Batman

Batman

I think I might go see Batman Begins today.

I'm excited about this one. I've gotten out of the habit of reading movie reviews before I go to movies over the past year or so. Some reviewers were giving away too much information, and I was letting others give me notions and preconceptions (i.e. either building my hopes up or tearing them down) before I even sat to watch a flick. So for most of the past year, I've managed to ignore most movie critics until after watching a movie.

But I wandered over Ebert's way looking for a review of something else, and saw that he'd given Batman Begins a glowing review. More often than not, the thumb and I will agree more or less on the thumbs down/thumps up quality if a movie, if not necessarily it's final grade. He says good things.

Maybe I was a little nervous.

See, I'm a Bat-fan from way back. I've been reading Batman comics since I was 8, so that's 20 years or so of Batman fandom. Big Batman fan. Huge unbroken runs of both the Batman comic and Detective Comics dating back to the mid-80's. Even when I wasn't buying comics, I was buying Batman and Detective. Batman books. Batman toys. Batman clothes. I'm a Batman geek. I once won tickets to a production of the Scarlet Pimpernel because I knew the answer to the radio DJ's trivia question...what year did Batman first appear on comic pages?

Of the movies they've done in my lifetime? I'm still big on Burton's 1989 venture. I geeked out for it that summer. It's because I was waiting so much for the movie, but it just seemed like Batman and that big yellow bat symbol were everywhere. Posters. On TV. On T-Shirts. You couldn't throw a stick in the summer of 1989 without hitting three people wearing one of those black t-shirts with the bat symbol on it (I had 2. I remember Mom asking why I needed 2 Bat-shirts. One to wear while the other's dirty. Duh.) Batman was everywhere. And TV spots? That was a media blitz. They showed Batman previews every commercial break for every TV show, it seemed. I still have the image of Robert Wuhl's Allie Knox imprinted on my brain asking "Is there a 6 foot bat in Gotham City?"

The movie opened June 23 of that year. I desperately wanted to go see it that night. But when we drove past the Plaza Twin in Athens, we saw that the line stretched all the way past the Revco, the drug store in the shopping center next to the theater, Dad put the kibosh on that. I weren't happy. I was even less happy when my buddy Nigel called and told me that it was, in a word, awesome.

The next day, I got a call from my friend Lindsey, and his mother drove us to see the 1:00 show.

(This is an aside having nothing to do with Batman--I've just realized that I don't think I had a friend with a common name while growing up....there was Lindsey, and Nigel, and also Tregg, and his brother Browdy. Even Lance isn't that common.)

Little things I remember from that viewing?

I realized that I'd seen 80% of the movie, in previews, TV specials and in every Batman magazine preview I'd bought...but I hadn't seen it all put together or moving, so it was cool.

Remembering that Allie Knox's line "Is there a 6 foot bat in Gotham City?" in the movie is taken from a different take than the one they used for the trailer. Different inflections. I'd memorized that trailer....

Getting a little pissed at Batman's having guns on the Batmobile and the Batwing.

Enjoying the hell out of Jack Nicholson's Joker.

I think I saw Batman 5 times that summer. Maybe more. Maybe less. Once with my cousins Christine and Robbie and my Aunt Glenna at the Midway Drive-In, with my Aunt threatening to take us home because the movie was so violent.

Batman was also the first pre-recorded VHS tape we owned. I still have the tape, though it's just about worn out. When I was moving in over here, my DVD's were still packed, and I was looking for a movie to watch. I popped the VHS of Batman in. There's a Diet Coke commercial featuring Michael Gough's Alfred that I'd forgotten about, but still knew word for word. And also a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck spot for the Warner Brothers Catalog.

That Batman still holds up for me. I think the Fanboy experience I had at 12 was more than half the reason why. But I like Gotham City in that first Burton Batman more than anything. It's as much a character as anybody in the movie. I just like the whole dreamlike, dark fantasy feel off the whole thing.

Of those movies that followed? Batman Returns is actually not that bad a movie. I remember not caring much for it the first time I saw it, believing that having both The Penguin and Catwoman drowned the movie. But I kinda like it here years later. It's got a weird noir feel to it that none of the others get. Plus, it's Christopher Walken in what I think of as his most Christopher Walkenesque roll.

The Schumacher Batman movies? Well, a lot of people get vehemently angry at their tone. And I was one of them for a long, long time. I wanted my Batman dark and crazy. Not part of some cartoon. I've mellowed somewhat. They're still crap movies, and I'll never need to see them again. But at some point I turned the page and said that Schumacher had so many things to try to do, but foremost among the production goals for Batman Forever and Batman and Robin was something along the lines of "Make a 2 hour commercial for our toys." Joel was getting paid, and he tried to make the best of what he could.

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Let me take a brief break to collect a thought or two.

Briefly: My top 5 Batman comic stories:

1. the Long Halloween (Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale)
2. The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller)
3. Arkham Asylum (Grant Morrison and Dave McKean)
4. Year One (Frank Miller)
5. Tower of Babel (from J.L.A.) (Mark Waid and Howard Porter)

Also, notable are the Death in the Family story, and the Batman, broken down and pissed off, of Mark Waid's Kingdom Come story.

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I've tried putting pen to paper as to why Batman appeals to me. And I've never really gotten a satisfactory answer. A lot of it comes off as a rant about "Batman's cool because I say so."

So I can't put my finger on exactly why. The best I can say is that it's a combination of a lot of things. The largest of which is the fear of loss that we all have, especially as children, that Batman has to carry with him was easily relatable. He's lost his parents. He's trying to set things right.

Maybe it appeals to that whole vengeance portion of my brain. Batman's a 65-year old revenge fantasy.

I have always liked that he's established a code to work by, and despite all the craziness that's gone on in his life, no matter how insane the villain he's fighting, he sticks to that code. There's a samurai vibe there that I appreciate very much.

And there's just a bit of trainwreck fascination there. I mean, Dude's crazy. Even in an imaginary world, how sane is it to dress up in a costume and fight people?

In the end, I don't know exactly why I've been reading a character for 20 years. But in that time, I've come to know what he is.

That's why all I've been hearing about Batman Begins has me a little excited. Just that we're exploring Bruce Wayne as much as we are Batman. I mean, the costume's not kept people coming back for 65 years. The costume'll bring you in the first couple of times, but after a while, we've all seen the costume. What's underneath?

Well. I've rambled enough. Let's go do something else....