So, with The Dark Knight Rises due out on Friday and my IMAX tickets booked for Sunday (baby permitting) I thought I'd share my thoughts on stuff he's been in, today... films!
He had been represented on screen many times over the years with a varying degree of success. I'm ignoring the 1940s serials, as I've not seen them, and I'm ignoring animated stuff as there's bastard loads of them and I can't be arsed.
Anyway to the 60's!
Batman: The 60s TV series is a thing of legend, its was good fun and spawned a 1966 feature length version, which wasn't great quality, but is fun to watch and contains some very funny scenes, particularly the 'Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!' line
Adam West was... special as Batman and will always have that kind of funny/campy interpretation to himself, it fitted the tone of the series and the time perfectly. The series itself is still very watchable and will remain so, the film struggled quite a bit and is relatively poor, feeling like an episode stretched out for twice the length.
The film just had a blu-ray release, £8 on amazon. It is tempting... Very tempting...
Batman (1989): Enough of fun Batman, this was the birth of 'dark' Batman, and good it was too! Michael Keaton was and will always be my favourite Batman, he plays off the bit of a rich cock Bruce Wayne and the moody Batman superbly and Jack as the Joker isn't bad either!
The plot is good, the casting and acting bang on. Tim Burton does a fine job directing, as to be fair he usually does. The film came out when I was a massive 7 and it was one of the films I grew up watching, that may make me slightly biased towards it (and it's sequel, but patience), but everything here felt right
Some would moan that Batman kills in this film, where in the comics he doesn't. Well he used too, so maybe that's hankering back to old comics. Yeah that'll do. And the fact the joker has a name? Shouldn't really happen, but hey, minor points.
So... have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Batman Returns: 3 years later and Keaton was back for the sequel, and in my opinion the best of all the Batman films. I'm not entirely sure where Batman was returning from, but he did indeed return!
Penguin and Catwoman provide the enemies, but hats off to a stand out performance from Christopher Walken as Max Shreck, the man's awesome.
Look at him, he even looks deranged!
The plot is darker than the first film and was considered more mature at the time, but it's still good comic book action. Having 2 (well 3 with Max) super villains working together made it a bit more frantic. It had some memorable scenes, my favourite being the, 'It could be worse, my nose could be gushing blood' line!
Go on Danny, take a bite!
This is my favourite and while Friday's release has the potential to take over, it's a tall order. Who knows!
The 4 Blu-Ray boxset of the first 4 films is justified by these 2 alone, they are superb films and the standard all superhero films that followed has to live up too.
Anyway that's all I can be arsed with for today, part 2 tomorrow (or Thursday) and there will be swearing as I venture into Kilmer/Clooney territory...
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