CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 7/18/08

Dark Knight, Camp Crusader,
and Everything in Between:
Batman on Film

By jason davis

As Warner Bros. unleashes The Dark Knight on movie screens worldwide, CS Weekly steps back into the last century to investigate Batman's wide-ranging film and television history.

Though it's not uncommon for 19th century pop culture characters like Sherlock Holmes or Dracula to have enjoyed a varied array of motion picture interpretations over the last hundred years, modern characters still governed by copyrights rarely achieve such diversity. Like his DC Comics predecessor Superman, Batman is an exception to that rule. Since first appearing in Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939, the Caped Crusader has been everything from the hero of anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II to the star of a superhero procedural and even a tongue-in-cheek satire of his very own comic book. Indeed, this versatility could be the secret to Batman's success on film and television—like the contents of his famed utility belt, he adapts to whatever his story requires.

While his creators, penciler Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, were still establishing the character's world in the pages of Detective Comics, Batman made his live-action debut in the low-budget cinematic equivalent to the lurid magazines in which he battled the evildoers of Gotham City. 1943's Batman found the Dark Knight (Lewis Wilson) hitting the big screen in a 15-part Columbia serial that teamed him with his comic book sidekick Robin (Douglas Croft) and pitted the two crime fighters against Dr. Daka (J. Carrol Naish), a Japanese spy with a penchant for making zombies of his enemies. Though crudely produced and unabashedly racist by today's standards, the production proved Batman's viability as a cinematic protagonist and even contributed one key ingredient to the Batman mythos: it was the first appearance of the Bat's Cave (later renamed the Batcave). Six years later, Columbia produced another serial, Batman and Robin, in which Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan faced off against yet another made-for-the-movies villain: the Wizard (Leonard Penn). "But," the narrator's stentorian voice intones, "Fox producer William Dozier had his own dastardly designs on the Dynamic Duo!"

In 1954, Dr. Frederic Wertham laid the blame for juvenile delinquency (and any other aberrant behavior he could conceive) at the doorstep of the comic book industry in his spurious tome Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham concluded that Batman and Robin were homosexuals, and while his attack took down the most lurid of horror comics, it only served to steer Batman's writers away from darker storylines. The resulting shift brought the Caped Crusader more science fiction storylines to distance the characters from grittier, reality-based tales. Just over a decade after Wertham's crusade, though, the wholesome new Batman would join the swinging '60s in a fashion few could have imagined.

Impressed by Rocky Horror-style participatory screenings of the Batman serials in Chicago's Playboy Club, ABC executives hired producer William Dozier to turn the superhero into a TV star. Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) were back in the most colorful and tongue-in-cheek show on television. The resulting series found "millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne and his youthful ward Dick Grayson" enjoying the good life in "stately Wayne Manner" until Police Commissioner Gordon (Neil Hamilton) summoned them to do battle with dozens of colorful villains culled from the comics or invented for the show. The show's kitschy stock phrases, propensity to add a "Bat-" prefix to any device the hero deployed, and the use of comic-style word balloons to spell out the likes of "Bam!" and "Pow!!!" during fistfights lent the show a surreal quality that set it apart from other fare gracing the airwaves in 1966.

Like the popular serials that preceded it, Dozier's Batman made use of cliffhangers, deadly contraptions, and Dozier's over-the-top narration to ensure that viewers would return the next week to "the same Bat-time, same Bat-channel." Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (Three Days of the Condor) was hired to supervise the writing and lent the series much of its knowing charm as Batman would stride into a discotheque and insist on having a drink at the bar so as not to attract undo attention. This Batman forthrightly espoused civics lessons as he thwarted one pernicious plot after another from his rogues gallery of high-profile guest stars. Indeed, the series made household names of the Joker (Caesar Romero), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), the Riddler (Frank Gorshin), and Catwoman (Julie Newmar). These four villains also menaced Batman and Robin between seasons in the theatrical film Batman: The Movie, which carried the series' camp sensibilities to the big screen (though Lee Meriwether replaced Newmar's felonious feline for the film).

With the series running out steam near the end of its third season, ABC cut the show's twice weekly airings to one episode a week. Two-part stories were minimized in favor of standalone narratives and Robin was sidelined in favor of sex appeal in the form of Commissioner Gordon's daughter, Barbara (Yvonne Craig), aka Batgirl. Alas, it was too little, too late, but Dozier's idea of the duly deputized and upright Batman would remain, minus his satirical edge, throughout the 1970s in Filmation's animated Superfriends series. It would take a revolution in comics, as well as an innovative college professor, to bring Batman back to the screen—and this time, things would get very dark indeed.

Michael E. Uslan taught an accredited college course on comic books before he secured the rights to Batman's cinematic legacy in the late 1970s. While he fought to bring his vision of a brooding and tormented Batman to the screen, the comic industry itself was taking a darker turn with Alan Moore's Watchmen and, more importantly, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Uslan's campaign eventually reached fruition in a screenplay written by Sam Hamm (Never Cry Wolf) and Warren Skaaren (Beetlejuice) and directed by Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands). Featuring a story that found Batman (Michael Keaton) inadvertently creating the Joker when he dumps Gotham City mobster Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) into a vat of toxic chemicals, the film reveled in the psychology of its lead characters. Batman was a stunted child forever trying to avenge the loss of his parents, while the Joker's disfigured smile led him to practice his homicidal art on the innocents around him. Eventually grossing $251 million dollars domestically, 1989's Batman was a Hollywood phenomenon. Though purists balked at the idea that a youthful Joker murdered Wayne's parents—a notion that lends a cyclical pattern of escalation to the film that would be remarked upon over a decade later in Batman Begins—the movie assured a franchise and was followed by the most thematically complex Batman film of the 20th Century.

Batman Returns re-teamed Burton with Hamm and co-writer Daniel Waters (Heathers) for a story that essentially split Batman into three disparate characters to provide distorted mirrors on the hero's psyche. Industrialist Max Schreck (Christopher Walken) illustrates the dangers of unlimited wealth and the power lust it can breed. Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito), a deformed and abandoned child who matures to become the Penguin, shows the dangers of an orphan left to rot in his own hatred. Finally, secretary Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) loses herself in the freedom a mask affords when she becomes the Catwoman. As Batman vanquishes each in turn, the script forces the protagonist to destroy his own roads not taken while accepting the duality of his existence lest he be lost forever like his adversaries.

While Burton's sequel unreeled on the big screen, writer Paul Dini and designer Bruce Timm toiled on the small screen to create the most melancholy Batman yet. Though no title appears in the show's opening, their opus is widely referred to as Batman: The Animated Series and, like the Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 1940s, it represents the definitive take on the character in the medium of animation. Despite being ostensibly aimed at children as part of Fox's cartoon line-up, the show's rich characterizations and thoughtful plotting landed them occasional sojourns to primetime. This animated incarnation ever merited a theatrical release titled Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which found Batman (voiced by Kevin Conroy) reunited with an old flame hiding a terrible secret. The series re-imagined villains like Mr. Freeze (v. Michael Ansara) as tragic figures while rescuing characters such as Poison Ivy (v. Diane Pershing) from relative obscurity. Of course, all this success was a double-edged sword for the Caped Crusader, as increasing attention and escalating sales of merchandise led to a broadening of the franchise's appeal.

With Burton bowing out of the second sequel, director Joel Schumacher (Lost Boys) took the helm for Batman Forever (story by Lee Batchler & Janet Scott Batchler with a script by the Batchlers and Akiva Goldsman). Batman (Val Kilmer) was now an established figure in Gotham City and the story began in medias res with the protagonist battling district attorney-turned-dual-faced-diabolic Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones). Gone were the darker elements of Burton's misfit-filled Gotham, but the notion of multiple antagonists remained, with Dr. Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey) becoming the Riddler shortly into the film. Adding to the crowded scenario was the cinematic introduction of Dick Grayson (Chris O'Donnell), who became Robin after the death of his parents. With so much going on, and at such a feverish pitch, it's no wonder that the moodiness of the previous installments gave way to a roller coaster ride that was more action than story. The same was even more true for Batman & Robin two years later. Another Goldsman script directed by Schumacher crammed Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzeneggar), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), Bane (Jeep Swenson), and even Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) into a free-for-all of wince-inducing catchphrases and absurdly camp action sequences that made the 1966 series seem sober by comparison. In less than a decade, the brooding hero of the Burton films had given way to a Batman (George Clooney this time) on ice, battling Freeze with retractable Bat-skates. At least the villain's animated origin story from Dini's Emmy-winning "Heart of Ice" made it into the movie, though it didn't survive the chilling effect of Schwarzenegger's performance.

While the animated adventures of Batman continued in various forms across the millennial divide, the theatrical franchise remained dormant until writer David S. Goyer (Blade) and co-writer/director Christopher Nolan (Memento) combined elements of the procedural story and iconography of the horror genre to relaunch the character with 2005's Batman Begins. The story opens with an embittered Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) submerging himself into the criminal underworld in an effort to learn about evil so he can one day battle it with intellect and fear. Taking its cue from Frank Miller's Batman: Year One comics, the film revels in the details of becoming Batman: secretly securing equipment, building the Batcave, and even networking with trusted law enforcement officials to combat Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy)—the Scarecrow—and his mysterious master's plan to destroy Gotham with fear. The most complex and richly drawn interpretation of the character to date, Batman Begins draws from horror movies by keeping Batman in the shadows as he goes about his work. The audience experiences him through the eyes of the criminals he hunts—fleeting glimpses and flashes of theatrical effects—as he researches his antagonist's scheme in a fashion that reminds the viewer that he originated in Detective Comics.

With the Dark Knight returning to the big screen this weekend in an outing that's already generating Oscar buzz, Batman continues to prove a potent pop cultural commodity and a valuable storytelling tool for the writers who script his adventures, in whatever genre they may take place.

Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Batman, Batman Begins, Batman Returns courtesy Warner Bros. Home Video

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