Super Hero Worship is an everyday opinion column by IGN’s Senior Staff Writer Jesse Schedeen. Check out the earlier Super Hero Worship entry, The Collapse of a Comic Book Titan Is Bad News for a Troubled Industry.
Batman followers are presently going by a little bit of a drought on the subject of new live-action films. The Batman – Part II was just lately delayed till October 2027, that means there’ll be a five-and-a-half-year hole between the unique and the sequel. Nor does DC appear to be making a lot progress with The Flash director Andy Muschietti’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold. We can actually respect James Gunn’s mandate that DCU tasks not transfer ahead till the scripts are prepared, however that doesn’t make the wait any simpler.
Lately, rumors have begun to develop that the explanation for the sluggish progress on the Batman entrance is that DC is rethinking Batman’s place within the new however quickly rising DCU. It’s been recommended that Warner Bros. now desires Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne to be the official Batman of the DCU, fairly than introducing a very completely different model in The Brave and the Bold. Even Gunn admits he’s “contemplated” the idea.
Frankly, that might be a really dangerous transfer. As a lot as we love Pattinson’s Dark Knight, he’s probably not lower out to share the display screen with the likes of David Corenswet’s Superman and Aaron Pierre’s Green Lantern. Here’s why DC followers are higher off having two completely different Batmen on the large display screen.
The Limitations of Matt Reeves’ Batman Universe
As a lot as I get pleasure from director Matt Reeves’ grungy, noir-tinged tackle Batman and Gotham City, this isn’t a model of the Batman mythos that screams “shared DC Universe.” Can you actually image this model of Batman sharing the display screen with heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, a lot much less serving within the Justice League?
Even trying solely at Batman’s nook of the DCU, that is an incarnation of the character that brings with it some critical limitations. There’s a purpose Reeves has billed this universe “The Batman Epic Crime Saga.” This is a really darkish, critical, and noir-laden tackle the Batman mythos. It’s about as grounded a tackle the franchise as you may get and nonetheless be telling a narrative a few billionaire who attire as a bat to punch criminals.
That method has actually labored effectively to date, each in The Batman itself and spinoffs like The Penguin TV sequence and Paul Dano’s The Riddler: Year One comedian. But it’s additionally an method that carries sure limitations. This Batman is married to a really particular imaginative and prescient of Gotham City and its prison underworld. DC’s Batman comics go away room for a lot of completely different creative interpretations and stylistic takes – darkish Batman, camp Batman, swashbuckling Batman, sci-fi Batman – whereas The Batman Epic Crime Saga is all grim and gritty, on a regular basis.
It’s robust to think about even a lot of Batman’s iconic rogues becoming into this darkish, grounded universe. How do you deal with villains with outlandish tech, like Mister Freeze? What about villains with outright superpowers like Poison Ivy or Clayface? Could you image this model of Batman ever having a sidekick like Robin or Batgirl? Barring a large tonal shift in The Batman Part II, these components of the franchise are mainly walled off within the Reeves universe. And the whole lot Reeves has stated about his sequel up to now means that it’s one other darkish, noir-y detective story.
I’m not right here to argue that Reeves took the flawed method along with his imaginative and prescient of the franchise. That’s what it’s – a particular imaginative and prescient for Batman that hones in on sure components of the character. But it’s exactly that imaginative and prescient that makes Pattinson’s Batman such a poor match for Gunn’s DCU. Everything we’ve seen of the DCU in Creature Commandos and the Superman trailers suggests it’s a a lot brighter and extra outlandish superhero universe. It’s actually a universe extra reflective of DC’s wider comedian ebook line. It doesn’t search to floor these characters in actuality or downplay the extra ostentatious facets of the lore.
On some degree, it may be entertaining to look at a film that drags Pattinson’s Batman kicking and screaming into the DCU. But finally, it might be a case of making an attempt to hammer a sq. peg right into a spherical gap. This Batman isn’t a group participant, that means we’d like one other Batman who could be.
The DCU Needs a Comic Book-y Batman
The DCU wants a Batman who can correctly co-exist alongside heroes like Corenswet’s Superman. It wants a Batman who lives in a Gotham City that has colourful supervillains in addition to hardened killers and gangsters. It most actually wants a Batman who can construct up a full-fledged Bat-family.
In brief, it wants a Batman extra according to the standard comics, and one who isn’t fairly so mired in darkness and pathos. We want a Batman who can take his place within the Justice League and struggle alongside the world’s strongest heroes. Pattinson’s Batman is nice, however he’s by no means going to be Ben Affleck’s Batman – the man who can convincingly order round his fellow costumed heroes and shrug off bullets as he delivers an Arkham Asylum-style beatdown to a complete warehouse stuffed with goons.
Most crucially, the DCU wants a Batman who embraces characters like Robin, Batgirl, and Nightwing in his life. We don’t know loads about Batman: The Brave and the Bold, however we do know the movie is impressed by Grant Morrison’s Batman comics and offers with the daddy/son dynamic between Bruce and Damian Wayne. That requires an older and comparatively hotter Batman, not the younger, delinquent, single-minded vigilante we noticed in The Batman. Unless Gunn plans on utterly throwing out the Damian Wayne storyline and beginning over, it doesn’t make sense to aim The Brave and the Bold with Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne within the lead. There’s no basis to construct on with that model of the character.
And, all different issues being equal, moviegoers are actually due for a change with Batman’s cinematic adventures. Batman movies have grown progressively darker and extra violent over the previous a number of many years. Christopher Nolan was mainly making James Bond films with costumed vigilantes. Zack Snyder gave us a Batman who manufacturers criminals and drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Reeves managed to go even darker nonetheless, making a imaginative and prescient of Gotham City and its protector that’s downright hellish. And that’s to say nothing of the Joker duology – R-rated Batman films with no Batman in sight.
At what level did we cease making live-action Batman films for teenagers? For no matter flaws it could have, 1989’s Batman helped cement my standing as a lifelong Batman lover. I don’t know that I might have felt the identical approach if I had been six years previous watching Batman v Superman or The Batman. One would have perplexed me and the opposite would have terrified me. DC has been aiming these films squarely at adults currently. That, as a lot as the results of the pandemic and the tarnishing of the DC model because of the Snyder-verse, might clarify why there’ve been diminishing returns with Batman’s field workplace hauls. They stopped concentrating on that essential youthful viewers.
Again, the purpose right here isn’t to criticize Reeves’ dealing with of his Batman universe, however to argue that there must be room for a couple of tackle the Dark Knight. The DCU doesn’t want Pattinson’s brooding loner of a Batman; it wants a special model who fits the story being instructed in The Brave and the Bold and who can attraction to a wider moviegoing viewers. It wants a Batman who, like Corenswet’s Superman, wears his trunks on the skin and truly cracks a smile every now and then. One model of Batman needn’t negate the opposite. Rather, they’ll coexist and provide completely different storytelling alternatives of their respective universes.
DC has traditionally been reticent about permitting a number of incarnations of fashionable characters to exist in live-action. But one would hope that after 2023’s The Flash, which options no fewer than three variations of Batman, they’ve lastly gotten over that misguided philosophy. In the wake of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, I believe it’s protected to say audiences are completely able to working with the idea of a superhero multiverse. So let’s set up the Bat-Verse already.
Ultimately, although Gunn has “contemplated” porting Pattinson’s Batman over to the DCU, I don’t get the impression he has any critical plans of doing so. It simply doesn’t make sense. Better that the DCU have its personal model of Batman along with his personal historical past and circle of allies and enemies. And if the tip result’s that we get twice as many theatrical Batman films, then a lot the higher.
For extra on the way forward for all issues DC, try what to anticipate from DC in 2025 and see each DC film and sequence in growth.
Jesse is a mild-mannered employees author for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your mental thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
