The Guard
Avenger
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The Guard keeps referencing the 70's as a joking period for Batman
I do? I thought I said that the dark, brooding, loner version of The Batman we know today didn't exist back then. Because he didn't. Bruce Wayne had a life, Batman had a life. The man was seen in public, and he didn't push his friends and family away. And yes, he did joke around a bit. He even (gasp) smiled quite a bit.
but my memories are the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neal confrontations with characters like Ra's Al Ghul (which is actually pronounced Ross Al Ghoul and properly translated means 'Head of the Ghoul' - Sorry Denny - Ghul means ghoul not demon), Two Face, and the revival of the Joker in 'The Joker's 5-way Revenge'. I also include in that, the Marshal Rogers stuff of the early 80's.
Yes, my memories are those things, too, but even in those stories, there was quite a bit of lightheartedness. Batman talked a lot, especially while he was fighting. He was friendly a lot of the time, and even polite. He was, in a word, human.
Batman was dark and moody. I'm at a loss to understand why The Guard keeps refering to Batman as a jokester during this period.
Again, I never said that. I said the version we know today wasn't around. The Batman that pushed everyone and every thing away and sought the deepest darkness without crossing over into obsession. But like I said, I can recall plenty of jokes and puns during that era. Tom Mankiewicz's THE BATMAN is, I think, a good example of what kind of Batman movie that era might have presented. Very lighthearted, very heroic, not as dark and brooding as we'd like to think.
We saw a great decline in the Bat gadgets and more reliance on his wits and fists. Denny's Batman WOULD pick up a peice of pipe and use it as a weapon if he were in a pinch.
I don't know about great decline. I never saw many Bat-gadgets in the comics to begin with, and the ones that he did use, like the Whirly-Bat, survived the "reinvention" and are still around in some form. I suppose that Batman used less gadgets than he did in the TV show, but wasn't that the case even in the comics? There have always been a few staples of Batman's aresenal: The batarang, batrope, rebreather, and smoke and gas pellets. All those were present both before and after the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams period. Batman's always been resourceful. That's nothing new, and certainly I've seen Batman throw barrel rings to capture fleeing criminals. And that was in the 40's and 50's.
Because the general public had only the image of Batman as this Adam West silly costumed clown that lost it's luster along with camp itself, it was 20 years before Batman would be allowed to grace a screen again.
Or it could have been that comic books were seen as children's fare for a very long time. After all, Superman and most other heroes didn't even get a campy TV show, and most heroes didn't grace screens again until the late 70's.
Even at that, Burton's film, as dark as it was, was still not that far removed from the camp.
Now this I'm interested in. How so? Because I see a dark, disturbed version of The Dark Knight. Not camp. Unless we have different definitions of the word.
By blending some straight character into the silliness, he made a pitch to both the nostolgiac's who had a secret soft spot for the humor, and a tip of the hat to those who were hoping for something more serious. It wasn't completely satisfying but at least it wasn't an out and out joke.
Let's be honest, though. There's always been, and always will be, humor in Batman stories. I don't think that makes it campy.
And, if you're asking my opinion, NO - the Bill Dozier/Adam West 'Batman' wasn't any more Batman than the Burton. The 60's Batman was a clown.
So the entire 30-40 year period before Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams came along meant nothing?
As to things pulled right from the comics - of course there are: The shot of young Bruce in the midst of his dead parents was lifted right from Mazzuchelli who got it from someone elses earlier interpretation. The flowers being left in Crime Alley? Thank Sam Hamm for that. Alfred being the Wayne's butler - of course - but a surragate grandfather?
I don't mean things that were directly lifted out of the comics. I was referring more to things like...classic elements pulled from the comics. Things we'd seen over and over again in the pages. Some I can think of, off the top of my head.
-Gadgets. We saw the batarang/batrope in the opening scene, the batbola, and the use of smoke pellets.
-Batman using his image to strike fear into criminals.
-Despite what many people say, the same martial arts oriented Batman we saw in the comics. Up until about 1990, Batman's repertoire consisted of punches, kicks, chops, blocks, flips, and swinging down into people. All those save one were in the film.
-The Joker killing innocent people for the sheer thrill of it, and even killing his own men in clever ways.
-Batman the detective. No, he didn't tell us what chemicals The Joker used to poison Gotham, but that's because most of us wouldn't have understood it anyway. He didn't go that in depth in the comics either, and his detective work was usually something far more obvious and "gimmicky", and supervillain oriented.
-Bruce Wayne's obsession with his mission, and his desire for a normal life, and love, but the realization that he cannot have one.
-The Joker orchestrating a huge parade/party with innocent lives at stake to draw out Batman.
-The Joker surviving impossible odds, when by all rights, he should be killed. (The Batwing's attack)
-Romance. Batman was always having romantic flings in the comics. Vicki Vale, Talia, Silver St. Cloud, Rachel Caspian, even Catwoman for a while.
-The Bat-Signal. Come on, the first movie nailed the signal.
And that's in the first film. The subsequent films had some more. No, it wasn't the exact same Batman people were used to. But beneath the surface, the core of the character and his world were there.
There were other elements that only made the film less... The Joker being the murderer of the Waynes? By that thinking, Batman should have hung up his cape after the Joker's death.
Why? It was fairly obvious that he wasn't in it for revenge in BATMAN, but because he could do, as he told Vicki, something that no one else could. Otherwise, why would he have bothered rescuing that family in the beginning? He was clearly a Batman determined to make Gotham safe for decent people. And that only made the character richer, I think.
About Keaton being an everyman ... what everyman could do what Batman does?
No one. But almost anyone could do what Keaton's Batman did, with enough drive. But then Burton's Batman wasn't the uber-acrobatic, leaping-before-he-looks version of the comics. He was grounded in reality. A man dealing with real criminals in a real world. Where some martial arts training and clever gadgets were enough.
Could you?
With that suit, a modicum of training, and some gadgets, I'd say so. I don't see why not.
Suffice to say, Keaton had to have the sculpted rubber suit because, without it, he might just as well been Bill Murray. Someone a little more in shape would have been a wonderful thing.
Keaton has a rubber suit because that's what Tim Burton and the costume designer wanted. Armor. Something to protect him, and make him look imposing, not ridiculous, as tights almost certainly would have. That's probably also why the Batsuit is black, not blue and gray. That's what early costume designs show, that's what Burton and Keaton and Ringwood have said for a long time. It was the plan from the get-go to have whoever Batman wearing a kind of "armor".
Chris Reeve made it a point to get into shape for Superman.
Superman is supposed to be huge. He can afford to wear tights, because bullets bounce off him.
It may come as a suprise to some of you but Batman has evolved. He isn't and shouldn't be that silly character from the 40's through the 60's.
True, but he will continue to keep elements of those years in his mythos. Things like Joe Chill, The Red Hood, Lew Moxon, his penchant for detective work, colorful villains, and even Robin.
No more so than you should be forced to continue to wear diapers. comics are source. That's the end all statement. Comics are where Batman was born and where his evolution takes place.
Then why did the movies appear to have something to do with his evolution toward a darker, more realistic version of the character in the comics?