There’s a very compelling argument to be made that the most anticipated character yet to appear in James Gunn’s DCU is Batman. The caped crusader has gone through so many onscreen incarnations since his TV show debuted in January 1966, it can be hard for even the most devoted fans to keep track. Both Gunn and filmmaker Matt Reeves have confirmed that Reeves’ The Batman and its upcoming sequel exist in their own continuity separate from the main DCU, thus leading fans to not only speculate about who may take up the mantle in the franchise, but also take to social media to let Gunn know their preferences.
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This week on the 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast, host Tom Segura asked Gunn one of his most burning questions about the DCU’s Batman – will the Dark Knight be wearing his blue and gray suit instead of the all-black one we’ve seen him in previously onscreen in recent yeats? Although Gunn didn’t answer the question per se, his response revealed something even more important. Gunn isn’t letting the fans steer him when it comes to getting beloved DC characters right. Instead he’s focusing on what matters most, character and story, the things that birthed such a rabid fanbase for Batman, rather than getting lost in the details surrounding costume and iconography.
Gunn Says “Religious” Batman Fan Debate Makes Him “Uncomfortable”
“There’s a religious aspect to so much of this stuff that’s very uncomfortable,” Gunn told Segura when discussing his interactions with fans on social media about the future of Batman and the DCU. “Should Batman have white eyes? That’s [another] big subject of conversation… and it’s like ‘Guys, that’s really what matters?’ But those are the things they care about.”
And though Gunn acknowledged the validity of those fans’ opinions and how they connect to a certain incarnation of Batman, he revealed that “none of those things are what’s most important to me. What matters is the character, the story, and I think we have a really, really good story now for what’s happening with Batman.”
While on the surface it may seem that Gunn is dismissing the fans, he is both giving them what they want, as well as what they need. The fans aren’t so passionate about the color palette of Batman’s suit because they’re aesthetes, it’s because of the stories they enjoyed with the character dressed in one of those suits. Unlike so many media leaders nowadays, Gunn is focusing on what makes a superhero movie great – story and character. On 2 Bears, 1 Cave he repeated his manifesto that he will not green light a movie for production unless a script is finished and he loves it (a sin Marvel allegedly has committed recently on a slew of films) and hired fellow writers to plot out a ten-year arc for the DCU before any cameras rolled.
The boundaries between creator and fan have become more muddied than ever with advent of social media over the past decade and change, but Gunn, who’s had his own toxic experiences with online vitriol, is lovingly putting an important one back in place. As much as Gunn engages with the fandom, and professed that comics “were my life” growing up, he is in service of the story he’s telling, rather than pleasing one fickle group of fans and inevitably incensing another.
Gunn Thinks All Versions of Batman Are “Cool”
Gunn’s comments on blue-gray versus black Batman underscore an imperative point. There’s no generally “right” version of the character, who has a long, complex, and varied history in media since he first debuted in Detective Comics in 1939.
“I think that’s one of the fun things about Batman though. There are so many expressions of Batman that are cool, and different ways to access that character is one of the ways in which he’s so iconic,” Gunn explained. “So, I don’t think it’s a matter of the blue and the gray or the black Batman. I think both those things are really cool.”
Ultimately, the “right” version of Batman in the DCU will be the version of the character that best fits into the universe Gunn is creating and most meaningfully advances the greater story he’s trying to tell. The best thing about a hero as storied and multi-faceted as Batman is that there’s no need for comparison either. A Matt Reeves film greatly differs in tone than a James Gunn one, but both of their takes on the character can be “right” for the movies they’re making and enjoyable for audiences they watch.
Yet for those looking for any hints about what version of Batman Gunn may be invoking in the DCU, he did tell Segura that he particularly liked “supernatural Batman” and pointed out that “we’ve never seen Batman in sort of supernatural environment” onscreen before. And given that the first major arc of the DCU is titled “Gods & Monsters”, a supernatural Batman could fit quite nicely into it.
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