Anything made in quantity will produce both good and bad,
it's just a fact of things. While us geeky types can do a river dance at how
the beloved stuff of nerds has permeated the social fabric of the world, we
find we have to hang our heads in shame at some of the stuff produced. Super
Hero movies are in no way new, you can find them back in the days before color
was new.
Since Wesley Snipes made Blade a short lived cool and
profitable franchise, movie studios are so invested in making films based on
comics that Super Hero is this close to being listed as a genre type. Thus the
sudden climb in their numbers (there's been at least two super hero movies a
year since 1998) and with great numbers come a large number of crap within. Not
simply the ones that make you roll your eyes or shake the theater personal
until they give you your money back. We're talking the ones that just went off
the rails and dumped its toxic cargo right near the town full of perfectly
behaved children and Stafford wives. This article is about the worst offenders,
and these are their stories.
1. Batman - Two Time Offender
Batman is not just an ultra-popular comic, but the name of
both a TV show and a Movie. The TV show is the cause of a strikingly bi-polar
reaction with most geeks. The fond memory of the show - especially Adam West
(who has been trolling fame from the character since the first episode) and
anger akin to road rage. It is a fact that this show single handedly kept
comics from reaching past the label of "just for kids" thanks to its
camp, worldwide syndication and absolutely no respect for the characters.
Tim Burton's 1989 movie was something a little different,
but we'll get to that in a bit.
What Batman the TV show got wrong is also what made it bad. Let’s
not get crazy over this show. After all it was the 1960's when the highest
special effect tech was stop motion and Claymation, scripts for everything from
soap operas to sitcoms were so simplistically written they make Stephanie Meyer
jealous. (There's very little from the 1960's TV that wasn't camp.) So one can
forgive the camp of Batman TV show about a millionaire who went around dressed
like a bat and beat people up. Where it got it wrong was the much lamented
"BIFF BANG POW." It is assured that there is some book or blog or
Playboy article written about why this existed - but even as a child it seemed
like a cheap swipe at comics as a medium.
Comics are a combination of words and pictures, so when
there's a sound effect the creators had to use onomatopoeia to an extreme. If one is used to reading comics this is not
a bother. In fact they were often more clever than silly and help convey what
was happening in the story effectively. Thanks to the Batman TV show people got
a permanent perception of comics that they were all as dumb and campy as Batman
- and no matter how fondly you remembered it, the show was pretty dumb and
campy. People have actually said, "Comics are nothing but BIFF, BANG, POW.
Make no mistake, as a kid I got a kick out of Batman, except serious plot
points that bugged me before I knew what a "plot point" was and the
"BIFF BANG POW" stuff. It made me wonder why a TV would show with
sound and color need onomatopoeia. It was like a Family Guy joke, funny at
first but after five minutes you wonder why they are running it so long. The
dual problem being that the BIFF BANG POW was one of the things that made the
series famous.
Where the TV show gets charged for site gag that became
useless after 2 episodes, the Tim Burton movie got it wrong in so many ways.
The first was the choice for director. Before Batman his credits were Pee-Wee's
Big Adventure and Beetlejuice. When he was interviewed while making Batman he
was asked if he read the comics and his now-infamous answer was "Do I look
like a person who reads comics?" (Seriously, the friggin director of Pee
Wee's Big Adventure and Beatlejuice snubbed comics and even more surprising was
that to this day no one has smacked him for that one.) Secondly Michael Keaton
was the wrong choice for Bruce Wayne or Batman. Granted there hasn't been a
"right" choice before Bruce Tim and Christian Bale, but Michael
Keaton did not convey "Millionaire" or hero, he looked like a dude in
a bat suit. While everyone laughs at Bale's Batman voice, at least he didn't
sound like a stereotype cast member of Will and Grace. Thirdly, the only scenes
anyone can remember about Burton's Batman were the one featuring Jack Nicholson
as the Joker. In fact the only scenes worth remembering were Jack Nicholson's
Joker. When the villain of the movie pretty much over shadows the movie then
you have problem.
Here's the difference between Batman (1989) and Batman
Begins/Dark Knight. Ask the average movie goer what they remember about Nolan's
films and they will say, "Bale as Bruce Wayne, the cool bat gear, Michael
Cain's Alfred - as opposed to who-ever-the-fuck played Alfred in Burton's crap
fest - Gary Senese's Gordon, Arron Ekard's Harvey Dent/Two Face, and Heath
Ledgers joker.” Heath Ledger "stole" the show as opposed to taking
over the whole movie. However, Ledger stood out because he was surrounded by a
great script, other excellent actors, a director who took the material
seriously and an intense plot. Unless you watched Burton Batman a million
times, I bet you cannot begin to tell me what the hell the plot actually was -
other than Bruce Wayne being Batman. Burton should have named his movie
"The Joker."
2. Catwoman - Take your pick
Let’s list the rest of the awful Catwomen to date: Julie
Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Uartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, a Halle Berry. Julie
and Urtha are remembered so fondly very fondly for their roles and the general
sexy - mostly Julie but more people remember Urtha then Lee. Yet, all the portrayals bring to mind a
question usually reserved for the Punisher movies. How hard is it to do
Catwoman?
When it comes to TV show versions of Salina Kyle - the one most
remember more through memory then actually having watched them once matured.
What so whack about those portrayals the simple way they were portrayed. Either they were constantly stealing cat
related items or acting cat like in a way even the older version of the comic
character never did. Julie and Urtha
both extended rolled r's with every word beginning or ending with an
"r" and it was supposed to be cat like. The stealing cat related items was a trope in
comics but one had to wonder how many could their possibly be? As for every version feeling like they had to
take on characteristics of a cat, it became annoying on TV or the movies. Batman didn't screech like a bat, Ant Man
didn't crawl of the side of walls or eat more sugar then the body could take. And while Catwoman does have a cat fetish,
she doesn't drink milk from a bowl or like herself clean in the comics - though
I'm sure some porn version probably does that some where.
Then we come to the two movie gals. Both, like Burton,
proclaimed no need to actually read any source material. Both had what amounted
to the worse costumes ever put on film - and that's saying something to
characters from a series about a dude in a bat suit. Both played the characters
as victims turn victims that could handle themselves. Catwoman is a simple
character - thief, Batman's greatest love, thrill junky. So why do they keep
going wrong?
First of all, anyone who tries to do something without
research will either fail or become a Republican. There's a reason why Catwoman
is a re-occurring character that's last since they created her during the days
of the suit. I am not saying the cheese cake wasn't a factor, but that ended a
good two years before the Burton movie came out. Because written well she's a
compelling character whose part of one of fictions greatest romances. The TV
show got it a little right. Once again it was the 1960's and American heroes
couldn't have felons as their true loves. (That rule goes up there with the husbands
and wives not being allowed to be seen in the same bed, which most likely
contributed to that idiotic stork story.) She not a megalomaniac or a person
who teams up with an army of sociopaths. Of no less importance, Catwoman is a
legendary world class thief with brains, skills and someone not to be screwed
with. Even the Joker gives her space.
Halle Berry gets the hardest hate because she made a movie
that was based on something, but not Catwoman. Granted it was a very bad movie
- she admitted as much when she accepted her Razzy back in 2005. Let’s not
forget that Batman Returns was all around horrible so Michelle's poor
performance got lost in a sea of crap that was the entire movie.
What makes one think a character like Catwoman can be done
correctly? Because analogues of the type of character she is has be done with
much success. Check out The Great Train Robbery, The Pink Panther, Ocean's II
(Both versions), The Bank Job, The Italian Job, Inside Man, Drive, 3000 Miles
to Graceland. Any Catwoman portrayal would be a caper/heist character complete
with James Bond balls and Mission Impossible tension. The woman in the costume
is secondary. In the TV series she stole cat stuff and made traps for Batman -
which is what every villain did in that series, stole stuff related to their
characters and made traps for Batman. Where Batman Returns failed was Catwoman
was boring and Pfeiffer and Keatan had less chemistry then a dolphin and a
goldfish. In Halle's movie . . . well, it was just too stupid to even hash out
plot problems - the whole movie was a "plot problem". Neither
character reflected the source material - which is far better the given credit
for and could carry a movie if done correctly.
As of this date Nolan Batman Rises has yet to come out so it
can't speak to how Ann Hathaway will do - though there's a reason why Nolan
first two films out grossed every version that came before it - and the
simplest answer is that both movies actually reflected the source material that
birthed the character.
If you have a suggestion for upcoming versions of this
series, feel free to post it.
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