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| Der ner ner ner ner ner ner Batman! |
Where now for Bat-Man on film?
Now that Christopher Nolan has completed his Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, speculation will now inevitably begin on how Warner Bros. are going to follow it up. Will they continue with films set in Nolan's universe? Will they reboot the series like Sony has done with The Amazing Spider-Man? Will they begin a similar to project to that of Marvel Studios? Are we in for a few years of rumours akin to Robin Williams as Riddler, Howard Stern as Scarecrow and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Penguin? Let me add my five cents to each of these questions.
Oh, and before I forget, SPOILERS.
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| Fifty Shades of Grey fever hits Gotham |
Will they continue with films set in Nolan's universe?
The temptation is certainly there purely from the box office numbers. If it ain't broke, why fix it? The ending to The Dark Knight Rises gives them some room for maneuver in this regard. Blake has inherited the Batcave and quit the police force, allowing him to continue the Batman's work. His name is revealed as Robin. Bruce Wayne isn't dead. From these plot points Warner Bros.
could continue to make further films in this universe, but
should they?
For me the ending to The Dark Knight Rise is the spiritual successor to the spinning top at the end of Inception. The spinning top is a question mark, a note of ambiguity at the end to get the audience talking. The scenes at the end of The Dark Knight Rises fulfill the same function. We know that the auto-pilot was fixed on the Bat but we don't know if the Batman was able to use it. Alfred sees Bruce Wayne at the end but we have already had one character earlier in the film seeing a dead person at a moment of heightened emotion and the same thing could be happening here. I would rather that we left this ambiguity there instead of providing definitive answers.
Now, you could make a Batman story without Bruce Wayne. The recent comic series Batman and Robin did that by having Dick Grayson taking over the Batman role with Damian Wayne, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul, as Robin. And it was an excellent series, with an interesting dynamic at it's heart. A John Blake Batman movie could work and there are still some major villains that, with some tweaking, could exist within Nolan's universe but there is another reason for hoping they don't take this route.
The brilliance of the Nolan Batman movies was the approach that they took, in essence to imagine what it would be like if these events happened in the real world. The comics, however, aren't set in the real world, they are set in the DC Universe, and its time for the DCU to, ahem, rise.
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| Two panels - all you need to know about the origins |
Will they reboot the series like Sony has done with The Amazing Spiderman?
If they decide not to continue with Nolan's iteration of Batman then some form of reboot will be necessary but, dear God, please don't cover the origin story again. All the reviews for The Amazing Spider-Man began with some sort of comment about how unnecessary it was to cover the same ground only ten years after the first Spiderman film. This would go double for Batman, as we have had the origin story twice now. Everybody is familiar with the circumstances surrounding the origin of Batman that any new film can confidently drop its audience into the action without explaining how it all began. One origin story that I would like to see them attempt, however, is that of Robin.
Robin has been a problem for many people attempting a Batman movie. The two Tim Burton films both played with adding Robin to the story in early drafts only to drop him during pre-production. The Schumacher films created a hip, teenage Robin that kinda worked in that he wasn't the worse thing in either film but still sucked. Nolan only introduces him as an easter egg.
Introduced in Detective Comics #38, a mere 11 issues after Batman's first appearance, Robin was introduced to give kids somebody they could identify with. While some concerns where raised about putting a young child in jeopardy, the sales figures nearly doubled and the Batman comics moved away from the darkness towards the light. For the next thirty odd years, until Denny O'Neil's celebrated run in the seventies, Robin was there by Batman's side becoming closely related to the camp, sci-fi inflected tales of the fifties and sixties, not to forget his most famous iteration from the Batman TV series.
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| Batman is too caught up in his sartorial choices to notice his ward may be slightly colour blind. |
In the eighties, with Dick Grayson established as the hero Nightwing, DC editorial staff realised that it helped to have somebody for Batman to talk to and introduced Robin #2, Jason Todd. An edgier Robin than Grayson, he wasn't that successful with comic readers who, given the choice of killing him off, voted to have his brains bashed in by the Joker (in classic comic tradition, and to paraphrase Monty Python, he got better). Robin #3 swiftly followed. Despite all the difficulties, he is an essential part of the Batman universe.
It terms of adapting him into film there is one comic book that could provide help to any adaptors. Nolan took a lot of inspiration from The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale and it's sequel Dark Victory is an excellent origin story for Robin. The one thing that Warner Bros. may be quite hesitant about is Robin's age, and the temptation would be to make him older (although I would like to point out Kick Ass had a fantastic pseudo-Robin in Hit-Girl), yet Dark Victory shows how the concept of Robin as a young boy can work effectively.
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| Carefully negotiated contracts result in a draw |
Will they begin a similar project to that of Marvel Studios?
Again, the temptation is certainly there. The Marvel Studio project of bringing the Marvel Universe to the big screen has been a phenomenal success. DC and Warner Bros. must be watching with a degree of envy, so what will they do?
In 2009 it was announced that DC Comics would become a subsidary of DC Entertainment, a newly created company 'charged with strategically integrating its content across Warner Bros. Entertainment and Time Warner'. This shows a renewed focus from Warner Bros. on exploiting the DC characters across all platforms but does not mean that a similar approach to Marvel Studios is being attempted. In fact, this has been largely
ruled out by DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson. In 2007, George Miller signed on to direct a Justice League film with Armie Hammer cast as Batman, indicating that Warner Bros. was happy to have different versions of their DC characters played by different actors at the same time. Following the collapse of that version it was recently announced that a new Justice League movie is being attempted. Perhaps they will they attempt a reverse Avengers and spin-off solo adventures from a Justice League movie?
An approach that I would like to see, considering my desire to see more of the DC Universe on screen, would be for a new Batman film to take inspiration from The Brave and the Bold comic series and, at least, feature cameos from other DC superheroes.
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| Guy Pierce as The Riddler? |
Are we in for a few years of rumours akin to Robin Williams as Riddler, Howard Stern as Scarecrow and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Penguin?
Of course we are. This is the fun time when we can speculate wildly and dream our fanboy dreams. The Robin Williams rumour came out soon after the first Batman movie and, if I'm remembering correctly, the role was once offered to Williams. The Howard Stern rumour started before Batman and Robin came out and around the time Private Parts was released. The Phillip Seymour Hoffman rumour was after The Dark Knight. I think we can expect a lot of the speculation now to centre around The Riddler and The Penguin, probably the most famous of the villains not featured in the Nolan films.
The most interesting speculation, for me, is the question of who takes the reigns of the Batman franchise from now on. An upcoming director would be a natural choice considering the success of Christopher Nolan, so may I suggest Duncan Jones or perhaps Rian Johnson? Nicolas Winding Refn is surely due a big Hollywood project. Maybe an established director like David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky (who worked on an adaptation of Batman: Year One before Nolan) or Paul Greengrass? It is all very exciting. The campaign to get Bryan Cranston to play Jim Gordon starts now.
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| Don't touch the lightning! |
Where now for Bat-Man on film?
Going back to my first question, I am able to answer this definitively. The next time we see Batman will be in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies adaptation of Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns.
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| That ain't Cyclops |
The Dark Knight Returns is, along with Watchmen and Maus, the comic that kick-started the graphic novel revolution and an inspiration on both Burton's Batman and The Dark Knight Rises. If you haven't read it, and are a fan of Batman, you are in for a real treat.
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