 Starring: Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin
Director: Leslie H. Martinson
Year Of Release: 1966
Plot: Holy supervillains! After Batman discovers that a yacht has been stolen, he realises that four of the worst evil-doers in Gotham City have banded together to cook up a diabolic scheme. Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler and The Joker want world domination, and only the Caped Crusader and his sidekick Robin, can save the day. |
I probably shouldn’t have titled this ‘Forget Christian Bale...’, as he’s got a bit of a temper, but never mind, I’ll just have to make sure I never make a sound on any set he’s working on. However despite the fact I don’t want Bale to verbally berate me, in the role of Batman I still prefer Adam West.
Nowadays it’s rather popular to look down on the 1960s Batman, with its bright colours, silly plots and ‘pow’ ‘kazam’ fight scenes, but it’s a product of its time and a lot better and cleverer than many give it credit for. For some reason nowadays, we seem to have the attitude that you have to treat superheroes deadly seriously. They all have to be grounded in the real world, and full of angst and conflicted feelings, but why?
If you think about them objectively, superheroes are quite silly. People running around fighting crime wearing costumes may be rather cool and it’s easy to see the attraction of the idea, but it’s also pretty ridiculous. In fact, having superpowers is probably the most sensible thing about the whole superhero thing, which isn’t saying much – and Batman doesn’t even have those.
As a result when you bring these characters to the screen you need to find a way to make the inherent silliness acceptable. With Tim Burton’s Batman movies, we were prepared to suspend our disbelief over the more bizarre aspects of the superhero world because he set it in a fantasy world that’s halfway between the 1940s and the modern world, with plenty of gothic and art nouveau touches thrown in. The entire universe of Batman and Batman Returns is far enough removed from reality that when you have superheroes and costumed villains running around in it, it doesn’t seem extraordinary. Why shouldn’t that happen in such an oversized, fantastical world?
The more recent Christopher Nolan Batman movies have been far more gritty and grounded in a realistic world (although still with over the top edges), but the reason you can have the Dark Knight and the Joker running around is that they are less human beings than they are symbols (or more accurately, archetypes). As Liam Neeson says to Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins – “You have to become an idea”. In those films, Bruce Wayne himself is actually rather boring and tedious. In fact it’s difficult to think of a more humourless character, who’s entire non-caped existence is purely about moping around like an overgrown teenager, and taking himself ridiculously seriously (although to be fair, he has a decent reason to mope). Even when he goes out for a night on the town with two beautiful woman, he looks like he’d prefer to be at home wallowing in angst and self pity.
He’s only interesting when he’s Batman, and when he’s behind the mask he stops being a person – hence the inhuman gravelly voice – and becomes a symbol of anger and frustration, exploring the idea that in order to stop the criminals, he must almost be worse than they are. Sure, all the stuff about his conflict and duality is important, but as a character he only really works when he dons the cowl. Without Batman, Bruce Wayne is nothing.
This turning of comic book characters into symbols is most clear with the Joker in The Dark Knight. The film deliberately never lets us know The Joker’s origins, with the character constantly making up stories about how he got his scarred smile. The reason for this is that who he is as an individual human being is irrelevant, and by clouding the issue of where the Joker came from, it highlights who he is as a symbol. The Joker is the agent of pure chaos and anarchy. He is the voice of what happens when the world as we know it breaks down.
Chris Nolan’s Batman films are very good movies, but despite their reputation for realism, they don’t present a ‘real’ situation at all, what they do is take the symbolism of superheroes seriously, and through that create a world where we suspend our disbelief not because of who the characters are, but what they represent.
What I love about the 1960s Batman is that while many claim it’s stupid and disrespects the characters, what it actually does is play with the inherent absurdities of a world where a man runs around dressed as a bat, but everyone takes that idea deadly seriously. It’s pretty much the antithesis of what Christopher Nolan did, but at the same time, it’s not an invalid way to look as the characters.
Batman: The Movie is essentially the theatre of the absurd. The humour comes from playing the characters absolutely deadpan, which highlights the humour of the ridiculousness of the situation itself. And I don’t care what anyone else says, Batman: The Movie is very, very funny. The scene where Batman tries to get rid of a bomb, only to find all avenues blocked by everything from nuns and babies to the Salvation Army and baby ducks, is absolutely brilliant. And I don’t know why, but every time Robin instantly works out the farcical (but correct) answer to one of The Riddler’s nonsensical conundrums, it has me in stitches (“What weighs six ounces, sits in a tree and is very dangerous?” – “A sparrow with a machine gun!”, “What has yellow skin and writes?” – “A ball-point banana!”) It’s stupid, but it’s funny.
People talk about how modern comic book movies deconstruct the superhero myth, to try and get under the skin of why these characters have resonated with people for so long. Essentially Batman: The Movie is also deconstructing the superhero myth, but from the other side, highlighting its absurdities and the essential silliness that goes on under the serious veneer.
It’s not a stretch to say the film is an early spoof, reacting to the self-righteous, 1950s superhero TV series. For example, if you watch the 50s Superman TV series, the Man Of Steel does very little that the 1960s Batman doesn’t do, from the pompous attitude to the ridiculous plots, but whereas in the 50s audiences were meant to take the pompous superheroes seriously, by the 60s they were prepared to make fun of that attitude and find humour in the sillier aspects of a comic book world. In fact, playing the characters absolutely deadpan while the situation itself gets ever more ridiculous is exactly what happens in the likes of Airplane and The Naked Gun, and it is those sorts of spoofs that are Batman: The Movie’s closest kin.
We may be able to suspend disbelief and enjoy more ‘realistic’ comic books films immensely, but there is undoubtedly an absurdity about the whole superhero situation, and Adam West plays that inherent oddity magnificently. Purely in terms of unadulterated fun, there’s no one to be beat him, and even today, both the 1960s Batman TV series and movie are probably the best superhero spoofs there have ever been.
Gravelly voiced Christian Bale may don the cowl well and the new films themselves may be absolutely fascinating, but for my money Adam West is still the most entertaining Batman. If nothing else, he’s a hell of a lot funnier than Christian Bale’s Caped Crusader, who probably hasn’t cracked a smile in his life.
TIM ISAAC
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