CASE FILE #124409: BATMAN

Trailer Trash Analysis:

The year is 1939. (Actually it's not, but you'll have to suspend disbelief for this to work.) Superman has taken the world by storm, in the process spawning a host of carbon copy imitators. DC Comics decides to take a different direction with the superhero genre, and tasks a teenager named Bob Kane with creating a more normal, accessible and down-to-Earth hero than the Son of Krypton. Kane, a functional illiterate who didn't understand what the words "normal," "accessible" and "down-to-Earth" meant, instead came up the story of a millionaire with a bat-shaped car who drove around in his underwear beating up clowns.

That millionaire, of course, was Bruce Wayne, aka The Bat-Man (later changed to the simpler "Batman" following a lawsuit from the hideous Bat-Boy of West Virginia cave fame). The premise of Batman has since endured to the point of being iconic, so that it's rare nowadays to find someone willing to step back for a second and realize how incredibly stupid it is. Even taking into account the time period (the 1930's, when everything was stupid) and the target market (kids, who have always been stupid), one still has to wonder exactly what Bob Kane was thinking when he gave us the idea of a man dressed in a bat costume who not only fought crime, but was a scientist, a detective, a black belt in karate and—following the addition of Robin to the series in 1940—a suspected pederast.

Batman resurfaced in the 60's as a campy television series starring Adam West. Though briefly popular, the show has since been denounced by Batman fans, who alleged the series was "too silly," making their hero look ridiculous. Fans craved a return to the "ultra-realistic, noir beginnings" of the comic. I've illustrated a few of these here, for those of you unclear as to what ultra-realistic noir looks like.

In an effort to take Batman back to his dark roots, Warner Brothers enlisted Tim Burton to direct a feature-film version of the popular character. Known for his dark work in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, as well as for his hilarious hair, Burton seemed the perfect choice to reinvent Batman as a gritty noir hero and have hilarious hair while doing so.

And so, in 1989 the Batman franchise entered box office lore to a media frenzy. Controversy raged over the casting of Michael Keaton as the titular detective crimefighter; at the time, Keaton was known mostly for comedies, as opposed to now, when he's known mostly for... well, something. What few realized, though, is that Burton purposely cast the role with a controversial actor, so as to draw attention away from the tie-in Batdance video, in which Prince expresses the struggle of Batman and the Joker with the most homosexual interpretive dance allowed at the time. Those of you who don't remember this video are among the truly blessed; those of you who do remember it most likely share the trauma I have of sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night shrieking, while visions of a hermaphroditic half-bat half-clown sashaying after me still linger in my subconscious.

At any rate, the dark Batman was a huge success. Burton was tasked to direct a sequel, with the goal of making it twice as dark as the first one. In this he succeeded; fully 70% of the action in Batman Returns is obscured in darkness and completely unrecognizable. Returns was also notable for the inspired decision to cast a skintight PVC catsuit in the role of Michelle Pfeiffer's body, and for managing to somehow make Danny DeVito look even more freakish and disturbing than usual.

With two successful entries in the Batman franchise under his belt, Burton decided to leave the series to devote more time to avoiding shampoo. In his place, Warner Brothers needed a director willing to sink the franchise into the depths of the ocean; they found that director in Joel Schumacher. The next two films under Schumacher, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, are almost unanimously believed to be among the most awful movies ever made. Despite this, however, both made hundreds of millions of dollars each, proving that there is nothing so awful that people won't pay money to see Jim Carrey in.

Forever and B & R are mostly known for returning Batman to the campy 60's feel the films were created to dispel in the first place. However, it's notable that when Adam West pulled bat-shark-repellent out of his utility belt in Batman: The Movie, it was meant to be wink-nudge ridiculous; whereas when George Clooney and Chris O'Donnell yell "Batskates!" in B & R (ejecting voice-activated bat-skates from their boots), then jump out of a plane and skate vertically down a frozen building, there isn't enough irony on the fucking planet that would make the scene anything other than embarrassing.

George Clooney later apologized publicly for Batman & Robin. Ironically, the only man to take the time to say "Sorry about that" was the only one who wasn't either a) spouting ice-related catchphrases, b) getting out-acted by Alicia Silverstone's rubber nipples, or c) being Chris O'Donnell, who is in a position to apologize for pretty much everything he's ever done.

Verdict:

Following Batman & Robin, the Batman franchise was declared officially dead, giving Hollywood executives the opportunity to immediately begin plans for reviving it. At one point there was talk of a Batman vs. Superman project, which was abandoned (see our Superman casefile). Other potential ideas for a fifth installment included Batman during his first year of crime-fighting; Batman as an old man; Batman as a teenager; Batman eating bugs for money; Batman in space; and some stupid ones.

Currently Memento's Christopher Nolan is slated to direct Batman V, with Christian Bale taking on the starring role. Given the campy excess of the last several Batmans, the pendulum has once again swung back to making the movie "gritty" and "dark," like... well, like Tim Burton already did.

If the makers of Batman V are reading this, I'd really like to clear this up to avoid further difficulties with what should by all rights be an enjoyable franchise. Batman isn't a great character because of the camp value. Batman isn't a great character because he's dark and gritty. Batman is a great character because he's batshit-bat-fucking-crazy. Nobody identifies with Batman. He's a billionaire. He owns collapsible bat-themed hang-gliders. He can only solve crimes if the criminals leave rhyming clues while wearing question mark-covered unitards. He beats up mutant penguins and lives in a cave with a ten-year-old boy. If anybody in the real world knows anyone remotely like Batman, I can assure you we avoid them like lepers, let alone identify with them spiritually.

No, the reason we come back to Batman as an icon again and again is because the title character, like most entertaining people, is so clearly a barking lunatic. Unlike Green Lantern or Wonder Woman, who at least have the pretense of powers to justify their lunacy, Batman is just some guy who dresses up like a bat every Friday and beats up criminals while Robin holds them down.

Even Batman's haunting ground, Gotham City, is a psychotic nightmare. Criminals attempt to poison the revervoir more often than city officials bother to chlorinate it. Gotham City museums actually have things worth stealing in them, but have yet to install any kind of reliable anti-theft device despite weekly break-ins. The police are unable to close the simplest of cases without sprinting up to the roof and shining an emergency "Get The Guy Who Dresses Like a Bat Over Here" floodlight into the sky. There are evidently so many aviaries and circuses in Gotham City that there are over a dozen abandoned ones handy for rental as lairs by villains.

I wholeheartedly support Gotham City's enthusiastic support of bird and circus-based attractions, but it's still clearly a town packed to bursting with the mentally disturbed. Only in a place that crazy could a Bat-Man ever even exist, let alone thrive.

That's the simple beauty of Batman's enduring legacy. We don't identify with him. We don't laugh at him. Mostly we just marvel at him, I think. In most movies, the villains get to have all the fun, and the heroes tend to be fairly bland. Batman's one of the few characters I can think of who's as monumentally fucked up as the criminals he's chasing. Tim Burton and Michael Keaton understood that. I'm optimistic that Nolan and Bale understand that too. I'm going to go out on a limb in saying I don't think there'll be a bat-skate in sight.

Behind the Scenes...

The Untold Story of Batman, With The Cast & Crew of The Batman Series

The Joker (Psychotic Killer): "Crime? Well, I've turned my back on a lot of that now. Actually, you should hear Samantha, my wife, harp on me about that. [laughs] Don't mention my mass murders in front of her, that's all I'm saying. I never hear the end of it. I run a bait and tackle shop in Miami Springs. I pretty much live and die by the tourist season now. I also do some marlin charters on the side if it's slow, just get some tourists out there with some poles int he water. You don't make a lot, but it's a fun time. So, but, yeah— yeah, I used to be a pretty big in the crime thing. I think me, Lex [luthor], maybe Brainiac— we were the big names back then. Did I know about what was going on with Robin? Well, I always kind of figured. Penguin used to tell me all sorts of stories when they'd caught him—congratulatory ass-pats, 'Grab onto me for safety!', that kind of thing. I never saw much, though. Keep in mind I was killing hundreds back then, so I had my plate full. But sure, I heard the stories."

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