Batman rant too long for Off-Topic Pub

Watching a few episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. Along with Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures (counted as B:TAS Volume 4 on the DVD; not as good as B:TAS, mostly hit & miss), and Justice League Unlimited, I own all of the episodes of B:TAS on DVD. No matter what anybody says about any of the live-action Batman movies, this cartoon is still the most faithful representation of Batman in a non-comic book medium, aside from Batman's suit not being particularly armored, with Kevlar and Nomex and tear-resistant stuff. It's pretty much the definitive version of Batman; the people who've been writing Batman comics for the last decade should have watched more of this so they wouldn't suck so much.

Episodes of particular interest to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight fans (i.e. specifically showing what the Nolan Batman films should've been more like ) are "Nothing to Fear", "Two-Face" Parts I & II, "Dreams in Darkness", "I Am the Night", "The Demon's Quest" Parts I & II, and "Second Chance". The movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is also a good one. Nothing to Fear and Dreams in Darkness are better depictions of the Scarecrow and more dramatic, more psychologically oriented fears than used in Begins. Two-Face and Second Chance are what the character of Two-Face is really like; TDK missed the mark by a lot on that one. The Demon's Quest is a lot more faithful to the character of Ra's al-Ghul (it's pronounced "Raysh" by the way) than Begins; the episode was written by the character's creator. I didn't mind them taking away Ra's's immortality to make it more realistic, but they changed it so much that it might as well have been a different character. I also didn't like how they combined Ducard with al-Ghul without any real reason, but even that was somewhat alright. I Am the Night does more to show how Batman holds himself responsible for any harm that comes to someone from criminals. And last but not least, Mask of the Phantasm does a much better job in depicting Batman's origin. Begins was okay, but there were a number of mistakes in it, such as 1A) Joe Chill being caught, tried, and convicted; 1B) Bruce Wayne planning on killing Joe Chill with a gun (his parents' murders ingrained a strong dislike for guns into him, and Bruce's strong sense of right and wrong was a part of him at least from the time of their deaths); 2) Bruce Wayne not having any sort of plan about how he's going to fight crime, and he only gets his start after being recruited into "The League of Shadows" (quotation marks because of how unrelated it is to the real one); 3) Batman acquires most of his -- no, ALL, of his equipment from Wayne Enterprises instead of developing it himself. Batman normally builds the vast majority of his equipment by himself. 4) Batman's "no-kill" code extends beyond simply "I won't kill you myself"; whenever he can, he will save a supervillain such as Ra's al-Ghul, though obviously not by sacrificing his life or an innocent's life to accomplish this.

As unfaithful as the four Burton/Schumacher Batman films are to the characters and settings, that doesn't bug me as much as people who are all like "OMG Batman Begins / The Dark Knight are teh best Batman movies EVAR," because people already know that those aren't like Batman much at all. Begins and TDK aren't much like Batman, either, and while they're great movies, they're not as great as they easily could've been had they stayed truer to the characters.

Other episodes better than all the live-action movies include "Heart of Ice", "Feat of Clay" Parts I & II, "It's Never Too Late", "Appointment in Crime Alley", "The Forgotten", "The Man Who Killed Batman", "Robin's Reckoning" Parts I & II, "Read My Lips", "Mudslide", "Sideshow", "Trial", "Riddler's Reform", "Deep Freeze", and the "Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero" movie.

Another thing I don't get about the live-action Batman movies is this: why does every one of them need to include a supervillain? For once, I would like Batman to just fight "normal" criminals or "normal" mobsters instead of every single movie I watch being basically about these fancy supervillains. I'm not saying the supervillains should be excluded from every Batman movie; I'm just saying that if you're making Batman movies, the first one should not include supervillains in any substantial role. I say "the first one" because if you have major villains in the first one and the second one, people are going to rage if you leave out supervillains in the third one. I wouldn't mind it, but it would be hell on their profits given the amount of people who want to see a larger number of villains adapted for the big screen.

And yet another thing I don't get: what's wrong with having Robin in a Batman movie? Yes, I know Forever sucked, but there was a reason it sucked. No one is going to adopt a 26-year-old as their ward. Everything about Forever was done wrong, pretty much. That doesn't mean it was Robin that ruined the movie. Read Batman: Dark Victory, or watch what inspired a good deal of it, Robin's Reckoning. If they did it like that, faithful to the comics, it could be done really well. Do it seriously and it can work. And why not do it for the next Batman? It would fit the themes perfectly; in Dark Victory, it's set after The Long Halloween and there's a distance between Batman and the other protagonists because of what he does as a vigilante. In TDK, he's isolated from the police at the end because he took the blame for several murders committed by (I'm assuming you've seen it if you were going to by now, it's been almost two years) Two-Face. And that's how Robin fits in; Bruce Wayne is going to Haly's Circus with some girlfriend when he sees Richard and Mary Grayson fall to their deaths. Richard Grayson was witness to some of the events leading up to it and he knows who the killer is, so he's the only material witness. Bruce Wayne being Batman, he offers to take the boy in, at least for awhile. Just go watch Robin's Reckoning; you can ignore the parts taking place in the present with the teenaged Robin if you want, but focus on the flashback segments and then tell me why that wouldn't work in a live-action movie.

I do agree with you about the cartoons being more comic faithful, The only live action batman movies i actually like are the first two, Batman Forever (Because riddler was just awesome), and the two latest versions (George clooney and batman should not have been even conceived)

On the matter of Batman beating up regular criminals, most people want to see major bad guys getting their butts whooped. Though I do feel that Ra's Al Ghoul could been a little more comic bookish in Begins.

On robin, They will most likely involve Boy wonder at some point maybe in movie 4? Though it did take at least three to involve him the first time around so who knows?

The thing is, It's probably easier to stick a bit closer to the comics than in the live actions. I mean we don't know if they've been given or withheld rights to certain aspects of the character or story.