#batramble

[petrorabbit]

Let's Watch Batman Movies #1: The 1943 Serial

The first thing that needs to be said about the Batman 1943 serial is that it was anti-Japanese propaganda created during WWII. The stated and overt purpose of these films is to rally white Americans against Japanese-Americans and citizens of Japan. For some reason, I went in like, oh, I’ve seen racist propaganda before, this won’t be so bad. I was quite wrong! Early on, the action moves to Little Tokyo and the narrator informs us that it is vacant ever since “a wise government rounded up the shifty eyed Japs.” Extremely bad! And it’s like that the whole way through!

The villain is an original character named Dr. Daka who uses advanced technology to turn people into zombies that he can control, which is textually linked to the stereotype of Japanese people being subservient and willing to die for their leader. There are multiple scenes where Daka is about to use his brainwashing machine on someone, and they announce that he will never break their spirit of American independence and capitalist ambition! Although bizarrely no one ever breaks out of the brainwashing on their own, so I guess the American spirit isn’t that strong?

Daka’s lair is in this… okay, wait, let me try and explain this. So no one lives in Little Tokyo anymore and the only thing still there is this dark ride that shows scenes of anti-Japanese propaganda. The way to get into the villains’ lair is to ride the ride for a while, then get out at a certain point and buzz in on a patch of wall that opens into the hideout. But it does seem that Daka is owning and operating this dark ride, which is already a baffling thing to do, I mean I guess it has “the last place they’d think to look” energy? But people are also, you know, riding this ride, all day every day. Seems like a pretty big security risk, I don’t know. I feel like this is a pretty good encapsulation of the mood of the whole thing - villain’s lair is in a dark ride feels like a normal fun Batman thing, and then also, abject racism.

The version of this that I watched was edited to be one single movie, so the cliffhangers and previously ons were edited out. Every twenty minutes or so, Batman would just get into a life-threatening scenario and then almost immediately Robin would save him. It was always Batman almost dying too - I guess maybe they thought that audiences would not be sufficiently worried about Robin? This doesn’t do much for Batman’s competence, though. He definitely comes off as less than able.

Part of this is also that this Bruce is real young. I’m used to thinking of Bruce as a long-suffering father, but here he and Dick are presented as basically peers. They are collectively referred to as the “American youth” defending their country. Bruce apparently just takes Dick along on dates with him? At one point, when Bruce misses a date because he’s on an undercover operation, his excuse is that he took Dick to the amusement park and they were having so much fun, they lost track of time. The Brucie act is out in full force, but it also doesn’t seem to be much of an act. Like, this Bruce just isn’t actually very pressed about anything. He kind of does seem like he’s dressing up like a bat and punching people because it’s fun and gives him a thrill. Plus, since he doesn’t really do anything as Batman that he couldn’t do as Bruce most of the time, it kinda just feels like he’s wasting time by leaving to get into costume. There’s one scene where his girlfriend, Linda Page, is being attacked in a room he just left, but instead of walking back in and punching the guys, he has to leave, dress as Batman, climb through the window, and then punch some guys. Really feels like he’s playing kind of fast and loose with Linda’s life.

The inciting incident is also very funny. Linda wants Bruce to come with her to pick up her uncle, who is getting out of prison, but Bruce is purposely late to, I guess, make him seem like not a masked vigilante. As a direct result of this, the villains are able to pick up Uncle Martin first and brainwash him. Classic stuff.

There is a pretty cool effect during the car chase that follows, where the kidnappers release a gas that changes the color of the car and hit a button that turns the license plate around. A lot of the effects, sets, etc, actually look pretty good, which might just be me coming in with low expectations. The Batcave - called the Bat’s Cave here, which implies to me that Bruce is just renting it from the bats - looks decent but is very empty, and the shadows of bats flying around are pretty comical. 

They access the Bat’s Cave through a grandfather clock, which I think might be the first time that idea showed up? It’s also, if not the first appearance of Alfred, a very early appearance, and rather than the highly competent backbone of the family, he is a comical boob who’s afraid of everything. He’s also directly involved in their operation - like, he fully goes undercover more than once. He also gets to kill Daka at the end, by hitting the button that opens the trap door to Daka’s alligators that he has for some reason. And then Commissioner Not-Gordon, who didn’t see that happen, yells, “And let that be a lesson - The Batman never needs any help from the likes of you!” Whomp whomp.

I quite liked Douglas Croft as Robin, he had a Jack Dylan Grazer vibe that I really enjoyed. Batman and Robin are also explicitly working for the American government here, which is strange. What else? Oh yeah, there are TONS of costume changes, I guess they wanted to have Bruce and Dick & Batman and Robin in each segment? So they’re always running off to change clothes. They also go undercover a lot, Bruce constructs a criminal alter ego named Chuck White who “accidentally” lets the location of the Bat’s Cave slip. His description of it, btw, is “a big cave full of bats… and there, in the center, sitting at a desk… one giant bat, the size of a man.” Incredible.

A few last details: when Batman and Robin leave criminals tied up for the police, they put little bat stickers on their heads, which is cute and whimsical. Also, there’s this x-ray device? I guess? That identifies the criminals before they are let into the lair, and somehow this device positively identifies Batman. Like he puts his hand on it and the Batman logo shows up on the x-ray, as if it was printed on his bones. Anyway, at my count Batman and Robin broke 5 windows by leaping through them, including one skylight.

There is another serial but I’m not gonna watch it bc these are like 4-5 hours long and I just can’t. Tune in next time for Batman: The Movie (1966)!

[batshikns]

i want a qpr where i can cuddle up to the person on the couch and they gently wrap their arms around me and we just watch the magic school bus or bob ross

[tiredbabybat]

Another nsfw blog interacting with sfw agere blogs

Tw,the first thing on their page right now is pxrn so be mindful if you go to block them

@/ smolfloofykitty

[petrorabbit]

I recently decided to watch all Batman movies. Then I saw how many movies that was, and added a bunch of qualifiers. It’s still too many movies but, you know, we do what we can.

I’m going to be posting about each movie after I watch it. I don’t expect this to be interesting to anyone who isn’t me but I might as well document the process. More rambling details under the cut.

The full list of theatrical and direct-to-video movies that feature Batman was 83 movies long, 84 if you count Catwoman (2004) which I do intend to watch for reasons of historical significance even though Batman doesn’t appear in it. For purposes of this list, a movie counts as a Batman movie if Bruce Wayne, or another character acting as Batman, has at least one line of dialogue. Crowd scenes like Space Jam 2 don’t count but baby Bruce in the Joker does. 

The first qualifier that I tried was that I wouldn’t watch anything with a runtime under 1 hour, or anything that was just episodes of a TV show edited together, but this didn’t pare down the list nearly as much as I hoped. I really didn’t want to use different qualifiers for direct-to-video movies versus theatrical releases, but I made it about 10 minutes into Mask of the Phantasm before I was forced to confront the fact that I don’t actually care about Bruce Wayne The Man Himself that much. So for direct-to-video movies, at least one of his children has to be in it as well. Theatrical movies get to skip this requirement because otherwise I wouldn’t be watching uh, almost any of them. 

These qualifiers only mark which movies are mandatory - I’ll probably end up watching a bunch that break these rules, but at least this takes the pressure off a bit lol

I haven’t gone back through and culled the list yet, so here is the full list of 84 movies.

Batman (1943 serial)

New Adventures of Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (1949 serial)

Batman Dracula (1964 Warhol)

Batman: The Movie (1966 Adam West)

Batman (1989 Keaton)

Batman Returns (1992)

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

Batman Forever (1995)

Batman & Robin (June 20, 1997)

Subzero (1998)

Return of the Joker (2000)

Mystery of the Batwoman (2003)

Catwoman (Jul 19, 2004 no batman)

Batman Begins (2005)

The Batman vs. Dracula (2005)

Justice League: The New Frontier (Feb 26, 2018)

Batman: Gotham Knight (July 8, 2008)

The Dark Knight (July 18, 2008)

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (Sep 29, 2009)

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (Feb 23, 2010)

Under the Red Hood (July 27, 2010)

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (Sep 28, 2010)

Batman Live (July 19, 2011 stage show)

Batman: Year One (Oct 18, 2011)

Justice League: Doom (Feb 28, 2012)

Holy Musical B@man! (Mar 16, 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises (Jul 20, 2012)

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Part 1 (Sept 25, 2012)

The Dark Knight Returns - Part 2 (Jan 29, 2013)

DC Super Heroes Unite (May 21, 2013)

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (Jul 30, 2013)

Justice League: War (Jan 21, 2014)

The Lego Movie (Feb 1, 2014)

Son of Batman (Apr 22, 2014)

Assault on Arkham (Jul 25, 2014)

Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (Jan 13, 2015)

Batman vs. Robin (Apr 7, 2015)

Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts (May 12, 2015)

Justice League: Gods and Monsters (Jul, 21, 2015)

Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem (Aug 18, 2015)

Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League - Attack of the Legion of Doom (Aug 25, 2015)

Batman: Bad Blood (Jan 20, 2016)

Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League - Cosmic Clash (Feb 9, 2016)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Mar 25, 2016)

Justice League vs. Teen Titans (Mar 29, 2016)

Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League - Gotham City Breakout (June 21, 2016)

Batman: The Killing Joke (Jul 22, 2016)

Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs. Mutants (Jul 24, 2016)

Suicide Squad (Aug 5, 2016)

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (Oct 6, 2016)

Justice League Dark (Jan 24, 2017)

The Lego Batman Movie (Feb 10, 2017)

Batman and Harley Quinn (July 21, 2017)

Batman vs. Two-Face (Oct 8, 2017)

DC Superheroes vs. Eagle Talon (Oct 21, 2017)

Justice League (Nov 17, 2017)

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Jan 6, 2018)

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (Jan 12, 2018)

Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: The Flash (Feb 13, 2018)

Batman Ninja (Apr 24, 2018)

The Death of Superman (July 20, 2018)

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (July 22, 2018)

Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Aquaman: Rage of Atlantis (July 22, 2018)

Reign of the Supermen (Jan 13, 2019)

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (Feb 2, 2019)

Justice League vs. The Fatal Five (Mar 29, 2019)

Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mar 31, 2019)

Batman: Hush (Jul 19, 2019)

Lego Batman: Family Matters (Jul 21, 2019)

The Joker (Aug 31, 2019)

Superman: Red Son (Feb 25, 2020)

Lego DC: Shazam!: Magic and Monsters (Apr 28, 2020)

Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (May 5, 2020)

Batman: Death in the Family (Oct 13, 2020)

Batman: Soul of the Dragon (Jan 12, 2021)

Zack Snyder's Justice League (Mar 18, 2021)

Injustice (Oct 19, 2021)

Batman: The Long Halloween, Parts 1 and 2 (Jun 22, 2021)

The Batman (Mar 4, 2022 Pattinson)

DC League of Superpets (Jul 22, 2022)

Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons (Oct 7, 2022)

Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires (2022)

The Flash (2023)

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

[petrorabbit]

Keaton 2: The Squeakel - Batman Returns: 1992.

I like this one better! It’s still not, like, a good movie, but it’s at least more entertaining to watch. I know people dunk on the nonstop puns a lot, but I feel like the bigger issue is that the characters are usually not actually talking to each other. They’re just sort of saying lines while standing in the same room. This is kind of hard to describe and I’ll get into it more in Batman and Robin, which is, I think, the worst offender, but it’s definitely present throughout this series.

Danny Devito is great as the Penguin, and one of the very odd things about this movie is how sympathetic they make him while also totally committing to him being a villain. Everything about his backstory casts him as the sympathetic party, and his initial motivations do seem to be just to track down his birth parents. In addition to the events themselves, the structure of the movie makes us want to root for him - we open on his birth. The first information we are given in the movie is that this man has been mistreated and we should sympathize with him. It just seems like a weird move for a character you ultimately intend to make into a mass-murderer and then kill.

One of the main villains is named Shreck, which is very funny for obvious reasons.

The staged kidnapping of the mayor’s son is an absolute delight. Frankly, if there’s anything this movie left me wanting more of, it was information on the Penguin’s circus henchmen. Who are they. Where are they from. Why are they doing these things. Who can say.

Catwoman’s storyline is just baffling decision after baffling decision. Confronting your evil industrialist boss with evidence of his crimes while alone in this office is kind of a bone-head move on her part, but then he just. Pushes her out the window. Of his office. And makes no arrangements to have her body cleaned up. Frankly, he’s lucky she didn’t die because that would not look great for him.

The Catwoman stuff doesn’t really get time to breathe, and as a result the romance falls kind of flat. I do always enjoy when last movie’s love interest has just disappeared between films. I know we spent the whole last thing on these two but it’s over now. Don’t ask any questions.

The next movie chronologically is Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) but I only made it ten minutes into that one before admitting to myself that I don’t care that much about Bruce as a solo character and I need some batfam in there to hold my interest. The only thing I want to say about this one before moving on is that there is very offensive Japanese stereotype in the first ten minutes, which was, uh, quite bad to see.

[petrorabbit]

Alright, it’s Tim Burton o’clock! Batman (1989) starring Michael Keaton. I believe this is when Tim Drake was being invented in the comics and named after him.

Apparently Keaton was not a popular choice for Batman and tbh, I did not love him in this role. As Bruce, he’s too reserved and as Batman he’s not particularly intimidating. Idk, he didn’t knock my socks off. Between that and the fact that this series went through 3 batmen in 4 movies, none of them really feel iconic to me. I’m not super hype about Keaton being back in the Flash, is what I’m saying.

This movie has a wild misdirection opening, where we see a little boy with his parents walking into an alley, and then no one gets murdered and Batman already exists and these are just random, unimportant people. Tbh I didn’t think that Batman’s backstory was already so well known at this point to do a bit like this, but egg on my face, I guess.

In general, this movie is pretty boring. It’s not very campy, the personal drama isn’t particularly engaging, and there are plenty of scenes that don’t add much and don’t really go anywhere. The reason that Jack Napier’s boss tried to have him killed - the thing that turns him into the Joker and, you know, causes the whole plot to happen - is that Jack slept with his mistress. But we know almost nothing about this woman, to the point where we had trouble figuring out which person on screen she was.

For me, there was just a general lack of energy. There were a few things I liked, like when Bruce is sleeping hanging upside down for no reason, and the confirmation that Bruce eats in the kitchen with Alfred, which is sweet.

Vicki Vale is the love interest, which is another thing that feels weird from a modern perspective, where everyone seems to hate her guts. This seems as good a time as any to mention that I have an irrational hatred of fictional reporters. Venom was an all-time great movie because when Eddie Brock committed a huge violation of journalistic principles, it did in fact ruin his whole life, and I love that for him.

[petrorabbit]

Aunt Harriet anon again, she is not from the circus. She just took Dick in after his parents died iirc.

Also if you're looking for fun 60s villains,

We of course have Chandell and his twin brother Harry who are played by Liberace

Catwoman(in season 3) who is played by Eartha Kitt, the woman who sung Santa Baby amoung other things

Egghead who is played by Vincent Price

And much more!

Oh, gotcha. Lmao i have such fondness for when one actor plays twins. Tbt to the time William shatner put on a terrible fake mustache to play Kirk's brother. Thanks, I'll have to check those out!

[petrorabbit]

What if I told you that the old woman in the 1966 Batman movie is Dick Grayson's Aunt Harriet? She's a character from the comics that really only appears in the 1966 Batman show. She spends most of the series just living her best life, getting into a brief romance with the villain who was played by Liberace before the villain went to jail, repeatedly trying to figure out where Bruce and Dick keep disappearing to, going to boxing matches because she likes them, and sadly was not in the show too much as the seasons went on as her actor started getting really sick.

Omg that is so delightful.... I guess I need to look up this Liberace villain now. Was she also from the circus? Thanks for sharing!

[petrorabbit]

Let's Watch Batman: The Adam West One

Chronologically, the next movie is actually Batman Dracula (1964) by Andy Warhol, but unfortunately that is lost media. Instead, let’s move straight on to Batman: The Movie (1966), starring Adam West.

This is more something that I noticed during the serial, but a bunch of iconic stuff in the Adam West version is directly parodying the serials. Stuff like the fighting style and scaling the wall with grappling hooks is pretty definitely a direct reference. So, that’s nice context to have.

Something that I think is very funny about this movie is the huge emphasis on modes of transportation. We get the batmobile, the batcopter, the batboat, the batbike (I know those names are wrong, don't @ me) and then an extended sequence where Batman and Robin just run. Obviously this is because little boys love vehicles, but I still enjoyed it. I wonder how many of these things were sold as toys at the time?

The premise is that the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler and Catwoman are all teaming up to dehydrate the UN security council and hold them for ransom. Notably, the Joker contributes absolutely nothing the whole movie. Everyone else is adding their little touch to the plan and Joker is literally just standing around giggling. 

Catwoman is the ringleader, and she also has an alter ego, a Russian reporter named Kitayna Ireyna Tatanya Kerenska Alisoff, who goes by Kitka, because it’s an acronym of her name. This really bothered me for no good reason, because Kitka could also just be a nickname for Kitayna. Like, why was the acronym thing necessary. I realize this doesn’t matter but it bothered me, okay.

At one point, Bruce goes on a date with Kitka for the purpose of luring out the rogues, who they think are after her. Since this is a sting operation, Dick and Alfred are watching from the car. Despite this, Bruce gets super horny and is absolutely going to bone down with Kitka even though he knows his father and son are watching him. Dick turns off the monitor because he doesn’t need that in his life, allowing Bruce to get kidnapped, but I can’t blame him for that one. Keep it in your pants, buddy.

This is another movie where Batman and Robin are working for the authorities. They very confidently announce that they are NOT vigilantes, they have deputized by the Gotham City Police Department! It’s lowkey kinda funny how different that line hits now. Can’t believe Batman and Robin are bootlickers. Well, Dick I can believe.

They also kill people in this movie! Not, like, super on purpose, but people die and they don’t care at all. This happened in the 1943 serial too. I guess it’s surprising to me because the Morality of Killing is such a hot topic in Batman now, but in this pre-Jason world, it straight up isn’t important. There’s this mildly horrifying sequence where a bunch of Penguin’s henchmen are dehydrated and brought back wrong, and they just explode on contact. Dead without even a body. This was one of two scenes that my dad informed me gave me nightmares as a child, the other being the one at the end where it is revealed that by mixing up the sand of the dehydrated UN security council, they all speak a different language now after being rehydrated. But what else did they lose? Their memories? Their souls? Chilling. Shout out to baby my dad for having an existential crisis about this.

I don’t know that I have much else to say about this one. Shark Repellent Batspray is still very funny. Burt Ward looked pretty good, imo, I feel like people are always dunking on him. Oh, apparently there was an old woman who lived with them in the show??? She has no lines but she’s there for a minute with Alfred. Who is this person. I’m not going to look it up because I don’t care, but there it is.

[batshikns]

she shimber on my timber until i have panic attack

[batshikns]

me core

[batshikns]

i feel so tired.. (i say as stay up)

[batshikns]

yeah sheepzai au but they're ex members and 20 y/o and live a domestic life as normal guys

[batshikns]

hey. hey. *poke poke* hey. hey. *poke* hey. *poke poke* he

[batshikns]

i wish i had an older brother when i was a baby

[batshikns]

waiaitqairw wait how old to yall think i am