Writer Sean Kelly has been posting on Twitter explaining why the “gritty Batman” adaptations are so problematic—in a nutshell, the reason Batman gets results is because he is even less concerned about the civil rights of suspects and is even less accountable than the cops are. It sends the exact opposite message that we need.
The thread is worth reading through because he pitches a great idea for a twist on the Batman origin story: Joe Chill, the crook who killed Bruce’s parents, is a cop. Young Bruce identifies him at the station but learns the hard way about how the boys in blue protect their own. He becomes a vigilante because he learns that the people can’t depend on a corrupt police force to protect them, and he makes “crooked cops” his primary target. But he doesn’t kill them because he knows that would lead to worse outcomes for everyone.
I don’t expect this reboot anytime soon but I really dig the idea.
A major part of why the grittiest Batman devolves that way is also in how it removes any additional context.
You take a Bruce Wayne that has nothing going on, no connections to other people. And a Gotham where nothing good happens. No levity. Divorced of super anything. Where everyone is bad. What the hell is the guy’s goal? What or who is he protecting?
It must be a singular personal obsession with punching crime for punching crime’s sake. It leaves you only with this version of Batman as the natural conclusion. And the “Batman is a fascist” and “why doesn’t Bruce Wayne use all that money to solve things at a social level” criticisms.
It turns Batman into the Punisher. But at least with The Punisher we aren’t neccisarily intended to view him as a force for good, or morally superior. And the The Punisher has been readily adopted as a symbol of hate.
The other less growly versions of Batman often do deal as much with shit like police corruption, and feature a present Bruce Wayne who does things like hire people, fund education, and out maneuver predatory developers to build affordable housing. And these things are often core story lines in the extended “Bat Family” comics. That’s the whole deal with Harvey Bullock, and it’s central to both Renee Montoya’s story and most of what goes on with Gordon.
Even Batman Year one, often ground zero for “real” street level Batman is primarily about Gordon dealing with a corrupt department and how Batman’s crime punchy doesn’t work without it and vice versa.
In the many, many rehashings of Joe Chill I’m reasonably sure he’s been a corrupt cop at least once. He’s frequently had connections to corrupt politicians, corrupt cops etc. A couple times he’s been a desperate addict or regular person in need of help, and ultimately forgiven. And there’s a hell of a lot more in that than the random street criminal who’s bad to the core. Or the times he’s been the Joker, a literal demon or space alien, or one time I think he was actually time travelling Bruce?
The grimdarker the Batman the less room there is for anything besides the troubling implications.
An interesting thread on how much better writers could do with their Batman movies.
they cannot follow up on B.Beyond because of the time setting. Seeing Terry Mcginnis and an old Bruce would be fine…but they want universe building. Beyond doesn’t really allow that because changing one character is fine…they’d have to change the entire DCU to future versions. That isn’t marketable for them.
They want current DC timeline versions. Keep it based in what are seen on mugs, pjs, comics, cartoons, etc etc.
To hell with all these directors out-grimdarking each other. We need to bring back the Batman who observes jaywalking laws!
Sad that Adam West is no longer with us. But surely we can find someone out there who’s worthy to pick up his mantle?
This is why I loved the Batman-The Brave and the Bold cartoons. The emphasis was on his actual heroic qualities.
It had a sense of humor and self awareness of the ridiculous nature of the genre. Yet they were able to insert Batman into one of the grimmer Bronze Age stories, “The Last Patrol” where the Doom Patrol sacrifice their lives to save a small town.
This would be a fantastic reboot idea, as well.
The problem I have with so many franchise reboots is that they are retreads of the same, often tired, ideas. My favorite example is the Ghost Busters reboot. I disliked it. I loved Wiig, Jones, McKinnon and McCarthy’s performances, but it was the same story, with glitzier and more phrenetic fx. Such a wasted opportunity, and waste of talent. The reboot could have been set 30 years after the original movie(s), where ghost busting was an accepted, if underappreciated, industry, like pest control, with multiple companies competing for your ghost busting dollars, and our scrappy heroines are barely making a living on the paranormal removal industry in the seedier parts of town. Their luck seems to change when they land a gig at a brokerage firm on wall street, and discover a racketeering conspiracy by the city’s top three busting firms to secretly release poltergeists, shades, haunted objects, banshees, and lesser demons on wealth(ier) cllents in order to extort business out of the well healed. No end of the world scenario, just late stage capitalism trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of society. For a real kicker, the beleaguered victims aren’t particularly sympathetic, so our heroines saving them is morally ambiguous. Yay!! We just exorcised a demon from pharma bro’s summer home in the Hamptons!! Poltergeist at Trump Tower… N-yeah, don’t see a problem there…
That part was a joke about DC’s allergy to comic book elements in their comic book movies.
And given that they’ve publicly stated that they’re going to being doing stand alone series without direct ties there wouldn’t neccisarily be an issue on that front. They just made bank on a Joker origin movie with no ties to their attempted series, that doesn’t wash particularly well for the canonical Batman timeline. Plus the success of Logan shows there aint no problem jumping around the time line.
They won’t adapt it directly because the audience probably isn’t there. Familiarity with Beyond falls into a fairly limited age block. And it hasn’t been terribly successful when transitioned to the comics. But like I said there’s no problem using it’s basic arch/framework as a more modern way to bring Robin in.
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