Can somebody tell me what kind of a world
we live in where a man dressed up
as a bat gets all of my press?
Looking back to the arc of the original Tim Burton Batman
franchise, it seems quaint that only one actor played Batman
on the big screen at a time.
Today, there is Battinson, Batfleck, Keaton's Batman,
LEGO Batman, and even a baby Batman
in Todd Phillips' Joker, all enjoying the fruits of the role
simultaneously.
Is it possible there's just too many Batmen?
I'm Batman.
Outrageous.
I'm Batman.
Hey, I'm more Batman than Batman, man.
Warner Brothers locked in an arms race against the MCU,
constantly trying to prove their fiscal viability
within the already overcrowded superhero landscape.
They seem to only really have one go-to move,
make a Batman thing.
There's never any room for experimentation
and reinvention.
Just do what worked before, but is this approach
the right way for DC to plant a flag
for the future of their company?
Cast your mind back to 2005 when Christopher Nolan's Batman
Trilogy would ostensibly reshape the modern conception
of a superhero movie.
In fact, it's out of the success of these films
and the failure of Superman Returns
that Warner's decided to go all in on giving the DCEU
its first few opportunities.
The brass decided to pivot the already in-development Superman
Returns sequel, titled Man of Steel
into being a reboot that would launch a new interconnected
universe, and thus, the DCEU was born.
Thank you for believing in me.
It didn't make much difference in the end.
For better or worse, Man of Steel
underperformed, and Warner's wanted no chances taken.
They viewed Batman as the only truly financially stable
element that they had to guarantee
a film would be a hit, but without Christian Bale's
iconic portrayal able to be incorporated into the universe,
Zack Snyder was given the very difficult task of casting
a new Batman only years after the last
and, arguably, most popular one had just left the stage.
Thus, Ben Affleck's loosely Frank Miller
inspired version of Bruce Wayne graced the screen in Batman v
Superman Dawn of Justice.
Despite initially being decried by the fan base,
he has since been embraced and has a strong contingent
of fans, who think he's literally the best
version of the character ever.
Tell me, do you bleed?
In rapid succession, the DCEU expanded.
Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman and Justice League
were released, all of which feature Bruce Wayne.
Unlike in the comics where Superman
is the jumping off point and in story leader of the universe,
Affleck's Batman was the go-to stabilizing element
for any project that DC viewed as even a little risky.
Unfortunately, that risk mitigation strategy
wasn't enough.
The DCEU started crumbling before it had really even had
a chance to lay a solid foundation for itself,
and just as the financials became unstable,
there's somehow more and more Batman pumped
into the ecosystem every year.
Whatever you do, wherever you go, I'll be watching you.
In the next stage of the DCEU, Warner's opted
to produce a few films in their slate
that kept the casting established
by the first phase of films.
Wonder Woman 84, Aquaman, Birds of Prey, and the like.
However, these films often act as standalone features, not
reliant on any of the continuity or intertextuality
of the previous shared universe, but not actively contradicting
it either.
The other cohort of films that were produced
were all in their own universes.
If things worked, then they could figure out
how to connect them and cross them over later.
This is how you get Todd Phillips R-rated
Joker, the Snyder cut.
And the gritty pseudo long Halloween adaptation,
The Batman, three major adaptations featuring Batman
happening simultaneously.
Hey, when all else fails, just do more Batman.
I've seen you go through similar phases in 2016 and 2012
and 2008 and 2005.
Today, the DCEU has now been thrown yet another curveball.
Warner's has been sold by AT&T to Discovery,
and what does the CEO, David Zaslav,
do as the primary order of business on virtually
his first day in office?
He says, we are righting this ship.
We're going to fix DC.
But we're in a bit of a complicated pickle.
There's three Batmen on the big screen currently.
Ben Affleck's, supposedly, going to appear in both The Flash
and Aquaman Two.
Michael Keaton is going to appear
in The Flash and any number of the other DCEU projects,
and Robert Pattinson is going to remain in his own little corner
for now.
That's a lot of Batmans.
And that's to say nothing to the fact
that the CW is trying to make us care about a Gotham Knights
show.
Batwoman was recently canceled.
David Zaslav pulled the plug on Batgirl.
Alfred has his own show where he's a spy.
Even Joker is getting a sequel, and it's a musical?
What is happening?
My life is nothing but a comedy.
Is this just too much Batman?
From a financial standpoint, it doesn't appear to be.
All of these projects are making money
and pushing the brand forward.
However, the half life for reinvention
and reinterpretation is getting shorter and shorter, frankly.
Currently, we're living in a world that
is being asked to accept a half a dozen versions
of the same mythology at once.
When will we reach a breaking point?
When there's seven simultaneous Batman?
When there's a Justice League of nothing but Batman?
They've done literally that in the comics before.
Maybe that's a novel way of trying
to legitimize this over abundance of everyone's
favorite billionaire playboy, or maybe,
just maybe, the new twin Kevin Feige, James Gunn, and Peter
Safran, should sort things out so there's just a single Batman
to build a franchise around.
Marvel didn't have 15 Captain Americas, or 15
Tony Stark's running around.
They achieved what no one else had
because they rallied their creative efforts
around a singular interpretation of a beloved character.
They took risks, and they committed to them.
That is America's ass.
For the past half decade, DC has been
trying to tell us that all of their productions
are connected canonically via a multiverse.
We're supposed to just accept it and hold the near dozen
versions of different dark nights in our head.
This presents both the fans and the DC brass
with an increasingly difficult predicament.
People love Batfleck, but it seems
like with every increasing day, Ben Affleck has other mountains
he wants to climb.
Simultaneously, The Batman really struck a chord
with viewers over the pandemic.
However, the world that the movie exists in, just
flat out isn't the world of a Batman,
who's a part of the Justice League, which
presents a Catch-22.
Do you let the Batman finish its trilogy, which
will take at least another five years,
and then cast a new Batman to jump start the Gunn Safran DCU
one?
Or do you continue with the Keaton Batman,
relegating everyone's favorite crime fighter
to a supporting Nick Fury-esque role in the universe?
In some ways, it just seems like an unwinnable scenario.
You're becoming quite a celebrity.
The future of the DCU rests on how Gunn and Safran decide
to reconcile this conundrum.
Will they have an elegant solution
that threads the needle and keeps the Snyder fans happy?
Or will they miss the mark and end up
stuck in a quagmire that's the equivalent of a Batman shaped
mustache on Henry Cavill's upper lip?
Only time will tell.
The only real answer that I can see is very simple,
the new Gunn and Safran era of the DC Cinematic Universe
should be built around Terry McGinnis.
I am Batman.
What do you think?
Who would you cast as a brand new Batman?
Let us know down in the comments below.
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