Adam West's Batman vs the modern "Dark Knight" version - which do you prefer?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Michelle66, Oct 31, 2010.

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  1. jook

    jook New Member

    Location:
    Australia
    ... who chooses to dress as a bat.

    Sorry, but that psychological character flaw of Batman is what justifies his existance. Why he became so good at detective work, and martial arts. Because he was more driven than an ordinary person.

    If he became a well adjusted adult, he would NOT be Batman. He would be a lawyer. Or a policeman.

    On top of all that, it's just plain better story writing. Do you need another straight-forward good guy? That was Superman. And it made sense for him with his good old fashioned country upbringing and happy childhood.

    It baffles me when people want their fictional heroes to be flawless, like some sort of ideal role model they can admire. That's just bad story writing. It's the flaws that make people interesting and that make them special.
     
  2. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Adam West being a total hammy hack makes it pretty hard to even enjoy the 60's show as a farce.
     
  3. guppy270

    guppy270 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Levittown, NY
    I agree. I doubt any of the latter-day Batman revivals, beginning with Burton's, would've happened at all without Frank Miller. I was 16 in 1986 when The Dark Knight Returns came out, and it rocked the "fandom" world, to put it milidly. After his run on Daredevil and Ronin, anticipation was at a fever pitch for TDKR, and Miller delivered. There were those who thought it was TOO dark, but it certainly pointed the way to where a lot of comics would go the next 20+ years.
     
  4. il pleut

    il pleut New Member

    adam west is may fave. even now he can say 3 words and i crack up. i'll choose funny over dark and pretentious any day.

    the whole concept of heroes, fictional or not deserves to be made fun of because there's no such thing. there are people who ocassionally do heroic things, and for that i'm thankful, but in the end everyone is fatally flawed, and as soon as you build the statue a pigeon poops on it, or it starts to rust or turn green.
     
  5. il pleut

    il pleut New Member

    that's a large part of the funny.
    did adam west cut you off in traffic or something?
     
  6. Michelle66

    Michelle66 Senior Member Thread Starter

    One of the themes I've noticed in the "I-hate-the-60's-Batman-show" crowd is their argument that the old show was somehow "sacrilegious" and making fun of the Batman comic book and that the character should be this dark avenging figure with many inner demons.

    Have any of the post-Dark-Knight fans ever read the comic book as it was up to the point of the TV series?

    Batman was not the angst-ridden character that Frank Miller debuted in his mid-80's mini-series. He was a basically just a guy in tights with a boy sidekick. Batman & Robin could have been Green Arrow & Speedy (without the arrows), or Captain America & Bucky (without the shield). He had a bunch of fanciful villains that always were up to mischief - same as every other super hero at the time.

    When the character debuted in '39, there was no back story in place. He was simply a rich man who doubled as a vigilante in a bat-suit. He carried a gun, and often dispatched villains by shooting them.

    Batman didn't get an origin story (and a mere one-page one at that) until six months later. By this time, costumed heroes were the rage and he was just one of many.

    In 1940, Batman got a sidekick, and the comics evolved into rather farcial affairs with the many expos that opened in Gotham City - each with gigantic working props for the characters to fight on.

    By the time the 60's rolled around, Batman had his own "family" of characters (Ace the Bat-hound, anyone?), and he was reduced to fighting space aliens all the time.

    A year or so before the series went into production, the comic book got a reboot. The space aliens were gone, and the series did get a bit more realistic - pretty much the same tone the series had.

    But, the constant "retconning" that has gone on in the years since the series aired is when the Batman character got all flawed and dark.

    And to those folks who can't get beyond the cartoony "pow" and "bam" on-screen effects, tell me, why is it that *every* fight in *every* comic book inevitably has the hero wise-cracking as he slugs it out? Do people in real life have light-hearted conversations when they are fighting? (This is a conceit of comic books that has always struck me at rather ridiculous. And it's in all of them - even the so-called "serious" ones.)
     
  7. Yovra

    Yovra Collector of Beatles Threads

    The Nolan/Bale-version!
     
  8. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    No, I just find his acting "style" unbelivably tough to watch. Even on Family Guy when he's trying to be funny it's just the same one-note gag.
     
  9. Maurice

    Maurice Senior Member

    Location:
    North Yarmouth, ME
    Nolan/Bale no contest. The 60's version seems to me like a substance-free cartoon that I outgrew when I was about ten. The current incarnation is gripping cinema art. There are so many high points in the Nolan series for me (Heath Ledger's Joker, the first unveiling of the Scarecrow, the brief portrayal of Gambol), it doesn't even come close to comparing.
     
  10. thegage

    thegage Forum Currency Nerd

    I started following Batman in the early '60s and can say that he was being reinvented long before Miller came along. For example the darker tone in the early '70s with Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil (and even Harlan Ellison) trending that way, which was in no manner like the TV show. And, the tone was frequently dependent on which DC book the story was in.

    John K.
     
  11. bluesbro

    bluesbro Forum Hall of Shame

    Location:
    DC
    I grew up on Batman - the original TV series. Still think that the original villans are better than any others since.

    But I voted for Bale. Specially the first one.
     
  12. direwolf-pgh

    direwolf-pgh Well-Known Member

    :laugh: ..just spat coffee all over my screen
     
  13. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    I actually like all of the incarnations, though they are very different. But each has their own charm. I went for the 60s series, which I watched religiously as a child and have rewatched in reruns. I realized how much humor was going over my head as a child. My choice of the series may very well be the nostalgia factor.

    I think some of the folks posting here need to be reminded that we are talking about fantasy here. ;)
     
  14. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    To the Batmobile!

    Well, we ain't eggxackley talkin' 'bout a documentary concerning substandard working conditions at a sausage factory, are we?

    While I appreciate that the Batman series as revived by Frank Miller is a leap forward for that long-running series and more power to that enterprise, the Adam West series has come to define sixties "Camp" as no other and has value as such. "Making Sense" has nothing to do with it. It's like requiring that "Dancing Queen" make sense.
     
  15. Michelle66

    Michelle66 Senior Member Thread Starter

    I wrote that the retconning started after the series ended. This would be the Neal Adams / Bob Haney issues of "Brave & The Bold" leading the way to the Adams/O'Neil stories in the main book.

    But, the Batman of this era wasn't the dark and brooding post-Miller incarnation that the movies seem to emulate. Comics hadn't started getting that deep and introspective yet. Sure, he was drawn all shadowy, and the mood was darker, but he still strove to bring all criminals to justice - even the homicidal Joker. Stories were still basically self-contained (meaning no long drawn-out storylines), and you never had Batman battling any inner demons as he was still a DC superhero (they all had the virture of Captain Kirk at the time).

    Things remained pretty much that way until the mid-80's and Miller's mini-series (and then the "Year One" thing where the origin got retconned yet again). It's here when DC started to go wacky with wholesale changes to everything they released.
     
  16. il pleut

    il pleut New Member

    well humor is subjective. for some reason i think he's a hoot, i think because he knows he's a ham.

    now family guy... i think that's kind of lame.
     
  17. FredV

    FredV Senior Member

    Was going to mention the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil Batman, and you're correct. Adams and O'Neil brought the character back to his roots the way Bob Kane and Bill Finger originally envisioned him. The early Batman comics from the late 1930's to the early 1940's were very film-noirish in their presentation. The early Batman had no qualms of carrying a gun and using it and even took a life if he had no other choice. From the late 1940's to the early 1960's emerged the more campy Batman that was the springboard for the 60's TV series. By the end of the series TV run DC Comics, through Adams and O'Neil, brought Batman back to his darker incarnation.
     

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  18. JC-L

    JC-L New Member

    Location:
    Virginia
    I like the Nolan version, although that has as much to do with the tones of the films as with Bale's portrayal of Batman himself. I did really like the West version as a kid, though, and for a while the first Keaton movie would have been one of my favs.

    I don't know a ton about the comics, but there have been various eras of Batman, and the stuff I find the most compelling shows Batman as conflicted, driven by dark impulses and almost as strange as the villains he battles. He's been dark at various points, and goofy at various points.

    I think it's interest to compare the Nicholson and Ledger Jokers. I heard a lot of comments that Ledger "got it right", but there are definitely eras where the Joker acts much more like Nicholson's weirdo rather than Ledger's psycho.
     
  19. JC-L

    JC-L New Member

    Location:
    Virginia
    I didn't know that. I thought he'd never killed anyone (and that was part of the struggle with Jason Todd, and both Batman and Gordon keeping the other from becoming "just like" the villains).
     
  20. thegage

    thegage Forum Currency Nerd

    Well, there were the Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories that O'Neil started penning in the late '60s. Those were groundbreaking in their treatment of current social issues, with all of the introspection that went along with the times. I think some of that did eventually spill over into his Batman, if not as overtly.

    John K.
     
  21. musicmax

    musicmax New Member

    Bale's voice nearly renders both Nolan films unwatchable.
     
  22. FredV

    FredV Senior Member

    Even back in the 40's when the Batman character became more kid-friendly, there were stories that harken back to the earlier, darker Batman. One of the most classic Batman comic stories from the 1940's is where Batman confronts Joe Chill, the man who murdered Bruce Wayne's parents. In the conclusion of the story, Chill is killed by his own henchmen who gun him down when they found out that he's the reason Batman exists.
     

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  23. Michelle66

    Michelle66 Senior Member Thread Starter

    Fred, I agree with your assessment of the tone of the early stories, but I don't think the film-noir feeling lasted into the late 40's, nor very much past Robin's introduction in 1940.

    Early Detective Comics covers are very moody and #31's is iconic. But, once Robin showed up, Batman started to resemble more of a father figure, smiling on as Robin beat up thugs.

    Also, if you look at the covers of his own title, he's always got on a big grin (and he and robin are usually up to some carefree shenanigans). (Check out how the logo changed between issues #2 and #8. That tells you all you need to know as to which way things were going.)

    Vintage comic book collecting wasn't really in vogue until after the 60's series had ended, so it's doubtful that the dark '39 version of the character was even known to the show's producers. When DC reprinted any old stories, they never went that far back as no fans from the 50's onward would have even remembered the old persona.
     

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  24. kevinsinnott

    kevinsinnott Forum Coffeeologist

    Location:
    Chicago, IL USA
    I agree it is distracting. Did they electronically lower it?
     
  25. JC-L

    JC-L New Member

    Location:
    Virginia
    I agree this is problematic, but it doesn't bother me like it does a lot of people. I think it makes sense (and has precedent) that Bruce Wayne changes his voice to sound scarier and to hide his identity. I don't know that Bale quite nails it, though.
     
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