Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,, na, na, na, na, Batman!
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, Batman! Batman, Batman, Batman!
I am crying as I write this. Maybe I am not supposed to say that, being a shining example of males everywhere, but fuck you, I cry. Deal!!! I had a shitty one last week and got some pretty bad news at work. It isn’t the end of the world, as one person told me that I was resilient. (He made this determination based on what I wonder) And if I am being totally honest, it really is only bad because the timing sucks, but it was bad news none the less. I decided that to cheer myself up I would go to see The Dark Knight Rises. I have been a Batman fan since I first stepped foot on the planet, starting with the Adam West episodes, in re-runs, I would watch before school every day as a kid. I have talked about my escapism tools before but Batman was one of the first. I will talk more about the Bat, but why was I crying????? The deaths that took place at the midnight showing in Colorado are why.
I don’t know anyone that was shot or killed. I don’t think I know anyone in the entire state for that matter. I only know that each one of those people shared one thing with me….they wanted to see the Bat. I am not going to retell the story here as I am sure you know enough of the details, but it took til today to have any impact on me at all. I was listening to a podcast review of the movie and Kevin Smith started the show with a minute of silence for the victims. He continued after the full 60 seconds had passed (I checked) and began to talk about the killings first, before he did 3 hours on the movie itself. Kevin said that those people were just looking to escape their own world, if even for a few hours. Those people wanted to be taken to a fantasy world where things happened on a grand scale, where things happened and your heart raced, and then the 2 worlds collided. They had no idea that their lives would end that day. No more speeding tickets, no more credit card bills and burnt toast. No more being cheated on and no more cheating. No more ice cream or birthday candles. No more sunsets or puppy’s breath. No more snuggling with someone you love and no more Christmas lights. No more fear and loathing or Love and Rockets. No more anything. And that made me cry. Sue me, Steve Rogers has a heart. This may sound silly to you but it also meant no more Batman. Those people bought tickets to a midnight movie, during the week, and it is over 3 hours long with previews. Those people cared about Batman and will never see how perfectly it was done. And I Cried Again.
I use to have a bath towel around my neck held there with a safety pin for as long as I can remember. I have blocked out huge chunks of my childhood, but I remember those towels. And I remember how I always knew that the Dynamic Duo would get out of whatever nefarious-slow-moving-train-while-being-tied-to-the-tracks type end the villain of the day had in mind for them. I knew there was a Bat Something in their utility belts that would be the perfect thing to get them out of the predicament they were in, and I still couldn’t wait to see it. I knew the Bat Phone under the cake cover would light up red meaning that Gotham needed them once again. I knew they would tilt that brass head of some bald dude back, and flip the switch that moved the book cases aside and allowed Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson to remove their masks and become who they really were, Batman & Robin.
As I got older I realized that Batman was not real (that one was hard for me to wrap my little mind around) and that if there was a billionaire whose parents were murdered in front of him (as I learned via the DC Comics was how Bruce became Batman), he would probably not set out to right wrongs and make the world a better place. He would probably end up on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Reality bites.
My reintroduction to the world of the Bat was from the mind of Tim Burton. Now let me set the stage for those of you too young to remember, there wasn’t always an internet. We had to wait for Al Gore to invent that. There wasn’t the access to information that we cherish (despise) now. We only knew that the guy that made Beetlejuice was going to make a Batman movie with the guy from Mr. Mom. I was astounded at how dark his Batman was. No cartoon bubble with the words POW or ZAP in them. He made a Batman that we could all respect (even if he would later go on to destroy other favorites of mine like Planet of the Apes and Willy Wonka), and I loved him for it. He went darker in the second one, so dark that Warner Brothers took the reins away from him and we ended up with a blond caped crusader and then the ClooneyBot, but I was thankful for each of those. They were my generations Batman. He was flawed (hell, he slept with Kim Basinger and we know she is a fruitloop) and even added nipples to his costumes for no good reason. He had Bat Iceskates and dodged rockets shot from the back of killer penguins, but he was mine. He flew a state-of-the-art BatWing jet that he used to snip the string to a bunch of balloons with and was taken out by a single bullet from a ludicrous handgun, but he was mine. Every bad guy figured out his “secret identity” and, if memory serves, he drove a Ford Taurus in the first Burton movie, but he was mine. Then came Christopher Nolan.
Nolan took the Batman from the soundstage to the real city. There are flaws with each of his 3 movies (not as bad as Greedo shooting first) but he gave the new generation a Batman they could embrace. His Batman was filled with anger and self-doubt. He was trained by thieves and assassins, and when we first see him as an adult he is in prison. It wasn’t til Ra’s al Ghul told him to destroy his place of birth that he decided on a path of righteousness, and to become the dark defender we needed him to be. In the second movie he was faced with his worst fears coming to life. He lost the woman he loved, and the only way to stop his newest foe was to do the one thing he could never do, take a life. I won’t spoil the last movie (is it the last), but I will say that there are a few scenes that made me well up. I wasn’t a Bane guy and really couldn’t care less for him in the books. Nolan made me care for him with the way he combined his hulking mass and the passive, soothing voice that came from a man that was just following his own set of principles to its logical conclusion. It is an amazing third act not to be missed and I will see it many more times (I am at 2 as I write this and will probably go this weekend) I just wish those 12 people that lost their lives, the 86 that were injured and their families, and even those that are afraid to go to the theatre, could know that I shed tears for them. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who lost loved ones and those that are still fighting for their lives. Don’t let one madman change you. THAT would be crazy.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.