spidermanrocks
Senior Member
Originally posted by DARTH POWER
^ I'm not sure I buy that just the name Batman will equate to huge box office success.Batman Begins wasn't a huge success (though it was a hit). The same goes for Superman Returns. Just the name Superman didn't make it some huge hit.
Also we have yet to see audiences reaction to rebooting the much loved Nolan Bat franchise. But it's too early to tell I guess.
Anyway I'm still not very clear on why Nolan's Batman can't fit into a JL world. Batman doesn't have any superpowers anyway, so he'll never compare to the rest of the league in that sense.
It's his wealth, technology, resources and understanding of the criminal mind that is useful to them (and his badassness which puts the rest of the league in line).
I remember people saying exactly the same about the movie Avengers before it came out. That movie Iron man and Hulk would be utterley useless next to movie Thor and so would not really fit together.
But look at the result. It worked wonderfully. And I'm sure a huge part of it's financial success was capitalizing on the big success of Robert Downey's Iron man (the original script gave Cap a much bigger role than IM), plus capitalzing on Hulk being probably the most famous and recognizable character on the team.
Batman Begins wasn't a huge success due to Batman's image on the big screen being ruined by Batman & Robin. It took a while for Bats to rise (pun intended) again. He reached the "movie-will-be-a-huge-box-office-success-because-it-is-Batman" status only after The Dark Knight was released in theatres.
Superman Returns wasn't a huge success for the same reason Batman Begins wasn't a huge success. The last Superman movie pretty much ruined Supes' image on the big screen. Combine that with the fact that over 50% of the stuff in that movie were just rehashed stuff from the Donner movie and you could point that out from just seeing the trailers.
I think most people will be fine with rebooting Batman. The word "reboot" is heavily misunderstood. A reboot doesn't necessarily mean that you screwed up and have to start from scratch, redo the origin, reintroduce all the characters, redo the origins of the villains, and all of that. A reboot simply means ignoring the previous continuity. And with Batman's popularity, you wouldn't even need to set up any characters or continuity. You can just do a straight adaptation of any comic with all the characters already established and it would be fine. They're already said the Batman reboot (if it gets rebooted; there is no official announcement from Warner Bros yet but they said they're considering it and it will most likely happen) will already have an established Batman. This means we'll most likely get an already established universe where he's been Batman for a while, he's met some of his villains already, etc. I see it more as just a different take rather than a reinventation or redoing of the character. So if they have an already established Batman and an already established rogues gallery in the reboot, I think most people will be fine with it. Plus, Nolan is staying as producer for the reboot, which means it will probably be just as good in terms of storytelling, development, and complexity.
It's not that he can't possibly fit into the JL world in any way. It's that he wouldn't be the best choice for a Batman that exists in a JL world. As I said before, he needs to be a lot faster. Even faster than he was in Begins. Take the Arkham games for example. I'm sure you played them or at least saw some footage of them. He has to be THAT fast. Or at least as fast as Black Widow and Hawkeye were in Avengers (and they didn't have powers either). And he also has to prove that he is the world's greatest detective. As I said before, Bale's Batman still has to display those feats. You may argue that he can just display those feats in the JL movie. True but it's not being consistent. It wouldn't make sense to have him be like that for 3 movies and have him get his technology from Lucius Fox and then all of a sudden he is perfected in every field. And based on what we've seen from TDKR so far, he still doesn't seem to display those feats he needs for JL. I don't think we saw him do even a full body flip yet. TDKR takes place 8 years after TDK. How will you explain him not achieving this in 8 years (as well as in all the other years he was travelling worldwide training) but he suddenly learns how to do all this just in time for an alien invasion (or whatever villains they'll use in JL) strong enough to make him have to team up with 4 to 6 superpowered heroes in order to stop? That wouldn't make sense from a logical standpoint. Anyone professional critic who would look into this would realize the problem with this and would criticize the JL movie for that. Plus, the suit Bale wears wouldn't translate well to a JL movie. It was fine in BB, TDK, and I'm assuming it will be fine in TDKR but that's because he spends most of his time in the shadows and darkness and it looks good in there. It wouldn't look good in broad daylight or even in a place surrounded by a lot of lights (which is how I'm assuming the JL movie will look like). There is also the age factor. Bruce Wayne will be in his very late 30s/early 40s in TDKR and there are parts in the trailers and TV clips where you can see his hair turning gray. We know Superman will be in his 20s and I'm going to assume the other heroes will be younger too. Would you want a Batman that's almost twice the age of all the JL members? I personally would prefer a Batman closer to the other superheroes' ages.
Iron Man is a different case. Robert Downey Jr and Iron Man pretty much go hand in hand these days in terms of capitalizing off the character. It was Robert Downey Jr's great performance that made Iron Man a mainstream success. People think of Robert Downey Jr when they think Iron Man (including most comic book fans) just like how most people thought Christopher Reeves when they thought Superman (at least back in the day) and how people thought Robert Englund when they thought Freddy Krueger. Before that, IM wasn't exactly unknown but he wasn't one of Marvel's top 5 guns either. The movie gave us a definitive version of the character and even a lot of comic book fans only got into Iron Man once the movie came out. Batman is a whole different case. He's been an iconic mainstream success for decades now. People don't think Christian Bale when they think Batman. They think of everything involving Batman from Bale to Adam West to the Burton films to the comics to Batman TAS to other cartoons to the video games. Nolan did not create that iconic image of Batman. He simply just beautifully reintroduced it on the big screen after it was destroyed in the last decade.
The only people I heard say that about Iron Man and Hulk only said that months before Thor even came out. I don't think anyone said that once they saw Thor.
Sorry for the long post. I'm kinda tired after all that writing. 🍺