matured, so did Batman. For
those of you unfamiliar with the world of comics, writer-artist
Frank Miller wrote a Batman miniseries (later compiled into one
graphic novel) entitled "The Dark Knight Returns." Few works have
so radically and successfully affected a rebirth for such a
well-known comic hero. Miller’s story of a middle-aged Bruce Wayne
donning tights after 10 years of retirement floored fans by eliding
that camp factor from Batman and making him what he was to begin
with: a creature of the night. Bob Kane’s original vision was for
Batman to scare the bejeesus out of evildoers, hence the nocturnal
creature motif. And Batman’s origin was revised early on to make
him the survivor of a childhood tragedy that made him an orphan and
left him scarred forever. Batman was a hero with pain, with a dark
side (since he was always trying to keep his lust for revenge on
the right side of the law) and this made him unusually human for a
comic book character. By the ’50s, the comic book strayed from the
original vision, and by the ’60s things got downright campy. Neal
Adams began steering things back in the proper direction in the
’70s, and when Miller came along, a Batman Renaissance began. A
slew of book’s followed Miller’s, such as the brilliant and dark
quintessential Batman vs. Joker story "The Killing Joke," to
Miller’s follow-up outlining the hero’s humble beginnings in "Year
One." The fans ate it up, and the first shot generated by Miller
snowballed for three years, culminating in 1989 (Batman’s 50th
birthday) with the BIG MOVIE. The film was lacking, as Tim Burton
(who unlike most Hollywood directors actually has a signature
visual style) generally can’t tell a story to save his life. But
Burton’s dark vision of the Dark Knight was at least somewhat
faithful to his modern incarnation, faithful enough for fans to see
the film multiple times in one summer. Michael Keaton was a dubious
choice, but Burton argued that Batman was more than a square-jawed
hunk, and all that internal conflict (which Keaton was capable of
delivering) was what was important. And then the bottom dropped out
of the franchise. Burton bowed out, and was replaced by Joel
Schumacher, an industry man so completely without individual vision
that the franchise was doomed to go wrong. Schumacher has wagered
that we fans are sick of that dark and angsty Batman, and instead
we want a colorful, Day-glo tacky version of the Gotham Guardian.
"Batman Forever" was bad enough, but "Batman and Robin" looks like
a bad Ice Capades show, and the costume design makes everyone look
like refugees from a Vegas drag show. They’ve even added Robin,
utterly ruining Batman’s lone wolf mystique. What Schumacher and
his scribe Akiva Goldsman (memo to the WGA: do the public a real
service and consider trouncing out any member who writes lines
like, "This is the hockey team from hell!" thereby protecting
innocent viewers from the scourge of crapass writing) fail to
realize is that there would be no Batman franchise without the
interest generated by Miller’s Dark Vision and the fans who loved
it. Polls taken back when the film was in development show that the
average joe had little or no interest in a Batman movie, and such a
thing wouldn’t have even been feasible without fans like me. The
same fans who now find themselves betrayed with this Technicolor
tongue in cheek "Hi Freeze, I’m Batman!" rendition on the
character. Wouldn’t it be nice if the public broke with tradition
and gave the film (pardon the pun) the cold shoulder. One can hope.
And what’s with this fifty villains per film business! Even the
comic book writers have more discipline and talent than to resort
to crowding the story with so many characters so that they don’t
have to develop the characters’ twisted psyches or the complicated
relationships in Batman’s life (it’s criminal that Comissioner
Gordon, Batman’s best friend/father-confessor has had about twenty
minutes of screen time in all four films) let alone actually tell a
good, coherent story. This, along with the revolving-door policy
regarding Batmen, seems to have people wising up to the fact that
the Batman films are a case of Emperor’s New Clothes; lots of
flash, but nothing is really there. It’s a shame that the Batman
franchise has never found writers or directors who took the
character and his world seriously, as more than kiddie fare, but as
an example of how mature adult work can sometimes be done in the
comic book medium. So far the animated Batman film "Mask of the
Phantasm" (and the animated series itself) is the best non-comic
book incarnation of the Dark Knight Detective to come along, and
real fans can seek refuge in the series’ many well-done episodes.
In the meantime, the movies will continue to get it wrong and annoy
us; until of course they stop making a healthy profit, since that
clearly is the only thing on the minds of the films’ creators.
Brandon Wilson is a third-year graduate student in film directing
by day, and a masked avenger by night. So watch out. Brandon
Wilson