Farewell, Batman.

Adam West didn't kill Batman.
Oh, his performance as the Caped Crusader (and half of a Dynamic Duo) was silly and weird. The scripts he had to work with were hackeneyed and sometimes downright weird, the costume was ridiculous and made him look like a tubby circus performer, and the less said about the bat-eyebrows the better.
But Batman survived. Batman went on. There was still... Batman.
Frank Miller helped a great deal. Many other writers and artists took turns re-examining Batman, making him scarier, more interesting, and shaping him into one of the best anti-heroes of all time.

Tim Burton didn't kill Batman.
Neither did Michael Keaton, though I didn't really care for his performance. You all might remember that we collectively gasped, "Mister Mom is going to be Batman? And the director is that guy who made Beetlejuice?" Yet, Burton/Keaton's Batman was still delightful. There are moments in it that show Burton's genius and Keaton's flexibility as a performer. (Well, not physical flexibility; the rubber suit was kind of clunky.)

Val Kilmer didn't kill Batman.
I didn't expect him to, either. In fact, I was gunning for this combination, because I loved Val Kilmer and I loved Batman. Val has dance training and it shows in his gorgeous fight performances. Madmartigan is Batman! Whoo! Batman Forever still sucked, though. It sucked despite a solid (if epically weird) performance from Jim Carrey, one of my favorite actors playing one of my favorite heroes, and Nichole Kidman playing smart as sexy. To be fair, it had a new director whose idea of surreality was not as well-formed as Burton's had been (though, Joel Schumacher, man? What the hell?), and we had Tommy Lee Jones doing flatly the worst performance of his career, so that might have been some of the problem.

But Batman went on, and his comic book stories were good.

We also had Batman The Animated Series.
Kevin Conroy didn't kill Batman, despite the fact that he was the only American-born person on the planet who didn't know who Batman was. Indeed, he went to the audition and read for it cold, just adapting his voice to fit what the production team asked of him. It didn't kill Batman to have Luke Skywalker voicing the Joker opposite him, either. Indeed, as a huge fan of Batman, Mark Hamil was an absolutely pitch-perfect Joker. B:TAS was one of the best cartoon shows ever produced in the United States, and it was glorious. We had Batman. We had the best of Batman. Batman was strong again.

George Clooney didn't kill Batman.
I'm going to be honest here, I really did like Clooney as Batman. There was a quality he brought to it that I liked. He can do "growly" without sounding like a throat cancer survivor. He can do dark and broody without being "Emo" about it. He can do devilishly charming effortlessly, and was the only person so far that made me believe in "Bruce Wayne, Billionaire Playboy." He has a natural intensity that works well for the character, and also has excellent comedy timing, which is important for a "straight man".

Joel Schumacher didn't kill Batman,
but Batman & Robin is proof that he tried his hardest. Oddly, I also didn't object to "Arnold" as Mr. Freeze; he suited this creative vision perfectly and it is very satisfying to watch the governator sling around a huge gun and spit bad quips through his toothy grin in his thick accent. I've always enjoyed Schwartzenegger as a villain, so this was kind of fun.

Chris Nolan didn't kill Batman.
God help us all, he tried. He seems to have had a terrible allergic reaction to Schumacher's vision of The Dark Knight and had the bad idea to do his trilogy of films to counteract it. Batman Begins bored the hell out of me. The Dark Knight was this awesome movie that happened to have Batman in it from time to time. The Dark Knight Rises was absolutely terrible. It bothers me that Nolan was working with such excellent talent and still managed to make a hot mess of things. It bothers me that Nolan worked so hard to break my toys. It bothered me that his version of "gritty realism" is just as bizarre and unreal as the Schumacher films, but with a different art director.

Christian Bale didn't kill Batman.
And honestly, I'm not sure that anyone could do a worse performance as either Batman or Bruce Wayne. We could have Johnny Depp overacting and doing the Jack Sparrow Swagger (TM) and it wouldn't be worse. We could have Adam West shoving himself back into the suit with the satin cape and it wouldn't be worse. Batman will survive anything we do to him.

Batman will survive Ben Affleck.







Wait. Maybe I spoke too soon.
Daredevil didn't survive Ben Affleck.
Oh, dear.
Farewell, Batman. I'll wait for you on the other side.

DC: Consider yourself warned. I am turning my back on you now. The only thing that will potentially lure me back to you would be a Wonder Woman Movie with Gina Torres in the title role, and a competent writer and director at the helm. May I suggest Allison Mack as producer?

*Sigh.* Who am I kidding? I'm still going to watch Shirtless Arrow, no matter how terrible it is. I will console myself with old seasons of Smallville.

Now, what prompted THAT?

Here's what prompted the rant about Batman as played by Ben Affleck:

“You go up to an eight year old kid, and you say, ‘Who’s Robert Downey Jr.?’ They go, ‘Iron Man.’ If you go up to an eight year old kid, and you say, ‘Who’s Ben Affleck?’ They look at you blankly or they say, ‘Argo-fuck yourself.’ There’s just not the same connection there … And so if you look at Robert Downey Jr.’s brilliant career over the last ten years with all these Marvel flicks, he went from a dude who’s sort of considered tarnished goods at one point, to a couple films of respectability, and then suddenly he was the lynchpin of a new universe of the Marvel films. He became the beacon— all that charm, all that training, his entire life of being Robert Downey Jr., being a charming actor and shit. Then BOOM, came into bear with that fucking character [Tony Stark]. Same thing is going on with him [Affleck]. I imagine he looks at it like, ‘I could probably Robert Downey Jr. this.’”
—
Kevin Smith, speculating that Ben Affleck wanted to play Batman in order to be like Robert Downey Jr. (x)

Here's what I said over on Tumblr:
"In truth, when I heard that RDJ was going to play Iron Man, the universe spun and realigned itself, angel choirs sang and wept simultaneously, I was suddenly able to experience all of time and space at one time, and I heard the voice of God.

God said, “Yes. All of creation happened for this moment, right here. You’re welcome.”

I heard that Ben Affleck is slated to play Batman and instead of suddenly being one with the universe, I disassociated from it a little bit.

Thanks, but no thanks. Adam West managed to not kill Batman. Chris Nolan and Christian Bale nearly finished him off, though.

Ben Affleck? Bitch, please."