Would you like modern Batman to be more like Adam West Batman, or dark and grim?

[Tzigone]

But Bruce was fairly well-adjusted at the start of his career...well, as well-adjusted as a man who dresses up like a bat to fight crime can ever be! Its only after years of crime-fighting take its toll on him that he starts to slide down that slippery slope towards becoming Batjerk.

I thought he'd been retconned to being this way from the start?

Its established that the Waynes and the Kanes didn't get along. In fact, the New 52 really emphasized this aspect - there was a zero issue back in 2012 in which the Kane family tries to steal the Wayne fortune since Bruce was technically missing, presumed dead (during his years abroad) and Alfred was the only one standing in the way. Thomas Wayne literally trusted his butler to protect his son's inheritance from his wife's family!

I admit I haven't read it (no interest in the N52 setup in regards to how long he's been Batman, ages of boys when becoming Robin, etc.). The problem pre-dates N52, though. Ever since living relatives were introduced in post-COIE. Then that brings up another problem I have - good characters turned bad. People who used to be nice folks are now evil (or at least jerkish like Hal's brother). Like Uncle Philip. Pop Haly. Zor-El, Jor-El, Allura. Wally's dad. Duela Dent. Sardath. Jean Loring. Jericho. And so forth and so on. Some in reboots, some just in storylines. Some of which had bad continuity or made no sense. I don't like good characters being remade as bad. Just a thing with me. Particularly irritating when it's done with relatives, because absolutely no one is allowed to actually have good family relations - not even if their family members are dead. Not "dramatic" enough. See also: adding angsty backstory where not originally present, as with Barry.

And still doesn't deal with Jacob Kane - was he a money-stealer, too, or just inappropriate for some other reason. But even so, the entire Kane family is bad, except the one Thomas married. Yeah.

And while he started out healthier in Year One, they did sort of retcon more of an edge back onto him earlier in his career. See the split with Dick pre-COIE vs. after. He acts more like a mature adult before the reboot.

Yeah, early post-COIE Bruce has some really bad behavior. With Dick and Jason and colleagues. But the way he reacted to Dick coming back and trying to talk to him and his reasons for taking Jason in and making him Robin - they were really hitting the "emotionally stunted" notes there. Though another comic would make excuses for him (when Dick and and Roy were talking when Roy was tricking Dick so he could get Lian, I think).

Plus, if Alfred hangs around as a surrogate father, it makes Bruce seem a bit less independent. He doesn't need a replacement father figure and I'm not sure if he even wants one. Alfred works better as an older peer he meets as an adult, IMO.

I don't find it less independent with Bruce because of how Alfred's treated (very different case with earlier stories with Kate and her dad, IMO). Alfred, by and large, doesn't get to make any decisions. He doesn't have any power or much influence. Which is slightly odd if he raised him, but not unbelievable. A parent's influence should wane one one is in adulthood, IMO.

There's the weirdness of Alfred remaining employed as butler. As someone said in early days of watching Gotham - Alfred being both Bruce's employee and his guardian makes for a very tangled web in terms of authority/hierarchy and is unlikely to be the best setup for raising a healthy child. And years later, Alfred's still an employee (or an employee again?) instead of just being a father figure. One or the other works, but both gives it a weird dynamic that is only occasionally addressed.

I do think it largely an issue of coincidental timing rather than real intent to make Alfred an inadequate guardian. Bruce was becoming more emotionally troubled in the comics during a broadly similar timeframe as Alfred was being rewritten as a father figure, but they weren't meant to be connected. But the end result is still there.

[DC Classics]

I feel Bruce/Batman shouldn't be always sulking, brooding, morose, there should be other emotions, but not jokey campy, either. I like Batman a mixture of the light and the dark.

I've always considered Val Kilmer's Batman in Forever to be a continuation of Keaton's version of the character. 'Officially' that's always been the case. But if you look at it from a thematic perspective as well, it makes sense. Keaton's Bruce was a disturbed man who became Batman because he literally couldn't cope with his parent's death and was obsessed with having the world make sense again. We see Kilmer's Bruce reflect on his past and come to terms with his decision to become Batman, and the obsession that initially drove him to the cape and cowl, and it matches up with what we saw in the Keaton films. Of course, Kilmer's Bruce has had years to mellow down and has realized that killing isn't the answer (since killing the Joker didn't bring him peace in the end), and by the end of Forever he decides to remain Batman out of choice, and not because of obsession.

The tonal schizophrenia of that film unfortunately makes it hard to appreciate the very real character arc that Bruce goes through.

In Batman Forever: The Official Movie Book by Michael Singer, Joel Schumacher explained that Forever was officially intended to be a different version of Batman, not a continuation of Tim Burton's Batman movies, that's why Gotham City, the Batmobile, Batboat, Batwing and everything is completely redesigned, Harvey Dent was obviously recast with a white actor, Batman was obviously recast because this Batman was a lighter version with a jokey "I'll get drive thru, chicks dig the car" personality that Keaton refused to play, and Joel didn't want Keaton anyway, and only Michael Gough and Pat Hingle remained just because Joel felt they "are two great actors." There was even a new theme song, etc.
Joel Schumacher said, "I think Tim Burton did a wonderful job, but I think it was incumbent upon us to give our own version of the Batman legend. Tommy Lee Jones was always my first choice for Two-Face, and I asked him very early on. There's nobody like Tommy Lee Jones. I mean, who else can be this wicked, funny and daring at the same time? I had been a fan of Val since Top Gun and Willow. He was incredible as Jim Morrison in The Doors and recently he blew me away in Tombstone. He's extremely handsome as Bruce Wayne, who is a charming millionaire entrepreneur and social star of Gotham..with a secret. As Batman, Val is heroic and sexy. I didn't want to have an adolescent Robin. I didn't want to have a wide-eyed, cutesy, overly innocent Robin. Nor did I want an overly hip, street Robin. Michael [Gough] and Pat [Hingle] are two great actors. The idea of changing them just for the sake of changing them would have been, I think, a mistake...so they remained. I thought that part of the fun of doing Gotham would be to create our own city. Bob Kane more or less based Gotham on New York, so we're using parts of Manhattan and parts of Los Angeles, and making up the rest."
Schumacher's production designer Barbara Ling explained, "We were very influenced by the comics which had these wonderful color washes in the frames. In one panel, the wash would be red, and in the next, blue. That was very striking to us, and we felt that was an important element to capture. After all, the comics weren't black and white. We have glowing colored sculptures lit from behind, animated electric billboards, giant graphic elements of graffiti, but all done in ultra-violet pant lit with incandescent lights. The Batmobile was quite a challenge. I knew I wanted it to have that wing on top, which would help it resemble the silhouette of a bat. The bat is an amazing animal. The structure of the wings its veins and ribs. So we started going for a stylized, automotive version of a bat. I wanted the Batmobile to look like a living, breathing thing, and you cannot believe how hard it is to design it." Barbara Ling's assistant Tim Flattery explained, "We took the Batmobile and incorporated elements of it [ribs that radiate day-glo light] into the Batboat."

Warners co-chairman Terry Semel and Bob Daly had decided Tim Burton was too dark for Batman and too scary for kids, so they replaced him with Joel Schumacher to make a lighter and campy Batman that's not too dark for their Batman Happy Meals deal with McDonalds and more toyetic friendly.
In 1995 co-chairman of Warner Brothers Bob Daly explained, "Terry Semel and I wanted this Batman to be a little more fun and brighter than the last one. The first Batman [(1989)] was wonderful [financially]. The second got terrific reviews, but some people felt it was too dark, especially for young kids." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...546-story.html
In Cinescope [June 1995] Joel Schumacher explained, "I wasn't asked to do the third of Tim's movies... When I was able to bring Val Kilmer in, it really gave me and the rest of the creative team an opportunity to feel that we were doing a new [version] instead of a sequel... We tried to add a lot of humor to Batman. They are called 'comic' books."
https://www.1995batman.com/2018/03/m...e-1995_30.html
Tim Burton has a producer credit on Batman Forever because he had one meeting with Warners co-chairman with his ideas for his third Batman movie to be set at Halloween with Brad Dourif as the Scarecrow until he discovered that they really didn't want him to do that, Burton's Scarecrow would have been even darker and scarier to kids, but they did kinda use his Halloween setting idea for one scene in Batman Forever.
"I don't know if any ideas made it in," says Tim Burton of the subsequent Batman Forever film. "I realized halfway through my meeting with Warner Bros. that they didn't really want me to do the movie. They kept saying, ‘Don't you wanna go back and do a movie like Edward Scissorhands? Something smaller?' I said, 'You don't want me to do the movie, do you?'"
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...nguins-1013942

[Zaresh]

Why does it have to be between 2 radical extremes? How about a middle option like Bronze Age Batman and TAS Batman.

Late to the thread, but this is me too, bassicaly. A half way both could be perfect and those two still had a lot of both ways of writing Batman. Heck, even post-COIE Bruce was still fairly balanced, even if he definitely made some very not good choices.

That being said, Titan's Bruce is a fresh breeze and I'm enjoying him a lot, both in and out of Dick's head.

[Lee Stone]

If I had to choose from the two extremes, I'd go with the Adam West version.

However, I have a fondness for the late '70s/early '80s Batman that was more of a detective, had a more balanced personality and was still human.

[Gotham citizen]

I think he should be more like he was during the first half of the eighties: serious but not unhappy, aware of his responsibilities but not squashed by them, resolute but not grim.

[Omniscient1]

I dont want an Adam West Batman- though I did enjoy the Batman 66 series - that was a thing in itself (and my kids enjoyed it, they do not enjoy the normal Bats at all).
I wish that the whole thing made a bit more sense. Bruce Wayne is slick, smart and everything he should be, then when he puts the cowl on he also grows a 2 day stubble.

Then there's the whole Gotham thing, if its such an awful place, where every crook ends up in that Asylum, then no one would live there, not least of which because there'd be no one left alive. There is no light and dark with the Batman runs at the moment, its all dark, which makes it (wait for it) unbelieveable. It has no internal coherence.

I cancelled Detective Comics last year because it was so bad, I am very close to cancelling Batman.

[Zorintien]

The version I like best is the Batman TAS version: Always serious. But he still works well with the police and the Justice League. I guess more Grim Dark than Superman, but not Grim Dark like The Punisher.

[johnpeelgothisgun]

I have my preferences, but it really depends on the story's tone and subject matter. I'm prepared to accept different characterizations. Within the past week I've met with several distinct versions of Bruce that all worked fine for me within their stories (e.g. "Death of Innocents," "Blind Justice," some Bronze Age stories, several TAS & TNBA tie-ins), and other versions that failed. If I had to pick just one--and I do not wish to do that--it'd be the TAS version, who has proven dramatic flexibility. To remain engaging, the man has to be left room to lose his temper now and then, succumb to arrogance when things appear too easy, or just make poor choices and suffer the consequences. Some of my favorite Bruce stories are set in the aftermath of Jason Todd's death and his reluctance to take on a new sidekick. He could be downright reckless and harsh in them. But it was because he cared, not because he was morbid or a pig.

[bretmaverick2]

I’d prefer Detectve Batman from the 70s/ early 80s to the near mentally deranged Batman we get recently.

[phantom1592]

Adam West's version spent over half his time deciphering riddles, putting together clues, and working in his crime lab to stop his enemies. So yeah... I definitely want more of THAT!


On a separate note... Adam West is the most comic accurate Bat-god that's ever been filmed. He had Shark Repellent in a HELICOPTER.... in Aerosol form!! BECAUSE HE'S BATMAN!!! The amount of pre-planning an contingencies plans that man has... Dude was prepared for a Sharknado 40 years before it was a thing!

[bat39]

Adam West's version spent over half his time deciphering riddles, putting together clues, and working in his crime lab to stop his enemies. So yeah... I definitely want more of THAT!


On a separate note... Adam West is the most comic accurate Bat-god that's ever been filmed. He had Shark Repellent in a HELICOPTER.... in Aerosol form!! BECAUSE HE'S BATMAN!!! The amount of pre-planning an contingencies plans that man has... Dude was prepared for a Sharknado 40 years before it was a thing!

Yeah, people tend to forget that the Batman '66 TV show was very accurate to the Batman comics of the 50's and early 60's...perhaps even more so than modern Batman adaptations have been to modern Bat-comics.

[Coal Tiger]

I always envisioned Batman as an adult human being that has the capacity to go from Adam West to Frank Miller and back again. Just one or the other makes for a pretty one dimensional character.

[bat39]

I always envisioned Batman as an adult human being that has the capacity to go from Adam West to Frank Miller and back again. Just one or the other makes for a pretty one dimensional character.

Agreed. Though I don't think this 'back and forth' happens all the time though. Rather, its a more gradual, cyclical process.

Even Frank Miller envisioned his Batman as being the guy from the 60's TV show who, 20-odd years later, was older and wearier and a bit psychologically damaged from the long years of the crusade.

Grant Morrison took a similar view of Batman's history. He starts out as fairly well-balanced, despite the persona of the grim ruthless vigilante he adopts to terrorize criminals. When Robin joins him, he actually finds his work fun and revels in all the superhero craziness. But after Dick leaves, his world steadily starts to become darker, culminating in a series of tragedies that almost break him emotionally - Jason Todd's death, Barbara's crippling, and later, Knightfall and No Man's Land. But eventually, he picks himself up again and regains the optimism of his early years.

[bat39]

double post

[Alan2099]

Yeah, people tend to forget that the Batman '66 TV show was very accurate to the Batman comics of the 50's and early 60's...perhaps even more so than modern Batman adaptations have been to modern Bat-comics.

Another thing people tend to forget is that Batman himself in the show was serious. It was usually just the situations he was in that were ridiculous.