Batman on Film Part 5: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

This was only supposed to be a four part look at the live action Batman films, but while at a recent dinner celebrating my birthday my friends and I discussed the Batman films, and we joked how I was a fanboy for Mask of the Phantasm, the movie based on Bruce Timm's Batman: The Animated Series. This has always been my favorite Batman movie, and as I was writing up drafts of the Batman on Film chapters, between my notes of admiration and complaints, the question became: What Batman movie, if any, deserves a 5 out of 5?

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is the perfect Batman movie. From the perfect dark, brooding and gothic mood set by Bruce Timm, the perfect casting and voice acting from Andrea Romano, to the epic music by Shirley Walker, to the cast led by Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Dana Delany, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Bob Hastings, Robert Costanzo, Stacy Keach and Abe Vigoda, to the brilliant story by Alan Burnett and written by Alan Burnett, Martin Pasko, Paul Dini and Michael Reaves.

The story takes place in two different time frames, telling a story in the present of a masked killer called the Phantasm killing off mobsters and a story taking place ten years prior that tells us of Bruce's days leading up to becoming Batman and the loss of his true love, with both stories meeting at the climax. It sounds trite and clichéd but it couldn't be further from that.

A love story never really seems to work within a Batman story for a couple of reasons. At the end of the day the reader/viewer always knows he'll choose his mission, his devotion to Gotham, his vow to his parents over Silver St. Cloud, Julie Madison, Vicki Vale, Nocturna, Selina Kyle, Talia Al Ghul, Wonder Woman, Shondra Kinsolving, Vesper Fairchild, and Zatanna. That story's been done to death so who really cares, right? Then there's the fact that these love interests have become little more than Bond girls: they'll be the damsel in distress, tempt Bats into giving up the life, but there's really nothing to them. The writers know a steady girl will never work so they just string the character along for a few issues and kill her off so we can have another two page spread of Batman brooding in the rain next to some gargoyles. As always, however, it's how you tell the story.

In Phantasm we're told from the beginning that the relationship didn't work out. We're given the story anyway because it's necessary to the plot, but also because the relationship crumples not because of Bruce Wayne's obsession and insanity. We learn in the past time frame that Bruce scrapped the idea of becoming Batman because he wanted to be with Andrea Beaumont, and when she comes back into the present timeline, while we are given the usual "I'll give up being Batman for you!" shtick, it once again ends in an unexpected way: Andrea Beaumont is the Phantasm.

The Batman of this movie doesn't kill. Ever. What a concept. He does manage to have a bit of a sense of humor--he makes a joke or two during the movie, but doesn't even come close to being campy, and still manages not to become the humourless neglectful father bordering psychotic "Dick Knight" we've seen in All Star Batman or the mainstream continuity from about 2000 until now. When he does get to the point of severe douchiness, Alfred brings him back down to earth. That's a subtle moment that doesn't get much attention. Bruce is always this close to losing his goddamn mind and with all the awful stuff he's lived through as Batman he gets a bit frayed. It was nice to actually see him become emotional and flustered. 

Like most Batman movies, this one is heavy on theme. Here it's parallels. The journey of the revenge seeker--Bruce Wayne and Andrea Beaumont--is explored here. Bruce becomes Batman and in doing so devotes his life to being a masked vigilante and rejects the idea love; Andrea does the same. Near of middle of film Joker makes a joke (like he's supposed to, Nolan) to the effect that the Phantasm makes Batman look cute. And it's the truth. The costume is scarier, the weapons are stranger, and the methodology is different: the Phantasm is willing to kill. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Throughout Phantasm there is a gold locket that Andrea keeps with her. It's in shape of a heart and inside there is a picture of her and Bruce. It's also a thematic point in the movie. In the flashbacks she wears it around her neck, in the present she has it on her nightstand, and at the end of the movie it's hanging in the batcave for Bruce to find. This goes back on Andrea's rejection of love. From keeping Bruce and their time together close to her heart when they were together, it's no longer on her when she decides to become a revenger, but still on the periphery of her mind--in sight but not quite, it stands as a reminder of what she lost--and after her vengeance is casted and her mission complete, when they both realize that they can't be together because of everything they've done, the locket appears in the cave not only as a way for Bruce to know she's still alive, but also tells us that she's truly alone now; the memories are tainted by the revenge and the locket which keeps a picture of them in better times is now given to Bruce as Andrea's way of telling him that the best moments of her life were always with him; she had carried the love and when she discarded it she lost her way into the murderous side of revenge. It is a reminder, a love letter, a warning. 

  

As in all great love stories, protagonists Bruce and Andrea meet at a cemetery. Bruce was visiting his parents to make sure they are still there, and Andrea is visiting her mother who died of cancer. Each of these snapshots into their relationship are layered with a sense of foreboding, either through events (like her father becoming involved in the mafia or Bruce being unable to leave a group of thugs alone) or through good old fashioned foreshadowing where a group of bats literally come between them. Andrea's father is killed by the mafia and Andrea decides to avenge his death. Bruce and Andrea are orphans seeking revenge for their murdered parents. As the Phantasm Andrea's a killer and her passing resemblance to Batman leads them into conflict and makes the police think that Batman's gone crazy so they start to hunt him. Really? Now, he's gone crazy? Really?


Thematically speaking, the foreshadowing doesn't end there. One of the more subtle references is the World's Fair. Bruce and Andrea in their formative years go there and see the hopeful world of tomorrow. When we return to the fair in the present, it is dilapidated, abandoned and grimy. At once it shows the great change to Bruce and Andrea's relationship--the happiness of years' past, the grimness that's taken them now. The fair is also the sad truth of memory, when we look back we tend to romanticize the past as being far greater than it truly was. They loved each other simply and easily then, but there were darker edges surrounding them always: Carl Beaumont's dealings with the mafia, and Bruce attempting to (and failing) to stop a robbery just outside of the fair. Hindsight isn't always 20/20.

By the end of the movie, we see Andrea as bordering insanity and so obsessed with revenge that she's willing to die for it. She disappears, presumably killed, and Alfred stitches Batman up in the cave. He mentions how revenge blackens the soul and says that he's always afraid that Bruce was going to fall into that same pit. Alfred goes on to say that there was no saving her, that she had been dead for a long time. Andrea's last words: "I am alone" says more about her character than anything Rachel could do in two movies, and Alfred's speech has more weight and meaning to it than "It's not who I am underneath" and "You either die a hero or become a jerk-off" could ever hope.  

The parallels of the revenger are again realized more as the movie reaches its climax. Batman is furious at the Joker. You see, it was a pre-Joker Jack Napier who was working for the mafia and killed Beaumont's father and set this modern revenge tragedy up in the first place. Batman's level of violence is raised to eleven and he is reckless in his actions, pitting himself in as much danger of dying as the Joker. However, when push came to shove, Batman was the voice of reason trying to keep Andrea from going too far. And that's Batman. He's willful and vengeful, but he doesn't kill, and that keeps him from becoming evil. It's a character defining moment. And that was the difference between Bruce and Andrea in the end--as Alfred said, it was too late for her.

On a related note, I don't mind seeing the pre-Joker Jack Napier working for the mafia in this capacity similar to Batman because we're given very little about him in this life. He has no dialogue and shows only his callousness when Andrea goes into her house to find her death father she screams, Napier just picks up an apple from the groceries she dropped, bites it and walks away. The mystery remains. Speaking of the Joker: they got it right. He was funny, scary, and he wasn't over or underused. One of Batman's flaws was Burton's overuse of the Joker. As the film went on his scenes didn't seem as special because he was in almost all of them. And he went underutilized in The Dark Knight because as far as I'm concerned he never made an appearance in it. Phantasm managed to strike a balance between less is more and doing more with less.

For a movie given a PG rating and sold to children, this is an extremely bloody and sexually explicit movie. Batman is a bloody mess at the end of the movie, Joker gets teeth knocked out, Andrea is beaten like an Italian housewife, and Bruce gets laid. Twice. Under no uncertain terms. This was pretty mind-blowing at seven and equally mind-blowing when I rediscovered it as a teenager. The action of the movie is hyper and exciting. It's cartoony, but still incredibly violent. This goes back to my complaint on live action superhero movies: what looks awesome in the comics and in the cartoons won't translate onto a live action screen. Imagine the climactic battle between Batman, Joker, and the Phantasm being played out by real people on a real set (more likely a real green screen, actually) with the World's Fair items being used as weapons, the tiny airplanes, the miniature city, the robot wife, and imagine the Phantasm's costume and how he disappears into smoke. Now imagine how silly it would look in live action.

Naturally, Batman is still a bit of a psycho. Once Andrea Beaumont comes into the present story, rather than call her up or send flowers to the door, Bruce hangs outside her apartment in the rain looking through binoculars, bugs her phone, and breaks in to rummage through her panties. That last one was just a joke, but not by much. It shows how intermixed these personalities have become. Bruce Wayne and Batman exist as a toxic relationship to one another, not unlike Bruce Wayne and Andrea Beaumont. They always lead to trouble. Their relationship is one of Batman's most important--and one of the best--because of the complexity of it. They're so similar in their methods and style of dress, they both lost their parents, they both desire/need revenge, they're both obsessed with their mission and they both want to end up with each other. It's all highly tragic without being maudlin like Peter Parker and Mary Jane and without being whiny...like Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Whereas Bruce loved Selina and Talia because they're the forbidden fruit and Bruce loved Zatanna because, well, you never forget your first, Andrea understood Bruce's mindset. They were mirrors of each other, playing out the same game but with slight differences. There's a Shakespearean tragedy rolled up in there.

The two pivotal Batman moments come at the middle point of the movie. The first is Bruce's decision to scrap the idea of being Batman to lead a happy life with Andrea. He realizes that he's reneging on his vow and goes to his parents' grave in the rain and asks for their forgiveness, that he wants a sign that he could be allowed to leave them. Bruce actually begins to weep a little, and says that he never counted on being happy. It's a powerful scene to watch. The animation, the music, Kevin Conroy's emoting, it's all quite perfect. It's all capped wonderfully by Andrea coming to him and saying that maybe they were meant to find each other, that it was his parents' way of saying he could be happy if he wanted to.

The second comes right after Andrea flees with her father. Bruce decides he has nothing left and figures now would be a good time to start attacking strangers in alleyways. Captured only in silhouette, we see Bruce hesitate before he puts on the mask, looking at it, realizing what he's about to do. He turns around and faces Alfred who exclaims "My God" and we see only the vorpal eyes and the black silhouette. Alfred's exclamation isn't one of fear exactly, but in reaction to what he realizes Bruce was becoming since the death of his parents. Alfred always attempted to keep Bruce from falling too far, and now sees that he has failed. Batman is the physical manifestation of Bruce's pain and now Alfred sees just what Bruce has let out onto the world. He's mourning the death of the boy he raised. 

All around, Phantasm manages to hit all the major points of the Batman/Bruce Wayne character. We see Batman search for evidence, his detective skills unravel major pieces of the mystery, we see Bruce Wanye's playboy image--his promiscuity, how it affects the poor slut, how no woman seems to measure up to Andrea--we see him obsess over his failures and ignore his victories, and we see him hope. That's a trait of Batman's that often gets ignored. Of any superhero he's the one who has the most hope--hope that he'll succeed, that people can become better, that there's a better world out there. Dick Grayson (as written by Peter Tomasi said this of Bruce after he "died"): "Thinking of Bruce kneeling here alone in the blood of his mom and dad - the cordite of the fired gun still fresh in the air ... it takes everything I have to hold the tears back. So much loss. It's strange how in the end that cold, evil deed even dictated my own future. I see Bruce. I see me. And seeing those old wax spots on the cave floor a few weeks ago got me thinking about the oath I made to Bruce ... and what it really means. The light from the candle didn't just help us see the words better that night ... The light from this candle was a beacon for the wounded soul of a young boy ... it helped me see a path of selflessness and devotion. Devotion to the common good. And this light must always shine no matter what. In those single life-altering moments ... we both had to depend on the kindness of strangers. And lucky for us ... they were caring and loving people ... at the end of all that pain and horror. Thank you, Bruce. There will always be hope in Gotham City."

I usually don't care for flashbacks in books or movies; often I think it's a stalling measure, but here it strikes a perfect balance between character and plot, and it sets up the coming events in a tragic way: we want good things to continue happening, but as the past and present stories reach their climax and begin to collide, each scene becomes more depressing and leads to the greater tragedy: that Batman will always be Batman, and he'll always be alone.


As much as I love this movie, I do have some problems with it. The revelation of Andrea Beaumont (who should be blonde in my opinion) being the Phantasm is a neat one. Surprising as all hell, but it doesn't make sense. She's too small, too short, and how would she have been able to push over the mortuary statue? God bless her, but she doesn't have the physicality to do all those things. I'm not even trying to be sexist here (really!). She says to Bruce she took a self defense class. That's not good enough. Also, at 76 minutes, the movie isn't long enough. If Phantasm had been a few minutes longer we could have been given a look at what Andrea's life had been like in the ten years in between the death of her father and the beginning of her revenge plot. It would have been nice to see how she, you know, managed to do these physically impossible things. With a longer run time we could see more of Bruce and Andrea in the present and have their relationship slowly begin to move towards each other again. We also could have seen what was going on in Bruce's mind when he decided to stop being Batman, we could how he felt when he realized the Phantasm was Andrea, and we could have seen how Alfred felt about all of this. He has a stake in this too, Alfred raised Bruce, so we should see him struggle as the surrogate father, trying to lead Bruce to sanity, and react to his disappointment when it all falls apart. And most of all, with the added run time, we could have avoided the same plot hole from Batman Returns that involved Batman being cleared of the charges off screen.

Those are pretty minor complaints, and when you look in the scope of the entire Batman-film catalogue, this one always stands out.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm: 5 out of 5.

New content on 1/8/11.

Batman on Film Part 4: Batman Returns

Batman Returns is a thematic Christmas tale full of themes on the human heart, choice, hope, interaction and duality that one cannot help but wonder if an early draft was penned by Charles Dickens. It's also ripe with enough fetishistic sex that one cannot help but wonder if the draft after that was penned by Oscar Wilde (with Ronald D. Moore and Caligula on board as story editors to add in those extra layers of sexual hang ups, dysfunction, and shame). Also, just like The Dark Knight, this Batman movie has almost no semblance of a plot. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Whereas Batman '89 was gothic in its background, Returns brings it to the forefront. If looked at from the Dickensian aspect, Batman Returns is a retelling of A Christmas Carol through a noir perspective which casts Batman as Ebenezer Scrooge, the Penguin as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Catwoman as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Max Shreck (who in turn is a reference in name and look to Max Schreck of Nosferatu) as the Ghost of Christmas Future. They all reflect each other, as well as Gotham City, and most importantly Bruce Wayne himself.

One of the reasons why the characters are hardly recognizable as their comic book counterparts is a bit complicated, having to do with dozens of rewrites, Sam Hamm dropping out (or being fired depending on who's telling the story), Burton's own wandering interest, and the addition of Daniel Waters as writer and Wesley Strick who did an uncredited rewrite to the final script. In short, however, due to the major success of Batman, the studio gave Tim Burton a shitload of creative control. And for better or worse we have Batman Returns.

Waters' desire was for Returns to be "a social satire that had an evil mogul backing a bid for the Mayor's office by the Penguin. I wanted to show that the true villains of our world don't necessarily wear costumes." The problem is that this is a superhero movie where people generally, you know, wear fucking costumes.

Christmas plays something of a thematic point in Batman Returns. At the beginning of the movie Max Shreck is referred to as Santa Claus, only for us to learn he's a total bastard. Since Christmas is meant to be the best time of the year, when we're all giving gifts and being happy, in Gotham everything is still fucked up. Christmas is a time of renewal and preparation as we all hope to end the old year on a decent note and hope for a better one in the upcoming. It's about hope; hope permeates rotten through Gotham City during the movie, but it ends on a hopeful note. The only ones who appreciate Christmas are Alfred and Bruce (who doesn't even appreciate the meaning until the end of the movie). 

Coming off of the first movie, with Batman having solved the murder of his parents, he no longer wants to be Batman. The way he waits for the signal is one of regret, dread, and lamentation. He doesn't want this. When it happens, there's just anger; a look that says he knows it was going to happen, but still disappointed anyway. He's more violent this time around, even less chatty, and these actions are so commonplace that the police aren't surprised when they believe he's killed an innocent woman. Since Batman was created by Bruce Wayne as a means to combat his feelings of helplessness and a means of vengeance following his parents' murder, with their deaths now solved, Batman no longer has a reason to exist. His line to Selina at the beginning of the movie: "I mistook me for someone else" speaks to that. There's more Bruce Wayne than Batman in this movie because of it. Bruce's attraction to the equally damaged Selina Kyle speaks to his desire to settle down with someone who understands him. (Vicki Vale couldn't "reconcile" it and that's why she left.) By the end of the movie he's so ready to call it quits as Batman, he rips his mask off as a way of getting his point across to Selina, who in turn takes her mask off. It goes back to the scene before between the two of them:

Selina: "I guess I'm just tired of wearing masks."
Bruce: "Me too."

By the end of the movie, Batman earns a bit of redemption, and his recitation of a Christmas platitude "Good will to men and women" is his way of coming out of the moral hole he was losing himself in. He was going to try to be a better man, and fight as Batman as a choice: hence Batman returns. He is the iteration of Scrooge in this movie not only because he's a rich miserable motherfucker but because the villains of the film visit him as representative traits of his personality at different stages of his psychological development.

As Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, they both attempt to form connections with each other ("He makes me feel the way I hope I really am"), while also, regretfully being forced from each other because of the pull of their other lives. They're desperate, awkward, and dark. Even when they're vulnerable they force each other away from the wounds they gave each other. They were both attracted to the other's darkness while both were trying to push away. They both move closer and engage in subterfuge until they realize the cycle they've been locked in. "Does this mean we have to fight?" is Selina's way of noting this realization and being aware of the fact that despite their feelings for each other they would still inexorably be enemies.

The frank and sometimes odd depictions of sexuality in this movie made it controversial among parents groups and caused Warner Brothers to reconsider allowing Tim Burton to helm their Batman films. This led to Joel Shumacher being hired, and the same groups didn't like him because of his possibly gay interpretation of Batman and Robin. Will Smith was right: parents just don't understand. Moving on, yeah, there's a lot of fetish in Batman Returns.

Batman and Catwoman's relationship starts off with and becomes impelled by violence. Catwoman penetrates Batman, Batman repeatedly beats Catwoman (who is dressed as a dominatrix, whip and all, mind you) in an attempt to overpower her; the Penguin, a bird, attempts to sexually posses a cat, which are usually more predatory. When his sexual advances fail he attacks her, the result of which leaves Catwoman's clothes torn, her body beaten. The sexual curiosity between Batman and Catwoman is formed by the mystery of the other's identity with Catwoman feeling Batman up in an attempt to know where the human part of him is. Their curiosity and attraction to one another grows as does their frequency and level of violence in dealing with each other and others around them. They have a psycho-sexual fixation on one another. I can't believe I'm stooping to this level, but I think I'll quote All Star Batman where Batman and Black Canary have sex after being turned on by the severe beatings they handed out to some drunks: "We kept our masks on...it was better that way."

The relationship of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle is in direct correlation to their alter ego's relationship. At some level they want to make a connection with each other to offset the oddity of their superhero/villain connection and attempt at something normal. This fails because their personalities bleed into their everyday Bruce/Selina lives and had it not been for their emotional distresses they likely would not have found each other attractive in the first place. Selina confirms this mid-film: "It's the so-called 'normal' guys who always let you down. Sickos never scare me. Least they're committed."

It's not only the complexity of the sexual hang-ups or the fetish of wearing leather bodices and masks, but of the persistent references to sex and sexual acts (mostly made by Catwoman and the Penguin) that led to such an adult take that made most adults enjoy the film, that pissed off parents groups, and baffled the younger audience. I could go on and list these moments, zingers and one-liners, but you'd be better off watching them yourself. Context is everything.

As I said earlier, this is a retelling of A Christmas Carol. Bruce, obviously, is Scrooge. He's bitter and angry, his choice have cost him a normal life with Vicki Vale. The police tolerate him but don't seem to lose any sleep when they think he's lost his shit, Alfred seems more complacent because Bruce is just getting darker and more aggressive. Throughout the movie Bruce deals with the darker sides of his personality--personified in Catwoman, Penguin, and Shreck, our three ghosts of Christmas--and come out the other end of the movie with a changed outlook; even though Bruce lost so much, like Scrooge realized he had, he sees his survival and these lessons he's learned as the means of getting a second chance. In Bruce and Scrooge we find the darkness of personality in lives led poorly, and in the end, lives resolved in an honest desire for redemption.

Penguin is the sins of Gotham City's past, its elite, coming back to note their sins; The Ghost of Christmas Past. He shows the darkness of the city not only before the creation of Batman, but before the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne (the comics often took the stand that when "Gotham's First Family" was killed and their killer never found the city went from troubled to screwed); Penguin's outer and inner ugliness is reflective of the city and its citizens (attempted infanticide!). His line to Batman towards the end of the movie: "You're just jealous. I'm a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask" and Bats's reply "Maybe so" shows us that they reflect each other as well. Batman was loved by the city, Penguin wanted that; in turn, Batman was losing his humanity and becoming more like Penguin. With that loosened morality structure he could do his job more effectively (as seen earlier in the movie).

Penguin is also biblically leaning in his endgame: the murder of the first born sons of Gotham City. This goes back to his desire to be wanted and the fact that he never is. Even when the city loves him, he's still surrounded by his gang of degenerates, he's still sexually rejected by Catwoman (who is defined as being the height of sexuality in Gotham) and even by plucky impressionable students and the people who work for him. Penguin is the darkened version of Bruce. His parents discarded him, whereas Bruce's parents loved him (the rejection is here as well), and had things been different, perhaps Bruce would have been a psychotic revenge seeker. Oh wait.  

The effect Batman has had on the city led to the creation of Catwoman--The Ghost of Christmas Present. Instead of lower crime stats, there are other masked vigilantes running about. I actually defend this incarnation of Catwoman (that is, the seething violent feminist that would make even Gloria Allred nervous) because it takes the sexual fantasy of the superhero and turns it into the fetishistic nightmare that it must be (she wants to play an intricate part in Batman's "degradation"), while also reflecting Batman: She's entirely morally bankrupt, as Batman stands near that precipice himself. They are, as Batman says, "Split right down the center." Catwoman rebuffs him because this isn't a fairy tale and it isn't supposed to be. While Bruce was becoming a darker personality, she was even worse, she couldn't imagine anything resembling a happy ending anymore.

I own two black turtlenecks and a blazer because of this movie.

With Batman's morality lower than ever, Max Shreck, as the Ghost of Christmas Future represents Bruce Wayne's future if he continued to darken. Older, more dangerous Shreck has killed his business partner, his secretary, and cares only for his legacy (his company and son). Bruce as Batman has already killed a number of people and has become more violent in his means. As Bruce Wayne he sees the threat of Max Shreck and they immediately become enemies. The fact that Shreck has more sway in Gotham and its politics is dangerous, but these are relationships that have taken years to cultivate, and one can't help but see Bruce beginning to make the same relationships or he wouldn't have been so close to Shreck in the first place. (A funny thing to note is that even when Shreck attempted to get ride of Mayor Hill and his candidate turned out to be a dangerous criminal, Gotham's most influential--Mayor Hill included--still showed up to his masquerade ball; the Mayor's costume was a plastic knife in his back. Shreck is too influential to ignore.)

By the end of the movie, the repeated "Things change" line isn't a quip so much as a thematic point. The characters are examined, mirrored, changed or killed by the end of the movie; everyone is forced to look at who they really are: Shreck by Catwoman, Penguin by Batman and Shreck, Catwoman by Batman, Batman by his villains.   

Hello Kitty is for schmucks.

The actors, specifically Keaton (who was finally given his due), Pfeiffer, and Walken drive this movie. Keaton and Pfeiffer are given the best material, their scenes together manage to be smoldering, tragic, dirty, sad and beautiful all at once, while Walken has fun walking around in the bastard skin of Max Shreck, playing the evil industrialist, the post-modern devil.


Now, this is all well and good, but these aren't the characters we've had around for sixty or seventy odd years. Batman isn't heroic, Selina Kyle died and was brought back to life by cat bites as a sex object, and naturally seems to just come to the conclusion that she needs to dress as a cat and blow up department stores (again, live action Batman movies demand acts of terrorism), the Penguin is a sex crazed deformed creature who spits tar, and Shreck at times comes off as a poor man's Lex Luthor. There are penguin suicide bombers, a circus of criminals who know martial arts and can hotwire the Batmobile, a vast sewer system perfect for a criminal base, a very gullible and unobservant Gotham City, a giant car/boat/duck, penguins miraculously in the warm waters of the east coast, Bruce being DJ, a convoluted and nonsensical plot involving mayoral control, Batman driving a giant phallus, an unresolved plothole involving Batman being exonerated off-screen (presumably).


Returns is overburdened with villains, and none of them really seem to have an endgame. The Penguin does, the aforementioned biblical murders, but his run for mayor is incredibly stupid and only seems to succeed in giving Penguin and Shreck more screentime. You can say that Penguin desired the position so he might gain the love and affection from others that he was denied by his parents, but you'd be reaching considering his stance on becoming mayor: "I could really get into this mayor stuff. It's not about power, it's about reaching out to people...touching people...groping people!"

Catwoman has a vendetta against Max Shreck directly, and this becomes relevant two times in the movie: when she blows up the department store and again at the end of the film when she attacks him in the sewer. The rest of the time she spends fixated on Batman, which doesn't make all the much sense from what we're given in the film. I understand her problem with a guy that punched her in the mouth, but shouldn't she be more worried about, you know, the guy that pushed her out of a fucking window and sent her on this path in the first place?

As much as I like Walken's Shreck, he doesn't need to be here. He does indeed play the role of a bad guy well, and from his deeds--the sewage dumping, the pollution, the intimation that he killed his friend and partner in a very Cain and Abel concept, and the attempted murder of the secretary--we can believe him as a villain, but why does he matter in the context of the film? There are no seen repercussions, besides the attempted murder of Catwoman, and everyone else from Bruce to the Mayor all dislike him seemingly because he just has more friends. This is only confirmed at the end of the movie when Batman smacks him and says, "Shut up, you're going to jail." For what? They don't have anything on him. They suspect him for these vague ideas of dumping chemical waste but they have no concrete proof. The idea to frame Batman was Penguin's idea, it is only Penguin that seems to know about Shreck killing his partner, and I doubt Selina Kyle was actually moving forward to prosecute him for attempted murder. So why is he going to jail? Because he's a dick. Great work there, Bats. Another slam dunk.

Shreck seems to be more of a facilitator, who makes connections between people and has a certain knowledge of their asshole behavior, but nothing sticks to him because, well, there were other things going on in the plot that we needed to see. Like how Penguin is lonely. And how Penguin is horny.

Before I wrap things up I want to make note that I haven't gone into the Bale vs. Keaton dick measuring contest because I think they were the right Batmen for their respective series. Trading out Keaton and placing him in the Nolan series would look as ridiculous if we took Bale and placed him in the Burton movies. They work in their respective continuities.

This is a deeply flawed movie, as the others have been, but it is still very fun and highly entertaining. If you're willing to accept Returns' flaws and take it as a study of ancient comic characters in modern noir--A Christmas Carol as macabre farce--then Batman Returns is enjoyable.

Batman Returns: 3 1/2 out of 5.

On Wednesday we'll be exploring one last Batman film. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, and remember: Don't eat mistletoe, it can be deadly from what I hear.  

In Defense of Dick Grayson as Batman

In the words of Dick Grayson: "Batman and Robin will never die."

For those of you who have jobs, spouses, or better things to do, you may not know that two years ago Bruce Wayne "died" (he went traveling through time), and Dick Grayson--now being called Richard Grayson to make him sound more legitimate and adult--took over the role of Batman with Damian Wayne as Robin. This had been done in 1995 after Bruce Wayne's last incapacitation at the end of Knightsend that had Dick Grayson become Batman for a few issues that formed the arc called Prodigal. Everyone figured this would be very similar.

Instead, Dick Grayson is staying Batman for the foreseeable future, which is as close to permanent as you can get in comics. Even though Bruce Wayne is now back and took up his cowl again, the story was modified to make Dick Grayson the Batman of Gotham and Bruce Wayne taking a Tony Stark-like role in the rest of the DCU. This change was made because of the surprisingly positive and supportive reaction to Dick Grayson's tenure: excellent sales, even better reviews from Batman fans, and because of the 180 shift in the roles of the Dynamic Duo that revitalized the character interaction of Batman and Robin. To say it simply, I prefer Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne as Batman and Robin, and somewhere along the way Dick Grayson became my favorite comic book superhero.

I grew up with Bruce Wayne as Batman and I still enjoy reading and watching stories that have him in a major role. However, I'm tired of hearing about his dead parents, I'm tired of his portrayal as an absolute asshole who is needlessly rude to everyone who loves him, and acts as a neglectful father to all of his sons. Bruce Wayne has become overly dark to the point of becoming one-note, which is only a few steps away from becoming a parody (think All Star Batman).

For a character without superpowers, you can't help but think that Bruce Wayne is overpowered. He's unstoppable, he's always already out thought the bad guy so we read these stories just to find out how/when he figured everything out and secretly laid out some countermeasure to ensure victory. Darkseid, a god, wasn't even able to kill him. Bruce Wayne thinks of everything--we get it, move on.

Dick Grayson is different. He doesn't prepare for everything. He improvises. The stories have become less predictable and more original; or at least more original feeling. The protection of Gotham City is no longer a fanatical obsession, but an adventure. The GCPD likes him more because he's more accessible and seems to actually give a shit. In Batman: The Animated Series Bruce, for a while, had a dry sense of humor we would see from time to time, a sense of humor that was very Dick Grayson. Grayson's humor remains a part of the character, whereas Bruce just got more jagged, aloof, and detached as time went on. Bruce can be seen as a martyred warrior, Dick is the swashbuckling upstart.

A line that Grayson once said (written by Devin Grayson) that is funny now in hindsight: "I've seen too much to be Robin, but I'm way too optimistic to be Batman." As Nightwing he resembled more of Spider-man than anyone else; now as Batman he straddles the darkness of the Batman titles while also trying to remain the man he is. This new version of Batman has to fight the city and keep his own morals and values in check; more succinctly, he doesn't fit in so well with the feel of the city and that actually makes it work. At the end of the day, Grayson doesn't come with all the baggage: "I close my eyes now for a few moments and I can see my parents riding the air current with me. Forever young. Forever strong. Their faces wide with excitement, big smiles on their faces, enjoying the adrenaline surge even more than I do. And there is one thing I am sure of ... my parents would be proud of my life." That reminiscence is a far cry from the stuff Bruce sees when he recalls his parents.

Dick Grayson, thanks to writers like Peter Tomasi, Scott Snyder, Grant Morrison, Paul Dini, Denny O'Neil (who must be immortal at this point), Tony S. Daniel, and even Geoff Johns have all made concerted efforts to mature him and lay the responsibility of leadership on his shoulders as we watched him begin to transition from Nightwing to Batman (the only way to make this lineup better would be if Chuck Dixon and Marv Wolfman were in on this). While we've seen him begin to grow into the role, he's still learning as he goes. We're at the ground floor of a story that will take years to tell and have many different layers to it. It's called scope, and it's so rarely used well in comics that don't have to do with Batman (Bruce Wayne, I mean), Superman, Green Lantern, or Captain America.  

In some ways this is a retelling of Batman: Year One (which was purposely paralleled by Peter Tomasi, who verges on being the Ronald D. Moore of Batman comics--in the way that he's very into character development, not that he's incompetent when writing the final episode of a beloved science fiction TV series) but with the twist that Grayson as the experienced soldier becoming a reluctant leader, without all the mental and emotional baggage that Bruce Wayne carried. It's familiar but new. The same goes for the vigilantism. Bruce does it for revenge, Dick does it because it's the right thing to do. The way they view the memory of their parents--Bruce's Batman is an ode to his devotion to their death, Dick's Batman is an ode to their memories, who they were in life.

One of the few problems is defending this new take to some people. Many call Dick Grayson Bat-Fake or Non-Bat. Fans of Dick Grayson really don't have a rallying name for him besides Dick Heads, but that's a problem in and of itself.

The old Dynamic Duo had a dark and angry Batman with a lighthearted Robin. Now, with Grayson as Batman, we have an easy going Batman with a dark and angry Robin. In the old days, Batman taught Robin how to fight crime, how to become a man. All that is still there, but it is tempered by a morality tale and a story about sons looking for fathers. Since Damian was raised by his mother--Talia al Ghul--he's something of a murderous psychopath. He's vulgar, violent, but he's trying to be a better person. Dick Grayson fills the role as teacher and surrogate father, the way Bruce was Dick's surrogate; here it's slightly different--while there is the surrogate father/son dynmanic, there is also the fact--one that the writers are very aware of--that it's two of Bruce Wayne's sons taking up the fight; the story of Batman and Robin is a generational one now. As time went on throughout their interaction, Damian began to respect and admire Grayson, and when they began to figure out that Bruce Wayne was about to return, Damian seemed a little letdown, afraid that he and Dick weren't going to be a team anymore. It's given the concept of Batman and Robin new breath and it's a lot more fun, and when you really think about it, it was about time. This new Dynamic Duo confirmed again that the story of Batman and Robin isn't only about crime-fighting, it's about fathers and sons dead and alive.

The point of any young protégé is to one day take over for the person they worked and trained under. Marvel and DC are full of these legacy characters who were able (through death or status quo shake-ups) to fulfill their role and take up the mantles of their former teachers/fathers. Most famous among them are Bucky Barnes and Wally West. But then there was Dick Grayson. He was that poor middle management guy whose friends were all being promoted above him (he should have filed his TPS reports properly). He was Robin, then he was Nightwing (which was a reference to Superman, actually) and he stagnated the last ten years or so. He was supposed to be killed off by Dan DiDio and Judd Winick during Infinite Crisis, only to be saved at the last minute by Paul Dini, Geoff Johns, and Grant Morrison. 

As someone who's obviously a fickle purist Batman fanboy, I'm surprised at how much my opinion of these stories and these characters changed over the last few years. As far as I'm concerned Bruce Wayne could've/should've stayed dead. Comic books, every ten years or so, need their continuities cleaned up, and every couple of decades you need a real shakeup to show the fans that there are still some new ideas to be mined, still some editors and writers who are willing to take a risk. I honestly don't care for Grant Morrison, but he gave us Damian Wayne and he made Dick Grayson Batman, so I really shouldn't complain too much. Right now, anyway.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that at some point all this will be retconned or simply undone and Dick will be demoted back down to middle management, and somewhere, sometime I'm sure Damian has a date with a bullet, bomb, or crowbar, but Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne represent a shift in the 70 year history of the Batman franchise. Dick Grayson is more modern and he's the guy you always root for. He's as close to an Everyman you can get in a series about men dressing up as bats and fighting Gods, criminals, clowns and the occasional hack writer (fuck you, Judd). I'll end with a line from Dick Grayson, on his first patrol with Damian: "Batman and Robin together again for the first time."


See you on Saturday, Christmas Day, with Batman Returns.

UPDATE 6/6/11: I hate it when I'm right. 
http://comics.ign.com/articles/117/1172824p1.html

Batman on Film Part 3: The Dark Knight

The fans are the worst part of this already overrated film. The fanboys, the fourteen year olds who live by The Dark Knight as not only the best comic book movie or Batman movie but as one of the absolute greatest films of all time. When this movie was first released it was number 1 on IMDb, beating out The Godfather and Godfather II--my Mediterranean blood boiled at this; now it's fallen a few points, but is still higher on the list than Goodfellas, my favorite movie of all time; like I said, blood boiling.

God forbid you say you prefer Mark Hamill or Jack Nicholson to Heath Ledger because one of these fanboys will say you're just being nostalgic or that you didn't "get" the movie, whatever the hell that means. I'm sure you know the type of young fanboys I'm talking about. The type that listen to Joy Division's "The Eternal" and cut themselves a little because it's such a deep song. Go slice an artery. These fanboys need an enema. The Dark Knight, while vastly superior to Batman Begins, is mediocre at best, and just like most of the movies in this retrospective, doesn't really qualify as a Batman movie.

There are two reasons why people love this movie. First is that it makes people feel smart. Something admittedly neat about The Dark Knight is that it has a certain post-9/11 feel to it, involving ideas such as the War on Terror and the Patriot Act; indeed, Batman probably is a Republican. The Dark Knight is the most thematic of any Batman movies and many, rightfully so, say this is a comic book movie for the adults; that it philosophizes on the nature of evil, anarchy, justice, nihilism and all that stuff. The problem is that the characters take on a theme, but they aren't really characters. Batman is representative of order, Harvey Dent of justice, the Joker of chaos. However, these titles aren't explored in detail and when they are, it doesn't often make sense. And there's also the fact that, you know, these characters don't actually act like the characters they're supposed to be.

The second is the fact that Heath Ledger died after completing his role in The Dark Knight (the role he attempted to get fired from because he found comic books to be silly--the role he attempted to get fired from by hamming up his scenes by doing a cross between Urkel, a generic 1930s mobster with cerebral palsy, Hannibal Lecter and a meth addicted 16 year old girl, the role he didn't want and got a posthumous Academy Award for). Some people think that the role of the Joker drove him to his insomnia and accidental overdose, that he inhabited the character of the Joker so perfectly that it eventually killed him. Just like Sylvester Stallone really believed he was a Vietnam veteran, Michael Chiklis a corrupt cop, Ray Liotta a gangster.

The typical TDK fanboy.

For a series so bent on realism, Nolan casually disregards it at random intervals. The city's rival gangs suddenly join up together and keep a joint account? Yes, it's an old comic book story, but it goes against Nolan's realism. If we can have that, why not a Lazarus Pit and a near immortal Ra's al Ghul? Why not the fantastical chemical spill to create the Joker instead of just shoe polish and a kids' paint set? Why not use acid in a courtroom to turn Harvey into Two-Face--especially when you telegraph the scene at the beginning of the movie? How about going from Lieutenant to Commissioner? It's almost as bad as cadet to captain.

The realism is something that should have only been a secondary priority. The Joker didn't have any of his trademark devices or moments: the acid flower, the vat of chemicals fall, the razor sharp cards, the laughing toxin, any of the props with a deadly twist that he's known for. He rarely felt like the Joker at all. All the flash and absurdity was taken away and replaced with the dryness of reality. We don't go to see a superhero movie for realism. Look, I'm not saying change is bad; I'm saying that you still need to be certain that the foundation of this character should have remained.

With another movie on the way (the awfully titled The Dark Knight Rises; what is he, the fucking sun?), Nolan has bitten himself in the ass by giving himself dwindled options as far as villains are concerned, unless of course, he simply drains all the interesting/unrealistic components of the character until they're nearly unrecognizable so as to fit his needs. Maybe Killer Croc will only be a nickname for a fat hick with bad teeth, Mr. Freeze will just be Scandinavian, Bane just has roid rage, The Great White Shark will be a white supremacist, Firefly will be like the Trashcan Man from The Stand, just, you know, even more boring, Penguin will be Rosie O'Donnell, and Poison Ivy can just be Al Gore.

Back at the plot: how about those gaps in logic? Batman, an American national who has the public support of an American law enforcement agency, goes to China to attack and kidnap one of its citizens. We're not worried about an international incident, Bruce? Fuck you. How exactly, Rachel, were you going to prosecute these bad guys using the RICO Act? It's not like those are federal charges and you're just a local law enforcement DA or anything, right? Explain it to me. Answer me, goddamnit!

Then there's Harvey Dent. Why would his cases be overturned if people found out he killed somebody? It wasn't like he was on the take, had other issues with corruption that involved his cases, or was taking drugs while prosecuting. Only the perception would change, not the facts of the cases. And that whole thing with Harvey's coin having two heads. Two-Face was born out of Dent's obsession with duality. That was absent from the film.

While Batman Begins was being penned, Chris Nolan and David Goyer decided not to use Harvey Dent because they didn't feel like they had the room to do him justice. I'm so glad they decided to wait until this movie to only use his Two-Face character for the last ten minutes of the feature.

Returning to the honored tradition of adding meaningless philosophizing as we saw in Batman Begins, we have a term in The Dark Knight that makes me shudder/void my bowels: "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." It's rhetorical nonsense. Does that mean that if the average Joe doesn't actively try to make the world a better place he becomes the defacto "bad guy"? Does that mean that the people that do devote their lives to law enforcement--being the basic "good guy"--eventually become the bad guy if they don't go down in some kind of blaze of glory? Was it just a little bit of good old fashioned ham-fisted foreshadowing? Was Harvey Dent just misquoting the Neil Young line "It's better to burn out than fade away"? Or was his statement just meant to be smug and dismissive? In the words of a friend of mine: "Can't it be both?"

Do you remember what happened last time we worshipped a false idol?

Something that TDK explored was the difference between Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne. Whereas Wayne has a seediness to him, Dent is the golden boy. Wayne, despite his cape-wearing, is still a dick, trying to steal Rachel (who, between films, managed to get more talented and even less pretty) while also finding a way to become a social chameleon, being both the wealthy jerk-off and a caped lunatic; Dent, however, only is Harvey Dent. He's a regular guy. Also: Aaron Eckhart's yelling is hysterical.

You know, considering how little Nolan seemed to like the Burton movies, he managed to take the escape vehicle in the batmobile idea from Returns. And it's a motorcycle, why are you calling it a pod? Also, the standoff: Joker with a gun, taunting Batman who's racing towards him in a vehicle. Taken from Batman. At any rate "Come on, hit me!" isn't nearly as cool as "Come on, you gruesome son of a bitch, come to me."


The 18-wheeler turning upside down wasn't cool in X-Men 3 and makes no sense here. Unless of course there's a deleted scene showing physics taking a nap. The bat-pod didn't have the speed or the force to manage that feat.

Batman: "What building should I run a train into in this movie?"

Now, inexorably, we come to Nolan's version of the Joker. Joker has always had a kind of immaculate image. I mean that he always looked dapper. He took care of his looks because it mattered in some way to him. His look was part of the joke, he liked looking better than everyone else, while knowing he's as pale as a corpse. He didn't wear makeup because he was "naturally" that color, and if he did he wouldn't have allowed a drunk and blindfolded William Holden to do it, and he wouldn't wear clothes that would make Tippy Tom vomit in disgust!

This agent of chaos terrorist stuff doesn't work with the character. It would have worked for Ra's al Ghul who was an eco-terrorist, since, you know, he debuted in the 1980s, but no, let's just make him Oskar Schindler with a bad attitude. Joker claims that he's a nihilist, that he has no plan. However, a nihilist is different than an anarchist, so which one is he?

Despite claiming that he has no plan, it's obvious that he does. One of the silliest, unnecessarily complex plans full of so many plot conveniences that I couldn't help but laugh every time something just-so-happened to work out absolutely perfectly. Joker was able to set up roadblocks all over the city, rig boats up to explode, rig a judge's car to explode (and also rig it to fire joker cards), rig a fat guy up to explode without him noticing and set the fat guy off to help him escape (he somehow knows he'll be far enough away to not get caught in it; he also knows he'll be left alone with a cop who he could manipulate), rig two ferries to explode without anyone noticing, rig a hospital to explode without anyone noticing, realize he's going to be arrested and get taken to the same place as fatguybomb, find two empty warehouses and rig them to explode, poison the commissioner's booze, launch a social experiment, and have a perfect guess on where he and others will be, how other people will react, and be able to hide all of his traps, bombs, explosives, kidnap an ADA and the DA and all this crap without anyone anywhere being able to even notice one small thing is wrong. How did he do all this? Did he just divine it? Someone who doesn't have a plan wouldn't have a goddamn plan! But, don't worry, Alfred was able to figure it all out because he had a story. He always has a story. "I was in Burma. Some men are just assholes." Also, a true nihilist wouldn't care about anything at all.

Now, admit it, in all of this Heath Ledger Joker-talk I bet you were expecting me to make a Brokeback Mountain joke, right?

In the end, I'm going to use Damian Wayne, the blood son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul (long story), who is the current Robin (longer story), to give us further evidence as to why the Joker isn't an agent of chaos--as taken from the pages of Batman & Robin: "You say you're a force of chaos and you don't plan anything. It just happens. But I've read your files and everything's a plan. So what is it this time? Because I don't think you know what chaos is. Chaos is needing someone to change your feeding tube. Chaos is not being able to go to the toilet without help."

Another problem with Nolan's Joker is that he's a little light on material. His jokes are rare and usually unfunny (though I always do get a good laugh out of his "Poor choice of words" line) because the Nolans and Goyer were too worried trying to make the Joker into this modernistic War on Terror bad guy and wondering how they could bludgeon us further with their self-important messages about society and the post-9/11 world that they forgot that the clown is supposed to be funny.

I was glad to see Batman take a small step towards intelligence here with his bullet test, though it really belongs in CSI than the dark detective. Batman also comes off as being a real hero this time around (he probably realized launching trains into buildings was not a good way to win over hearts and minds), willing to sacrifice himself for the asshole that's trying to blackmail him and sell his secret.

I enjoyed Batman actually taking the time to consider how his actions have hurt people, himself included, and his scenes with the Joker are the best written in the film. It's a shame there hadn't been more. And there really could have been. Nolan could have cut the China scenes and cut all the politicizing and philosophizing; and honestly, if you want a politicized superhero go read Green Arrow, God knows it's as close as he ever gets to being interesting or original. If they had given Batman's role as a symbol a clearer definition besides, perfectly, "our dark knight," the character himself may have had a larger and more important role than he did. It would have been a good idea for him to appear, considering it is his own fucking movie.


The moral quandary that Batman is in--of wanting to kill the Joker at the risk of his own soul is the best part of the movie. We see him go back and forth on the issue and it's fun to watch because it's well written and despite Bale's and Ledger's worst voices, well acted. The Nolans and Goyer also set up the cyclical nature of the Batman/Joker relationship well, with Joker saying "You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you because you're just too much fun" though I could have lived without the clichéd unstoppable force/immovable object stuff and the overt and obvious "We're going to be doing this forever" bit.


By having Batman kill Harvey Milk Dent in the end (you can't say he didn't), this becomes one of the few comic book movies where the bad guy technically wins, and I have to say it's done with subtlety and class. It was an excellent way to segue into Batman's own self-hatred which leads him to decide he needs to take the blame for Dent's crimes. While that in and of itself is pretty needless and silly it does make its own sense in context, and it actually is a pretty good ending.

Once again, Nolan's cinematography makes the film worth anything. From police motorcades to rivers to cities to fires and explosions, there's a certain art to the imagery that manages to be both sleek and dirty. Simply, he knows how to draw a pretty picture. The firefighters at the exploded warehouses were the best in the feature. The Dark Knight tried again and again and again in its overly serious tone to give us this thematic modern superhero movie. It was feast or famine, but the image of the firefighters at this ground zero was very well done and the strongest part of the movie. It made its point better than any line of dialogue could have.

Honestly, The Dark Knight isn't really bad. Despite being overly serious and having a tendency to overstate its own importnace, it's rarely dull unlike Batman Begins. Messy and deeply flawed, sure, but still pretty well paced. And Rachel died. I was always a sucker for happy endings.

Gay cowboys.

The Dark Knight: 2 1/2 out of 5.


Note: Once again, another detour article will come out on Wednesday. This one will take a look at Dick Grayson as Batman.

In Defense of Robin

Don't worry, I'm talking about the comic book character, not Howard Stern's resident hole. (Opie & Anthony always win in the end, by the way). The big question surrounding the character of Robin has always been: Boy Wonder or Boy Blunder? Never has there been in comics as controversial behind the scenes or with fans as Robin. It's quite possible that he's the most maligned character in the history of comics (and I'm even counting Jason Todd separately). I, personally, love the character: Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Damian Wayne. Jason Todd is a twat, but that's not what I'm trying to get at here. The character of Robin is a necessary one, and despite what many fans and filmmakers believe, he's a good one too.

The character of Robin/Dick Grayson was created in 1940, just a year after Batman made his first appearance in 1939. Originally, Robin was a way to boost sales. That's right, haters: it was found that kid sidekicks like Robin, Speedy (though Green Arrow still managed to suck), Superboy and the like increased readership among young boys and was a guarantee to raise circulation numbers. Young readers liked Robin because they identified with him and felt like they could be a part of these grand adventures. All those kids who were losing their fathers in the war found a measure of solace in this young orphan trading tragedy for high adventure. They empathized with Dick Grayson, they appreciated the father/son dynamic of Bruce and Dick, getting a form of parenting and guidance from the comics, and hope most of all.

Those Batman fans who dislike Robin (et al) usually do because of two reasons: the gay thing and the "old chum" thing. I'll explain. Everyone knows the perceived homosexual iteration: the single rich gentleman living in his secluded mansion with his young hairless orphaned ward. They dress up in tights together--the older one in leather, the younger one in pixie boots and hot pants. But enough about Gary Glitter's house parties, this is about Batman and Robin. All kidding aside, they're not gay. Nobody can say that they are with a straight face except for the ignorant or wishful thinking fetishists or maybe Frederic Wertham, a man who manages to be an absolute cocksucker without being gay. No one in the history of DC Comics who has written Batman or Robin or both wrote them to be gay. Never.

Hh.

Then there's the "old chum" thing--the idea that Batman, a notoriously antisocial loner would not have any want or need for a sidekick, let alone one who dresses like a Michael Jackson wetdream. Admittedly, seeing the dark and brooding Batman looking all awesome and depressed is severely diminished when you see ol' green underwear standing beside him trying to look important. Over the years, writers like Chuck Dixon and Marv Wolfman have tried to make excuses for the costume, saying that it exudes total confidence in his skills, it's a loving homage to his parents, or that it's purposeful so villains wouldn't take him seriously and become overconfident allowing Robin to seriously fuck them up. It's a nice try but even I don't buy that one. Thankfully, by the time Tim Drake (the third Robin) took up the mantle it actually resembled a real costume. The purpose of Robin is to keep Batman in check, from getting too dark and keep from crossing the line, and Robin always gave Batman a reason to try to stay sane: he was the example now, the father.

Christian Bale has been noted on record many, many times discussing his dislike for the character, claiming he'd refuse to work if Nolan placed Robin in the movies. Dick Grayson was even set to appear in some early drafts of Tim Burton's Batman Returns, but was eventually dropped because there were too many stories and characters. His version had Dick Grayson as an inner city youth who was a great car mechanic (ignore the vaguely stereotypical overtones) and would have helped Batman repair the Batmobile near the final act of the film. Burton and Nolan have otherwise ignored Robin, and while I understand the decision to an extent (the original costume wouldn't translate), I however think that Dick Grayson would make an excellent story in a movie.

Like many moments and stories and characters in the Batman mythology, the story of Dick Grayson parallels Bruce Wayne's and borders on being cyclical. There's a powerful story in there: Bruce Wayne lost his parents to crime and has never really dealt with it in a positive way. He allowed the trauma to swallow him and now he runs around as Batman. It is arguable that Bruce never really grew up in certain ways. Now, he witnesses the same thing happen to Dick Grayson and is moved by this. His whole mission is to keep things like this from happening again and again and now it has--to a young man just like him--and he feels like he can help the boy. Now, suddenly, the son must become a father, and Bruce's parenting style (whether intentional or not) is to give Dick Grayson a chance at fighting crime, while being very mindful that Dick shouldn't go too far or allow himself to be as damaged as Bruce is. That is a character arc, one that doesn't even need to involve seeing Dick Grayson don a domino mask and pixie shoes. You can just show Dick struggling with the loss, while Bruce tries to make sense of it to him, only he realize that he never made sense of it himself, and use these character scenes to, you know, build character and ground the story a little. This is perfectly stated by Bruce in Dark Victory:

"I've brought a young man -- a boy, actually -- to stay at the house. He's ... lost his parents at roughly the same age that I ... That I lost you. I don't know what will happen. I don't see myself as any sort of father figure. But ... I think I can make a difference in his life....Deep within the caves beneath my father's house, I remember what Catwoman said. 'A father's love can be a terrible thing...' How the rage brought in by the death of The Roman changed Sofia's life ... and what the murder of my own father brought out in myself. Now, I see in Dick the chance to help him cope with his own loss ... and guide him into being a better man for it."

In many ways Dick Grayson represents Bruce's attempt at redemption, an attempt to fix some mistakes; at some base level he seems to be aware of how fucked up a human being he is, and he sees the same tragedy unfold for a young Dick Grayson and wants to help guide the boy the only way he knows how--through vigilantism--but knows he can't let Dick Grayson become as distant and damaged as he is. The early development of the Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson relationship is about coming to terms with tragedy, turning the rage, fear, and vengeance into something productive. Just having this story play out in a movie would humanize Bruce/Batman, something that Nolan and Burton have/had difficulties with. But, yeah, let's not try for subtlety. More rooftop car chases and Prince on the soundtrack.

Over the years Robin evolved beyond his role as sidekick, becoming his own character, even coming to lead the Teen Titans (think the Justice League without pubic hair) in several mini and ongoing series, as well as two television series. Eventually, Robin was given his own on-going series in 1993 that ran for 183 issues (concluding in 2009 when he--that is Tim Drake--was given a new solo title in his new role as Red Robin), and Dick Grayson as Nightwing had his own on-going series starting in 1996 that ran for 153 issues (concluding also in 2009 when Dick Grayson became Batman).

There have been five canonical Robins altogther: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown (then back to Tim Drake), and the current one, Damian Wayne, who is also Bruce Wanye's only biological child. Each Robin was different, with different strengths, weaknesses, flaws, roles and all that. The character also evolved beyond the smiling kid friendly character. Dick Grayson moved on to bigger and better, Jason Todd found his greatest role in being a greasy smear on Joker's crowbar (and eventual foil/archnemesis for Grayson), Tim Drake became a highly intelligent loner detective like Bruce Wayne or Vic Sage, Stephanie Brown pulled a Jesus Christ before becoming the new Batgirl, and Damian Wayne is the hard-as-nails Robin who decapitated four villains and carries around a crowbar just in case he happens to run into the Joker. You know, for karma's sake. I'll provide a visual. Over the years, Robin went from this:
                                               

to this:

Perhaps the best example I can reference in the longevity of the character is the fanbase that supported Dick Grayson's rise to Batman following Batman RIP and Final Crisis. Sales skyrocketed. But, then, I'll be going into detail about this change soon enough.

Robin, in any form, isn't going anywhere.