But Batman’s history is the story of this tension and how far one children’s character can be pushed into the realm of maturity and realism before he’s broken.įrom the beginning, Batman was more of a greatest-hits compilation than a fully formed character. To cinematically fix Batman he couldn’t merely adopt the dark, but had to be molded by it. Bane’s speech might as well be Nolan’s pitch on how a new generation of creatives would rehabilitate Batman for the big screen. The reason we’re on the precipice of a fourth moody Batman movie within the span of 17 years-sixth if you count Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman and Justice League-is because the modern incarnation of the character embraced a level of grittiness that felt in direct opposition to what had come before in Adam West’s Batman, Tim Burton’s two films, and Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Nolan is no longer in charge, but his successor, Matt Reeves, is picking up where he left off: This weekend, the director’s The Batman arrives in theaters, and it stars Robert Pattinson as what’s been dubbed “Emo Batman.” Over the next two installments, Nolan would wring every last bit of camp and wonder from the Caped Crusader-and while that resulted in one of the best superhero movies of all time in The Dark Knight, it ignored the lighthearted parts of the franchise that had been a hallmark for decades.

In 2005, Christopher Nolan’s aggressively realistic and murky Batman Begins resurrected the franchise after Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin sent her to IP purgatory eight years earlier. In retrospect, the dialogue feels oddly meta. Naturally, this fails, inspiring one of the greatest villain monologues of all time: “You think darkness is your ally,” Hardy croaks. On the verge of defeat, Christian Bale’s Batman turns off the lights as if this will be the gambit that saves him.

In 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy’s Bane can’t help but chuckle as Batman catches the terrorist’s fade. Perhaps the greatest critical evaluation of present-day Batman unintentionally occurs while a villain is kicking his ass.

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