Comic Creators Comment on Batman Movies

[Silver Nemesis]

James Tynion IV

"I saw Batman Returns when I was waaaaay too young, and it warped my young brain into a fan of all things creepy and all things batty... I was four years old when it was released in theaters, and I think I saw it two or three times."

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2014/04/02/batman-eternal-an-interview-with-james-tynion-iv

[The Dark Knight]

Good comment from James. I remember seeing BR as a youngster. Even then I knew it was the 'bad boy'. I've always been a lover of atmosphere and visuals. I rank that very highly.

[Silver Nemesis]

I'm not sure this should be included in this thread, since he hasn't actually worked on the Batman comics, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird was recently asked about possible similarities between the TMNT reboot and Batman Begins. His response....

Peter Laird (on Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy):

"I confess I don't remember enough about the plot of "Batman Begins" to really answer your question adequately. Blame that on "The Dark Knight Rises", which made me want to forget that whole trilogy."

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/nailbiter111/news/?a=97678

[Cobblepot4Mayor]

Ivan Reitman, a one time potential director of what became Burton's Batman, also gave a similar comment to Mr Eastman recently when discussing the long gestating Ghostbusters III and whether it should simply just be rebooted. His response was rather pleasing to read.

"I certainly think rebooting it is not interesting – i.e., tell the same story but with new guys," Reitman told Spinoff Online in an exclusive interview. "But picking up a story that has a generational shift in it, yes."

"I always felt it was important to tell a story that had the first two movies as predecessors that everybody involved in the movie recognizes," he said. "I mean, all of the story recognizes, as opposed to well, let's pretend nothing happened and let's talk about the creation of Batman yet again. That's sort of what my thinking was."

EVERYTHING these days is trying to be just like Batman Begins. To a T. It's all so very irritating because the formula as we all know doesn't work for everything. It really is killing the imagination. It's not Nolan's fault however. It's the "hacks" who lazily just copy him in a cesspool of cop outs. I'm pointing at you...Zack Snyder lol

[The Laughing Fish]

Norm Breyfogle gave his opinion on Nolan's Batman, while talking about the difficulty of trying to apply too much realism to comic book characters during an interview on a fan's podcast:

The [other equally relevant] problem I had with the Nolan films is that the story made Batman less of his own man. I mean, the Nolan films portrayed him as an unfocused, angry guy until Ra's al Ghul got a hold of him when he was an adult. That's not Batman! In fact, it makes even more difficult to believe that Batman can do the things that he does. One of the main things about Batman that makes him a little bit more believable that he can do these superhuman feats is that he was so driven from the age of nine or so (or whatever age he was when his parents got killed) to reach the peak of human ability in the mental spirit and the physical spirit. And Nolan completely wiped that away! And not only that, he made Batman's creation as a result of Ra's al Ghul, one of his own villains, instead of being his own man.

The main problem I have outside of portraying Batman realistically on live action is that Batman is not his own man. In my opinion, we are still waiting for the best Batman to be portrayed on screen. For instance, one great example that is a glaring lack that we've had in the Nolan films is that because Bruce Wayne is unfocused until he meets Ra's al Ghul, we don't get to see any montage sequences of young Bruce Wayne growing and building his physique, by going through his acrobatics, weightlifting, training and his martial arts. We don't get to see that. As any strong Batman fan of the comics, including me, will tell you is that's one of the most important things about Batman. To me, it also helped me as a young man to be a self-actualised individual. Bruce Wayne in the Batman films is not a self-actualised individual – he's actualised by Ra's al Ghul!

And Lucius Fox is his science guy. Instead of Batman being the supreme scientist, Lucius Fox has to tell him everything about science. That's ridiculous! That's not Batman, that's some guy in a Halloween costume!

Source: play it at 31:10 minutes on http://twotruefreaks.com/media/podcasts/TrentusMagnusPunchesReality/mp3/NormBreyfogle02.mp3

I mentioned this off-topic in another thread awhile ago but I'd thought it would be more suitable to mention it here. I especially love "the guy in the Halloween costume" too! 

But by the sound of it, I don't get the impression that he's too big of a fan of the Burton stuff either. Nonetheless, he does have a point that the definitive Batman on screen is yet to happen.

[johnnygobbs]

I don't think I would have bought Bale's Bruce Wayne as a genius scientist/self-made master of the martial arts, but I don't mean that as a criticism.  I liked Bale's portrayal of a spoiled, pampered brat who needed moral guidance from others to become the self-sacrificial figure he became by TDK and TDKR.  That might not be Norman Breyfogle's Batman, but it makes for a fascinating story of redemption.

I wonder if "Gotham" will deal with the aspects of Bruce Wayne's development Breyfogle longs to see, bearing in mind that we're already seeing a fairly pro-active, intellectually acquisitive child, albeit one who has not yet started to build his physical faculties as well as his mental ones.

[The Laughing Fish]

I don't think I would have bought Bale's Bruce Wayne as a genius scientist/self-made master of the martial arts, but I don't mean that as a criticism.  I liked Bale's portrayal of a spoiled, pampered brat who needed moral guidance from others to become the self-sacrificial figure he became by TDK and TDKR.  That might not be Norman Breyfogle's Batman, but it makes for a fascinating story of redemption.

Unfortunately I have to disagree. I thought the character's morals were contradictory throughout the series, and the "sacrifices" he made in the sequels made absolutely no sense. He takes the blame for Harvey Dent because he's afraid people would lose hope...despite his argument that people are ready to believe in good at the end of the boat scene. I guess Joker was right after all?!    And if Batman tainted his own symbol to protect Dent, wouldn't that cause an equally devastating impact to anyone who looked up to him? 

For TDKR, I think BatmAngelus suggested the ending would've been far better if Batman "died" but Bruce stayed alive to help Gotham recover from the ruins in the aftermath and taking over his father's role as a philanthropist. I like that idea a lot. Instead, he fakes his death as both personas, tricks everybody in the process for no real good reason and gets together with a morally shady woman who killed several times...while an under-trained Blake takes over the mantle as Gotham's protector.  None of this comes across as redeemable to me. And Batman needing to be explained about everything all the time diminishes him as a character too. Let him figure things out for himself for once!

[The Laughing Fish]

I forgot to add that Breyfogle is applying the standard to all the films when it comes to Batman not being a self-actualized individual. He just especially finds it more troublesome in Nolan's interpretation.

[The Laughing Fish]

Bruce Timm credits B89 for being an inspiration for BTAS, and talks about some of the differences between the film and the show.

We have a love/hate thing going on with the Tim Burton movies. Obviously our show would never have gotten made if it hadn't been for that first Batman movie. There are some interesting parallels, somewhat, in the design of the movie and what we did, but I made it clear to Jean [MacCurdy] when we first got the gig that I didn't want to make the TV show just a spin-off of the movie. I didn't want to use their Batman design, I didn't want to use much of anything they did. I wanted the show to be unique. Not on that, but I had my own ideas what Batman was. They coincided in some places with the movie, and some places they didn't.

Tim Burton and Anton Furst used retro/deco elements in their version of Gotham City as well, but theirs was more of an ugly take on it - it was a deliberately ugly, brutal take on the futuristic design - and we didn't really want to go that way. It certainly worked for the movie, but we wanted more of a pure, old-fashioned kind of art deco. Burton and Furst were probably influenced by pretty much the same sources we were. There was an architectural visionary named Hugh Ferris, who did these elaborate futuristic cityscape architectural renderings. They were just gorgeous - these massive deco buildings rendered very moodily. That was one of our prime influences on the look of the show. I'm sure Burton and Furst were looking at the stuff too, and then they went off in their own direction with it.

Source: https://books.google.nl/books?id=EMwn_4llWK0C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=our+show+would+never+have+gotten+made+if+

And this is what Timm said during the DVD commentary for the BTAS House and Garden episode.

If he [Burton] had done an Adam West style Batman movie, regardless whether it was successful or not, they would never have allowed us to do this take on Batman. They only allowed us to do this because it was perceived to being in vein to what Tim Burton had done. Once again, thank you Tim Burton for making that movie.

[thecolorsblend]

I haven't gathered any quotes regarding Schumacher and Nolan's films. I'd imagine the comic creators' responses would follow the general consensus: i.e. Schumacher bad, Nolan good. But you never know, there might be some interesting opinions out there. If there are any interesting quotes, we could just add them to this thread for now. If we get enough of them, I'll change the thread title and edit the original post to include all the new additions.

Right around the time Forever came out, Wizard did a comic pro round up of different peoples' views about it. One that stands out was someone (Alex Ross?) saying the movie was nice eye candy but he kept checking his watch for when the movie would end. Some pros really liked it.

Also O'Neil has gotten picked on for his changing views regarding the movie. Keep in mind that he was editor of the comics at the time and so logically he would've been expected to be a company man. "This movie is the greatest thing ever created. Try not to think of it as a 'movie' so much as a divine revelation. Tim Burton is God inscribing the commandments onto stone tablets and showing us simpletons and fools The Way!" Crap like that is to be expected. You're more likely to get honest feedback these days, oddly enough. But there was a lot of sugarcoating going on back then.