Batman Rebooted: Five Challenges Faced By the Next Filmmakers

Batman will be rebooted. Soon. With a Justice League script in the offing from Gangster Squad writer Will Beall, the odds are good that a Batman film will be expected from Warner Brothers either right before or right after Justice League hits theaters. The likelihood of the studio picking up on the dangling threads from The Dark Knight Rises is close to zero, meaning that in the next few years, we’re likely to hear rumblings about a rebooted Batman franchise.This soon after Batman Begins, that’s bound to be a controversial move, and if the first movie back from the Nolan series isn’t a blockbuster, then it’ll be a huge black eye for Warner and a failure for the filmmakers. What are the biggest challenges the next filmmaker will face? We’ve got a list–and some ideas for how to offset them a bit.Finding a voiceThe problem: Batman is, as has been pointed out over and over, a character that thrives on reinvention. Still, the character has worked the best in basically one or two ways over the last thirty years. Frank Miller has used him as a deeply damaged person with occasional shades of sociopolitical commentary, while most other creators have crafted something more in the Neal Adams model–the dark, brooding avenger of the night who does this because he’s better than anybody else at it, and couldn’t forgive himself if he didn’t.Of course, both of those takes were central to Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the character, and the more shiny superheroic, campy version that was popularized by Adam West was adopted by Joel Schumacher in the ’90s, to disastrous results. Making something that resembles the comics right now, or resembles the best and best-received film versions, will inevitably seem like little more than a rehash of what Nolan has done.The solution: Batman, Inc. One of the big ways that Nolan has distanced himself from the mythology and the feel of the comics is that he has intentionally and emphatically stayed away from the bat-family. If Bruce were to see results in what he’s doing, and conclude that Batman could be a powerful symbol outside of Gotham as well as inside, it could go a long way toward changing people’s perceptions of the franchise and the characters. Think of it as Scott Snyder’s Batman (Nolan’s films) versus Grant Morrison’s (the new guy).Making him a team playerThe problem: It all comes down to Justice League again. If DC is going to craft a cinematic universe to rival Marvel’s, Warner Brothers needs to create a world in which Batman seems like someone who might credibly be able to play well with others.Most of the public at this point know Batman as a reclusive loner, a lone guy who hangs out in his cave and really only relates to Alfred. The fact that both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan used this characterization, and that most modern comics use a variation of it, hinders progress because there’s so little source material to refer to, in order to learn how to do it right.The solution: Justice League Unlimited. The DC Animated Universe, which started when Batman was launching out of the popularity of the Burton films, is a great comics-to-screen adaptation of a Batman who can tell those quiet stories about organized crime but is just as at home with a world-threatening alien invasion. Unlike Super Friends or even Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited never took the DC Universe for granted–they still occaionally confront the oddness of Batman hanging out with Enlongated Man or Booster Gold–and they never disappointed. Look to the DCAU for inspiration and you’re unlikely to fail.