It’s amazing how different something can look and how it can create different emotional content when it’s seen in animated form vs. live-action. The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson and many other notable celebrities, is already being highly anticipated by a lot of fans since it’s another look at an iconic character that people have been following for years. Thanks to delays caused by the pandemic however this movie has been pushed back again and again, which hasn’t really decreased the level of anticipation that people have built but has definitely made it possible for people to keep talking, theorizing, and coming up with one project after another to show their support for the movie. This animated version has a style to it that a lot of fans happen to like, and while it might be a little halting and even a bit scratchy it does come off as a version of the trailer that is bound to create a different experience than the live-action version has done. Animation can often be used to convey emotions and invoke feelings that live-action is capable of but often falls short of simply because reality isn’t always quite as mysterious as animation can be. This kind of proves that animation has a lot more freedom to it than real life does since to be fair, there’s far more that can be done with animation, even when keeping things realistic.
One thing to wonder about The Batman at this stage is how many times the hero will be brought back, rebooted, remade, and used as one of DC’s biggest draws, since while he’s still insanely popular there is always the feeling that he’s become their crutch as well. The fact that DC has a humongous stable of heroes and villains to draw from makes it obvious that continuing to go back to Batman, Superman, and a few others that people happen to love could mean that they don’t have a lot of other ideas to work with, or aren’t really certain who else could take up the kind of attention that their biggest heroes have held for so long. A lot of people might want to argue that Batman doesn’t need to change that much and doesn’t need to be replaced at all, and they’re not wrong since there’s no need to replace heroes, but there might eventually be a need to move on since like it or not, trying to watch the same heroes do the same thing year after year, version after version, and actor after actor, is becoming a bit hard to weather simply because at some point we’re going to be wondering when it will end rather than when the next movie will come out.
Plus, it would be nice to see a Batman movie focus on enemies that we haven’t really seen yet since he has plenty of them that aren’t as well known and could possibly benefit from being displayed in a movie. There are several that might have been seen but rarely used, and while there are plenty that have been used in the animated series, it would be fun to see them in live-action since anything that might humble the Batman and remind people that he is a human being and not some be-all, end-all of superheroes no matter how much he plans and schemes, would be nice for once. While I’m not a Batman superfan I’ve been a fan of the dark knight for quite a while, and it’s with my own level of fandom that it’s easy to say that it might be time for the Batman to rest and welcome in the next generation of heroes, along with Superman and the others that have been around for so long. Even fictional characters have to progress and move along at some point, and while it’s true that using different universes can allow a hero to exist in very different ways and in different timelines, the Batman feels like an idea that hasn’t worn through yet but is one that still might have an expiration date that might be wise to pay attention to eventually, especially given that the whole idea that the saying “Because…I’m Batman” has become a joke as well as a catch-all that explains why Batman can beat pretty much anyone with prep time and a perusal of his arsenal. The unfortunate part is that the only place we ever get to see this tested is in the comics and in the occasional online video that pits heroes and villains from different companies in a very biased match that tends to depend on votes or on circumstances that are often placed in the favor of one character or the other.
Batman has been given challenges in live-action movies, but aside from Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, the dark knight has never really faced much of a no-win situation outside of the comics. Maybe it’s time to change that.
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