The new Batman movie, The Batman, opened in theaters last week. I saw it. I thought it
was great. I’m very happy with it. So are lots of other people, apparently, because
it’s doing great business at the box office. And that means there’s probably going to be a The
Batman 2 in the pipeline before too long. I’m sure Matt Reeves, the director of The Batman,
and his production team have this covered already, but just in case they don’t,
it just so happens that I have a concept for a sequel to The Batman which I think is pretty good.
I could stand here and pitch it to you, but I actually think my idea is summed up
pretty well by this illustration I’ve prepared. Check it out:
We’d need to make some adjustments to match the tone of Matt Reeves’s Batman, of course, but I
think you get the gist of it. If coming up with the story for the next Batman movie was my job,
it would be the story of how Batman gets his partner in crime-fighting,
the story of how young, newly orphaned Dick Grayson becomes Robin.
I know there are probably some of you thinking, “Well, gee, Steve, I don’t know if that would
work. I mean, Robin is such an outlandish concept, he’s a relic from a bygone era, really,
when superhero comics were written for a target audience of children.
I just don’t think he would fit in with the gritty, realistic world depicted in The Batman.”
But I would like to say, with all due respect, that I’ve been hearing that shit for over thirty
years and I’m tired of it. Makers of live action Batman movies have ignored Robin — not entirely,
but mostly — for too long! What gives? Why don’t the makers of live action Batman
movies want to include Robin? Is it because they’re scared? Is that it? Are you afraid?
Are you afraid we’re all gonna laugh at your Batman movie? Huh?
What are you gonna do, cry? Is the big important movie director gonna cry?
This isn’t a joke. I want to see this child and his garish red and yellow costume
depicted in a live action Batman movie, and I want it done properly, and I am serious,
and I need you to know that.
To date there have been nine feature length live action Batman movies: Batman (1966),
Batman (1989), Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight,
The Dark Knight Rises, and now, The Batman. Of those, only three — Batman (1966),
Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin — include the character of Robin.
Probably not coincidentally, those are also the least serious of the three. That’s not necessarily
a bad thing — the 1966 Batman movie is one of the best of all the Batman movies, it’s comedy gold,
and Burt Ward is hilarious as Robin there, as he is in the TV series on which the film
is based. But the fact that Robin has, to date, only been featured in the goofier Batman movies
doesn’t mean he can’t possibly work in a more dramatic version.
I have every confidence that Robin could work in a serious Batman movie.
And just so we’re clear, when I say Robin, I mean Robin the Boy Wonder. I mean a twelve or thirteen
year old kid dressing up in a costume and fighting bad guys, not a dude who is obviously at least
in his twenties before he ever even meets Batman. I’m sorry about what happened to your parents,
I’m sure that was rough, but you’re like twenty-five, you’re only an orphan technically!
How can I be so sure that a version of Robin not unlike the one we’ve seen in the comics would work
in a serious live action Batman movie? It’s a pretty simple argument. The excuse is always
that Robin is too silly of a concept to play in a serious movie. The problem with that excuse
is, Batman movies have taken silly concepts from the comics and made them work before.
For example, The Dark Knight, which is still the best Batman movie for my money, and is
super duper serious, features as its villains two deeply goofy characters: the Joker, and Two-Face.
Some of you might be saying, “But, when I think of goofy Batman villains, I think of, like, the
Condiment King or the Cavalier, not the Joker or Two-Face — they’re two of the best villains ever!”
So they are. But one is a serial killer who looks like a clown, and the other is a guy with half of
a scarred-up face who flips a coin to decide if he kills people. Don’t they sound pretty silly?
And, if your answer is, “Well, sure they sound
silly when you describe them that way” — that’s my whole point.
On paper, the Joker is a silly, outlandish, unbelievable character, but in The Dark Knight,
Heath Ledger, and director Christopher Nolan, create a version of that character
who is compelling, kinda terrifying, and absolutely credible. Same thing with
Two-Face. There are scenes in The Dark Knight which, judged on the basis of literal realism,
are preposterous — the dude is walking around with half his face missing — which just happened like
the day before, by the way — and other than being a little grumpy, he seems fine! And yet, it works,
because the film roots that character in an emotional context, a tragedy, a loss, a pain,
an anger that feels real despite how superficially silly the concept of the character is.
There’s another character Batman movies do that with, too. Shit,
I’m blanking on the name — who am I thinking of — oh yeah — Batman!
He’s a man, dressed in a bat costume, who fights crime. And he’s the world’s greatest detective.
And he’s a master of the martial arts. And he’s, like, an Olympic-level athlete. And he has a vast
arsenal of weapons and gadgets to assist him in his work. And his headquarters is in a gigantic
cave. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, how can he afford to do all of this? He’s also super rich.
I love Batman. He’s, no foolin’, not just one of my favorite superheroes, but one of my favorite
fictional characters, period. But, he is deeply, inherently, inescapably silly. And yet,
he has been successfully depicted multiple times in movies that, in order to work,
depend on us taking him seriously. I think the best example of this is
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, but the new film, Matt Reeves’s The Batman,
is also a damn good movie that takes Batman very seriously and expects us to do the same.
Unlike Nolan’s movies, Reeves’s The Batman doesn’t spend any time
trying to make its Batman plausible. In the first film of Nolan’s trilogy, Batman Begins,
we get a lot of exposition explaining where Batman gets his costume, and how his cape
can turn into a glider, and where he got the Batmobile, and how his grappling hook works,
and a bunch of other stuff intended to explain how Batman does Batman shit.
It’s as if the movie is telling us, “See? Not so far-fetched after all, is it?”
And, it is still quite far-fetched, actually, but that’s one method Nolan uses to make it
feel believable, giving plausible-seeming explanations and justifications for things.
In Reeves’s The Batman, on the other hand, there’s essentially none of that.
Batman is Batman, and he does Batman shit, and there’s no time spent explaining it, justifying
it, or trying to make it seem plausible, it just is what it is. Batman is just Batman.
Some of the things — a lot of the things — Batman does in the movie are, if you take a step back
and think about them — very silly. I’m not just talking about things like fighting off a dozen
bad guys at once single-handedly, or jumping off a rooftop and gliding above the city like
a flying squirrel — or a bat, I guess, if that’s how you wanna look at it. I’m talking about Batman
visiting crime scenes and examining evidence alongside the police, or going to a nightclub
in full costume — things that aren’t all that improbable physically, but are the sorts of
things that probably wouldn’t happen in real life, things that, if not presented just right,
could break our suspension of disbelief and shatter the reality of the film.
But, that doesn’t happen, at least not for me, because those superficially silly things
are presented in such a way that they don’t play as silly within the context of the film.
They work. And the movie as a whole works tremendously well. And if Batman can work
as a serious, dramatic character in a serious, dramatic movie, so can Robin.
The Matt Reeves version of Batman may even be uniquely suited to introduce a proper
live action Dick Grayson/Robin. Not only does The Batman have a dark but pulpy aesthetic and
tone that is perfect for stories like this, at the end of the film it leaves Batman seemingly
on the cusp of a transition. He realizes that in order to help the people of Gotham City,
he needs to do more than simply fight crime — he needs to become a symbol of hope. What better way
to explore what that means than to introduce Dick Grayson, a kid who is going through the same thing
Bruce Wayne went through after his parents were murdered, a kid who is probably feeling
more vengeful than hopeful, a kid who needs Batman’s help, but who can also help Batman.
Here’s the thing: Batman can work as a solo character. Obviously he can — in the comics
there have been some classic Batman stories that didn’t include Robin — Batman: Year One, The Long
Halloween, Gothic — in fact, most of the stories from the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series
are set early in Batman’s career, before he met Robin. But just because Batman can work as a solo
act doesn’t mean that’s the best way to present him, or the only way he should be presented.
I’m a firm believer that Batman and Robin should be a package deal, that Batman is better
with Robin. He’s narratively useful — someone for Batman to talk to, to explain things to,
which would work particularly well in the more detective-oriented take presented in Reeves’s
version. He also provides an opportunity to explore the ethical problems with what Batman
does — Jim Gordon is obviously a close ally to Batman, but what if he sees Batman bringing
a young person into his very dangerous line of work and starts to have second thoughts?
Robin can be a surrogate child, a partner, a friend, a responsibility, a reflection,
a lens through which to show Batman at his best and at his worst. And,
he’s a great character in his own right. Dick Grayson, the original Robin, is brave, loyal,
funny, a kid who has gone through the same sort of wrenching, life-changing tragedy as Batman,
who uses that tragedy as motivation to fight crime the same as Batman, but who manages to
avoid the darkest depths of violence and obsession to which Batman is often drawn.
Does that mean Robin has to be in every single Batman story? No. Does that mean
I think the movies that don’t have Robin should have had him?
No. Those filmmakers chose to tell stories that didn’t include Robin, as is their right,
and some of those stories made for really, really good movies.
But it’s also possible to choose to tell Batman stories that do include
Robin. I’d like to see him on the big screen more often — or her,
depending on which Robin we’re talking about, Dick was the first but there have been several.
Robin is not just some ancillary character — he’s one half of the dynamic duo.
For decades on the covers of comic books it didn’t just say “Batman” — it said “Batman and
Robin the Boy Wonder”. He is an important part of Batman’s character and legacy,
he’s been around almost as long as Batman has — that’s the cover of Robin’s debut issue,
Detective Comics #38 — Batman’s debut was Detective Comics #27 — you do the math — and
he ought to be part of a live action Batman movie that does him justice and treats him seriously.
I don’t want him to be a joke — although, again, as demonstrated by the 1966 Batman movie,
that joke can be really funny. I don’t want him to be an angsty twenty-something relegated
to a subplot its own movie barely seems to care about. I don’t want him to be a winking allusion
made by a character who turns out to have a similar name at the very end of the movie.
And I don’t want him to be dead, represented only by a vandalized empty costume in a bleak, shallow,
pretentious, pseudo-philosophical wankfest directed by an objectivist edgelord douchebag.
I want Robin. He doesn’t have to look exactly like this. But he should be adapted from this.
And the main beats of his origin should be the same: young person, lost parents to violence,
becomes Batman’s sidekick and surrogate child. If filmmakers can make a serious, dramatic movie that
works about this guy, they can make one that also includes this guy. All they need is the
right take, and the vision to make it happen, and that begins with recognizing that, sure,
Batman is cool on his own, but Batman and Robin? That’s when it gets really good.
Not you.
Eh. Not you, either. But at least you’re not the racist one. Oh, were your ears burning?!