Introduction

Few works in the history of popular culture have had as much pronounced effect as Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843.  While Christmas Day had always been a sacred, solemn feast day within the Christian faith (just as the Winter Solstice had been in many pagan cultures before it), it wasn’t until the middle part of the 1800s that many began to see it less as a site of religious devotion than as a holiday to be celebrated, and to be celebrated most specifically through the act of giving.  While A Christmas Carol didn’t spawn this tradition itself, it, more than any other force, popularized it throughout the western world.  Through its powerful, secular story of redemption through charity and love, Dickens imparted to all that Christmas was a time to celebrate all that was worthwhile about the human race, most specifically our love for one another, and our compassion for those less fortunate.

A Christmas Carol, of course, relates the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a malevolent, miserly moneylender of old London grown embittered by a life devoted more to money than his fellow man, and how the nocturnal visitations of three Spirits of Christmas compel him to not only amend his ways, but become a paragon of charity and kindness “who knew how to keep Christmas well.”  Through the tale of Scrooge comes the empowering, heartwarming lesson that no person, no matter how broken by the either themselves or the harshness of the world, is beyond hope of redemption, and that true happiness is defined less by what we take from the world, than what we give to it.

Beneath that, though, A Christmas Carol is also social critic Charles Dickens’s scathing critique of unchecked capitalism and self-obsession, and a powerful reminder that a life devoted only to the accumulation of wealth or power is not without its collateral damage. Though a timeless work, A Christmas Carol was still a work of its time, a time when the mad rush of Victorian industrialization left many behind without hope of finding a better life, and great wealth became more and more consolidated with those who had the power to influence and affect the lives of many other souls.  While some of Dickens’s implied messages, such as the idea that the success of the struggling working classes are solely incumbent on the benevolence of the wealthy, can be highly problematic, his central plea, that when some of us suffer, so suffer we all, remains as true today as it did in 1843.

It should go without saying that whether it’s due to its timeless message, endless popularity, and/or boundless influence, A Christmas Carol has proven to not only be a ready source for adaptation in the worlds of film and television, but one of the most popular.  Many great actors through the decades, on both stage and screen, have tried to make their mark on Ebenezer Scrooge’s enduring legacy, and since 1901 (and perhaps earlier), many great filmmakers have interpreted and reinterpreted the story, time and again, helping to impart its message to each new generation.  Now, this is usually the time in these Overviews where I point out that “some were better, and some were worse,” but for the most part, A Christmas Carol is a hard story to get wrong, so I’ve largely forgone that approach to this piece.  Also, since A Christmas Carol is one of the most oft-filmed stories in the history of the moving image, I’m generally limiting my scope to versions which I feel are the most significant and most popular, and those are usually the best versions anyway…though there are exceptions, of course.

Finally, for this overview to have any significance, you must remember that Jacob Marley was as dead as a doornail.  And with that, away we go…

Scrooge (1935)

Though creaky and stilted by modern standards, this British-made talkie version is not without its significance: besides being the earliest surviving sound adaptation of A Christmas Carol, it also provides an interesting glimpse at London theater icon Seymour Hicks’s take on Scrooge, a role he had been playing onstage annually since 1901 (Hicks also starred in an earlier film version of the story in 1913, also titled Scrooge).   As a film, Scrooge isn’t much, and it suffers from a very low budget – so low a budget, in fact, that Jacob Marley’s ghost is portrayed as “invisible.”  Hicks’s Scrooge is also a very singular interpretation, yet it will probably not be for all tastes.  If you do watch it, make sure it’s the recently remastered 78 minute version, and not the more common hour-long version, which not only severely truncated the story but has such visual and audio issues it often proves unwatchable.

Scrooge Trivia: Though an unknown quantity for many modern audiences, Sir Seymour Hicks is notable in film history for giving a young Alfred Hitchcock his first credit as a film director with 1923’s Always Tell Your Wife (for which he is credited as co-director with Hicks).

A Christmas Carol (1938)

Back in the 1930s, there was one actor who was synonymous to the American public with the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, and that actor was the great Lionel Barrymore.  A member of the legendary Barrymore family (Drew is his grandniece), Lionel had played Scrooge live on the radio nearly every year between 1934 and 1953.  Given the tremendous popularity of Barrymore’s Scrooge, making a film version of his performance seemed inevitable, and in 1938 MGM planned to do just that with their own version of A Christmas Carol.  Unfortunately, Barrymore, recovering from a broken hip at the time, could not accommodate MGM’s shooting schedule and therefore the role of Scrooge went to that of longtime British character actor Reginald Owen.  Now, if you’re reading this and asking yourself “who’s Reginald Owen?” then rest assured, many in 1938 were doing precisely the same thing.

MGM’s version of “A Christmas Carol” was a conversation starter. Of course, that conversation’s always started with: “Who’s Reginald Owen?”

Hurriedly shot in a few weeks in October 1938 for a December release (God bless the studio system), this was, for decades, the most widely seen film version of A Christmas Carol in circulation; since the 1970s, though, its popularity has markedly declined in favor of other versions (most notably the later Alistair Sim film), and it’s really not hard to see why.  All told, this stands as a remarkably lackluster version of the story, defined by uninspired casting, starting with Owen’s rather tepid and caricatured Scrooge, and unaided by Gene Lockhart’s Bob Cratchit (his wife Kathleen played Mrs. Cratchit, and daughter June was uncredited as one of the Cratchit children).  Not helping matters was that the film is highly sanitized, with many of the darker, spookier elements of the original story excised and, by proxy, a significant amount of its social conscience.  And naturally, this being a MGM production, they also tried to shoehorn in a romantic subplot where it absolutely did not belong.

While Lionel Barrymore’s famed Scrooge never made it to the silver screen, many audio recordings exist, including this version performed with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater Company.

Fortunately, while Barrymore’s Scrooge was never really captured on film (though several audio versions of it exist), many elements of his performance were later immortalized in Frank Capra’s seminal It’s a Wonderful Life, where Barrymore played another villainous, curmudgeonly miser: the nefarious Mr. Potter.

Scrooge Trivia:  Though best known now as kind of a footnote in terms of celluloid Scrooges, Reginald Owen had a career as a character actor in Hollywood that lasted decades; he’s also notable for being one of the few to ever play both Scrooge and another Victorian literary icon, Sherlock Holmes, which he did in the 1933 film A Study in Scarlet (it’s worth mentioning, however, that he didn’t do a very good job in that, either).

Scrooge (US title: A Christmas Carol) (1951)

There’s probably not much I can add about this film, which is rightfully considered by many to be the best of the manifold film versions of A Christmas Carol, in no small part because it features arguably the greatest Scrooge of all time.  Played to perfection by the actor and comedian Alistair Sim, Ebenezer Scrooge here wasn’t portrayed as the broad, often two-dimensional caricature he had been many times before and since. With his Scrooge, Sim wasn’t aiming to give the world another inhospitable miser being cruel for cruelty’s sake, but an unhappy man whose coldness to humanity was drawn from some deeper sorrow.  To that end, this version, written by Noel Langly and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, embellished much of Scrooge’s backstory well beyond what was in Dickens’s novella, granting its audience a far better understanding of what made this Scrooge into such a…well, Scrooge.  As a result, it not only makes Sim’s Scrooge a far more compelling individual, but his ultimate transformation into a good man all the more cathartic.

Alistair Sim’s Scrooge was less a cruel miser than a miserable man, making him a character we genuinely wanted to see change.

In addition, Hurst and Langly also restored to the story all of the atmosphere and supernatural malevolence that the earlier MGM interpretation removed, to such a degree that its original New York City engagement at Radio City Music Hall was scrapped on the basis of it being “too sinister” for a broader family audience. To that end, while Scrooge was very popular in Britain during its original release, the film went largely overlooked in the United States until being gradually rediscovered through seasonal airings on PBS and syndicated stations in the 1970s.  For many it now stands as the definitive film version, with every Scrooge performance since essentially standing in the shadow of Sim’s iconic interpretation.

Scrooge Trivia: This film’s editor, Clive Donner, would later go on to direct the exceptional 1984 version with George C. Scott.

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)

Historically notable as the first animated Christmas special in television history, and thus the forerunner of such holiday classics as A Charlie Brown Christmas, this hour long adaptation of the novella is fondly remembered by many of its generation and often shows up on lists of many people’s favorite versions of the Dickens novella (it also proved to be the forerunner for generations of animated characters doing their own versions of the story at one time or another).  Starring UPA animation’s Mr. Magoo character (voiced by comedian Jim Backus, AKA Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island), a wealthy and loveable eccentric who stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his nearsightedness, this employed a clever play-within-a-play variation on its presentation of the tale, with Magoo portrayed as playing the lead in a Broadway musical version of the Dickens story.  A pleasant watch with some surprisingly good songs, written by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, and enjoyable even for those completely unfamiliar with the Magoo character.  Surprisingly, many Dickens buffs also hold this version in high regard for presenting much of the novel’s original dialogue intact instead of “modernizing” it, as many other versions do, for a then-contemporary audience.   Originally aired on NBC in 1962, the network just acknowledged its 50^th anniversary by airing it in prime time recently for the first time in more than forty years (though it badly cut down much of its original running time to allow for commercials).

Scrooge Trivia:  Besides being a quality version of Dickens’s story, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol also offers a fair representation of the animation style of the UPA studio, whose considerable work is often overlooked these days due to the enduring popularity of Disney and Warner Bros.  Notable for their intentionally minimalistic animation, the studio received two Oscars in the 1950s for the shorts “When Magoo Flew” (1955) and “Magoo’s Puddle Jumper” (1956), and the popularity of this special led to the well-remembered series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo.

Scrooge (1970)

My personal favorite of the many musical versions of A Christmas Carol, this version sometimes gets derided in some circles due to Albert Finney’s polarizing performance as the heartless miser (for which he won a Golden Globe).  I personally enjoy both the film and the performance, though I see why some have a problem with the latter; at only 34 years of age at the time, Finney was among the youngest to ever play the role, and as a result his Scrooge ventures into being a caricature of an old man.  Despite that, I think this version did among the best jobs among all interpretations at developing Scrooge’s character change over the course of the story, and Finney especially does a great job when playing the younger, tragic Ebenezer in the “Christmas Past” portions.  It also has a pretty terrific assortment of songs, including “I Like Life,” “I Hate People,” and “Thank You Very Much.”

Scrooge Trivia:  Besides Finney’s Golden Globe-winning performance, Scrooge was nominated for four Academy Awards, the only live-action version of the story to ever receive Oscar nominations.

A Christmas Carol (1971)

This criminally underseen version of the story may also be the all-time best.  Directed by the great animator Richard Williams and co-produced by the legendary Chuck Jones, this brilliant animated adaptation could be among the best cartoons ever aired on American television.  Visually audacious and breathtakingly evocative, this Christmas Carol featured Alistair Sim reprising his famed interpretation of Scrooge, with narration by Michael Redgrave, and it did an exceptional job parsing Dickens story down to 27 minutes without sacrificing any of its power.  Truly a must see work, especially for animation buffs; this was so well-regarded that it was given a theatrical release after airing on ABC in 1971, which, due to Academy loopholes at the time, made it eligible for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject, which it won handily in 1972 – making it the only version of A Christmas Carol to win an Oscar, ever.

Scrooge Trivia: Though a famed animator and winner of two Oscars (the second for the animation effects in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), Richard Williams is perhaps most famous for a film he didn’t finish: The Thief and the Cobbler, which Williams worked on intermittently for twenty-eight years beginning in 1964.  Sadly, the film was taken out of his hands by a completion bond company in the early 1990s, finished by others, musicalized, and somewhat inauspiciously released in various countries under the titles The Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight, where it was quickly forgotten.  Though the original work still stands as incomplete, what was completed by Williams and his collaborators is often highly regarded by several observers as some of the best animation ever placed on film.  Not surprisingly, it also holds the Guinness Record for longest film production in history.

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

It shouldn’t be at all shocking that the Walt Disney Company would someday try to put their own stamp on the Dickens classic; what’s probably most surprising is that it somehow took them so long to do it.  First released theatrically with a reissue of Disney’s The Rescuers, this went on to become a holiday staple on network television throughout the 1980s, and it airs annually on Disney cable channels to this day.  A pleasant enough version of the story and a huge treat for Disney fans, as it boasts appearances from most of Disney’s rich line-up of classic characters in both key roles and cameos, with Jiminy Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Goofy as Jacob Marley, Mickey himself as Bob Cratchit, and (of course) Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge.  In fact, the popularity of the show’s original network airing was such that it led Disney to take a renewed interest in producing animated work for television, the first of which was the wildly popular and well-remembered DuckTales, which centered on the misadventures of none other than Uncle Scrooge himself.

Scrooge Trivia: Though Mickey Mouse is synonymous with the image of Disney (and essentially their corporate mascot), Mickey’s Christmas Carol actually represented his first original animated work in thirty years.  It was also the final time that Clarence Nash, the original voice-actor for Donald Duck, would perform that character.

A Christmas Carol (1984)

One of the most highly regarded versions of A Christmas Carol, this handsome and very atmospheric adaptation featured George C. Scott as an extremely believable and grounded Scrooge, with an excellent supporting cast that featured David Warner as Bob Cratchit, Roger Rees as Scrooge’s nephew Fred, Frank Finlay as Jacob Marley, Angela Pleasance as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and an excellent Edward Woodward as a particularly judgmental Ghost of Christmas Present.  Though I personally feel the two earlier Sim versions represent the best Carols ever, this one absolutely gives them a run for their money in that argument, with a very literate and moving script by Roger O. Hirson that pays more heed to Dickens’ original message about the importance of social welfare than most versions do.  It’s also undeniably the scariest version of the story yet produced, with a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sequence that’s positively ominous.

Scrooge Trivia: In many respects, George C. Scott may have been an ideal choice to play Scrooge: though among the best-regarded stage and screen actors of his generation, Scott had a far-reaching reputation as being a demanding and moody actor who could often prove an intimidating presence for many of his co-stars.  He’s also infamous for having refused his Oscar for Patton on personal grounds, one of only two actors (the other being Marlon Brando) to ever to do so.

Scrooged (1988)  

A high profile attempt to modernize A Christmas Carol for the 1980s (and cash in on star Bill Murray’s popularity from Ghostbusters), this somewhat ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful movie is perhaps better remembered than it deserves thanks to some quotable lines (such as permanently affixing Sir John Houseman with the dubious honor of “America’s favorite old fart”).  Murray stars as Frank Cross, a heartless, self-absorbed, and unhappy executive for a major television network that’s producing a garish new version of Scrooge (“…featuring the Solid Gold dancers!”) who is encouraged by three particularly grotesque and unfunny Ghosts of Christmas to stop being a complete schmuck to just about anyone and everyone.  Besides retelling the story as a widely uneven supernatural black comedy, this also tried to satirize both eighties self-absorption and the entertainment industry’s crass attempts to commercialize everything; unfortunately, the movie itself proves to be little more than a crass commercialization of Dickens, which doesn’t really give it much of a leg to stand on in either the long or short run. It’s a pity, actually, because if there was ever a period of time that could have used A Christmas Carol all its own, it was the “Me” decade.  Murray’s delivery and charm carries this one a long way, but the film generally wastes a terrific supporting cast, which included Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodward, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, Carol Kane, and, of course, John Houseman.

Scrooge Trivia: The “favorite old fart” line was actually a source of some controversy at the time as being somewhat disrespectful to Houseman. Capping a sixty-year career as actor, director, screenwriter, executive, corporate spokesperson, and producer of both stage and screen (including a famous though volatile period of collaboration with Orson Welles), Scrooged was Houseman’s final film role, and was released just a few weeks after he passed away on Halloween, 1988.  Given its proximity to his death, and that Houseman was making a cameo as himself, some at the time felt the Murray’s sarcastic put-down should have been excised. On the other side, Houseman reportedly found the label to be a rather humorous compliment

A Blackadder Christmas Carol (1988)

Given it’s prominence in popular culture, A Christmas Carol has certainly been spoofed countless times, though few have been as successful as this BBC special – a one-shot installment of the famed Brit-com Blackadder, which chronicled the nefarious exploits of the vile and disreputable Blackadder family over various generations of British history.  Played in all his incarnations by Rowan Atkinson, Blackadder was a conniving villain with a scathing wit who was perpetually scheming, unsuccessfully, for more wealth and/or power.  The big joke, here, though, was that Ebenezer Blackadder is the only member of the line to be, not only a nice person, but the kindest in all the land (meaning he’s pretty much a living doormat to everyone he knows).  Naturally, a run-in with the Spirit of Christmas (Robbie Coltrane) and a glimpse into the lives of his ancestors and descendents teaches him a true Christmas lesson: that bad guys have way more fun.  A one joke premise, for certain, but a clever, funny joke supported by the series’ typically biting humor; with that said, that humor is often brutally sarcastic and mean spirited, and therefore may not be everyone’s idea of holiday entertainment.

Scrooge Trivia:  While A Christmas Carol has been endlessly exploited as source material for many shows and series’ “Christmas specials,” Dickens himself attempted to capitalize on the popularity of his own masterpiece by producing many similarly-themed Christmas stories in the years following, such as The Chimes and The Battle of Life.  While they were popular in their time, they’re mostly considered literary afterthoughts now, and even Dickens held some of them in very low regard.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Probably the best remembered version of Carol to my generation, this delightful take saw Dickens getting the singular Muppets treatment (literally, in fact…Gonzo the Great himself plays the great author).  Equally parts hilarious and heartwarming as only the Muppets could really pull off, anchored by a tremendous Michael Caine as Scrooge, who wisely plays the part as straight as possible despite having a puppet show (quite literally) going on about him.  Most of the supporting characters are played by Muppets, including Kermit as Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy as Mrs. Cratchit, Fozzy as Mr. Fozziwig, and Statler and Waldorf as “the Marley brothers.” One of the true highlights of the Muppets’ canon, though it sadly represented something of a “last gasp” for the Henson Company’s singular creations, who would begin a slow descent into obscurity throughout the 1990s before making something of a comeback with 2011’s The Muppets.

Scrooge Trivia: The Muppet Christmas Carol was also notable for being the first Muppets movie to be produced and released after the death of creator Jim Henson in 1989; appropriately, it was directed by his son, Brian.    

A Christmas Carol (1999)

While hardly the worst version of A Christmas Carol out there, this one may be the most disappointing. Produced for the cable channel TNT, this adaptation was meticulously faithful to the Dickens novella, including maintaining much of its original language and using music and trappings that would be authentic to 1843 England. Patrick Stewart starred as Scrooge, following a series of successful stage performances of the story on both Broadway and the London stage (the latter of which saw him win an Olivier Award), and, though it pains me to say it, he does a surprisingly forgettable job.  The entire production, unfortunately, is generally flat, unimaginative, listless, and even, at times, mechanical, with very little of the story’s emotion or message remaining here intact.

Scrooge Trivia: It’s possible that a big part of this film’s problem was that Stewart only played Scrooge; in his award-winning one-man stage interpretation (which he adapted himself), Stewart actually played all of the roles himself – including Tiny Tim!

A Christmas Carol: The Musical (2004)

A made-for-TV adaptation of the Alan Menken/Lynn Ahrens musical, this version made very little effort to hide its relative staginess.  Kelsey Grammar starred as a somewhat less-than-convincing Scrooge, with Jason Alexander as Marley, Jane Krakowski as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Geraldine Chaplin as the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come, Jesse L. Martin as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Jennifer Love Hewitt as the lost love of Scrooge’s youth.  To be fair to Grammar and the rest of the cast, this version wasn’t exactly aiming for realism, so one’s enjoyment of it is really mostly dependent on whether you like the music and can overall abide the cheesy wigs and obvious sets.  Personally, I’ve always found most of the songs to be pretty forgettable (I first saw the musical in the late 90s at Radio City Music Hall, with Roger Daltrey in the lead role), but the story’s still there and the cast is nonetheless likeable enough; it’s hardly anything anyone would call “must-see,” however.

Scrooge Trivia: One of the most interesting aspects of the musical are the significant liberties that it takes with Scrooge’s backstory, most of which was actually derived from the early life of author Charles Dickens; just as with the musical’s Scrooge, Dickens’s father was sent to debtors prison when he was only ten years old, and young Charles spent many of his formative years working for ten hours a day at a boot-blacking factory.  While in the musical the cruelty of this childhood drives Scrooge to become a penny-pinching miser, in reality it drove Dickens to not only become a tireless, prolific author and the greatest novelist of his age, but a staunch social critic, outspoken proponent of child welfare, and a far-reaching philanthropist to the poor and downtrodden.

A Christmas Carol (2009)

This recent big budget, high-gloss adaptation, produced by Disney and directed by Robert Zemeckis using 3D motion capture animation (he also penned the script) was something of a box office and critical disappointment when it was released a few years ago, though there’s actually a fair bit to like here.  Starring Jim Carrey as not only Scrooge but all three Ghosts of Christmas (an idea which comes off better than one might think), and co-starring Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, and Colin Firth in a variety of supporting roles, this film had its heart in the right place.  The problem was that the most of the CGI-heavy action sequences were overdone well past the point of effectiveness and too often got in the way of the story and the performances. It’s a shame, too, as the film does have some very, very effective scenes, and Carrey, all told, does an admirable job as Scrooge (though he was pretty much doing a dead-on Alistair Sim impression).

Scrooge Trivia: While the image and presentation of the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future generally remain consistent throughout the many versions of A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past has often been far more open to interpretation.  Dickens’s description of the apparition was largely ambiguous, even to its gender, meaning that it has, over time, been played by both men and women.  In Zemeckis’s version, he presented Dickens’s metaphorical comparison of the Ghost’s visage to a candle’s flame quite literally, depicting it as a living candle with a flame for its head.

Doctor Who – “A Christmas Carol” (2010)

Presented as the 2010 edition of the Doctor Who Christmas Special, this unique spin on Dickens story may be one of the most creative interpretations of it that I’ve seen. Written by series show-runner Stephen Moffat, this has the time-traveling alien do-gooder (Matt Smith) racing against time to save a ship (containing his companions the Ponds) from crashing into a human colony sometime in the distant future; naturally, the only person who can save them is a heartless, embittered old tyrant very reminiscent of Scrooge (played by a terrific Michael Gambon) who is all-too-willing to let them all die.  Taking his cue from Dickens, the Doctor sets off to help him see the error of his ways, which he does by using the TARDIS to go back in time and rewrite the old man’s unhappy life (!).  Funny, touching, romantic, and, as is typical of the series, very, very clever, this stands as not only the best of the Who Christmas specials, but also serves as a really excellent primer for novices to the Doctor Who Universe (or Whoniverse, if you will).

Scrooge Trivia: One of the most prominent themes in A Christmas Carol that often goes understated (but which was prominent in this Doctor Who version), is that of lost love, as Scrooge’s shattered courtship as a young man was a leading cause of both his bitterness and his resentment of his nephew Fred’s happy marriage. This may have been because Dickens himself had a contentious romantic life; his first love was sent away to school in Paris when her parents found Dickens, then an impoverished young man of twenty, to be an unsuitable match for her.  Later, he rather infamously left his wife Catherine, with whom he had ten children over twenty years of marriage, for actress Ellen Ternan, who at age 18 was 27 years Dickens’s junior.

Conclusion

“This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy…for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

Sadly, if there’s an ancillary reason why A Christmas Carol has endured in popularity for most of the last 170 years, it’s because many of the social ills and hypocrisies that it tried to address are still all too prevalent.  Especially in these recent economic hard times, too often we’ve all seen those who have more cast a dismissive eye to those who have less, and for many it remains a matter of ideological pride to judge their lack as a result of personal flaw or ingrained inferiority, as opposed to the harsh lot of circumstance. Though the recent election cycle is thankfully behind us, there were too many times where it often became painful to watch one of our Presidential candidates continuously bemoan and demean others for what they didn’t have, and dismiss their needs as not worthy of his time.  Truly, every time I heard Mitt Romney, former venture capitalist, chastise the “47 percent,” or joke with the long unemployed about how he was “also looking for a job,” or encourage undocumented workers to self-deport, or claim that those unable to afford insurance could call an ambulance or visit an emergency room when they needed health care…I thought back to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, asking the two men of charity, with cruel insincerity, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

Of course, it’s also in dark times where we see the goodness in people that Dickens championed, such as with the recent destruction wrecked by Superstorm Sandy and how it caused so many to not only open their wallets but also give of their time to help others.  It shouldn’t take those times to force us to help one another, or to encourage us to think beyond our own sphere, but for all the crass commercialization that sometimes sours them, it’s good to know that we have our Holidays, whether they be Christmas, Hanukah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, or what have you, to remind us that no one in this world should ever truly be on their own.

“And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

By Jonathan J. Morris, Antiscribe.com

Over the last week I’ve been striving, with significant difficulty, to write a review, essay, analysis, what-have-you, of The Dark Knight Rises. Certainly, prior to the film’s release I crafted two overviews on the topic of Batman and his history in popular culture, and naturally I wanted to make my write-up of the movie the best, most comprehensive, most insightful piece that was in my ability to do. That plan hasn’t changed, but the world I expected to write about TDKR in has, and I can’t articulate my thoughts about this movie – nor likely any movie – before I address that which has been weighing most heavily on my thoughts. Therefore, before I can discuss Christopher Nolan’s epic on both its own terms and in terms of the cinema, I feel I must talk about the Aurora tragedy and, to a certain degree, about Batman.

Of course, like so many other people throughout this country who weren’t directly affected by the tragedy, I felt heartbroken over what happened in that Colorado movie theater two weeks ago. I am, after all, someone who has spent a great deal of his life, love, and learning in movie theaters, and now to have seen others enter this kind of sacred space I hold so dearly and fall victim to the erratic violence of a deranged mind, bothers me to a degree I have difficulty describing. It’s a violation, a punch to the gut; and as so many others have stated in the last few weeks far more eloquently than I, it has forever placed a black mark on the one experience that often unifies all classes, races, creeds, and cultures into one community: the act of “going to the movies.”

It’s also clear now, that no matter how much one may feel or describe that the Aurora tragedy, it will be forever associated intractably with both The Dark Knight Rises and with Batman. To be clear, as I said last time, that is far from the most tragic thing about what happened in Aurora; twelve lives were lost, dozens more were injured, and hundreds if not thousands in the surrounding community will be haunted by these events forever. Those are the victims of Aurora, not a fictional character (and his corporate owners) whose lucrative legacy will not likely suffer as years pass. But again, just as I felt a kinship with those victims because they were movie goers, and it is, for me, equally so because they were Batman fans. Yet it’s still weird to me on many levels to see this referred to offhand as the “Batman tragedy,” “Batman shootings,” or “Batman murders;” on the one hand I completely understand it, but on the other it bothers me. Not offends me, mind you, but bothers me. To a degree it’s almost too trivial a term; a convenient shorthand for an event that defies easy explanations or satisfactory answers. But as a Batman fan, it bothers me because the designation should offend me, and it just doesn’t.

Certainly the two most divisive issues discussed in the aftermath of Aurora have been gun control and whether and how depictions of violence in our popular culture influence actual violence in the real world. Of the first point, my feelings are pretty cut and dry: our country values its supposed “right to bear arms” far too highly, and it’s a gross disregard for public safety to allow the widespread sale of both automatic weapons and high volume ammunition to any average citizen with the desire to purchase it. It frankly disgusts me that many on the right and those who simply concede the point didn’t think it was appropriate to discuss the topic in the immediate aftermath of Aurora; the ownership of semi-automatic assault rifles is a serious public health issue, not the politicization of a national tragedy. Some would point out that those weapons exist for one reason – to kill – but that’s actually an understatement; what they expressly exist for is to maximize the ability of one individual to injure and kill as many targets as possible. To think that has any place on the open market in a free society entails a definition of freedom that is actually dangerously liberal. People shouldn’t have the right to own any gun they want; what they should have is the right to not be shot, nor feel the need to own a lethal firearm of their own just to feel safe. That we license drivers, teachers, plumbers, notaries, and everything under the sun but don’t license and register every single gun owner in the country is a painfully tragic farce. Now, would James Holmes have found another way to kill, or procured a weapon illegally? Probably. Would that hypothetical other way have been as effective as a semi-automatic assault rifle with an adjusted clip he bought on the open market? Probably not. And in the interest of disclosure, I have fired a gun before in a controlled situation. I have felt the rush, the thrill, the power; I understand the appeal. I just don’t see those “benefits” outweighing the risks.

On the other issue, I’m a bit more divided, but I want to be very clear from the start: the only person responsible for what happened in Aurora, albeit allegedly, is accused gunman James Holmes. Whether or not he called himself “the Joker” or owned a Batman poster doesn’t make those characters, their corporate owners, their creators, their artists, their writers, their performers, and their fans responsible for his crimes. Whatever “drove” him to do what he did, did so likely in his own mind alone, and anyone who lets any work of popular culture influence them to such a degree has been damaged and deranged beyond all definitions of normalcy; the same was true of John Hinckley and Taxi Driver, it was true of Mark David Chapman and The Catcher in the Rye, and it would be true of James Holmes and The Dark Knight. We may never truly know explicitly what drove Holmes to do what he did or whether a Batman fixation played any significant part in his actions. The only thing I think we can all be sure of is that he absolutely chose his venue for both the elevated exposure of a high profile national event and the number of unsuspecting, unassuming victims it provided him.

And yet, knowing all of that to be true mentally and ethically, I somehow can’t dismiss our popular culture, and especially the cinema, as easily as others do, and as much as I consciously feel that Holmes deserves the sole blame for what happened, I remained unsettled about Batman’s, and popular culture’s, connection with this tragedy. To be honest, I can’t help but think that perhaps the character’s association with what happened may be as deserved as it is unfortunate.

As said, my last post here was a survey of Batman movies, and in my introduction, which was written before Aurora and certainly designed to be largely panegyric, I spoke about how it’s always been my feeling that Batman’s best symbolism is to be seen as an ideal of how hope and greatness can sometimes grow out of tragedy. I also discussed, briefly, my discomfort with the fact that his tactics have become so symbolic for post-September 11 America and the Bush, and now Obama, doctrine. Yet there’s something else, though, that has made me uncomfortable with Batman in recent years: it’s how readily his mythology has become almost hopelessly mired in dark, nihilistic, unredeemable violence.

In the late 1980s, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke revitalized Batman’s place in comic books, but a very large reason for that was because they both, sometimes ruthlessly and savagely, presented the violence at the very heart of Batman and his villains. In a scenario that appears eerie in retrospect, Miller’s version of the Joker was shown killing hundreds in the studio audience of a talk show, and then later fatally poisoned a troop of Boy Scouts at a local carnival (all as a way of trying to finally drive Batman to kill him). Moore’s version of the Joker, rather infamously, shot Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl, through the spine, and then stripped her naked and took photos of her as part of plan to drive her father insane. At the time, these depictions of brutal violence, both in scope and derangement, were much discussed and dissected, and they remain controversial, but the thing was, they were meant to be horrific and nightmarish, and ultimately that was the effect they elicited from their readers, for better or worse.

But in the years afterward, these and similar acts of horrific violence and unpleasantness steadily became the norm within the world of the comic book Batman, and the fact is, I really don’t like reading modern Batman comics because of it. My fellow contributor here on the site Andrew Golledge and I have discussed many times how appalled we are with much of the grisly nastiness and sordid unpleasantness that exists within the modern Batman. While villains such as the Joker and Two-Face have always drawn from the grotesque in their conception, over the last two decades Batman’s comic book world has given us things that would make Hannibal Lechter blanch: man-eating cannibals who are explicitly shown eating man, serial killers who tally their hundreds of victims on their own flesh, criminal masterminds who flay others alive and then wear their skin, deranged scientists who mutilate children and then make them their slaves, and black-hearted psychotics who cut out people’s eyes and force them down someone else’s throat. The Joker alone has descended into becoming the ultimate nihilistic nightmare, who forks his own tongue using a straight razor and has his own face cut off in between filling graveyards with victims, apparently just for giggles. In the last week, it has come out that DC Comics asked comic stores to hold back one of the recent Batman titles (Batman Inc. #3) because its violent content was considered too inappropriate in the aftermath of Aurora.

Images from “Batman Inc.” #3, which has been withheld in the aftermath of the Aurora tragedy.

In many ways as bad as the comics have been the recent Arkham series of Batman video games. Video games, of course, are entirely based on the notion of vicarious violence; the two Arkham games are no different, yet each game’s treatment of violence has been even more desensitized and questionable then the one before it. I loved the first game, Arkham Asylum, and found it to be one of the most compulsively playable games I’ve ever experienced, but I often found myself uncomfortable maneuvering Batman past the countless dead bodies of the in-game criminals’ innocent victims – who were typically cops, doctors, nurses, and guards who worked at or around the titular asylum. The sequel, Arkham City proved to be even more nihilistic, though again, I will admit that I greatly anticipated the game, and even upgraded my desktop to be able to play it. In this instance, Batman must wander through the eponymous prison city – the ultimate in urban decay – investigating all manners of murders and mayhem (including more bodies that have had their faces cut off); as an added plus, you also get to play as Catwoman as she endures all kinds of sexist slurs and threats of rape. The game’s ending, in particular, struck a very sour tone with me, as one of the game’s villains brutally slaughters hundreds of the city’s prisoners by raining bullets and missiles on them from above, while the other, the Joker, poisons thousands of Gotham’s citizens, it is implied, successfully. The game’s final scene sees a catatonic Batman cradling a dead Joker, seemingly almost in mourning, while I emphasize, again, that thousands of people are dead. It’s an extremely off-putting and morally dubious finale that seems to value the death of a villain over the death of apparently countless innocents.

Looking at it all now, what really bothers me about Batman’s violent turn isn’t really the violence itself but the fact that it has become so casually done. It’s become as iconographic of Batman stories as the Batmobile, and so commonplace that not even Batman and his allies in storyline seem to bat an eye to it anymore (no pun intended). Indeed, even the comics’ legion of readers seems to find the violence more exciting than appalling, a printed spectacle of human degradation as bad as anything Frederic Wertham ever described, while the writers and artists seem to treat it as exemplifying their work’s inherent sophistication. I’m by no means a prude, and I enjoy violent entertainment to a point, but I just find it all to be often nasty beyond belief for what it’s supposed to be, and as much a signifier of comic books’ and video games’ ongoing status as bastard, illegitimate art forms as is their sexism and stereotyping.

Of course, far more pertinent to Aurora are the Nolan movies, and really for a cultural icon of many interpretations, this is the Batman that will be associated with this tragedy. The Nolan films themselves are as deeply emblematic of the darkness at the heart of the modern Batman as any of his other iterations, and have been the ones that most specifically correlated Batman to the War on Terror, but they at least treat each and every death as something horrible, painful, and worthy of grief, and regard nihilism as something to be stopped instead of encouraged. And indeed, the final film in the series, the one that Holmes and his victims did not see in full, implies that darkness and pain should not be something that needs to be endured forever, but to be risen above. However, one can’t deny the bitter, sad irony that films that so allegorically exploited the pain and trauma of the Post-September 11 era for their own success have now seen the real world encroach upon them and exploit them in turn.

And finally, one can’t discuss The Dark Knight films without discussing the Joker; indeed, if Nolan and Ledger’s Joker wasn’t already a nexus of tragedy it will be far more so now if it’s learned that James Holmes really was inspired by that characterization. When I wrote a paper some years back on the place of The Dark Knight in the re-emergence of superhero films post-9/11, a scene that I watched numerous times, and I would say it’s probably the film’s most unnerving, was the one where the Joker and the now-scarred Harvey Dent meet face to face for the first time. In a film entirely constructed on symbolizing the War on Terror, it was an obvious analogue to the act of terrorist indoctrination, and in this case depicted a seductive and deceptively logical indoctrination into the Joker’s particular brand of nihilism. I still remember on the second time watching it feeling my stomach turn with the thought that some broken individual might hear the words Ledger was saying, and, as Harvey Dent did in the film, become encouraged to hurt others. Perhaps James Holmes was that broken individual, and if so, I pray he’s the last.

The Hollywood Repoter – Tragedy and the Movies – Aurora Commemorative Cover

Among those who willing to draw undeniable correlations between movie violence and the Aurora tragedy was Peter Bogdanovich, whose breakout film Targets (1968) featured a climax where a deranged gunman (based on real-life multiple murderer Charles Whitman) began murdering theatergoers at a drive in movie. Bogdanovich wrote an undeniably impassioned if ludicrously simplistic view of how he absolutely saw a dangerous (though flimsy) correlation between violence in the movies and in the real world in a recent Hollywood Reporter devoted to the tragedy. While I don’t share Bogdanovich’s alarmism, I do see his disgust. Anthony Lane and David Denby in The New Yorker spoke alternatively downplaying the correlation and recognizing it as a byproduct of the movie going experience, respectively. Both have excellent points, and perhaps that speaks to how there aren’t necessarily easy answers when trying to interpret these events. What they perhaps all speak to is that the role and influence of popular culture and its relationship with real world violence, while not intrinsically correlative, isn’t nonexistent, either.

Image from Peter Bogdanovich’s “Targets,” about a gunman who goes on a killing spree that culminates at a drive-in movie theater.

Popular culture, whether it’s in the form of movies, music, novels, television, comics, or video games, is never truly benign. Indeed, being something of an adherent to the Frankfurt School, I generally look at all commercialized art (and nearly all art strives in some degree to be commercial) as having the ability to indoctrinate and homogenize a society; movies, especially, influence us, our attitudes, our morals, our ethics, our fashion sense, and in the twentieth century and now beyond have been a crucial part of the development of the individual within global society. But I also feel that as products marketed to a society they can often be as reflective as they influential, informed as much by the tastes of their audience and public as they are by the artistic and commercial tastes of their creators. Therefore, much of what may be negative in our popular culture, whether it’s violence, sexism, racism, or classism, may exist on the screen to an uncomfortable degree, but perhaps only so much as they exist still in us, or at least in our mass consciousness.

I guess my point is, when thinking about Batman in regards to this tragedy, is perhaps it’s not only disconcerting that his universe may have given a mass murderer a lexicon for how to express himself, but perhaps because his world has become too accurate a reflection and representation of our society’s capacity and willingness to both endure and even enjoy violence. As Jason Bailey of Flavorpill and The Atlantic phrased it in a piece on The Dark Knight Rises and Auroralast week, “(the film) takes place in a world where such things are not just possible, but expected.” While any sense of causation between Holmes and Batman, the Joker, The Dark Knight, or what have you, would be tacit at best, the fact that one is so much of what the other became should make us think more about how we choose to represent and enjoy violence. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t enjoy violence at all: action movies can be fun, video games can be fun, combat sports can be fun, cartoons can be fun, physical comedy can be fun, and even gory horror movies can be fun. But perhaps, in addition to reflecting on whether we should exert further controls on guns, if as a society we may want to rethink our reliance and indulgence in violence as such a vital cornerstone of what we consider entertainment. It’s not a perfect comparison (because I do think guns have a far greater causational relationship with violence than movies et al could ever strive to replicate), but perhaps those of us who too readily dismiss the idea that violence in our popular culture doesn’t have some significant relationship to violence in the real world have something in common with those people who refuse to relinquish their gun rights despite the appalling human toll of gun violence each and every year. Perhaps we are overly willing to ignore the implications in favor of the pleasure and power that comes from our vicariously experienced violence and too comfortable whistling past an ever-expanding graveyard in the name of our own gratification.

Ironically, one of the key moral dilemmas that is often posed within various of works of Batman, including the Nolan films and even Arkham City, and that is rarely resolved, is whether Batman is himself the cause of the chaos he fights, and if villains like the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler, and all the rest would have come to be if Batman himself didn’t exist. The question remains often unanswered because it is unanswerable, equal parts right and wrong, true and false. One can’t really exist without the other, just like violence in our popular culture can’t exist without violence in our own culture. At the end of it all, though, I can’t and won’t give myself over to the perspective that pop culture directly causes chaos; that fictional violence necessarily has to lead to its real world equivalent. The outpouring of support for the victims in the aftermath of Aurora has been too great to make me think that popular culture, nor anything else, has completely desensitized us all to the senseless evil of violence when we see it. And the fact that people have been reluctant to return to theaters, and especially to The Dark Knight Rises, may be unfair to the filmmakers, movie theaters, and indeed the beloved experience of seeing movies, but it may also be partially encouraging if it means people are starting to rethink some of the content of their entertainment and letting it give them pause.

As I’ve said earlier and say still, Batman may be born of grief and violence (and particularly gun violence), but his greatest legacy is as a symbol of hope, and of taking tragedy and turning it into something positive. Maybe this event will come to remind some of his cultural arbiters of that fact, and raise him up from being someone who has wallowed in a world of filth and violence, and move him back into the light. In fact, that journey has probably already begun…

Victims of the Aurora shootings attending the arraignment of James Holmes ,wearing Batman t-shirts as a show of defiance against the self-proclaimed “Joker.”

Suggested Reading:

“A Shooting in a Movie Theater.” By Anthony Lane

“The Massacre in Aurora: Can You Blame the Movies?” By David Denby

“Batman Returns: How Culture Shapes Muddle Into Madness.” By David Dobbs

“The Philosophy of the Technology of the Gun.” By Even Selinger

“How Aurora Changed ‘The Dark Knight Rises.’” By Jason Bailey

“What If Movies Are Part of the Problem?” By Peter Bogdanovich

“We’ve Seen This Movie Before.” By Roger Ebert

“Out of the Darkness.” By Lauren Humphries-Brooks

By Jonathan Morris, Antiscribe.com

(Note: I had planned to have this up last week, but after learning about the terrible events in Colorado, I though it best to wait a few days.  Though it should go without saying, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, who were not only members of our greater American community, but fellow moviegoers and Batman fans.  Though far, far, far from the most tragic aspect of this horror, it’s still somewhat unfortunate that it will forever be associated with Batman; as a figure in popular culture, the Dark Knight has always stood as a symbol against guns and gun violence, as well as an idealization that hope and light can someday arise from great tragedy and darkness.  Hopefully, as a nation and a society, once we’ve mourned and grieved these events – and learned from them – we will find our own way onward, toward hope and light.)

Though Batman used firearms in his first year of existence, he has since stood as a symbol against guns and gun violence.

Introduction

Welcome back to the second part of this epic overview of Batman threw the years.  Last time, of course, I looked at the character’s long history in animation, and this time I will be revisiting his even more notable history in live action film and television.  In the previous edition, I also spoke a great deal about how Batman is such an extraordinary character in popular culture due to his incredible adaptability to the tastes and tones of any given era.  Now I’d like to speak to why I think he holds so much appeal.

Needless to say, Batman has been increasingly seen, and especially more so since the 1970s and 80s, as a very dark character: the Dark Knight – a tragic, moody, often taciturn avenger that commonly plays straight man to typically far more ostentatious adversaries.  As I discussed in my piece on Batman: Year One, the broad strokes of Batman’s origin are exceedingly well known, and for both his long-time and fair-weather fans, that origin is a big reason as to why his appeal is so universal.  Everyone,  somehow, somewhere, will be touched by terrible tragedy at some point in their lives, and will inevitably come face to face with the deep mourning and torrent of emotions that comes from the fact that what they’ve lost – no matter what, when, where, and how – can never ultimately be retrieved or restored.

A large part of the Batman’s universal appeal is that he was born in tragedy, and tragedy is something that no one in this world, sadly, is exempt from.

Many heroes of history have been the victims of loss, from Gilgamesh to Hercules to the Lone Ranger to Spider-man, and that loss propels them, like the Batman, to make the world a better place (relatively speaking).  What makes Batman different and special is that he is the hero who embraces his pain, externalizes it, and uses it as his greatest weapon.  Batman, by all rights, should be a symbol of evil.  He dresses like a nightmarish gargoyle and uses unsparing tactics, the greatest of which is his ability to strike boundless terror into the hearts of his enemies.  Pulling on some of the most terrifying images of our collective unconscious, Batman doesn’t stand in the blinding light of justice and transparency, but cloaks himself in night and shadow. He protects the laws though he does not obey them, and he’s an engine of chaos that will stop at nothing to maintain order.  Batman is a bringer of light, albeit one forever couched in darkness.  In the end, he’s a mess of contradictions, but in a way that makes sense to all of us.  For anyone who has known loss or tragedy knows pain, and Batman is a hero who feels our pain and embodies our primal desire to return pain to those who cause it.  As terrifying as Batman is, he’s on our side, and no matter how times may change, we have the feeling that he always will be.

I first discovered Batman through cartoons, in both Adam West’s live action variety and the animated Super Friends. But very shortly after I was first introduced to Batman’s origin in the Super Powers episode “The Fear,” my dad bought me my first Batman comic.  I don’t even remember the story, the villain, or whether even Robin was in it or not.  What I remembered was HIM. This was not the cartoon character I watched playing second fiddle to Superman and Wonder Woman, the big brother to a garishly adorned teenage sidekick.  This was something else entirely.  To an eight year old, this was an icon of cool violence. He wasn’t just ears, a cape, and a mask, but long, terrifying ears on a stern mask with a billowing cape that seemed to encompass the darkened sky. When he struck someone it wasn’t just a cartoonish “POW,” but an explosion and release of righteous anger.  To my young mind, the character he most reminded me of was Darth Vader, except in this case I had the tacit permission to cheer on this paragon of night. The Dark Knight has been a major part of my life ever since, and though I would grow out of comic books and superheroes for the most part, Batman proved to be a gateway to other things: to the world of film noir, to hardboiled literature, to Shakespeare, to mystery stories, and to the basic archetypes that have informed out storytelling for thousands of years.

Artist Neal Adams’ famous interpretation of Batman, which would have been similar to the first image of the Dark Knight I ever saw in comics.

Yet unlike many of the trappings of my childhood and other characters of comic books, Batman has seemed to become only more relevant for me with time.  It’s of no great surprise that he became our most indicative post-September 11 superhero; the traumatized but proactive Batman was very much emblematic of our even more traumatized nation, as we, too, cloaked ourselves in the trappings of anger and pain, and lashed out our enemies (perceived and otherwise) using the tropes of fear and terror with a fervor that was, for a time, uncompromising.  Of course, in the process it only demonstrated why Batman is and should remain a fantasy, as pain and trauma only begets itself, with no end in sight.

So while I still enjoy and appreciate the myth of the Batman and his Gotham City, which is simultaneously every city in the world and yet none of them, I do so nowadays with the sober eyes of a wizened, sophisticated adult.  To me he no longer always represents childhood nostalgia or escapism (though he still does sometimes). More often than not, he feels more and more like the allegorical reflection of the society in which we live: of how close to the edge of its ethics it’s willing to go, and how it ultimately chooses to face its evils.

Though couched in the trappings of darkness and a symbol of fear, the Batman’s true legacy is as a bringer of light and hope.

Of course, given how much he has consistently reflected and been effected by an ever-changing society through the years it shouldn’t be surprising that Batman has been our most oft-filmed superhero (at least cinematically…Superman still has him outpaced in regards to television series).  In fact, a large part of the story of superheroes in film is, in large part, the story of Batman in popular culture. And of course, as is always the case, some versions have been better, and some have been worse…

Batman (1943)/Batman and Robin (1949) – The Serials

Pretty regularly overlooked these days (as are most film serials, really), these two twelve-part series made by Columbia Pictures marked the first depictions of Batman outside of the world of comics.  Made somewhat inexpensively, they generally typified many issues common with old movie serials: poorly written, clumsily acted, extremely corny, and awash in continuity errors, narrative inconsistencies, and enough plot holes to drive a Mercury 8 through (which was actually used in one of the serials in lieu of a Batmobile).  Though not without their interest or perverse charm, by today’s standards both of these series, despite their moments of unintended hilarity, are borderline unwatchable.  In their time, though, they were very successful, and actually displayed far, far greater adherence to its source material than other serials typically did to other comic book characters; the Captain America serial, for instance, pretty much adapted the character’s costume and nothing else (not even his shield!).

Batman and Robin, as they appeared in the 1949 serial.

The first serial told of Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin (Douglas Craft) going into action to stop an evil Japanese agent named Dr. Daka (J. Carroll Naish) who had developed a mind-control device that turns people into mindless slaves.  The second serial saw the Dynamic Duo (now Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan) up against a mysterious master criminal named the Wizard, who devised an electronic device that can control automobiles and other vehicles.  While the first of the two serials was the superior, technically speaking, being a product of the Second World War it was also appallingly racist.  Not only was the villain Japanese, but his hideout was in an abandoned “Little Tokyo,” inside the “Japanese Cave of Horrors.” Little Tokyo was abandoned, by the way, because “a wise government (had) rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs;” which is, of course, a direct reference to and endorsement of this country’s forced internment of innocent Japanese-Americans.  Sadly, even the Caped Crusader gets in on the slurs at a few points.   Now, I know it was a different time, and while some may find the archaic racism funny in an absurd way, that doesn’t make it any more right or less shameful in retrospect. The second serial was appreciably worse, with an even lower budget, ill-fitting costumes, and huge gaps in logic; on the other hand, it didn’t racially stigmatize an entire ethnicity, so it’s got that going for it.

The villainous Japanese agent Dr. Daka (J. Carroll Naish). While dated in countless respects, the racism in the 1943 serial was by far its most archaic aspect.

Though seldom seen nowadays, the serials had a great influence on this history of the Caped Crusader.  The idea of Batman having a subterranean hideout, initially called “the Bat’s Cave,” was actually first introduced in the 1943 serial. Also, Batman’s butler Alfred, presented initially in the comics as a portly, clean-shaven blowhard to be mined for comic relief, was portrayed in the serial as a thin, mustached, brave, and loyal ally; the comics soon adapted these traits to their version of Alfred and it has remained consistent with his presentation to this day.

The 1943 serial introduced the world to the Bat’s Cave, which of course became better known as the Batcave.

Probably their most pronounced area of influence, however, was that they directly inspired the later Adam West series. Though its somewhat apocryphal where the tradition actually began, by the 1960s it had became very common at many trendy parties to screen the films and mock them for their corniness; within a year or two, these screenings became a Saturday night fixture at the Playboy Club in Chicago, and an edited version of the 1943 serial made the rounds of college towns as An Evening with Batman and Robin.  After a producer for ABC attended some of the Playboy Club screenings and saw the reaction they received from the audience, the idea for a Batman television series was born…

Batfact: The first of the Batman serials ran into some interesting censorship, though not sadly for their racial content. Since the production code restricted positive depictions of vigilantism, Batman had to be specifically classified in the film as a lawful, deputized government agent.

Batman (1966-1968)

“Quick Robin…to the Batmobile!” If there was ever something that emphasized how adaptable Batman is to different times and different eras, it was this iconic 1960s show. Though it seems to be less remembered with each passing year, this series was integral to the history of the Caped Crusader, making him, his mythology, and his iconography an ingrained part of the cultural consciousness and lexicon.  Also, Batman marked the first time camp humor had been (intentionally) employed in a mainstream television show. Needless to say, though, this was anything but The Dark Knight…

Batman (Adam West) doing the “Batusi.” Nope, no Dark Knight here. No sir.

If you are somehow one of those people who has never been exposed to the Batman TV show, the series was essentially a campy, light-hearted, hackneyed-as-all-hell presentation of the Batman that was far more interested in spoofing the iconic character than giving him his legitimate due.  Produced by William Dozier, who was also the show’s famous omniscient narrator, the show had a keen disdain for its source material and was chiefly designed as a straight comedy that eviscerated comic books and other “juvenile entertainment” while drawing on the pop art/mod aesthetics that were all the rage at the time.  Played to the hilt by Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin were shown as ridiculously noble heroes who, despite their considerable intelligence, gadgetry, and toughness, could always be counted on to be colossal idiots whenever the plot required them to be. The physically unimpressive West especially, so overdid his line readings that almost every performance he gave was like a pompous slap in the face of the know-it-all, unblemished heroes of the earlier generation’s Saturday morning serials (such as the one covered above).  In fact, the show’s formula was drawn directly from the serials: aired twice a week for the majority of its run, the first episode of the pair would see Batman and Robin called in by the inept Commissioner Gordon and Irish Stereotype Police Chief O’Hara to investigate the “villain of the week.”  After about twenty minutes of trying to figure out the villain’s scheme, the Dynamic Duo would inevitably get captured and subjected to some inordinately complicated death trap; this would serve as the episode’s cliff-hanger, after which Dozier would exclaim: “Tune in tomorrow! Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel!” The next episode would begin with Batman and Robin breaking out of the death trap, stopping the villain’s evil scheme, brawling with his/her henchmen (complete with the show’s trademark graphic exclaiming “Bam,” “Pow,” etc.), saving the day, and exiting the scene with Batman dropping a usually pithy remark. Rinse, repeat, see you next week…

One of the campiest aspects of the “Batman” TV series was to use titles to emphasize violent sound effects, just like in a comic book.

Impressively, the show clicked because it managed to be two separate shows for two separate audiences.  While adults saw it for what it was chiefly intended to be – high comedy – kids loved it as what it was actually sending up – comic book-style adventures.  And though formulaic, the show was carried, as many versions of Batman often are, by the villains, played by a deluge of guest stars, including Victor Buono, Vincent Price, Liberace, Van Johnson, Art Carney, Maurice Evans, Joan Collins, Cliff Robertson, David Wayne, Milton Berle, Ann Baxter, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, among many others.  The “Big Four” of the show’s villains, though, were the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, and Catwoman, played by Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and Julie Newmar, respectively (though Gorshin and Newmar were replaced by John Astin and Eartha Kitt at points in the series’ run).  All four were fantastically campy in their roles, and Meredith and Newmar especially defined how their villains would forever be seen in the popular imagination.

Burgess Meredith’s portrayal of the Penguin was one of the show’s most remembered villainous performances, and is still references every time Jon Stewart impersonates former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Meredith gave the Penguin an instantly recognizable cackle that was meant to imitate the squawking of his namesake, and is still to this day referenced on shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (who invokes Meredith notably when impersonating Dick Cheney).   Newmar’s Catwoman became something of a sex symbol, known for often “purring” her lines like a cat, something that would forever be associated with the character (though downplayed by most recent versions).  Of them all, though, Gorshin’s Riddler probably stood out the most; playing the part with a kind of irrepressible, manic glee, Gorshin took what had previously been one of the comic book Batman’s more obscure foes and forever elevated him to the highest pantheon of the Dark Knight’s rogues’ gallery.

Just a sampling of Batman’s television rogues gallery, all of who were played by high profile guest stars camping it up like crazy.

An immediate hit when it debuted in early 1966, Batman spawned the first incarnation of what we now know as Batmania, and that year it was supposedly impossible to not go anywhere without seeing the Dynamic Duo’s likeness stamped on some piece of merchandise, or hearing some version of or variation on the famous title theme (including by The Who of all people):

As usually happens with fads, it didn’t last, and the show’s ratings had declined so greatly by only its third season that its budget was slashed and the show was cut to only half an hour weekly.  To draw in more female viewers and to give Batman a dash of sex appeal, Yvonne de Carlo was added to the show as Batgirl/Barbara Gordon, but it wasn’t enough to curb the downward spiral and by early 1968 Batman was cancelled.  Despite having only an initial run of a little over two years, the series became a fixture in syndication for most of the next twenty, and in the process became an ingrained rite of passage for kids growing up in the 70s and well into the 80s.

Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) was added to the show in its final season to try to renew interest. Here she is, in chains; somewhere, Wonder Woman is smiling.

Of course, in the modern era, this show proves to be pretty much a “love it” or “hate it” affair. Those who love it do so because they look back on it either with pronounced nostalgia or with great appreciation for its camp sense of humor. For many fans of the modern Batman, however, it’s a ready target for scorn and derision, standing as the complete anathema to the stark, serious Batman of the modern age. Regardless of how one may feel about the show, the role it played in Batman’s history cannot be denied. This series, for better or worse, ingrained elements of the Batman universe into the public imagination, and made the character a household name that has never been forgotten. And though Batmania burned briefly, it burned bright enough to increase sales of the comic (and actually all superhero comics) considerably and established the Dark Knight as a consistent source of merchandising revenue for Time Warner, who purchased DC Comics in 1969.

A few months into the show’s run, West’s Batman appeared on the cover of “Life” magazine, then one of the most popular and important periodicals in the country; in the eyes of many, this marked the beginning of “Batmania.”

My personal opinion of the show? I watched it fervently when I was in Kindergarten and as I said, this and Super Friends were my first exposures to Batman, so I do see the nostalgia that many hold for it.  And for the first little while, there can be no denying that this show did a very good job at being a dead-on spoof and satire of hackneyed comic book stories; in the long run, though, its formula really didn’t have any legs, and it shouldn’t be at all surprising that the show was canceled so quickly.  For me, though, at the end of the day, this just isn’t the Batman I enjoy anymore; I much prefer the Dark Knight to the Caped Crusader, and though I somewhat resent that the show treated a beloved character as a joke, I take comfort in the fact that its biggest audience historically – kids – enjoyed the show without really getting that joke.

Ironically, due to the fact the show was such a short-lived fad, those who crafted Batman comics found themselves forced to change the direction of their prominent character away from the campy tone of the series in order for it to survive.  Under the custodianship of Dennis O’Neill, beginning in 1970 Batman was rather quickly transformed into a more somber, more serious avenger and detective, one that would evolve into the Dark Knight that we all know today. Robin/Dick Grayson was also shipped off to college, breaking up the Dynamic Duo after a thirty-year run and returning Batman to being, more often than not, a solo hero.

Batman Issue 227, December 1969, drawn by Neal Adams and written by Dennis O’Neill, marked the new beginning of the Batman, and his transformation into a true Dark Knight. The cover was intentionally similar to Detective Comics #31, printed thirty years earlier; in O’Neill’s eyes it symbolized taking Batman back to his darker roots as a lone, nocturnal avenger.

Batfact #1:  Though demand for it has always been high, and it still shows up on cable syndication to this day (presently in the United States on The Hub), this series has never been officially made available on DVD or any other home media.  There are manifold reasons out there as to why, but what it almost certainly boils down to is ownership rights.  While DC Comics (now owned by Time Warner) owns the characters and trademark, they licensed them to ABC (now owned by Disney), who then licensed production of the show to 20^th Century Fox (now owned by Newscorp…at least for the moment), who then co-produced it with Dozier’s Greenway Productions (owned by Dozier’s heirs).  With the rights divided across so many parties (and major corporations), it has made securing a home video release close to impossible (though bootlegs are, naturally, plentiful).

Batfact #2: Riddle me this – who is the only actor to have played a villain on both the live-action Batman as well as Batman: The Animated Series?  The answer: Roddy McDowall, who played the original series creation Bookworm on the Adam West show, and then delivered a very empathetic turn as the Mad Hatter on TAS.

Batman: The Movie (1966)

Originally conceived as being something of a grand scale pilot to the Batman series prior to it making the air, production scheduling forced this movie version of the then-popular show to be filmed instead after the completion of the first season.  Shot in a little over a month, and then rushed into theaters by year’s end, Batman: The Movie, depending on whose perspective you believe, either marked the height of Batmania or the downfall of it.  More than likely, it represented a little bit of both.

“Batman: The Movie” saw the Dynamic Duo outnumbered when their four biggest villains teamed up to take over the world.

The movie, which of course draws heavily on the cheeky, camp style of the series, tells of Batman and Robin facing their greatest challenge when their Big Four villains, the Penguin (Meredith), the Joker (Romero), the Riddler (Gorshin), and Catwoman (Lee Meriwhether, stepping in for the unavailable Julie Newmar) team-up to take the U.N. general assembly hostage and try to take over the world!  While some like this in that “it is what it is” kind of way, this movie was silly even by the standards of the show; though it featured the first prominent appearance of the Batcopter and Batboat in pop culture, it also boasted the infamous use of “Bat-Shark-Repellent;” which of course begs the question: what is a Bat-Shark? That fact it was a feature film made its sense of humor somehow all the more trite, and by the time it starts satirizing international political relations, it had pretty much stretched its conceits far too thin.

Ultimately, the movie was not a box office success and indicated an overexposure of the character; for this reason, Batman: The Movie is pretty well regarded, one way or another, as the tipping point for Batmania.

Batfact: Interestingly, unlike the actual TV series, this has consistently been available on home video for most of the last 25 years, so for many fans of the Batman show, this represents their best and quickest available “Batfix” on the open market.

The Legends of the Superheroes (1978)

NO! NO! I…won’t.  I can’t.  Don’t make me!  Aaagh!

Sigh, all right…all right…let’s just get this over with.  This incredibly obscure series consisted of two specials produced by Hanna Barbera productions, intended as something of a live-action, though heavily satirical, version of their popular Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon.  Featuring Adam West and Burt Ward returning to their roles as Batman and Robin, it also featured a number of other superheroes and villains, including Captain Marvel, the Green Lantern, the Atom, Giganta, and Solomon Grundy (Superman and Wonder Woman were spared the indignity because they were otherwise appearing on film and television, respectively). The first show was, generally speaking, intended as kind of live-action version of a typical, hackneyed, ludicrous Super Friends episode.  While that was bad enough, the second episode was instead a take-off of a Friar’s roast, and generally brought out all the worst elements of variety television of the time.  Collectively, these two shows were pretty much Batman’s equivalent of The Star Wars Holiday Special, and even people who liked the original 60s television show despised this.

Batfact: Following the original Batman series, Adam West (as well as both Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig) suffered severe typecasting.  While West would work sporadically over the next twenty years, including voicing Batman in some of the animated series, he made part of his living appearing at conventions in costume as Batman.  Fortunately, after Tim Burton’s Batman was released in 1989, West returned to the public eye and has repeatedly found consistent work as a voice actor, including on some of the various Batman television series.  The most poignant of these was probably the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Beware the Gray Ghost,” which saw art imitate life as West portrayed an actor typecast from a superhero role he played decades earlier.

In one of his most poignant voice roles, on “Batman: The Animated Series,” West played Simon Trent, an actor, like West, who was typecast for playing a superhero – the Gray Ghost – on television years earlier.

Batman (1989)

For someone who lived through the phenomenon that was Tim Burton’s Batman, it’s sometimes kind of amazing to me how it’s gotten more and more overshadowed by the newer, and admittedly better, Christopher Nolan films. Make no mistake, though, this was the most anticipated film of its day, and one of the most brilliantly marketed films of its generation.  Playing off the character’s prominence in popular culture, the film’s advertising pretty much evinced the character’s name in favor of his trademarked logo, and its rather minimalist trailer became a collector’s item in the days before DVD extras.  Though its blockbuster status was essentially guaranteed before it was even released, when it arrived in theaters, it was nonetheless a revelation.  This was a film far darker than any other mainstream blockbuster had ever been; and it was essentially the first time American popular culture had seen a long-established character not only modernized for a new generation, but completely recreated and reinterpreted as the antithesis of what they had previously known.  In Burton’s Batman, gone were the blue cape and cowl and gray bodysuit that made Adam West look borderline ridiculous (before West pushed himself across that border); this was a true Dark Knight, swathed in black body armor, with an ominous mask and voice that was often little more than a taciturn whisper.  This Batman, unlike his predecessors, wasn’t a children’s superhero, but something that seemed designed to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, and the world he lived in wasn’t a cartoon, but something out of an urban nightmare…

The film essentially tells a condensed version of the long saga of Batman and the Joker instead of a true origin story.  In it, Batman (Michael Keaton) is still something of a new quantity in Gotham City and regarded as an urban myth; in his first major “coming out,” however, he finds himself in a confrontation with crime boss Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson).  During their struggle, Napier is accidentally knocked into a vat of chemicals, bleaching his skin white and driving him entirely insane.  Now transformed into the homicidal Joker, he begins a high-profile reign of terror, taking control of the criminal underworld with an eye more toward mass-murder than profit.  And, of course, only Batman can stop him.

Rather than a straight origin, the film basically told a condensed version of the war between Batman (Michael Keaton) and the Joker (Jack Nicholson).

Though it proved critic-proof anyway, the film at the time received very mixed reviews, and in retrospect I think that speaks to just how strange and different Burton’s film was when compared to what was then the norm.  Granted, I don’t find it to be an especially classic work of cinema or anything, and as Burton himself once said, “it was more a cultural phenomenon than a great movie;” nonetheless, Batman holds up as an entertaining and periodically compelling version of the character which, though dark in countenance, still finds a way to be remarkably fun.  And while not possessing anywhere near the narrative depth and psychological complexity of Nolan’s later Dark Knight trilogy, Batman still may match those films in quality of craftsmanship.

Batman’s Gotham City was both a nod to the gothic tradition as well as emblematic of 1980s urban decay.

As is typical of Burton films, what his movies lacks in narrative cohesion they usually supplement in visual grandeur, and here that was really no different.  The film’s sumptuous production design presented a Gotham City that seemed almost like a gothic hellscape of urban decay, with buildings that seemed crafted more out of shadows than stones.  If there’s one area, though, in which this Batman stands head and shoulders above its later reboot, it’s in Danny Elfman’s rousing, sometimes operatic, and occasionally hypnotic musical score, which perfectly balanced the unsettling mysteriousness of its hero with the gleeful menace of the Joker, as well as the ominous dread that was ever-present in Burton’s gothic Gotham.

Though since surpassed and overshadowed by Heath Ledger’s galvanizing, award-winning turn as the Clown Prince of Crime in The Dark Knight, Jack Nicholson was still in his over-the-top glory as the Joker. And while Ledger’s version certainly remains the more realistic and disturbing, Nicholson’s actually does a much better job representing the character as he appeared in the comics: as a cheerful but menacing homicidal sociopath whose ornate, grandiose plans generally lacked the later Joker’s ideological agenda.  In another huge departure from the norm for the time, and still influencing movies to this day, Nicholson’s Joker was as much as if not more of a focus than Keaton’s Batman; Nicholson, it must be understood, was a much bigger star than Keaton at the time, and even received top billing and what turned out to be a very sweetheart deal that included a cut of the film’s box office.  Keaton, who at the time was a very controversial choice for the role, remains a surprisingly good Bruce Wayne/Batman, even if he’s never really quite an ideal one.

In one of the more trendsetting aspects of the film, the success of Jack Nicholson’s Joker made the casting of a film’s villain almost as important as the casting of its hero; it also inspired numerous films to focus more on a scene-stealing villain rather than a hero.

As said, the film was a phenomenon, and proved to be such a media event in the summer of 1989 that it essentially launched the second coming of Batmania: T-shirts, baseball caps, shoes, sandals, and bathing suits featuring some variation of the Bat-symbol were everywhere (including on most everything I owned). Bat-merchandise of all varieties could essentially be found in virtually every store in the local mall, comic book sales skyrocketed, and, somewhat ironically, even renewed interest was taken in the Adam West series.

Batman was everywhere in 1989, even on breakfast cereal. It was delicious! And yes, I owned that bank.

Though, again, somewhat overshadowed by the Nolan films now, it needs to be noted that this was actually one of the more influential films in Hollywood history – and not really for the better. Though not as much of a game changer as Star Wars was a generation earlier, the impact of Batman on commercial moviemaking was profound.  Scott Mendelson on Salon did an excellent job some years back of analyzing its influence here, but in short, Batman forever changed how films were marketed, produced, distributed, and merchandised, and  it especially  placed permanent emphasis in Hollywood on filming preexisting properties instead of creating new ones of its own.  Batman was also the film that led to movies being “front-loaded,” placing greater emphasis on the opening weekend and starting the gradual contraction of the amount of time movies would typically spend in the theater. This led directly to the decline of second-run movie houses in favor of first run movie-megaplexes, as well a more rapid sell-through of home videos to the average consumer.  Finally, I would add, that as an unfortunate byproduct of this success, it precipitated an even greater homogenization of Hollywood’s product and a decreased interest in deeper, more sophisticated fare.  And make no mistake, for most of the next decade, films with even a modicum of similar subject matter tried to ape this movie’s success, commonly by coupling darker, antiheroic protagonists with over the top, scenery-chewing antagonists who typically outshone the hero.  Indeed, the studios threw a lot of good money after bad trying to mimic the success of Batman, though none of them ever did (not even its sequels).

While Batman can be viewed as something of a culmination of 1980s postmodernism and commercialism, it also essentially marked the beginning of the 1990s.  Released just after the end of the Reagan Presidency, and its emphasis on nostalgia for an earlier time, this black-clad Batman and his hyperrealized world of urban decay, corruption, and madness was a high profile symbol of the darkness and discomfort at the heart of the American psyche, and a testament that all that glittered, even in the bright day-glow neon of the 80s, was not gold.  The runaway success of Batman marked a turn in popular culture toward darker popular entertainment, and in a lot of respects, we’ve never really turned back.

After “Batman,” for better or worse, nothing would ever be the same again.

Batfact: While a cultural phenomenon and a merchandising machine back in 1989, there was one area where it was felt Batman merchandising had fallen short: toys.  Unlike Star Wars, Masters of the Universe, and other major properties of the time, Batman only featured three characters that really lent themselves to being made into action figures: Batman, the Joker, and, in a real stretch, Joker’s henchman Bob.  As a result, the line was supplemented with other DC Comics characters like Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, and the Penguin. Producer ToyBiz surprisingly lost money on the line, and after DC and ToyBiz went their separate ways, the license was picked up the next year by Kenner Toys.  While it may seem insignificant, from Batman Returns onward, there came a greater focus on putting more and more merchandisable characters on screen in each film, which, by 1997’s Batman & Robin,had more than passed the point of overkill.

Batman Returns (1992)

Burton’s much-anticipated follow-up to his original blockbuster, Batman Returns arrived amidst great hype in the summer of 1992 but was almost immediately the source of controversy.  With Burton granted far greater creative control when compared to the first film, he ended up creating a sequel that managed to be even darker and gloomier than the original (though with a much lower body count, all things being equal).  Instead of obviously fun and exciting, Batman Returns proved incredibly bleak and macabre, with a greater emphasis placed on sexuality and the grotesque that left audiences, and specifically family audiences, shell-shocked at the time.  With that said, it has engendered a cultish appeal among many in the two decades since its release, and I know some people who find Returns to be their favorite of the original series.

Personally, I just found it weird that “Batman Returns” was set during a snowy Christmas season but was released in June.

However, it absolutely cannot be denied that as a mainstream blockbuster, this film was a qualitative failure, and though Batman Returns remained profitable, it made significantly less than Batman did three years earlier.  Arguably its biggest problem, creatively, was that it placed too much focus on the villains over Batman.  While the first film was criticized in many quarters for this, here that focus was even more out of balance; with no less than THREE villains in this film (beginning an annoying tradition that would creatively compromise the rest of the series), our eponymous hero was sometimes left gasping for screen time.  In fact, I would argue that he wasn’t even the film’s protagonist, with that role pretty much shared by “villains” the Penguin (Danny Devito) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Exacerbating a trend from the original film, “Batman Returns” was much more focused on its villains, Catwoman and the Penguin, than it was on Batman.

Departing significantly from his comic counterpart, Burton and Devito’s Penguin wasn’t the dapper, goofy, and somewhat comical criminal mastermind Burgess Meredith made famous, but a deformed, monstrous, misanthropic maniac who basically looked like a full grown Thalidomide baby.  Thrown into a river as an infant, Oswald Cobblepot is raised in the sewers to become Gotham’s fabled “penguin-man,” who blackmails Gotham’s evil business mogul, Max Schreck (Christopher Walken) into helping him “reclaim his birthright” as a member of the surface society so he can exact a horrible revenge on Gotham City.  Selina Kyle, meanwhile, is Shreck’s put-upon, meek, and shy secretary; after being pushed out a high window for stumbling on one her boss’s evil plans, she has a psychotic break, assuming the role of the sexy, empowered, and vengeful Catwoman.  Both, of course, before long run up against the Batman, with Catwoman especially proving to be a very tricky and personal foe, especially when their alter-egos meet and begin to fall in love…

A far cry from his comic book namesake, Burton and Devito’s grotesque and unpleasant Penguin was often too much for audiences in 1992, though Devito did a fine job bringing him to life.

For a film that was marketed and merchandised as a kids movie, people had every right to be upset with what Burton actually gave them; when it was first released, I myself witnessed firsthand all the children under age eight being led crying from the theater as the movie went along; by the time the Penguin tried to bite someone’s nose off, a significant part of my theater had cleared out.  Of course, those kids and parents, had they remained, would have seen Penguin attempting to mass murder all of Gotham’s first born children, so it was probably good that they left when they did.  And perhaps more than any film he’s done, this stands as Burton’s most egregious example of sacrificing plot for style.  While the film looks absolutely fantastic, its story sometimes makes little sense and is full of frustrating contrivances that stretch “suspension of disbelief” well past its breaking point.  (I mean seriously…how does the Penguin get a bunch of rocket launchers on hundreds of penguins in like, five minutes?

Though the storyline of Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiflfer) could be a little illogical and contrived, Pfeiffer was fantastically tragic in the role.

With all of that said, there’s a lot about this movie that I actually really, really enjoy.  Danny Elfman arguably surpassed himself with his score here, which, for better or worse, often beautifully adds to the film’s melancholic aura; his pieces for Catwoman, especially, are amazingly evocative and raw.

The actors’ performances were also utterly fantastic; though Penguin was undeniably the film’s leading liability, Devito did a fine job playing him, and Michelle Pfeiffer was brilliant at playing a very troubled yet alluring Catwoman.  Walken, though, sometimes threatened to steal the movie as Schreck, playing him as something of a cross between Donald Trump and Albert Einstein, and it stands as one of the definitive “Walken performances.”  And though Daniel Waters’ script often leaves the plot dangling, some of his dialogue is absolutely superb.

As he often does, Christopher Walken periodically came close to stealing the movie as the villainous mogul Max Schreck.

What I probably appreciate most about Batman Returns is that it represents the best presentation of the Batman/Catwoman relationship I’ve ever seen; whether they were fighting or flirting, Keaton and Pfeiffer had amazing chemistry, and the film does a beautiful job playing them off each other as badly broken people with a duality that splits them “right down the center.”

Watching it today, it helps to look at Batman Returns as a high budget black comedy in a blockbuster’s clothing, and it actually presaged the often grisly turn that Batman comics have taken in the last two decades.  Naturally, given the backlash to the movie and its underwhelming box office, Tim Burton wasn’t asked to return for a third movie, and as a direct result, Keaton also departed the role.  At the time, Burton’s exit was absolutely the right call; unfortunately, though, Warner Bros. decidedly overcompensated after Batman Returns, exerting even more corporate control over the series and taking the next film much, much too far in the opposite direction…

Though maligned and controversial in its time, “Batman Returns” has developed a strong cult following over the last two decades.

Batfact:  While it most certainly would have been one character beyond “one character too many,” there were originally plans for Robin to be in the film; however, the character would have been a distinct departure from the Boy Wonder we all know, and instead of being an orphaned child of circus acrobats, he would have been a young auto mechanic and/or juvenile gang leader.  He also apparently would have been African-American; Marlon Wayans, in fact, was hired and paid for the role and claims to have attended a wardrobe fitting for the character, but of course never actually performed in this or any of the subsequent films.

 Batman Forever (1995)

A much maligned movie, especially after the success of Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Forever was essentially an equal and opposite reaction to Burton’s nihilistic Batman Returns, taking Batman away from a dark Gotham City and placing him within an Las Vegas-like cartoon world.  With director Joel Schumacher at the helm, Batman Forever, more than simply trying to be a more family-friendly version of Batman, went even further than that, becoming essentially a more modernized version of the Adam West show.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the 1960s, but the 1990s, and the return to a camp aesthetic was for many, thoroughly unwelcome.

Presented as an often overlit, bright, neon-soaked, the Gotham City of “Batman Forever” often felt like Las Vegas without the gambling and legalized prostitution. In other words, mostly unbearable.

A camp cartoon is really what Batman Forever essentially proved to be (complete with lame-ass sound effects).  Where Burton’s Batman had been dark, Batman Forever was colorful to the point of garish, and where it had been serious, Schumacher’s film aimed to be jokey.  Like the Adam West series, the movie’s script was chock full of bad puns (really, really bad puns) and double entendres, and hewed much closer to the ludicrous and fantastical than Burton’s version ever dared (did I mention the sound effects?”. The resulting film is difficult, if not impossible, to take seriously, though if nothing else it was far more palatable for a family audience than Batman Returns had been.

“Batman Forever” tried to recreate a more family-friendly Caped Crusader, and in the opinion of everyone went way too far in the wrong direction.

The film saw Batman again facing two villains, each of whom played on one of his dual personas.  The first was Two-Face, played by Tommy Lee Jones as a one-dimensional (ironically) cackling psychopath who wants revenge on Batman, and the second was the Riddler, played by Jim Carrey, an evil genius with a mind reading device who’s pathologically obsessed with Bruce Wayne.  While Carrey was in his element in this type of part, Jones was clearly doing it for the money; sadly, that didn’t stop either of them from trying to see which of the them could go more over-the-top or chew more of the overglossed scenery than the other.  Overall, they emblematised the movie perfectly, as Batman Forever was just too broad, too loud, too obnoxious, and too excessive in just about every respect.

Beyond over-the-top and beyond obnoxious Jim Carrey’s Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face were also at times a little too touchy-feely for some people’s comfort.

I can’t honestly say, though, that this movie is quite as awful as its reputation.  What’s bad in it is plenty, plenty bad, and Schumacher’s entire creative direction was just completely wrong headed in every way, but writer Akiva Goldsman actually did try to return some of the focus to Bruce Wayne/Batman, giving him a romantic interest in the form of a sexy psychiatrist (Nicole Kidman), who helps the Dark Knight confront his internal conflict with duality.  The film also does a decent job with developing the Dick Grayson/Robin narrative, and though somewhat too old for the role, O’Donnell worked as a moody and rebellious Boy Wonder.  Not surprisingly, it was Batman who ultimately held the film together, and Kilmer’s decision to play him as earnest, serious, and straight, despite the ludicrous cartoon going on around him, kept Batman Forever from slipping completely into ludicrousness.  (So, of course, they replaced him in the next movie.)

Though hardly the ideal Dark Knight, Kilmer wisely portrayed his Batman as a mostly grounded character – despite the ridiculous cartoon going on around him.

Where Batman Forever still proves to be something of an interesting discussion starter is that Schumacher, who does happen to be gay, filled his already campy movie with homoerotic innuendo and queer aesthetic choices; perhaps most notable were Batman and Robin’s anatomically explicit costumes, which rather infamously featured nipples and rather pronounced codpieces (not to mention numerous close-ups of both).  Even now, it remains a very debatable point as to whether it was appropriate for Schumacher to included such material in the film.

The anatomically explicit outfits in “Batman Forever” were the source of much discussion back in 1995, and led to subsequent debates over whether or not Joel Schumacher’s gay innuendo and aesthetic in the movie was either appropriate or effective.

Now there have certainly been a great many queer analyses of Batman through the ages, and not without good reason; but they have often reflected a niche perception that can be intriguing but ultimately teleological, meaning that its representations were commonly done without the artist/writer’s intention.

Case in point…

Here, it was intentional, and thus has to be judged on how effective it was.  For me, it’s not that the material may or not be gay that was its problem; it’s that it subtracted from the film rather than added to it, and in the process were done in contexts that didn’t make the material anymore intriguing or insightful.  For instance, why have your two villains essentially groping each other and prancing around your sets?  How did implying a homoerotic bond between them benefit a gay perspective?  It didn’t, and it felt more like the self-indulgence of its director more than anything that really had something to say or add to his film.

While Nolan and Burton tried to make Batman into a bad-ass, Schumacher was more about showing some Bat-Ass. (Drum roll…) Honestly, I’m someone who supports gay rights and appreciates queer-influenced art and writing, and I still find Schumacher’s innuendo and imagery to be just completely out of place here.

Unfortunately, Batman Forever proved to be a pretty major box office success despite some truly wretched word of mouth, and in a way that success proved to be the doom of the series; but we’ll get to that in a moment…

Batfact: The sexual orientation of Batman creator, Bob Kane, has actually been a source of some speculation over the years.  Kane was known as a dapper dresser and for being fairly ostentatious; he also claimed to be an avid womanizer who even bragged in his later years about having an affair with Marilyn Monroe (a claim few actually believed and that doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny).  Whether he was overcompensating or not for the life of a deeply closeted gay man, of course, remains speculation only.  Kane was married only once, later in life, to a much younger woman, and had a daughter from a previous relationship; he passed away in 1998 at the age of 83.

Batman & Robin (1997)

In case you can’t tell, that’s supposed to be Batman’s logo mounted behind…um…never mind.

There’s a common recurrence in Hollywood that you’ll see well too often, where an unremarkable and/or mediocre film somehow manages to become successful, and as a result the people behind the film suddenly think that they’re infallible.  Therefore, when it comes time for the filmmakers to create a sequel or follow-up, instead of learning from the successes and failures of the previous work, they treat all parts of it as if they were successes alone.  The end result is often a new film that is worse, and sometimes significantly worse, than its predecessor.  While I’m sure everyone has their own name for this phenomenon, I personally call it the Joel Schumacher Effect, and Batman & Robin is the reason why.

Rushed quickly into production on the heels of Batman Forever’s success (so quickly that Val Kilmer was fired for not being able to return to the part immediately), Batman & Robin stands not only as the worst Batman movie, but the worst superhero movie of all time and one of the worst films of the 90s.  This is, at the end of the day, just a colossally unwatchable waste of time and especially of money, and it not only tanked the Batman franchise but pretty much killed the genre of the superhero film dead until X-Men in 2000 and more significantly Spider-Man in 2002 brought it back to prominence by reminding people that just because a movie had a superhero in it didn’t necessarily mean it sucked.

With George Clooney stepping into the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne (and in the process giving one of the worst performances of his otherwise superb career), Batman & Robin saw the Dynamic Duo again facing one villain too many as they did battle with the cold-hearted Mr. Freeze (an unbearable Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the seductive Poison Ivy (a sexy but clearly embarrassed Uma Thurman).  They were also helped by a new ally, Batgirl, played by Alicia Silverstone, who through her performance pretty much squandered all the goodwill she received from her star-making turn from Clueless.  Really, no matter how you may feel about individual members of the cast, none of them ever had a chance to get away unscathed.  This took everything that was bad about Batman Forever and actually doubled- and even tripled-down on them: it was even campier, featured even more painfully awkward gay innuendo, included more terrible one-liners, and displayed sets and costumes that made Batman Forever’s seem like an exercise in understatement.  Even worse, while the last film at least tried to have Batman retain some gravitas, here Schumacher and Clooney made the Dark Knight as much a joke as everything else in the movie, and equally unfunny to boot.

Of course, one of the film’s villains would be Poison Ivy, a femme fatale whose kiss could kill. Given Schumacher, I’m sure the symbolism should be obvious.

While Schumacher doesn’t deserve all the condemnation for this film, he certainly deserves most of it.  The studio absolutely tried to turn this movie around too quickly, and their decision to bring in a toy company to design their costumes showed where their priorities lay.  But Schumacher had no excuse not to learn from the previous film; while Batman Forever was successful, its word-of-mouth was positively noxious, and it was pretty clear from everyone who saw the movie that they wanted its campiness pulled back just as much as they wanted a dialing back on the grimness after Batman Returns.  Instead, he pushed even harder towards making “his Batman,” and in the process made the absolute anathema of what anyone wanted to see. Case in point: I’m a pretty huge Batman fan, and I waited eight years before finally watching this movie, and even then, it was worse than anything I could have imagined.  The film also had a very disappointing opening, and didn’t even make its production budget back in the North American box office. To his credit, or perhaps not, Schumacher has pretty much apologized for this movie repeatedly, and almost everyone involved in it has disavowed it at one time or another.

Batfact: John Glover, who portrayed Jason Woodrue, the mad scientist who helped create Poison Ivy, had previously voiced the Riddler on Batman: The Animated Series.

Birds of Prey (2002-2003)

This was kind of a blink-and-you’ll miss it series that aired on the WB for a few months beginning in the fall of 2002, and was produced by some of the same people who conceived the long-lived Smallville.  It was based loosely – very loosely – on Gail Simone’s popular comic, which was about a superhero group of mostly female members led by the wheel-chair bound Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl.  The main concept of the show was that it was set years after Batman and the Joker had their final confrontation, which ended with Batgirl crippled and Catwoman murdered.  Grief-stricken over the loss of the love of his life, Batman/Bruce Wayne abandoned Gotham City, leaving it essentially in the hands of Gordon, now known as Oracle, and his daughter with Catwoman, the Huntress (the Helena Wayne version from pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, not the Helena Bertinelli one of the modern era, for those who care about that kind of thing).  That right there was pretty much a major strike against the show from the beginning: the insinuation that Batman would actually completely give up and run away, let alone abandon his daughter, pretty much ruined whatever credibility this might have had with Batman fans.

I gave this show a shot, since I admired the original comic for presenting an all-female team from an actual female perspective (DC Comics, you have to understand, is notoriously backward on things like gender equality and multiculturalism), but this was just a very poorly done, overly hackneyed, ill-conceived series that absolutely deserved to be cancelled, which it fortunately was after only 13 episodes.

Batfact: Some years later, a young, pre-Batman Bruce Wayne was actually due to become a reoccurring character on Smallville, but Warner Bros., concerned about “brand confusion” with the Nolan film series (yeah, like that would have happened…) vetoed the idea.  As a result, the producers instead tapped the character of Oliver Queen, AKA the Green Arrow, who like Batman was a billionaire moonlighting as a superhero.

Batman Begins (2005)

Believe or not, when this film came out in 2005, it was with very, very low expectations and not a great deal of hype.  Though it was a full eight years after Batman & Robin, Batman, as a brand, was seen as damaged goods as movie properties went; therefore, when it was released, the film made less than $50 million its opening weekend – less than Batman Forever did a full decade earlier with lower ticket prices.  However, between an often glowing critical reception and ebullient word-of-mouth, Batman Begins maintained and grew to be financially successful enough to launch a new franchise; some even asserting that it was, up until that point, the greatest superhero movie of all time,  and undeniably the greatest Batman movie ever made.

Though it now sits somewhat in the shadow of its sequel, Batman Begins stands as a great film all its own, and in terms of depth, drama, and complexity absolutely dwarfed Burton’s original “cultural phenomenon.”  The film essentially retells the origin of its eponymous character (Christian Bale), while giving that story a unique spin all its own, with a special focus on Bruce Wayne’s traumatic motives and preparations for a life combating evil under the tutelage of R’as al-Ghul and his League of Shadows.  Much more than that I dare not give away, as this film, in a major departure from other superhero films, never really tips its hand in regards to where it’s going or even who its villain is, drawing you into it through its character’s development and revealing things as it goes along, all building to a truly thrilling climax.

“Batman Begins” rightfully focused on the way Batman’s origin is defined by painful, horrific loss.

Though it presented a very complex character study of Batman, and one that adhered thematically to his comics’ counterpart, Batman Begins was still set very much in its own, very believable universe. Christopher Nolan, his brother Jonathan, and co-writer David Goyer drew from Batman’s mythology but didn’t feel bound to follow it, instead creating one of its own that very much spoke to its historical moment. It’s script, besides being incredibly sophisticated and full of extremely well-drawn characters, should be mandatory reading for prospective screenwriters as a perfect example of how to use “set up and pay-off,” as well as for establishing underlying themes.  The cast was also world class, save perhaps for the miscasting of Katie Holmes as Batman’s love interest.

Also, while a great deal of focus has always been placed on The Dark Knight for its prominent post-September 11 symbolism, the fact is most of that symbolism began in Batman Begins; the film is essentially about terror and terrorism as themes, and its climax intentionally echoes the World Trade Center attacks, among many other elements.  Between this and its overall quality, Batman Begins reasserted Batman to his rightful place as not only one of the world’s greatest superheroes, but also its most culturally significant one.

Batfact: Batman actually began in May 1939, with his first appearance in Detective Comics #27.  The issue is commonly ranked as one of the most valuable comic book titles in history; at an auction in 2010, an edition classified in fine condition sold at auction for just over $1 million.

Where it all began: “Detective Comics” #27, the first appearance of “the Bat-Man.”

The Dark Knight (2008)

Not a film that needs any further endorsement from me, but needless to say, The Dark Knight is arguably the greatest superhero movie of all time and perhaps the most significant American film of the first decade of the 21st century.  Essentially an epic urban crime saga wearing comic book trappings, this was, at its core, a trenchant political allegory for the War on Terrorism and the finite maturation of the superhero film genre.  Mind you, I don’t actually agree with its politics (which lean very much towards the Right), but nonetheless it represents one of the most prominent works of post-September 11 culture, and it should be required viewing for that aspect alone.

In what proved to be his final complete screen performance, Heath Ledger gave us in the Joker one of the greatest villains in Hollywood history.

Narratively, The Dark Knight retells the Batman-Joker conflict for the umpteenth time, bud did it in such a way that it made it feel like it was for the first.  Heath Ledger gave what was the performance of his sadly shortened lifetime as a Joker who was less an insane madman than a articulate, charismatic, terrorist mastermind with a very specific ideological agenda; his loss only a few months before the film’s release imbued this already dark and tragic story with a further sense of loss (as well as increased expectations and hype for the movie itself), but even so, Ledger’s Joker deserves to be in the Pantheon of the greatest fictional movie villains of all time, right up there with Hannibal Lechter, Harry Lime, and Darth Vader.  Often lost among the acclaim for Ledger was the performance of Aaron Eckhart, who was himself pretty much perfect as the idealistic but doomed Harvey Dent.

Often lost in the praise for Ledger’s Joker are platitudes for Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent/Two-Face whose tragic fall is simultaneous heart-breaking and unsettling.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about The Dark Knight is that you in no way need to be a Batman or even a superhero fan to fully enjoy or appreciate it.  It truly stands as a grand achievement of American filmmaking, and whatever Batman movie that was made before or will be made after will likely forever be in its very long shadow.

Batfacts:  While the conflict between arch-enemies and antitheses Batman and Joker is among the most storied in popular culture, it was almost over just as it began.  After making a memorable debut in Batman #1 (1940), the Joker was to be killed off in his second appearance; it was only due to a last minute call by editor Whitney Ellsworth that the character was spared and a new comic panel was drawn to establish that the character had survived a narrow brush with death.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Whoa…let’s not get ahead of ourselves there, kids.  I’ll tell you what…tune in next time, same anti-time, same anti-channel…

By Jonathan Morris, Antiscribe.com

Introduction

Well, you just knew this was coming, right?

So yes, thanks to our ever more crowded summer movie season, it’s already time again for another survey of a famous character in popular culture…and they rarely come more popular than the one and only Batman.  Whether you think of him as the gritty, vengeful, and brooding Dark Knight, or the noble, altruistic, and exciting Caped Crusader, the Guardian of Gotham City is an indelibly ingrained part of our popular culture, an American icon (though not always in a positive way), and the definitive urban avenger. I also don’t think it’s unfair to say that Batman has long surpassed his contemporary Superman as the world’s most famous superhero, and he’s arguably the most consistently compelling and undeniably the most commercially successful superhero of all time.  For me, though, and I think for any observer of popular culture, Batman should also be considered among the most fascinating.

As times go by, many famous characters are reinterpreted and recreated for each new generation, inevitably drawing upon the various tastes and subtexts of that given moment in time. Bob Kane’s Batman, though, perhaps more than any other character I have ever seen anywhere in media, has demonstrated an astonishing ability to be readily transformed and transfigured to any given era without ever subsequently becoming an anachronism.  It’s not that Batman is timeless – though he is – it’s that he’s somehow always timely. It’s an amazing attribute, and one that makes the Dark Knight not only distinctive in the history of comics, but in world literature and media as well.

For that reason, among others, there can never be a truly definitive Batman; some versions are always going to be better than others, for sure, but no character as fluid and oft-interpreted as the Dark Knight will ever manage to perfectly encapsulate his rich but dense 73 year history as a fixture in the American consciousness. But really, that’s a big part of his fun, and why I find him to be so endlessly fascinating, no matter how many times he’s recreated.

Even when it’s in LEGO form.

Now before we get started… given that Batman has been finding his way onto film screens for almost 70 years now, this entire overview is going to be done in two parts.  In this first one, I’ll be looking back at the animated adaptations of Batman through the years.  Next time, I’ll go over the live-action versions, including the Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, and Christopher Nolan films and the Adam West series. In the introduction I’ll also talk about what Batman means to me, and why I think his appeal is so universal.  So with that out of the way, the Bat signal’s shining, the Batmobile’s idling, and the night’s calling…so away we go…

The Adventures of Batman (Batman with Robin The Boy Wonder) (1968-1970)

Though while notably the first of many animated interpretations of the Dynamic Duo, this Filmation series is something of a forgotten quantity, even among many long-time Batman fans.  First airing as half of The Batman/Superman Hour, and then in its second year on its own as Batman with Robin The Boy Wonder, this series was produced to capitalize on the tail end of the popularity of the Adam West/Burt Ward series, to which it bears more than a few similarities, including a propensity for placing Batman and Robin in overly complicated death traps.

All told, there’s a very good reason why this show often gets forgotten: it’s pretty darned forgettable. While not in any way good, it’s also not so stupendously bad to achieve infamy.  For the most part, the series was compiled of short, six to twelve minute stories (usually one or two segments, television-wise), and therefore never had the time to either develop interesting stories or get bogged down in lame, campy humor.  The animation, being of its time, is pretty much terrible, though it’s supported by solid character designs; and while it includes most of the major villains of the period (and some specifically created for the series), they all essentially act like carbon copies of the Joker – loud, obnoxious, cackling, and boastful.  Pretty much the nicest thing about the series I can say is that it’s almost quaint in how utterly archaic it is.  Significantly, though, the two individuals who voiced Batman and Robin, Olan Soule and Casey Kasem, would voice the characters in many subsequent series, and basically became the voices of Batman and Robin for an entire generation and beyond.

The Super Friends (1973-1974, 1977-1983, 1984-1986)

Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy?  Yeah, me neither…

By any other name, and it was known by more than I could ever keep track of, this famous Hanna Barbera dynasty was one of the most popular kids series on television for well over a decade.  If you’re somehow not familiar with the show, it was basically an overly kids-friendly version of DC Comics’ Justice League that went through many different iterations, reformats, and title changes over the course of its run, where it was a fixture on both Saturday mornings on ABC and television syndication for years and years.  As the overly-fluffy title might suggest, the show was total kiddie pap (The Wonder Twins, anyone?) that for the most part can only be enjoyed nowadays in an “ironic” or “camp” way (or barring that, whilst very, very high).  The semi-beloved The Challenge of the Superfriends season especially was just a mindblowing assortment of nonsensical stories and ideas that almost seemed like they were written while being animated (“I know! We’ll have Lex Luthor turn all the people in the world into Cheetahs and Bizarros!” “Why would he do that?” “Uh…um…because HE’S EVIL.”)  Yet, for all of its willingness to completely insult the intelligence of its young audience, this show was, for at least two generations of American children, their introduction to the heroes and villains of the DC Universe; and those children pretty much grew up to become Generation X (which explains a lot, really…)

Batman and Robin, again voiced by Olan Soule and Casey Kasem for most of the series’ run, were fixtures of the show for its thirteen year existence, but they weren’t typically more developed than anyone else on the usually juvenile show.

While the Dynamic Duo were major characters on the show, the series wasn’t really big on complex characterizations, so neither Batman nor Robin (nor any of the major heroes or villains on the show) really had anything approaching a distinctive personality.  Soule and Kasem again covered the voicing of Batman and Robin for most of the series’ run, with Adam West stepping in for Soule during the mid 80s, when it was eventually renamed Super Powers and the overall writing began to displaying a better level of sophistication and appreciation for its source material.  The one episode that probably bears viewing for Batman fans is “The Fear” from the final season, which was designed to serve as a backdoor pilot for a new Batman series that ultimately never got off the ground.  Penned by writer/producer Alan Burnett, who would go on to write for most of the animated Batman projects of the last 20 years, “The Fear” marked the first time that Batman’s tragic origin had been depicted outside of the world of the comics:

So what’s the deal with Robin avoiding girls?  Hmmmm…

Batfact:  Between SuperFriends airing on ABC’s Saturday morning line-up and The New Adventures of Batman airing on CBS’s, Batman was one of the only major characters in the history of Saturday morning television to appear on two of the major networks at the same time.

The New Adventures of Batman (1977-1978)

Batman, Robin, Batgirl, and…sigh…Batmite on “The New Adventures of Batman.”  Really this was one of those shows that unfortunately was made, and we all have to accept it and move on…

Filmation’s second attempt to do a Batman cartoon is better known than its original, though not in a good way.  Featuring Adam West and Burt Ward returning to voice the Dynamic Duo, this series was an extremely childish, intentionally goofy, and overly lighthearted attempt to recapture the charm of the 1960s television show; this time, however, Batman and Robin were joined by Batmite, a magical imp from another dimension who happened to be Batman’s biggest fan, and whose meddling always did far more harm than good.  That’s right…AN IMP FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION was a major character on a Batman show.  Pretty much the camp nadir of Batman in popular culture, this was obviously the complete antithesis of the dark avenger we all now view Batman to be. That, though, is not the show’s problem; I’ll of course discuss this when I review the original Adam West show, but there’s a place for the lighthearted, fun version of Batman.  This show failed simply because it did a horrendous job of trying to execute that version of Batman.  Say what you will about the West/Ward series, but it had a brain in its head and when it was hackneyed it was at least conscious of being hackneyed. This show was hackneyed because it simply lacked the talent and creativity to do anything better. The New Adventures of Batman, at the end of the day, was an awful concept that no one wanted to see, and thankfully, few enough people actually did.  Only 16 episodes of the show were produced, and that was about 27 episodes too many (give or take).  Despite its fairly limited run, reruns aired on various Filmation compilation showcases for another few years, including on, I kid you not, The Batman-Tarzan Hour.

The Joker, the Penguin, Clayface, and Catwoman(what the hell?) as they appeared on the show. Oh and some alien archenemy of Batmite’s whose name I will never be bothered to commit to memory.

Batfact:  While most of Batman’s major villains, including the Penguin, Joker, Catwoman, and Clayface appeared on the show, two major villains, the Riddler and Scarecrow were contracted to Hanna Barbera, where they appeared on Challenge of the SuperFriends as members of the Legion of Doom.

Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1996) 

So what can really be said about Batman: The Animated Series, one of the most beloved and critically admired television shows of all time?  Simply put, Batman: TAS is not only the greatest superhero T.V. show of all time, it’s also the greatest dramatic animated series ever.   Drawing on the original Max Fleischer Superman cartoons for their stylistic influence, Batman: TAS eschewed the cartoonish impulses of just about every other animated show on television at the time, presenting an extremely dark, nourish Gotham City set in a kind of hybrid reality caught between post-war art deco and retro futurism.  The animation style was deeply expressive and impressionistic without being unrealistic, and producer Bruce Timm’s character designs, though not particularly realistic themselves, encapsulated the personalities and personas of their timeless characters; thus what the drawings lacked for in realism, they more than made up for in truth.

The musical scores were also completely unlike most other cartoon series of their era; composed under the supervision of the late, great Shirley Walker and performed by the full Warner Brothers Orchestra (just like the Looney Tunes shorts of old), a new, specific musical score was produced for each episode, instead of the producers relying on the use and reuse of stock music cues, as Disney and others did at the time.  Walker and company’s amazing, eclectic, evocative compositions, improved upon Danny Elfman’s work on the Tim Burton movies, giving Batman: TAS a sweeping grandeur that made even the lesser episodes feel incredibly cinematic.

The vocal casting, too, was without peer: in something of a marked departure from other animated television shows of the period, the series would often tap well-known actors and personalities in key roles in addition to traditional voice actors. While most shows didn’t generally call attention to their voice actors, Batman: TAS adroitly used them to add to its “prestige factor.”  Just a sampling of the show’s amazing vocal cast included Ron Perlman as Clayface, David Warner as R’as Al-Ghul, Roddy McDowall as the Mad Hatter, Richard Moll as Two-Face/Harvey Dent, Adrienne Barbeau as Catwoman, John Vernon as Boss Thorne, Paul Williams as the Penguin, John Glover as the Riddler, Efreem Zimbalist, Jr. as Alfred the Butler, Robert Costanzo as Harvey Bullock, and Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn (who was an original creation of the series).

Especially in regards to its villains, the voice cast of “Batman: TAS” was one of the greatest ever assembled, including Mark Hamill, David Warner, Roddy McDowell, Richard Moll, and John Glover. (Image courtesy of ComicVine).

The two actors best remembered from the show, however, are Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy, who voiced the Joker and Batman, respectively.  Hamill, who’s of course best known for being Luke Skywalker, completely reinvented his persona through his version of the Joker, and went on to became one of the leading voice actors of the last twenty years. While his performance was drawn from many earlier cartoon villains in animation history, Hamill imbued the Clown Prince of Crime with an underlying vein of psychopathic menace, and his iconic take on the Joker’s signature laugh become synonymous with the character for most of the last twenty years.

Conroy, at the time a longtime stage and television actor doing his first cartoon series, made the part forever his own by completely capturing the darker turn the character had taken during the 1980s and 90s, while staying true to the noble core of Batman’s earlier incarnations. Conroy’s biggest innovation for the character was employing two entirely different voices for Bruce Wayne and Batman (as opposed to simply using two different timbres of the same voice, as Michael Keaton had done); the juxtaposition really emphasized the pronounced duality and psychological complexity of the Dark Knight, and emphasized into the mindset that many Batman writers have taken in the last 20 years toward the character: that Batman isn’t the mask that Bruce Wayne wears, but Bruce Wayne is the mask Batman wears. In the last twenty years, Conroy has played Batman more times than anyone in history, and while others have voiced the Dark Knight since, Conroy’s interpretation is the gold standard against which all will probably forever be compared.

Perhaps Kevin Conroy’s most inspired contributions to “Batman: The Animated Series,” was performing Bruce Wayne and Batman as if they were almost two separate people.

While all of the elements above proved essential to the success of Batman: TAS, it was the writing, spearheaded by Paul Dini, Michael Reaves, and Alan Burnett, which brought the series to true greatness. The episodes were remarkable in the narrative complexity of their plots, the nuanced development of their characters, and the often sophisticated treatment of its material.  One of the more pioneering elements of Batman: TAS that too often goes understated was that it was really the first animated series that allowed its viewers to get inside the heads of its villains, and some of the show’s best remembered episodes were those that expressly examined the human motives and traumatic origins of Batman’s deeply scarred rogues’ gallery.  Perhaps the series’ most famous and possibly best episode, the Emmy-winning “Heart of Ice,” exemplified this; taking one of Batman’s campier villains, Mr. Freeze (voiced, unforgettably, by Michael Ansara), the episode, written by Dini, recast him as a compelling, sympathetic, but irreparably misguided vigilante, tragically disfigured in a cryogenics experiment gone wrong and out to avenge the death of his wife.  It can be viewed online here.

“It would move me to tears, had I tears left to shed…” Arguably TAS’s watershed episode, “Heart of Ice” was emblematic of how the series often explored the painful complexity of Batman’s deeply scarred rogues’ gallery.

In the end, Batman: TAS is one of those series, along with The Simpsons, that changed animation on television.  Besides setting a heightened standard for narrative depth that is still chased to this day, the series broke numerous taboos and censorship restrictions placed on children’s television at the time.  It was the first cartoon in more than a generation to depict actual gunfire on screen (even on shows like the 1980s G.I. Joe, it was mandated for handguns and rifles to shoot lasers instead of bullets), and while it rarely showed death on screen, it was never scared of implying it, nor did it shy away from depictions of blood, pain, grievous injury, or psychological trauma.  Another of the more popular episodes “Harley and Ivy,” even remains noteworthy for its thinly-veiled lesbian overtones, something few, if any, series have ever dared try to do since.

One of the kinkier episodes of the TAS, “Harley and Ivy” portrayed Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy essentially “setting up house” during their city wide crime spree.

While it seems almost commonplace to see shows referred to as “animated series” as opposed to “cartoons” nowadays, it was particularly meaningful when Batman: TAS invented the designation back in 1992.  This show, then and now, was no mere children’s cartoon, but a classic television series that just happened to be animated. Batman: The Animated Series is the rare case of a legend that lives up to its hype, and while I assert that there can be such a thing as a definitive Batman, this is the one that has come closest, providing the most completely satisfying and thematically faithful presentation of the Dark Knight and his rich history that there has ever been (and probably ever will be).

Many episodes, including the two-parter “Robin’s Reckoning,” were initially aired in prime time out of concerns over some of the subject matter; in this case, the depiction of the death of Dick Grayson’s parents.

Batfact: When the show was first being aired on the Fox Network, certain episodes were originally considered too dark and violent for airing in its after-school timeslot, and thus initially broadcast in prime time on Sunday nights.  Included among these were the two-parter “Robin’s Reckoning,” which depicted the death of Dick Grayson’s parents, and “I Am the Night,” which centered on  Commissioner Gordon being severely injured by machine gun fire.

For further viewing I would heartily recommend this video essay by John Keefer:

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (2003)

Perhaps the most intriguing element of “Mask of the Phantasm” in Batman lore was that it presented, essentially, the “Last Temptation of Bruce Wayne;” depicting him given the choice between becoming Batman, and leading a normal life.

Essentially the film version of The Animated Series, this was produced to be a direct-to-video movie that ended up being granted a theatrical release.  Though criticized at the time for lacking feature quality animation, this was a very strong compliment to the series that filled in some of the animated Batman’s often undeveloped backstory.  When some of Gotham City’s veteran crime bosses start showing up dead, thanks to a new, mysterious vigilante (who, in an odd oversight, is never actually referred to as “the Phantasm”), Batman is wrongfully accused of the crimes.  At the same time, an old flame of Bruce Wayne shows up, leading him to recollect an earlier time in his crime-fighting career when he was tempted away from becoming Batman by the prospect of leading a normal, happy life. Overlooked in its time, the film has become regarded more fondly in recent years, and even showed up on Time’s list of the top ten superhero films of all time.  I wouldn’t go that far, though; while the first part of the film, depicting, in essence, “the last temptation of Bruce Wayne,” is very compelling, the movie peters out as it goes along, and the actual mystery as to the Phantasm’s real identity leaves something to be desired.  Still, it’s a good movie, and one that succeeds at being more than simply an extended episode of the actual series.  Kevin Conroy again provides the voice of Batman, and he received some very strong support from Dana Delaney, Abe Vigoda, Dick Miller, Stacy Keach, and, of course, Mark Hamill as the Joker. Shirley Walker’s score was also among her best work.

Batfact: Released on Christmas 1993, Mask of the Phantasm was a huge bomb, coming in at number 10 at the box office during its opening weekend and not even making enough during its theatrical run to recoup its $6 million price tag.  Because of this, it has, by a significant margin, the worst box-office record of any Batman movie.

Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero (1997)

The second film to be based directly on The Animated Series, this direct-to-video feature was originally produced to be released in conjunction with the live action Batman & Robin (which also featured Mr. Freeze as the antagonist).  The fierce critical backlash to that film, however, led to this one being delayed (ironically until after The New Batman Adventures, set after this show, was airing on television).  While its worlds better than the calamity that Schumacher’s movie represented, this proved to be a mostly underwhelming affair.  The anti-heroic Mr. Freeze (again voiced by Michael Ansara), while living in peaceful seclusion at the North Pole, is forced back to Gotham City when an arctic reconnaissance team accidentally ruptures the cryogenic chamber containing his terminally ill wife.  With an organ transplant being her only chance of survival, Freeze is forced to hunt down a donor compatible with her rare blood type.  Unfortunately, the only viable candidate just so happens to be Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl (Mary Kay Bergman), whose relationship with Dick Grayson (Lorin Lester) is beginning to get serious. Unlike Mask of the Phantasm, this one was kind of was just an extended episode of TAS, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it pales significantly when inevitably compared to the classic “Heart of Ice” episode.  The animation also tried to combine the series’ normal two-dimensional animation with some three dimensional CGI, to mixed results.

Batfact: Originally debuting during Batman comics’ much-maligned “science fiction” period in 1959 (when the comics were heavily censored after the 1950s Comic Book scandals) as Mr. Zero, the character of Mr. Freeze was renamed by the Adam West series; there he was portrayed – in succession by George Sanders, Otto Preminger, and Eli Wallach – as a very clichéd, ice-themed villain with a German accent.  While the camp portrayals were memorable and made the character something of a household name, it was often in a derisive way, as emblematic of the West series’ high camp.  The Animated Series forever changed that, leading to the character being reintroduced in the comics (after being killed off in the 1970s) and incorporating Paul Dini’s more tragic back-story; his elevated profile even led to him being given the feature film treatment (unfortunately) in Batman & Robin.

The New Batman Adventures (1997-1999)

“The New Batman Adventures” continued TAS chronology by telling the continuing adventures of Batman, Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, and Nightwing’s mullet. Ah, the 90s…

Set in the same continuity are the original Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures picked things up a few years afterward with Batman fighting crime with the help of a new, younger Robin – Tim Drake – and Batgirl, with occasional assistance from an estranged Dick Grayson, now known as Nightwing.  While conceptualized by most of the same creative staff and using most of the same voice cast  as TAS, New Batman wasn’t quite as good overall; its main issue was that it featured newer, far more cartoonish character designs with brighter animation that was significantly below the standards of the original series.  Despite that, there were still a number of very strong episodes that were sometimes even darker in tone and subject matter than the first series; for instance taking advantage of loosened censorship standards, Bruce Timm and company made death and murder a more pronounced aspect of the show.  On the flip side, though, the New Batman also featured the worst episodes of either series; in the the end, though, the good still far outweighed the bad.

Batfact: Part of the reason for the altered animation style was to keep it more in tone with the concurrent Superman: The Animated Series, which New Batman often aired in tandem with as The New Batman/Superman Adventures.  As a result, Batman made a number of guest appearances on the Superman show, including a three-part, team-up episode entitled “World’s Finest,” which was released commercially to home video as The Batman/Superman Movie.

Batman Beyond (AKA Batman of the Future) (1999-2001)

This actually is the very rare example of an idea that seemed terrible in concept but actually worked in practice.  When New Batman failed to gain traction with younger viewers, Warner Bros. executives asked Bruce Timm and his collaborators to devise a younger, hipper, Batman that would be more ‘kid friendly.”  Timm and company balked at the idea of a teenage Batman (who wouldn’t?), but relented when the idea was presented to make him a futuristic version of the character.  And thus Batman Beyond was born.

Set approximately forty years after the original Animated Series and twenty years after Bruce Wayne retired (for health reasons) as Batman, the series tells of teenager Terry McGinnis (Will Friedle), a tough Neo-Gotham kid with a juvie record whose meets up with an octogenarian Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy).  and accidentally stumbles on the Batcave.  When McGinnis’s father is murdered, he steals Wayne’s high-tech Batsuit in order to hunt down those responsible.  In the process, McGinnis assumes the mantle of Batman, under Wayne’s guidance, with much of the series’ tension derived from the rebellious Terry chafing against Bruce’s militaristic devotion to crime-fighting.

The younger, teenage Batman from Batman Beyond – while distinctive, I’ve never personally been a fan of the character’s design…though it was a minor flaw in what was a surprisingly strong show.

Though the idea of a teenager balancing high school with being Batman is more than a bit strained, the series maintained the high standards associated with what was known by this point as the DC Animated Universe, or DCAU.  The series, wisely, kept references to the original Batman’s past rogues’ gallery to a minimum, giving McGinnis a mostly whole new assortment of futuristic villains and stories to challenge him.   And for a supposedly “kids-friendly” show, it was still pretty darn dark, with the earlier series’ emphasis of tragedy, trauma, vengeance, and violence transposed here pretty much intact.  The animation was also damned good, and the futuristic art design of the series standing as a creative achievement in and of itself.

The real key to the series’ success, though, was its sometimes fascinating portrayal of an older, crankier, world-wearier Bruce Wayne, who often reveals some of the deep personal scars and loneliness of having given his life over to being Batman.  All things being equal, Conroy did his best and most nuanced voice work as the older version of Batman, who could be alternately funny and occasionally disturbing.

The emotional and creative anchor of the so-called “future Batman” ultimately remained Bruce Wayne, whose depiction in the series was its most compelling aspect.

The series didn’t really maintain throughout its three season run, becoming, as the older Bruce once commented in the series, “too high school.”  And being honest, I never particularly liked the costume design of the futuristic Batman.  Again, though, the series was far better than it was worse, and a fine demonstration that even a contrived idea could work if it has the right caliber of talent behind it.

Batfact: On the topic of being “too high school,” DC/Warners was once so obsessed with the idea of a teenage Batman it actually flirted with a horrible idea called Gotham High, which would depict Bruce Wayne at high school with teenage versions of his supervillains as classmates:

Concept art for what might have become “Gotham High.” This is, needless to say, just all kinds of wrong…

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker

Produced as a straight-to-video movie, this, like the Batman Beyond series itself, far exceeded any and all expectations.   Just as Terry McGinnis begins growing into his own as Batman and Bruce Wayne finally regains control of his family’s company, things take a hard turn for the worse when it seems that Batman’s greatest (and worst) enemy has returned from the dead to wreck havoc on Gotham once again.  But is it really the one and only Joker – or is it something even more unnerving?  For a straight to video movie of any kind, this was superb on many levels, with an intriguing mystery that gets right to the heart of the epic, obsessive conflict between Batman and the Joker. For longtime fans of The Animated Series, Return of the Joker also revealed what happened to Bruce Wayne/Batman, Batgirl, and Robin after the ending of The New Batman Adventures, and all told, it’s actually really disturbing.  Mark Hamill also gave one of his best and nastiest performances as the Joker here.

Batfact: Prior to its initial DVD and VHS release, Return of the Joker was heavily edited for violence, including depictions of murder, and some malevolent and/or sexualized content.  After an online petition from fans, Warner Bros. subsequently released the original, uncut version on DVD (which received an MPAA rating of PG-13 as opposed to the edited version’s PG).  Of the two, the original version is the one to see, as the edited edition makes a major change in the flashback scenes that alters part of the backstory considerably.

Justice League/Justice League Unlimited (2001-2006)

The next, and final, series set in the DC Animated Universe, this was the first major adaptation of the Justice League of America since Super Friends, and in the process incorporated both Animated Series’ Batman and Superman, and teamed them up with Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, the Flash, and for some reason, Hawkgirl.   For its first two seasons, the series focused on this smaller group of heroes, and was composed predominantly of two part standalone episodes that drew on many aspects of the DC Universe.  While Batman (still voiced by Conroy) was part of a larger ensemble here (and didn’t appear in every episode), he pretty much stole every episode he was in.  One of the really neat things about the DCAU was the fidelity and continuity they placed on Batman’s character from series to series; here he was sort of on in a transition between the still sometimes good-natured Batman of the original Animated Series and the hard-ass of Batman Beyond, making him someone very conscious of his own issues and who was often a few steps ahead of everybody…even his own teammates.  Also, he sings:

The first season of Justice League was an infamously mixed bag, as the producers weren’t quite sure what they wanted to series to be, and it too often showed.  It got much better, and more consistent, during the second season, though by that point it had driven a large part of its audience away.  After the second season, the series was relaunched as Justice League Unlimited, and reformatted as mostly half-hour stories that all contributed to a much larger season-long story arc, and as a result became a far superior show.  Despite a much more expanded roster of superheroes, Batman still played a major role in the new series, even though the emergence of The Batman series made many aspects of his mythology (such as his rogues’ gallery) off limits due to Warner Bros.’ fear of “brand confusion.”

The episode “Epilogue,” originally conceived as the series finale and told from the perspective of Terry McGinnis, was designed to be final denouement for the DCAU’s Batman saga.

The final episode of the first season of JLU (which the producers thought would be the series finale), entitled “Epilogue,” was designed to be a denouement for Batman’s DCAU legacy.  Written by the late Dwayne McDuffie, it was set in the distant future of Batman Beyond, with a now adult Terry McGinnis discovering that he may have more in common with Bruce Wayne than he ever thought possible.  “Epilogue” was a perfect ending to the legacy of The Animated Series, and a must see for any true Batman fan.

Batfact: Though often regarded as one of the core members of the Justice League of America (and in the comics, he was a founding member), Batman often had a tumultuous relationship both on the page and behind the scenes.  In the 1980s, after the reputation of the Justice League had declined, members of Batman’s editorial staff actually tried to get the Dark Knight’s history retconned so that he was never actually a member of the group.

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003)

Another of DC’s straight-to-video productions, this proves notable for technically being the final incarnation of the original Batman: The Animated Series, stylistically speaking (though it used the character designs from The New Batman Adventures).  Unfortunately, it’s not much as an actual movie.  As the title suggests, a mysterious (and reckless) Batwoman shows up in Gotham City and begins targeting a criminal empire headed by the Penguin, leaving Batman to discover who she is before she falls victim to the Felonious Fowl and his cadre of allies…which includes Bane.  Awkwardly, Bruce Wayne finds himself falling for his lead suspect.  Neither particularly bad nor particularly good, but just kind of tired, Mystery of the Batwoman ultimately kind of demonstrated that all good things should come to an end, and that The Animated Series universe had overstayed its welcome.  As par the course, though, it did boast a strong voice cast, including Kelly Ripa, Hector Elizondo (as Bane), and Kyra Sedgwick as Batwoman.

Batfact: The vocal cast also included Kevin Michael Richardson, who would go on to voice the Joker on The Batman, and Kimberly Brooks, who played Bruce’s love interest and a Batwoman suspect, would actually go to play the former Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, in the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The Batman (2004-2009)

With Christopher Nolan’s relaunched Batman film on the horizon, this new show was produced to essentially be The Animated Series for a new generation, with a younger, hipper, more loquacious Batman and more modernized, stylized interpretations of most of his villains.  Heavily inspired by anime (which was all the rage at the time) and helmed by Animated Series veteran Glen Murakami, The Batman ultimately proved to be incredibly successful, lasting five seasons on the WB network and winning multiple Emmys.  With that said, it was very much despised by many critics and Batman traditionalists for going far too afield from its character and his mythology.  To me, that wasn’t really the show’s biggest problem (though it was a pretty big problem); it’s that it tried way too heard to be hip and trendy, with too great an emphasis on slang and high-tech gadgetry when it absolutely wasn’t necessary.

Among its many issues, “The Batman” suffered from some overly cartoonish character designs.

Make no mistake, beyond that, this still really wasn’t a good show.  The storytelling was pretty threadbare at times, with narrative sacrificed readily for action sequences that felt pretty forced.  The animation drew too much on anime aesthetics, and made worse by character designs that were passable at best and terrible at worst.  The designs were also extremely toyetic, with Batman especially seemingly having a special suit, vehicle, or gadget for every occasion; which, narratively, also usually meant that instead of solving crimes or outsmarting his opponents, Batman usually just out-teched them.  Worst of all, the show reverted most of Batman’s iconic villains from the three dimensional characters of The Animated Series and back into what amounted mostly to two-dimensional gimmicks. Of course, this show was always going to have to deal with being in the shadow of TAS, and if nothing else, it tried to be something markedly different.  But it’s very telling that while TAS still feels timeless, The Batman already feels really, really dated. About a year into its run a straight-to-video feature called The Batman vs. Dracula was released, which I’ve honestly never watched, despite actually being a fan of both Batman and Dracula.

Bat-Trivia: The Batman vs. Dracula wasn’t actually the first time Batman fought Dracula on screen.  None other than Andy Warhol directed his own, unofficial movie, Batman Dracula, in the early 1960s.  The supposedly very campy film is rare and was actually once thought lost (which means I’ve never actually seen it), and was typically only shown at Warhol’s art exhibits and parties.

Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)

I reviewed this anthology of Batman shorts (each crafted by different manga directors) as part of my DC Original Animated Movies overview last year.  My disdain for it hasn’t dimmed, though I would emphasize that it really was a colossally wasted opportunity to present the many facets of Batman over the years, as opposed to simply giving different perspectives of the same Batman.  It was also Conroy’s worst outing as the Dark Knight.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008-2011)

Presented as throwback to the Silver Age version of Batman (that’s “the Batman of the 1950s to late 1960s” for the non-geeks out there), Batman: The Brave and the Bold basically showed Batman as he was in the good old days: a straight arrow, good-natured good guy with a quick wit, sharp intellect, and affable personality.  In other words, NOT the Dark Knight.  Also, in keeping with its namesake comic, The Brave and the Bold was mainly centered on the Caped Crusader teaming up with various obscure superheroes of the DC Universe to battle their sometimes equally obscure villains.  While certainly not a portrayal of the brooding, bad ass Batman most people of the last twenty five years identify with, this show does a fine job of celebrating the character’s often overlooked and repressed legacy as a once lighthearted kids character.  The best part, though, is that it’s also very self aware of that fact, and the show often has a lot of fun breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging that it’s not always everyone’s idea of Batman.  Needless to say, The Brave and the Bold isn’t for everyone, and it sometimes forsakes smart humor for childishness, but I give it credit for trying to be drastically different from nearly every other modern incarnation of Batman, and mostly succeeding on those terms.  It also boasts some pretty terrific voice casting, led by Diedrich Bader as Batman.

Batfact: If there’s one episode that every Batman fan should try to see, it’s Paul Dini’s “Chill of the Night!” which adapted the classic Silver Age story of Batman finally confronting his parents’ killers; besides being far darker in tone than the rest of the series, it also featured guest voices from Adam West and Julie Newmar as Bruce Wayne’s parents, as well as Animated Series veterans Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Richard Moll.  Fittingly, it was also the only episode of the series that saw Batman working on his own, without the weekly “guest superhero.”

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009) / Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (2010)

Again, I covered these two movie adaptations of the Superman/Batman comic book series in my previous DC Animation overview, and my opinions of them haven’t changed; as I say in that piece, however, these lean more towards being Superman stories than Batman stories.

The 1940 issue of “New York World’s Fair Comics,” which marked the first time Batman and Superman had ever appeared together.

Batfact:  Though portrayed often in the modern era as being as much frenemies as friends, Batman and Superman have a long history in comics together; their first joint appearance together occurred on the cover of 1940 New York World’s Fair Comics (released the year after Batman’s debut); though they didn’t appear in the same stories within the issue, the image was significant for specifying that the two characters existed in the same storytelling “universe.” In the eyes of many, this marked the very beginning of DC Comics’ overarching continuity.

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)

Once again, I wrote about this in my earlier overview, but since I didn’t discuss Batman in I probably should embellish a bit.  Though among the least successful of the DC Original movies so far, this was actually among the best they’ve made, with a terrific script by Dwayne McDuffie.  The story basically sees the Justice League teaming up with an alternate universe Lex Luthor (who is his Earth’s only surviving superhero) to do battle with an evil incarnation of the Justice League called the Crime Syndicate, all of whom are slightly altered antitheses of the main character.  The chief villain, Owlman (voiced superbly by James Woods) is Batman’s evil doppelganger, a completely nihilistic psychotic bent on destroying all universes.  As a result, the film’s final battle belongs to Batman, and it’s a pretty darn good one that features one of the best Batman lines I’ve ever heard.  All told, the entire movie is so good you won’t even mind that Batman is actually being voiced by Billy Baldwin of all people.

“Crisis on Two Earths” featured Batman’s nihilistic doppelganger, Owlman (James Woods) as the chief villain.

Batfacts: Though never touched on in the movie, Batman’s doppelganger Owlman (whose namesake is a bat’s natural predator) isn’t actually an alternate universe Bruce Wayne, but Thomas Wayne, Jr., the older brother (and murderer) of that universe’s Bruce Wayne.  Because Owlman never actually had a counterpart in the “real” universe, it’s led to many fans speculating over the years that Batman may someday be revealed as having a long lost older brother.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)

In the earlier overview again, though it bears repeating that this represented the best overall animated Batman since the end of the DCAU, and really a must see for anyone who is a fan of Batman in the modern era.

“Batman: Under the Red Hood” adapted from the comics both the tragic death and resurrection of the second Robin, Jason Todd.

Batfact: Under the Red Hood adapted the return from the dead of Jason Todd, the very dysfunctional (and unpopular) second Robin, who was killed by the Joker in the famed 1988 storyline, “A Death in the Family.”  The death of Robin was huge media story at the time (even though it wasn’t the same Dick Grayson/Robin most knew) and was particularly controversial because DC Comics actually let fans vote, via a 900 number, on whether Todd/Robin would live or die.  The final vote had Todd dying by a very slim margin of only 72 votes.  Longtime Batman editor Denny O’Neill has claimed in interviews that he had heard that one individual, using a preprogrammed autodialer, may have voted 100 times (enough to skew the vote), but this story has never been corroborated.  It was revealed, some years later, that even if the fans had voted for the Jason Todd character to live, the plan was always for him to leave the role of Robin at the end of the storyline.

Young Justice (2010 – )

As the title suggests, this series tells of the junior version of the Justice League, which is made up of sidekicks like Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Superboy, and others, and despite what one might think, it’s actually a pretty sophisticated show, well in keeping with the legacy of Justice League Unlimited and other DCAU series (though it’s set in its own, very unique continuity).  Beside Robin/Dick Grayson having a significant role in the show, Batman (voiced by Bruce Greenwood, who also played the part in Under the Red Hood) plays the role of the team’s mission officer, who sends the team out on their weekly assignments. In the second season, set five years after the first, Dick Grayson has become Nightwing (assuming Batman’s earlier responsibility) and Tim Drake and Barbara Gordon have assumed the roles of Robin and Batgirl, respectively. While Batman isn’t featured in every episode, Dick Grayson’s angst over turning out too much like his mentor has represented an ongoing character arc in the series.  Some of the Dark Knight’s rogues’ gallery has also shown up throughout the series in small roles, including R’as al-Ghul, Hugo Strange, the Riddler, Bane, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and the Joker.

Batfact:  Though Dick Grayson is a household name as the alter-ego of Robin, in mainstream continuity he hasn’t actually been Robin since 1983 when he first assumed the role of solo vigilante Nightwing.  Beginning in 2009, after Bruce Wayne/Batman was “killed” in DC’s Final Crisis miniseries, he temporarily assumed the role of Batman, with Bruce Wayne’s long lost son Damian Wayne as his Robin.

Batman: Year One (2011)

I actually wrote a full length review and analysis of the movie here, which I was personally pretty proud of; short version, though, is that this was an underwhelming adaptation of Frank Miller’s legendary graphic novel, that seemed to complete fail to grasp what made said graphic novel such a classic.

Batfact: Our modern perception of Batman as a tortured, somewhat antisocial, and fearsome avenger whose perspective on the world is sometimes unremittingly dark (crystallized most notably in the Christopher Nolan movies) has its true genesis in Miller’s Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, both published in the 1980s, both of which forever changed how many people not only read, but subsequently presented, Batman.

Justice League: Doom (2012)

Representing the last script Dwayne McDuffie completed prior to his death last year, Justice League: Doom, unfortunately, didn’t represent his best work.  Based on the central concept of the classic JLA storyline, “Tower of Babel,” it tells of the immortal supervillain Vandal Savage and his latest incarnation of the Legion of Doom getting their hands on Batman’s secret contingency plans for the other Justice Leaguers: fail-safes, essentially, just in case any of the League’s super-powered members – Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Martian Manhunter – every became a threat to humanity.  When the Legion sets these plans into action, it’s up to Batman and the young superhero Cyborg to try and save the day.  While the central idea behind the story has always been fantastically ripe for adaptation (and often speculated as the basis for a proposed Justice League feature film), Doom sadly kind of botches it.  Batman plays a major part in the story here, but the central question at the heart of the original storyline, “Was Batman right to potentially plot against his friends and allies, even in the name of the greater good?” is ultimately not explored to any satisfying degree in the movie, in favor of shoehorning the Legion and Cyborg into the story in the name of excess action scenes.  While the producers, and especially Bruce Timm, clearly wanted to make the script, as is, in tribute to McDuffie, the sad fact is that it was clearly in need of a rewrite, as many of Batman’s actual plans don’t even make sense in retrospect.  One of the film’s marketing hooks was that it reunited many of the classic voice actors of the DCAU as their original characters, including Kevin Conroy as Batman, yet it ultimately didn’t give them anything terribly interesting to do.

Batfact: Tragically, Dwayne McDuffie passed away on February 21, 2011, just one day after his 49^th birthday.  A certified genius, McDuffie was a critically acclaimed and extremely prolific writer and story editor in animation and comic books, including the popular Ben 10 animated series, and both the Justice League animated series and JLA comics, among many, many others.  Though he was incredibly adept at giving voice to many of the most iconic comic book characters of all time, including Batman, his greatest legacy was probably as co-founder and editor of the well-remembered Milestone Comics.  Milestone’s mission was to present a wider range of minority characters in the world of superhero comic books, told often from the perspective of minority authors and artists.  McDuffie, who was black, created and co-created a number of major characters for Milestone, many of which are now part of the mainstream DC Unvierse. One of them, the teenage superhero Static, was the subject of his own acclaimed television series, Static Shock, that ran from 2000-2004; in the first episode of its second season, called “The Big Leagues,” the character received an endorsement from a pretty major guest star: Batman.

Dwayne McDuffie (1962 – 2011)

Conclusion:

And so ends this look back at the long legacy of Batman in animated media, which even as I write this is due to expand with the release of the animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns being released later this year, and a new series done in 3D computer animation, Beware the Batman, airing next year.  But for right now, look out for the live-action half of the Best and Worst of Batman next week: same Bat-time, same Bat…um…blog…

Ernest Borgnine (January 24, 1917 – July 8, 2012)

Today, sadly, we lost another link to the days of Classical Hollywood with the passing of Ernest Borgnine.  I don’t typically write obituary pieces here, because I’m honestly someone you’ll typically find disdaining the hoopla that often surrounds the death of major celebrities. However, Ernest Borgnine probably won’t have every detail of his funeral plastered all over 24 hour news channels, nor likely have his death and life fetishized beyond all boundaries of good taste by special commemorative issues of People or Entertainment Weekly, so I feel confident that eulogizing him in my own way will still fall firmly on the side of good taste.

Though Borgnine wasn’t the biggest star of either his time or all time, he was popular enough to be instantly recognizable, and he was an outstanding character actor in an era where Hollywood recognized that not everyone in a movie’s cast had to be gorgeous enough to grace Vanity Fair and GQ.  If there’s one word, though, that would probably best characterize Borgnine, whether he was playing villains or heroes, it would be “gruff.”  Borgnine was no one’s idea of handsome, nor was he often physically fit.  But he portrayed an aura of grit and worldly experience, and of manliness and power, with so little effort it would be easy to believe he wasn’t actually acting.  Borgnine may have been a “type,” but like the most enduring figures of both film and television, he was a type that was entirely his own, and someone whose talent and appeal will never be duplicated.

Borgnine’s famous turn in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch,” was probably the epitome of his “gruff” persona.

But if there’s one role that I will always associate with Borgnine, it’s the one that probably went most against his type: Marty Pilletti, the eponymous character in 1955’s Marty.  Based on the teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Delbert Mann, Marty told of a good-natured but unattractive and overweight Bronx butcher in his mid-thirties, who still lives at home with his mother and who struggles daily with shyness and social ineptitude.  Having suffered years of heartbreak and disappointment, Marty goes through life convinced he’s going to die a bachelor; after being pestered by his mother one night to go out to the local dancehall, Marty happens to meet Clara, a woman as equally plain and unremarkable as he is, but with whom he makes an emotional connection…

Though he didn’t originate the role – Rod Steiger did, and brilliantly, too – Borgnine gave it a life and passion that made it unforgettable (and won a Best Actor Oscar to boot).  Though Marty is a beloved and famous movie (it’s one of only two films in history to have won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’Or), it still stands as a singular film, one that speaks to the invisible insecurities of the male self-image in a way that few films since have ever dared to.  For that reason, it’s always spoken to me, too, and more and more as the years go by.

I can’t deny that Marty and I have a lot in common.  I’m in my early thirties, presently forced by economic circumstances to live at home with my aging mother. Like Marty, I often feel defined by my heartache, with a heart that’s been broken by life so many times it just doesn’t seem to go back together again anymore.   Worse than that, like Marty, I’m not at all handsome, I’m overweight, and I live every day with social anxiety disorder.  Some years ago, I even faced a situation like Marty’s, where after having given up on every making a true connection, I met someone who I thought could be special, and took a chance on romance that I never thought I would take again.  Unfortunately for me, it ended up being the most humiliating, debasing, and disappointing experience of my romantic life, and it appears now to have finally put to rest for me any dreams I may have had of finding love or having a family of my own.  But at least I’d always have Marty to feel my pain, and to give me the fond hope that when he picks up the phone at the film’s end to ask Clara out for another date, that everything for him, at least, is going to turn out all right.

On a conscious level, I guess I shouldn’t be particularly sad for Ernest Borgnine – at age 95, the man lived a full life, including a decorated naval career during the Second World War, and he forged, over generations, an amazing legacy of work in film and television.  But, as a person myself who has lived a life long-defined by the cinema, now seeing Borgnine pass into eternity, I can’t help but feel that there’s one less person in the world who spoke, not only to me, but for me, and for men (and women) like me. We’re the kind of people who live with loneliness and shyness in a culture that disdains the expression of such feelings, that scorns and mocks the unattractive and the awkward, and that holds all of us up to images of perfection for which we’ll never be able to compare.

Even in this world, Ernest Borgnine had to live, for much of his career, with being considered “gruff.”  But for me, and millions of others, he’ll always be, first and foremost, our Marty.

While undeniably the least anticipated of this summer’s trio of big-time, tent-pole superhero movies, The Amazing Spider-Man, beyond any discussions about its quality or worth, has become the latest test case for an ongoing pop culture debate – how soon, exactly, is “too soon” to do a reboot?  Is there even such a thing as “too soon,” anymore?

Last week, while composing my epic-length overview of Spider-Man in various media I presented my argument that Sony was right to kill off their still nascent Spider-Man franchise after the debacle that was Spider-Man 3, even if that left me with the prospect of a new Spider-Man movie I felt more obligated to see than excited to.  Of course, I understand, from the corporate perspective, the reason for the shortened turn-around: if Sony hadn’t kept their license active, than the lucrative film rights to the character would have reverted to Marvel/Disney.  But still, a completely new version after only ten years and two months – to the day – since the first film, let alone only five years since the last film, even in our much more accelerated culture, surely seems a little hasty.

It’s viral campaign notwithstanding, for some moviegoers, a rebooted Spider-Man movie was not only not wanted, but not welcome.

If you’re reading this, you almost certainly know the story of Spider-Man: angst ridden but good-natured teenager Peter Parker gets bitten by a spider, gaining “amazing” spider-powers, only for his uncle to be tragically murdered by a criminal Peter could have, and should have, stopped earlier; as a result, Peter learns a valuable lesson about responsibility and therefore becomes Spider-Man.  It’s the same story now that it’s always been, and pretty much exactly the same as it was ten years ago, and that’s entirely the film’s problem.  While everyone seems to be looking at The Amazing Spider-Man as a reboot, the fact is that it fails to do what a reboot is supposed to actually do, which is engage a property in a new and different way.  Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man certainly look different in many respects; the newer film tries to be a bit more gritty and realistic than Raimi’s hyper-real, idealized New York City of a decade ago.  The Peter Parkers appear different, with the likable, lovelorn, and sympathetic Tobey Maguire replaced with the sullen, moody, and not unsympathetic Andrew Garfield, and his love interests have been switched out, with the blond, brainy Gwen Stacy replacing the red-headed, artistic Mary Jane.  For the most part, though, what has changed between the two films proves pretty lateral; what remains, though, remains almost entirely the same, but strangely with less of the humanity that Raimi’s unrealistic version captured so well (at least for the first two movies).

Of course, not everything in Spidey’s origin has been transposed intact to The Amazing Spider-Man, as Webb, along with credited writers James Vanderbilt, Steve Kloves, and series veteran Alvin Sargent spend a lot of screen time trying to embellish that origin.  Key to this newer version is that more of an onus is placed on the mysterious fate of Peter’s parents.  Leaving the young Peter in the dead of night to be raised by his Aunt and Uncle, they are subsequently believed killed in a plane accident; as he comes of age, Peter continues to be haunted and bitter about their loss. After rediscovering some of his father’s research, Peter traces it back to the nefarious conglomerate Oscorp, and specifically to Curt Connors, his father’s colleague, who has ambitious ideas about potentially merging human and reptile DNA.  Unfortunately, while all of this is fine for incorporating the film’s antagonist, the Lizard, into the story, it tells us nothing new or different about Spider-Man that we didn’t already know, despite advertisements promising that “Spider-Man’s secrets will be revealed!”

What proves to be the major undoing of “The Amazing Spider-Man” is that there’s really nothing “untold” about it’s story.

That, most of all, is what sinks The Amazing Spider-Man: while it makes slight changes from the first film, embellishing or de-emphasizing certain elements of the main origin story, its differences from the earlier incarnation prove entirely cosmetic. This is just the same story, told nearly the same way, with the same meaning and message and with nothing new or insightful added to make it worth revisiting. That it wasn’t done as effectively as its predecessor, at least from an emotional perspective, only makes the entire thing feel all the more unnecessary.

To make clear, The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t awful or unwatchable. There are some intriguing ideas mixed in here and there, but for the most part the film doesn’t carry them through to their potential.  I appreciated, for instance, that Webb and company didn’t try to have Peter Parker just become Spider-Man fully formed, and instead had Peter journey from victim to vigilante to hero; it wasn’t altogether well done, but it was something that at least set it apart thematically from its predecessor, and the film’s most poignant moments come when Peter realizes that there’s more to being a hero than beating up the bad guys.

Casting-wise, Andrew Garfield certainly has the physical appearance of Spider-Man down, especially of the wiry, gangly, Todd McFarlane-drawn Spider-Man of my own youth.  It seemed, though, that Garfield might have taken the idea of Spider-Man as a New Yorker and neurotic a little too much to heart, and used that to essentially make his Peter Parker into a Woody Allen for the Twilight set.  I’ve liked Garfield in most of what I’ve seen him in, but despite his considerable talent, he really lacks that intangible quality needed to anchor a movie, and with this kind of spotlight on him it proved all the more noticeable.  In the end, Webb and Garfield’s Spidey/Parker felt more like a caricature than a character, a series of nervous ticks searching for an emotional center.

The romance in this film, now between Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), feels almost perfunctory.

Beyond Spidey, the very likeable and talented Emma Stone isn’t given much as his love interest Gwen, and her romance with Peter feels almost like a perfunctory obligation of the plot than something justified by any discernible emotional connection. She, at least though, is well cast; the rest of the supporting players, though strong actors and performers all, are pretty well miscast, and playing characters that are left too underdeveloped by the final film.  Poor Sally Field isn’t really given anything to do as Aunt May, and seemed almost cynically cast just because she’s someone’s idea of elderly.  Dennis Leary trades on his gruff-but-semi-loveable cache from Rescue Me for the part of Gwen’s father, the police captain in charge of hunting down Spidey; in the end, though, he’s much too abrasive and distancing for what turns out to a pretty important role. Of them all, Martin Sheen fares the best as Uncle Ben, but he’s also emblematic of the casting issue; that Sheen is a great actor cannot be doubted, but at the end of the day, he’s just not the avuncular type to be playing Peter’s surrogate father figure.

Denis Leary, as Captain Stacy, is probably the film’s most egregious example of miscasting for what proves to be an important role.

Webb, too, seemed, at first glance, an odd choice to direct the film, given his only previous credit was the overly indyriffic-by-half 500 Days of Summer (which I actually did like, though as a movie it was a very good script).  Now in hindsight, his selection appears even odder. While he does well with character moments, Webb displayed some pretty clear ineptitude with most of the action sequences, which generally failed to measure up with either the film’s predecessors or its competitors. There was an admirable effort here to complement the CGI with some real-life stunt work, but most of the action felt like it was better in theory than in practice.  And for all the hype that the film gives us Spidey in 3D, The Amazing Spider-Man rarely seemed to take advantage of the format until its finale.  Most frustrating for me was that the scenes of Peter discovering his powers just seemed to lack any of the sense of wonder or awe that Raimi’s films captured so well.  To be blunt, I was actually more thrilled by the climax of the movie’s original trailer, with its extended point-of-view sequence, than I was by anything in the actual film.

Under the direction of Marc Webb, many of the film’s action scenes, such as this one aboard a subway train, are awkward and even confusing.

If this movie does boast one significant advantage over the original Spider-Man film, it’s that its villain proves significantly more effective. I’ve personally always anticipated seeing the Lizard onscreen, and to a degree I wasn’t disappointed; the character’s CGI looked believable, and his fight scenes with the Webslinger are pretty much the film’s best and most inspired action sequences. The problem, though, and I expected this going in, is that his story is essentially identical to that of Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2 – a sympathetic mentor transformed by his altruistic but still self-aggrandizing experiments into a myopic monster.  While faithful to the Lizard of the comics, in the cinematic sense it’s again, just too much of a retread.  We’re also not given much of an indication as to how we’re supposed to feel about the Lizard’s alter ego, Connors (played by a surprisingly wooden Rhys Ifans), prior to his fateful transformation; which left me feel somewhat indifferent to his plight by the time he started growing a tail.  All told, he’s a better, more organic villain than the Green Goblin of the first Spider-Man, who seems poised to be the Amazing version’s next big nemesis.

One of the few saving graces of “The Amazing Spider-Man” was that the Lizard (Rhys Ifans) made for a fair antagonist.

In the end, the issue at the heart of The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t whether it’s a reboot that has come too soon, it’s that its less a true reboot than a straight remake of a movie that’s still much too fresh in people’s minds.  Unlike reboots, remakes have been a fact of commercial moviemaking for almost its entire history, with rare exception, a remake represents an attempt to take a pre-existing movie, show, or idea that was good enough to be successful the first time and try to copy it for a new generation and a new audience.  Reboots, though, take still-fresh properties that were successful but were in some way irreparably screwed up beyond immediate salvation; meaning that they are, essentially, a do-over for studios that had no real excuse to mess it up the first time.  While overdone all across popular media, there have been times where reboots have worked, and have therefore proven welcome in retrospect.

If I had to choose the two best and most successful reboots of recent memory, I would likely name Batman Begins and Casino Royale, and for good reason: they kept what was fundamental about their subjects and presented them each in a way that was new or interesting.  Batman Begins reinvented a franchise, eight years after its last installment, that failed in great part because it didn’t take its character or his mythology seriously; in doing so, it re-presented the iconic Batman by restoring to him a wealth of character fidelity, an ocean of narrative depth, and a ton of political symbolism. Now while Batman Begins was generally welcomed by most, Casino Royale, it’s fair to say, was treated with a degree of skepticism equal to, if not greater, than that recently faced by The Amazing Spider-Man.  While not everyone agrees with me, I feel Royale worked because it transformed an iconic but undeniably tired character, James Bond, from an anachronistic demigod who never demonstrated an ounce of emotional depth to complement his consider panache, into a more realistic and compelling individual who was forced to contemplate whether he wanted to be something more than a geopolitical thug.  Key to both films’ success is that while they while remaining inherently recognizable as being Batman and James Bond respectively, they eschewed the formulas of their earlier versions, defied traditional narrative expectations, and subverted their characterizations so they had something new and different to say.  Ultimately, as reboots, they were successful because they managed to appear familiar but also fresh.  The final issue with The Amazing Spider-Man is that while it’s huge on the familiar, it completely lacks anything resembling freshness.

The ultimate problem with “The Amazing Spider-Man,” is that, for better or worse, it’s just too much of the same coming much too soon to seem fresh and new.

At the end of it all, the timing of the new Spider-Man may or may not be too soon for a hypothetical reboot, but it’s undeniably far too soon for the straight-up remake it actually is.  If the film had managed to be a true reboot, it might (or might not) have shown potential to be interesting and entertaining; as it is, it’s far too much like a movie I remember seeing as if it was yesterday, and whose influence is still keenly felt in every other superhero movie that hits the multiplex.   For better or worse, The Amazing Spider-Man was a movie that had to justify its existence by being something exciting, new, and dare I say, amazing.  At the end of the day, it was just the same old Spider-Man. And not even a friendly neighborhood one, at that.

By Jonathan J. Morris, Antiscribe.com

Introduction

With the coming July 4 holiday bringing the anticipated (though not by everybody) reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man, it seemed like an appropriate moment to once again trace the filmic and televisual history of another major figure in popular culture. Who? Why, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, of course!

The core backstory of Spider-Man is well and widely known – Peter Parker, a socially awkward but brilliant young man from Forest Hills, Queens is bitten by a radioactive spider (or a genetically enhanced one, depending on the era) while on a school field trip and soon finds himself blessed (and cursed) with spider-like powers.  After a failure to use his “gifts” properly results in personal tragedy, he realizes the deeper meaning of the mantra “with great power, comes great responsibility.” Becoming the superhero Spider-Man, he protects the neighborhoods of his native New York City from both everyday criminals and monstrous super-villains; indeed, Spidey’s rogues’ gallery is second only to Batman’s in depth and popularity, boasting the Green Goblin, Venom, the Lizard, the Scorpion, the Kingpin, Carnage, the Sandman, Mysterio, Electro, and (my personal favorite) Doctor Octopus.

“Amazing Fantasy #15,” from August 1962, the first appearance of Spider-Man; the famous cover was drawn by the incomparable Jack Kirby.

Spider-Man, first conceived by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, has long been the poster boy and franchise character for Marvel Comics (now a subsidiary of the Disney media empire), and he pretty much embodies Marvel’s archetypal “hero with problems.”  Unlike most of his comic forbears, Spider-Man was notable for the pronounced difficulty he faced balancing the life of his alter-ego Peter Parker with the duty of being a hero. Like any young man of humble means trying to make his way in the world, Peter faced everyday stressors and obstacles: paying the rent, holding down a job, being there for his friends and family, and, perhaps most painfully, enduring the pain of romantic disappointment.  Compounding this, of course, were the needs and responsibilities (and dangers) of being Spider-Man.  Also, again unlike his forbears, Spider-Man was often considered as much of an outlaw to his public as the villains and criminals he fought against.  Due to the fact that Peter Parker/Spider-Man endures these pressures, and the insecurities they generate, Spidey has often led to him being classified as the “neurotic superhero;” his personality often defined by a pronounced inferiority complex and a quirky, nervous sense of humor that belies a wellspring of deep pathos.  Of course, Spidey is also the quintessential New York superhero, whose Big Apple spirit is as much as part of him as his persona as his trademark “Spider-Sense.”

Faced with money issues, stress, loneliness, heartbreak, and feelings of inferiority, Spider-Man is pretty much the archetype for Marvel Comics’ “hero with problems.”

Now, as a proponent of the superhero genre in general, I’ve been a fan of Spider-Man pretty much since I was a kid…albeit one often more in theory than in practice.  Though I was fortunate to have read them mainly during the glory days of Todd McFarlane, Spider-Man comics in the modern era are heavily criticized for their periods of frustrating inconsistency (see the 1990s notorious “Clone Saga,” or even better…don’t), and the character historically has not held a particularly stellar track record when being adapted to film and television.  Thereby, consider yourself warned in advance, true believers, because the story of Spider-Man in television and film is not always a happy tale, nor one necessarily for the faint of heart; in this little journey through part of Spider-Man’s pop culture history, the bad, unfortunately, sometimes outweighs the good.

Spider-Man (1967-1970)

This show marked the first, and perhaps the most famous, of Spider-Man’s animated incarnations; it may also be among the worst.  Originally airing on ABC stations on Saturday mornings in 1967 before moving to syndication the next year, this early Spider-Man is infamous for its unspeakably bad animation, which sometimes barely qualified as animation.  To clarify, the series’ (non-)style was defined by still frames being marginally animated with little or no actual character body movement; it’s especially infamous for its “talking heads,” which consisted of static close-ups with only the lips and eyes of a character moving, which has been comically aped over the years by Conan O’Brien and others.  The rest of the episodes were often composed of continuously reused animation of Spider-Man swinging across New York City backgrounds, sometimes for literally minutes of screen time on end.  Being fair, the series had almost no budget and episodes were often created with very little turnaround. Thus, it was very common to see entire sequences reused over and over again; some of the later episodes, in fact, were even cobbled together from earlier episodes (or even other cartoons) without any new footage whatsoever.  The scripting was also often lackadaisical, simplistic, and padded with filler, and after the series switched studios after the first season, it pretty much ceased using Spidey’s main villains of the time, instead using very repetitive and nondescript aliens, wizards, mole people, monsters, and so forth.

The 1960s Spider-Man cartoon, though fairly famous, was not highly regarded for its animation – for instance, note the lack of detailed web-patterns on the costume.

With that said, as unwatchable as it often is by today’s standards, this series was a major reason why Spider-Man became part of the fabric of our popular culture, as it brought the character out of the limited scope of comic books (where it was a huge break out hit at the time) and into the childhood of an entire generation of American children.  Its iconic theme song is also an indelible part of the character and his myth, known, sometimes by heart, to lucky bastards people who have never even seen the show itself.  If you do decide to watch it, stick to the first season, where the episodes use many of the classic villains, with some of the stories even adapted from the early  comics; the first episode of the second season also features a pretty faithful retelling of Spidey’s origin from his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15.  The rest: pretty much death.

Spidey-Fact: The second and third seasons of the show were produced by Krantz Films, and was specifically overseen by animator Ralph Bakshi, who would go on to be one the icons of independent animation, directing the feature film versions of Fritz the Cat and Heavy Metal, as well as the original, animated feature adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

The Amazing Spider-Man (1977-1979)

In addition to its other numerous problems, the live action “The Amazing Spider-Man” exposed the fact that Spidey’s outfit was pretty damned impractical.

This series, which aired intermittently on CBS in the late 1970s, represented the first attempt to make a live action Spider-Man series…and it was pretty much an epic, epic failure, and not even in that so-bad-it’s good kind of way.  The series first began as a television movie in 1977 before airing sporadically for the next two seasons for a grand total of about 13 episodes.  It remained pretty faithful to the concept of the character, with an emphasis mainly on Peter Parker’s journalistic endeavors, though the only characters adapted from the comic though were Spidey’s elderly Aunt May and Peter Parker’s boss, J. Jonah Jameson (who was far more reserved here than his comic book counterpart).  Also, like many other live action adaptations of comic book characters throughout the years, and for obvious budgetary reasons, none of Spidey’s iconic supervillains appeared in the series.  Nicholas Hammond played both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and he received little aid from some of the most pathetic special effects this side of an Ed Wood movie.  Just terrible, terrible stuff all the way around, and the series remains so hated by both Marvel and Spider-Man fans that it’s never even seen the light of day on either DVD or legal online streaming (episodes did show up on both laserdisc and VHS, though, which means bootlegs are fairly plentiful).

“The Amazing Spider-Man” was cancelled in large part because CBS felt it was tarnishing their image with advertisers.  Can’t see why…

Spidey-Fact: Though thoroughly dreadful, The Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t a ratings disaster; in fact, it was actually a moderate hit, landing in the top twenty television programs of the year in its first season.  However, besides the fact it was a critical laughingstock, CBS axed the series out of fear of being seen as a kiddie “superhero” network in the eyes of advertisers; it also canceled the Linda Carter Wonder Woman series for this very reason.

Japanese Spider-Man (1978-1979)

Yep, there was a JAPANESE SPIDER-MAN, and unlike his live action American counterpart from above, his show does fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category.  In fact, to hell with that: it’s so bad it’s AWESOME.  Produced by the Toei Company during a brief licensing deal with Marvel, this was a half-hour, live action television series that aired in Japan during the late 1970s and was marketed pretty specifically to kids.  Though called Spider-Man and starring a main character who looks and acts like the American original, it featured a different alter-ego and origin story for its main character.  Instead of Peter Parker, the Japanese Spider-Man was Takuya Yamashiro, a young motocross biker who gains his powers from aliens through the injection of a spider-serum and by the wearing of a special spider suit.  He uses these powers and weapons to do battle with the villainous Iron Cross Army, a group of presumably fascist extraterrestrials (or perhaps they’re just alien Commie-Nazis?) trying to take over the world.  Oh yeah, and given that this is a Japanese show, he’s aided by a giant spaceship that turns into an equally giant robot.  The best part? It’s not even a giant Spider-Man robot, but a giant leopard-man robot called Leopardan.  Why would Spider-Man pilot a giant leopard-man robot? No reason given, and in this kind of show, none necessary.

“Ichiro, I defeated the truck that tried to run over you. The driver got away, but darn it, I beat that truck but good!”

Okay, now that I’ve gotten the hipster irony out of the way, this show was what it was: a 1970s hybrid of Spider-Man and the Power Rangers. To its credit, the show’s special effects, though often accompanied by a typically cheesy J-Pop theme, absolutely blew away those of the concurrent CBS series, as did the character’s costume design. And Takuya still carried around an inferiority complex that would have made Peter Parker proud, even if he possessed none of his trademark witty banter.  In fact, some of his monologues were so nihilistic and bleak I half-expected the guy to just slit his web-shooters at some point.  The complete series is currently available to stream for free on Marvel.com here, though it probably should not be endured without some kind of (clears throat) chemical enhancement.

With a giant robot, comes giant responsibility: Leopardan, Nippon Spidey’s friendly neighborhood giant leopard-man robot.

Spidey-Fact:  Though the Japanese Spider-Man’s origin was completely different from the American original, it did bare a marked similarity to that of a Filmation superhero character named “Web Woman.”  Though not a Marvel character, Web Woman was more or less a female version of Spider-Man, and actually prompted Marvel to create and copyright its own character, Spider-Woman.  In homage to Web Woman, Linda Gary, the actress who provided her voice, later provided the voice of Aunt May in the 1990s Spider-Man series.

Spider-Man (1981-1982)

This, the second major attempt to do an animated Spider-Man, was produced by Marvel and aired in syndication concurrently with the much more popular (and better-regarded) Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends; it also featured the same music, animation-style, and character designs, though with a different vocal cast.  All told, the series was pretty faithful to both the best and worst of Spider-Man comics, retaining much of their superhero action but being overly representative of the contrived plotting and lame humor of some of the earlier Stan Lee-scripted Spider-Man stories; even by the lower standards of children’s television some of the writing was often asinine and unsophisticated – an opinion I even felt while watching it in reruns as a kid in the late 1980s.  Not surprisingly, it also entirely lacked the harder-edged pathos of Spider-Man comics of the era, and though most of the major villains were on parade here, it pretty much failed to offer the kind of insight and background into their characters that made them so iconic; the Lizard, for instance, isn’t portrayed as the tragic victim of scientific accident, but just another bad guy.   With all that said, this was still essentially Spider-Man being Spider-Man, and fighting against the typical cadre of Spidey bad guys (though Marvel’s uberbaddie Dr. Doom was the most recurring villain), and some fans prefer it to Amazing Friends for that reason. And it was certainly a marked improvement over the earlier 1960s series in terms of animation, with good fluidity and very little in the way of actual errors.

Spidey-Fact:  Preceding this series in 1979 was another “spider” cartoon produced by Marvel: Spider-Woman.  The show wasn’t a hit, only lasting 16 episodes – two of which featured guest appearances from Spider-Man himself.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981-1983)

One of the most popular and best-remembered Spider-Man cartoons of all time, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends was an iconic show in the early-1980s and remained so popular that NBC aired it as part of its Saturday morning cartoon block through 1986, even though new episodes stopped being produced in 1983.  Produced by Marvel Animation using the same music, character designs, and animation of its syndicated counterpart, this series represented the company putting its best foot forward in the writing and technical department. In this series, Peter Parker/Spider-Man is helped in his super-hero adventures by his roommates Bobby Drake, AKA Ice Man, and Angelica Jones, AKA Firestar (who in this continuity are former members of the X-Men); fortunately, their wacky “Jules and Jim” living and dating arrangement is never explored in depth. Typically, the “Spider-Friends” did battle with an assortment of popular Spider-Man villains, including the Green Goblin, the Sandman, and Electro, but unlike the syndicated series, Amazing Friends was far more prone to featuring appearances by other Marvel superheroes, like the Hulk and the X-Men, and their villains. Therefore, it felt sometimes less like a straight Spider-Man series than a Marvel team-up show; which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Though a hackneyed concept for certain, pairing Spidey with other superheroes prevented “Amazing Friends” from relying too much on the Webslinger’s internalized perspective.

Even today, the show holds up mostly well, carried by strong character designs and animation, though the scripts and dialogue come across as mostly corny, albeit in a charming way.  One of the keys to its success was actually the hackneyed “Spider-Friends” concept; as kind of loner, Spider-Man in the comics typically narrated his own stories, which has never really translated well to most of the animated adaptations.  Here, giving Spider-Man other characters to play off made the show considerably more watchable, and enjoyable, than other versions (including the syndicated series).

Yep, Truffaut would have had a field day with these three…

Spidey-Fact:  The character of Firestar/Angelica Jones was created specifically for the series; the role was originally earmarked for Johnny Storm/The Human Torch of the Fantastic Four, but copyright issues pertaining to the character (and presumably the fact that the show would have become a total sausagefest) prevented it from happening.  Firestar/Jones did eventually debut in the comics as part of the X-Men mythology, and would become a member of the superhero groups the New Warriors and the Avengers; ironically, though, she has apparently had virtually no in-continuity interaction with either Spider-Man or Ice Man to date.

Spider-Man (AKA Spider-Man: The Animated Series) (1994-1998)

This version, which aired on the Fox Network, is widely regarded as the best and undeniably the most successful of the various Spider-Man animated series.  And for the most part, that’s with good reason, as it’s an overall fine crystallization of over thirty years of the Webslinger’s mythology; one also can’t argue with longevity: Spider-Man aired for five seasons for a total of 65 episodes, making it, to date, the longest lasting Spider-Man series by a New York mile.  Of course, to some folks of my generation, this was also the series that introduced them to Spider-Man (and current Spider-Man Andrew Garfield was supposedly a huge fan of it). I never really watched it religiously myself, since I was getting out of comic books and certainly cartoons at the time it began airing, therefore I don’t have the same nostalgia for it that others do.

A conceptual drawing for the then-prospective series, which was highly regarded for its strong animation.

Though it lies somewhat in the shadow of the beloved Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-Man is regarded highly for having many of the same qualities. Produced by Marvel Film Animation, the animation set a pretty high standard in the earlier seasons (though it went noticeably downhill as the series went on) and holds up very well almost twenty years later; it also featured some of the first uses of 3D CGI animation (albeit used only in the backgrounds).  Many of the character designs could be pretty toyetic (justifiably since this show was a merchandising machine), but for the most part they remained pretty faithful to their classic comic designs. The series also featured some top notch voice work, especially with the villains (who were much better developed than earlier animated incarnations), including Hank Azaria as Venom, Efreem Zimbalist, Jr. as Doctor Octopus, Joseph Campenella as the Lizard, Martin Landau as the Scorpion, Roscoe Lee Browne as a particularly good Kingpin, and Mark Hamill as the Hobgoblin.  Christopher Daniel Barnes was the voice of Spider-Man and Peter Parker, and he’s regarded as one of the best to vocalize the role; Ed Asner also voiced J. Jonah Jameson, in a part well suited for the former Lou Grant.

The series’ version of J. Jonah Jameson, voiced by the incomparable Ed Asner.

What really carried the series and made it remarkable in its earlier years was its writing or, at the very least, its plotting.  The showrunner, John Semper, Jr., taking a page from its contemporary series X-Men, built the show predominantly on season-long story arcs and weaved many of its individual episodes, with featured Spidey battling his rogues’ gallery, within those storylines.  They weren’t perfectly done, mind you (the Venom/Black Costume Saga, the first time it had been adapted outside of the comics, was considered a huge disappointment), but for the time the show demonstrated a level of narrative sophistication that would later influence a number of other animated series.  By the fourth and fifth season, however, the show was relying on more outlandish storylines that broke from Spidey’s typical oeuvre (two words: the Beyonder) so unfortunately, that level didn’t necessarily maintain. Also, in keeping with Spider-Man’s role in the comics as a cross-promotional vehicle for other characters, the series featured guest appearances from numerous other Marvel super-heroes, including Iron Man, Captain America, Nick Fury, Daredevil, the Punisher, Blade, the Fantastic Four, Morbius the Living Vampire, Doctor Strange, and, in a crossover from their own series, the X-Men.

One of the more ludicrous acts of censorship in “Spider-Man” was renaming the Sinister Six the “Insidious Six;” the new adjective wasn’t only lame, but technically inaccurate.

Personally speaking, I don’t hold the show in the same high regard that others do.  For one thing, it completely overdid it in transposing the comic book Spidey’s highly internalized, first person narration into the series – to a point where I found where his continued kvetching in episode after episode to be gratingly obnoxious. Also, Spider-Man, while kind of lighthearted, was also never really very funny, and the show had this ultra-annoying tendency to follow up its few Spidey jokes  with the Wallcrawler emphasizing how much angst he was feeling at a particular given moment.  I mean, sure, Spidey’s wisecracking is a total psychological defense mechanism, but you’re not supposed to beat us over the head with it.

What really, really hurt the series for me, though, was the severity of its censorship. Besides the typical issues of the time where gunfire had to be replaced with lasers and direct portrayals of death and murder were verboten, Spider-Man faced some truly insane restrictions, including the fact its main character wasn’t even allowed to punch anyone.  Perhaps the most egregious change came when Spider-Man’s main villain group, the Sinister Six, had to be renamed “the Insidious Six” because the word “sinister” was considered, well, too sinister for a children’s viewing audience (much like the phrase, “Are you fucking kidding me?”).  Now a lot of shows of the time had to deal with similar issues, and some people would probably give credit to Semper and company for having to write around their restrictions, but given the fact that Batman: TAS had been kicking down the doors on those same restrictions for a few years prior on the very same network, I’m a little less sympathetic towards them than most. The show itself would sometimes inadvertently call attention to the censorship, too, including an ill-advised, watered down redo of the famous “Death of Gwen Stacy,” with Mary Jane in her stead.  And seriously, when the God-damned Punisher can’t even fire a real gun, much less kill anybody, that’s just going to make your entire show look damned wussy.

And finally, the show’s theme song, by Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, was horrible. Just horrible. There…I said it.

Spidey-Fact #1: Neil Ross, who voiced Norman Osborn and his alter ego, the Green Goblin, on this show, also voiced the same character over a decade earlier on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

Spidey-Fact #2: Though this Spider-Man did a pretty good job representing most of the popular Spidey villains, there were two major omissions in the series: Electro and the Sandman.  This was because when the series first entered production, James Cameron had planned to use them (or more accurately, variations on them) as the villains in his own never-produced Spider-Man film.

Spider-Man Unlimited (1999-2001)

Spider-Man in “Spider-Man Unlimited.” Don’t ask about the suit. Just…don’t.

So where to start with this one?  Technically speaking a continuation of the previous Spider-Man series, this is pretty much a test case of what happens when some idiot decides to take a popular idea, in this case Spider-Man, give it a “fresh spin” to make it more dynamic and marketable, and in the process completely fail to make anything either fresh or dynamic. To wit, Spider-Man Unlimited saw the friendly neighborhood wallcrawler leaving the neighborhood, and indeed, the entire Earth behind to go help a human resistance movement on the mysterious Counter Earth.  Yep.  Not surprisingly, this show was pretty much rejected by its audience before it even aired, with the rumor mill at the time stating that Marvel only agreed to produce it because they needed money coming in after their bankruptcy restructuring in 1998.  The two-year duration is also a little misleading, as the show was yanked after only three weeks on the air in the fall of 1999 (where it was slaughtered in the ratings against the juggernaut that was Pokémon), and subsequently cancelled before being used as midseason filler by Fox the next year, with only a season’s worth of 13 episodes produced.  I’ve honestly only seen maybe an episode or two over the years; while the animation, all told, remains fairly solid, at the end of the day, this asinine idea had two insurmountable problems: it just wasn’t Spider-Man, and it just wasn’t good.

Spidey-Fact: Spidey on this show was voiced by Rino Romano, who would later go on to voice the title character on The Batman, which unfortunately wasn’t cancelled after only one season.  Anyway…he’s still notable for being the only person to have voiced both Spider-Man and Batman, so “yay” for him.

Spider-Man (2002)

The long awaited film version of Spider-Man was a major media event when released in 2002 and its massive financial success single-handedly resurrected superhero movies as a viable genre after Joel Schumacher and the 1990s pretty much put a bullet in their collective head.  Perhaps not without coincidence, it was also one of the first major New York City films following September 11 and something of a celebration of the city and its heroic spirit during a time when it was sorely needed.

Directed by Sam Raimi and starring a ideally cast Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spidey, the movie presented an absolutely dead-on interpretation of Spidey’s origin story and boasted a superb supporting cast on every level: Kirsten Dunst played Spidey’s true love Mary Jane with James Franco was his troubled best friend, Harry Osborn, Cliff Robertson and Rosemary Harris were tone perfect as Uncle Ben and Aunt May, Willem Dafoe was an appropriately menacing Green Goblin/Norman Osborn, and J.K. Simmons almost stole the entire movie as the cantankerous J. Jonah Jameson.  Though a big budget blockbuster, this was the rare one (for the time) with a heart, as it really captured the central humanity of Spider-Man and his world, and the movie remains well-liked today because it presented strong, complex, perfectly realized characters in thoroughly compelling situations. Funny how that works, huh?

Finding just the right touch for the love story between Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Toby Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), was one of the things “Spider-Man” pretty much got right.

Unfortunately, while Spider-Man earned its success, the fact remains that only half of it was really a good movie.  While it nails the origin story, the second part of the film, with Spider-Man’s superheroics in facing down the Green Goblin, just never clicked.  For one thing, the CGI used for Spider-Man himself, while good, wasn’t yet convincing (it would take a major step forward in the second film); the real problem, though, was the Goblin. Dafoe did good villain work as the character, but the Goblin’s costume was laughably bad (he’s often derisively referred to as the “Green Power Ranger”) and other than messing with Spidey and his loved ones he doesn’t really even have a master plan or focus. Lord knows, a villain without an evil plot really isn’t much of a villain, and as the mantra states a hero can only rise to the level of his villain.

The Green Goblin ultimately kept “Spider-Man” from soaring, due in large part to the fact he looked like the Green Power Ranger.  You have to give Willem Dafoe credit, though, for not only doing the best he could with the part, but for insisting on wearing that ridiculous outfit himself.

With that said, Spider-Man stands as one of the most important and influential commercial movies of the new millennium.  Before Spider-Man, the attitude of Hollywood’s executives toward comic book inspired films and many similar properties collectively was one of condescension bordering on contempt, with a vainglorious belief that Hollywood’s “creativity” could improve characters by fundamentally changing everything that people liked about them (for prime examples, just look up many of the god awful Spider-Man movie ideas that predated this film from the 1980s and 90s).  While things today are hardly perfect, Raimi, a major Spider-man fan himself, demonstrated to Hollywood that showing fidelity to a character, and thus using the elements that made them popular to begin with, could directly yield both immense profits and fan adoration (which, in turn, yielded even more immense profits).

One of the original “Spider-Man” posters that had to be recalled immediately after September 11 because the reflection of the Twin Towers was visible in Spidey’s eyes.

Spidey-Fact:  Spider-Man, though it didn’t directly reference September 11 in any significant way, was nonetheless impacted by it.  The film’s original trailer, released in the summer of 2001, was centered on a standalone scenario of bank robbers trying to escape on a helicopter and getting trapped in a giant spider web spun up between the Twin Towers; one of the posters also featured Spider-Man with the Towers being reflected in his eyes.  After the World Trade Center attacks, both were understandably recalled from circulation.

The original theatrical trailer with the World Trade Center footage:

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003)

Often referred to as MTV Spider-Man, this animated series had a brief run on cable channel in the summer of 2003.  Superbly animated in three dimensional CGI and targeted towards a teenage audience, this presented a darker, more modern, and more mature Spider-Man universe that didn’t shy away from death and violence, or even sex and drinking, when it proved appropriate.  Ostensibly a continuation of the Raimi movie, this was about Peter Parker (voiced by Neal Patrick Harris) balancing college life with friends Mary Jane (voiced by Lisa Loeb) and Harry Osborn (Ian Ziering), with the responsibilities of being Spider-Man.  I’ve always really liked this series, as it did a fine job incorporating a nuanced view of Spidey’s personal life with some quality action and humor.  The scripting was also pretty sophisticated by superhero cartoon standards (longtime Spider-Man writer Brian Michael Bendis was one the chief writers), and as with Amazing Friends, giving Peter Parker friends to play off of really kept Spidey’s first person narration manageable and gave the stories a much more organic flow.  NPH, given his impeccable comedic timing and fair dramatic chops, was also perfectly suited for voicing Spidey, and he remains my personal favorite Spider-Man voice actor.

Though it had limitations, “The New Animated Series” boasted some astonishingly great animation and character designs.

The series did have some issues. It would absolutely have benefitted from not trying to follow the movie’s continuity, since it limited how much actual narrative development they could do over the course of the show (which was, not surprisingly, ignored by Spider-Man 2 anyway).  It also restricted the producers from using most of the major villains, which certainly hurt it from a marketing perspective – though it still boasted adaptations of the Lizard, Kingpin, Electro, Kraven the Hunter, and Silver Sable, as well as a number of villains created specifically for the show.  Personally, I liked the fact it put characters and stories first and didn’t go nuts trying to replicate all the characters and storylines from the comics.  Of course, the series did end up getting canceled, so shows what I know (though it wasn’t helped by the fact that MTV aired the episodes both out of order and with relative inconsistency).

Spidey-Fact: Among a pretty strong voice cast of villains that included Rob Zombie, James Marsters, Gina Gershon, Michael Dorn, Jeffrey Coombs, Ethan Embry, Virginia Madsen, Kathy Griffin, Jeremy Piven, and Harold Perrinaeau, Jr., the series tapped Michael Clarke Duncan to reprise his role as the Kingpin from the feature film version of Daredevil (a film which some say is underrated).

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

One of the best movie sequels ever, Spider-Man 2 represents the rare example of a follow-up that was not only vastly superior to its predecessor, but completely blew it away on every level.  Spider-Man 2 further employed the strong characterizations and humanity from the first installment, addressed the issues that held it down, and blazed full speed ahead with a story that drew heavily from both Spider-Man’s epic mythology as well its own historical moment.  In all, it essentially summed up, to an often heartbreaking degree, the central existential pathos of Spidey’s condition, demonstrating a Peter Parker trying, and for the most part failing, to reconcile his life as struggling young college student in New York City – one still madly in unrequited love with Mary Jane Watson (Dunst) – with the realities of being Spider-Man.  Besides being unable to make his rent, hold down his job, keep up with his classes, or fulfill his obligations to his loved ones, Peter begins losing his spider powers, presenting him with the temptation of being “Spider-Man no more…”  Peter soon finds, though, that no man, let alone a superhero, can escape his responsibilities, especially when a new villain emerges to threaten both his hometown and the woman he loves…

As a side effect of letting his life get out of control, Peter Parker begins losing his powers, leading him to contemplate a life as “Spider-Man no more…”

Instead of the mostly uninspired, aimless, and awkward Green Goblin of the first film, Spidey now had to contend with the many-armed genius Doctor Octopus (a terrific Alfred Molina), whom Raimi and company astutely transformed from the two-dimensional megalomaniacal mad scientist of the comics into a good man essentially living Peter Parker’s dream life, whose transformation into a monstrous villain feels genuinely tragic.  Spider-Man 2 also furthered development the love story between Peter and Mary Jane beautifully, and if you don’t have a tear in your eye at the film’s end, then I question whether you have a soul.

While The Dark Knight is most often singled out as the profound example of the post-September 11 superhero film (and for good reason), Spider-Man 2 was the really the first post-9/11 superhero movie to incorporate many of the themes and subtexts of the post-9/11 zeitgeist.  Allegorically, the entire film is about dealing with grief in a world of loss and lowered expectations, with the beleaguered Spider-Man coming to grips with the fact that he may never have the life he wants, clashing with a villain, Doc Ock, driven to insanity essentially by having his entire world taken away from him.  Each man represents a different reaction to the “new normal,” one standing for noble acceptance and courage in the face of sorrow, and the other irrational anger and myopic violence after experiencing irreconcilable loss.

With Doctor Octopus, “Spider-Man 2″ gave Spider-Man an emotional antithesis as an archenemy; Doc Ock was a good man driven insane by grief, while Spidey learned that it was more important to remain a good man than to have the life you always wanted.

A strong case, I feel, can be made that given all its strengths as a blockbuster, and for its deep and moving perspective on the humanity that lies at the heart of the superhero’s journey, Spider-Man 2 may be the greatest superhero film of all time, and at the very least, it belongs in the discussion.  What’s inarguable, in my opinion, is that Spider-Man 2 represents simply the best Spider-Man ever.

Spidey-Fact: Though Mary Jane Watson, across most adaptations of Spider-Man, is generally treated as Peter Parker’s one true love, in the comics she wasn’t his first love.  That was the brilliant and beautiful Gwen Stacy, who was tragically killed during a battle between Spidey and the Green Goblin.  While killing major characters is (too) commonplace an occurrence nowadays, the death of Gwen Stacy (in issue 121 of The Amazing Spider-Man comic, June 1973) was a landmark moment in comic book history, and represented a seismic shift away from comic books maintaining the status quo in favor of more realistic stories where anyone, no matter how popular or beloved, could die.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

And alas, here we go, from the penthouse to the outhouse. While Spider-Man 2 was both a major hit and a critical darling, Spider-Man 3 was one of the more astonishingly disappointing movies of the last decade.  Simply put, the film’s story was, to be blunt, a colossal clusterfuck of underdeveloped story threads and obnoxious contrivances which tried to do so much that it ultimately failed to do anything right at all.  Its biggest mistake, though, came in trying to shoehorn too many ill-chosen villains into a plot that was already focused on a hero briefly flirting with the dark side.

With his life seemingly beginning to look up, Peter Parker (Maguire) begins to grow too self-obsessed, which leads him to neglect Mary Jane (Dunst), whose own life isn’t going well at all  That, in and of itself wasn’t a bad dynamic, but things get needlessly complicated when Spidey falls under the influence of a mysterious alien creature, who besides giving him a cool new black suit turns him into an obnoxious, unlikable, unsympathetic emo brat.  As if that wasn’t bad enough (for us), Peter has to reckon with three supervillains – his best friend Harry as the new Green Goblin (Franco), the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), and Venom (a completely miscast Topher Grace).  Besides all of them being much too much for any one film, let alone this film, to execute properly, each villain’s presentation is almost completely wrong; for instance, the Sandman, who here was retconned as the real killer of Peter’s Uncle Ben from the first film, is very oddly portrayed as a sympathetic, guilt-stricken villain whose criminal acts are semi-justified, making Peter look like a jerk for – GASP – hating him for killing his uncle and wanting to hold him responsible.  And don’t even get me started on the weasel-like Grace playing Spidey’s typically monstrous evil double.  In the end, the film is just a schizophrenic mess of incompatible story elements, bad humor, and overdone action that completely sacrificed all the good will of the earlier films in the name of more CGI and more villains for its corporate masters to merchandise at the same time.

The chief problem (among many) with “Spider-Man 3″ was that it tried to shoehorn too many villains into one picture, including Spidey’s evil double, Venom (Topher Grace). Given that he’s one of Spider-Man’s most popular foes, many were disappointed at the poor job the film did with his character (while I’m just amazed that they blew such a perfectly good marketing opportunity).

What’s probably the most disappointing aspect of Spider-Man 3 was that it was a clear throwback to the approach that made superhero films anathema to quality moviemaking back in the 1990s: too much executive tampering and corporate greed, with creative and narrative choices defined by what was serviceable rather than by anything that would stand up as quality storytelling.  In essence, it was the opposite of just about everything that the first Spider-Man represented a drastic, and much welcomed, departure from.

With the new movie coming out, I get asked a lot about what I think about them rebooting the character only five years after his most recent big screen incarnation.  In theory, I’m against it, as well as the entire modern tendency in popular culture to “reboot” things too quickly just because certain people didn’t show the proper care and attention to do something right the first time.  In this case, though, I might be compelled to make an exception.  Though others differ, at the end of the day, I’m not sure I would have wanted to see the series continue with the same characters and creative personnel after this. Spider-Man 3 is the definition of a franchise killer, and not even another movie as great as Spider-Man 2 could have made up for the travesty that this film was. It’s actually very revealing that, despite Spider-Man 3 shattering a number of box office records at the time and making almost $890 million worldwide, almost all parties, and especially director Sam Raimi, chose not to follow it up with an actual sequel.  Besides being a testament to just how badly done this movie finally was, it’s a very public and welcome acknowledgement by Sony and Marvel it made some huge mistakes.  So is The Amazing Spider-Man coming too soon? Probably, and I’m admittedly not incredibly excited for it for that reason.  However, rebooting the series was really the only alternative; after Spider-Man 3, there was just no going forward.

If you were one of those unlucky enough to see it, I hope this is, at least, a small consolation:

Spidey-Fact:  Another testament to the film’s failure: though it was a major box office success, the DVD sales of Spider-Man 3 fell far short of expectations, selling as many DVDs in its first week that Spider-Man 2 sold on its first day.

The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008-2009)

Yet another attempt to create an animated series of Spider-Man, this show aired for two seasons, first on the WB Network and then on the Disney XD cable channel.  Directed mainly towards a kids’ audience, the series drew heavily from both the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series, which portrayed Spider-Man as teenaged superhero dealing with the stresses of high school, as well as some of the classic Spider-Man stories from the character’s long comic book history.  To get the criticisms out of the way, I’ve never personally been a big fan of the teenage incarnation of Spider-Man (not that I was this show’s target demographic anyway).  I also personally disliked the character designs on this show: they were way, way, way too cartoony, even by Spider-Man’s standards, and the series’ overall animation kind of suffered because of it.

“The Spectacular Spider-Man” was actually a very good Spidey series, though it suffered from some pretty goofy character designs, especially with the villains. On the bright side, the Sinister Six (pictured) at least got their name back…

With that said, there was a lot to like here. The writing was very good, and far superior even to the 1990s series; it especially did a nice job organically blending the villains and their origins into the series’ overarching story arc, which pitted the young Spider-Man against the unscrupulous Oscorp CEO Norman Osborn.  Osborn, at the behest of the crime boss Tombstone, sets out creating a series of costumed, super-powered super-villains to kill the fledgling superhero (or at least keep him distracted) so as to keep him out of the way of their criminal enterprise. Overall, the series was a strong mix of well-developed characters (even among Peter Parker’s classmates), witty banter, wall-to-wall action, and inspired plotting. In fact, its flaws notwithstanding, a good argument could be made that this represented the best animated Spider-Man series to date. Unfortunately, the series became an unfortunate bystander in Marvel’s sale to Disney in 2009; since it was produced predominantly by Sony (who owns the film rights), Disney was forced to share a large part of the show’s proceeds.  After the sale of Marvel was completed and primary animation rights reverted to Disney, they cancelled the show after only 26 episodes, opting to create their own series that they would completely own and control: Ultimate Spider-Man.

Spidey-Fact: Like the previous two animated series, Spectacular Spider-Man boasted a very strong voice cast; all three series, however, shared one major constant: Ed Asner, who voiced a recurring police officer in the MTV series, J. Jonah Jameson in the 1990s series, and Peter’s Uncle Ben in The Spectacular Spider-Man.

Ultimate Spider-Man (2012- )

Loosely derived from the series of the same name, Ultimate Spider-Man represents the first Spider-Man animated series produced under Disney’s auspices, and they’re not off to an especially great start.  Though still reasonably faithful to the Spider-Man character, and very similar in its overall story-arc to Spectacular Spider-Man, this series tells of a young teenage Spidey joining up with SHIELD at the behest of Nick Fury to learn how to become a better, more disciplined superhero.  To that end, Fury puts him with a team of other nascent superheroes – Iron Fist, Powerman AKA Luke Cage, Nova, and White Tiger (two of whom I’d actually heard of before) – who, of course, all end up as his high school classmates under Principal Coulson (voiced by Clark Gregg, reprising his Agent Coulson character from the Marvel films).

In all, the series is pretty much a Marvel team-up show, spotlighting characters and especially brands, like SHIELD, that Marvel actually owns complete control over (unlike Spider-Man).  Again, using Spider-Man as a marketing device to push and spotlight other characters is a big part of his character’s legacy in the comics, but here it feels totally overdone – not to mention really, really corporate.  To me, Spider-Man works best as an unaffiliated loner, so essentially putting him with “the man,” i.e. SHIELD, kind of works against his everyman appeal.  None of this is really helped by the fact that the show is much too jokey, with Spider-Man constantly breaking the fourth wall and the series stylistically cutting away to continuous visual non-sequiturs, making the series seem almost like a knock-off Family Guy for the Elementary School crowd.

For over thirty years, “Spider-Man” co-creator Stan Lee has made a vocal appearance in every animated Spider-Man; in “Ultimate Spider-Man,” he finally graduates to a recurring character – Stanley the Janitor.

Spider-Fact:  Spider-Man co-creator (of record) Stan Lee has a recurring role in the series as Stanley, the janitor at Peter Parker’s high school.  Since the early 1980s, Stan Lee has had a vocal presence in every Spider-Man cartoon: he served as a periodic narrator on the 1980s Spider-Man and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and he had voice cameos in the 1990s series, the MTV series, and The Spectacular Spider-Man.  In addition, Lee’s wife of now 65 years, Joan, also provided the voice of the character Madame Web in the 1990s series.

Conclusion

As this overview demonstrates, Spidey hasn’t always had an easy time of it when getting translated to other media, mainly because he can be a very tough character to pull off; besides being very internalized in the comics, the character and his world are also deceptively nuanced.  To do Spider-Man correctly requires the right balance of sadness, excitement, humor, and drama along with just the right touch of verisimilitude.  When he’s done right, Spider-Man represents the “hero in all of us;” the innate good person most of us hope to be, who does the right thing when it’s easiest to do nothing.  To Spider-Man, his antithesis isn’t evil, but apathy.  It’s an important distinction, and when it’s not made properly, Spidey becomes just another boring, kiddie superhero fighting the bad guys because he’s supposed to, and not the noble, timeless, ageless hero fighting for the greater good because it’s simply the right and responsible thing to do…

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
-John Milton, Paradise Lost

By Jonathan Morris, Antiscribe.com

This past Sunday I attended, for the second time, a high definition screening of the Royal National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle, which gave me an excuse (not that I ever really need one) to revisit the cinematic legacy of two of my favorite figures of popular culture, the brilliant but misguided Dr. Frankenstein and his tragic and terrifying Creation (much as I did with Sherlock Holmes last year).

Since its first telling in Mary Shelley’s landmark novel in 1818, the story of the man and the monster he made from the pieces of dead bodies and brought to life through scientific means has never ceased to enthrall audiences the world over.  Too often simplistically classified as a horror story, the novel of Frankenstein transcends genre, standing as a masterpiece of both gothic literature and the Romantic Movement, as well as being one of the first true science fiction novels. While the horrific aspects of the story and most of the film versions would barely register as scary by modern standards, the core themes of Frankenstein – our conflicted perspectives on God, our ever-growing ability to master science and develop new technology, the limits of our knowledge and ambitions, the debate between nature and nurture, the relationships between parents and children, the markers we impose on people’s self worth, and the evils of hatred and prejudice  – remain ingrained parts of both our physical and metaphysical existence; for these reasons, among others, Frankenstein has been a fixture in popular culture since before doctor and monster first appeared onscreen over a century ago.

Much like any other figure of comparable standing in popular culture, there’s really no such thing as a “definitive” Frankenstein.  Having been adapted and reimagined repeatedly so many times over the years, no one version of either Frankenstein and/or the Creature/Monster ever made or yet to be made will ever manage to be everything to everyone. And thank God for that, because a big part of the fun and fascination of Frankenstein for me since I first discovered the story at age 7 is the sheer variety of ways that the story can be told, again and again and again.  Needless to say, though, some versions are certainly better than others, and some are more horrible that anything any mad scientist could ever slap together.

Some caveats: this is not meant to be an exhaustive oveview of all Frankenstein movies, but merely a selected survey of significant films, made for both film and television, that fall within the parameters of mainstream moviemaking.  I also tried to keep it limited to films that were direct interpretations of the archetypal Frankenstein story, and not postmodern variations of it.  Therefore, there’s no I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Frankenhooker, or that Japanese-made Battle of the Gargantuas prequel that saw a four-hundred foot Frankenstein monster defending the Earth from equally large alien menaces (that last one was, of course, a painful omission).  Also, no Re-Animator­ (okay…that one actually was a painful omission – I <heart> Jeffrey Coombs).

And by the way, I’m not one of those people who get all hung up on how referring to the Monster as “Frankenstein” is incorrect; sons, after all, generally take their fathers’ names…

Now then, let’s all follow the call of nature and raise a toast to Gods and Monsters…and away we go…

Frankenstein (1910)

Charles Stanton Ogle was the first person to play the Frankenstein Monster on screen in a version produced by the Edison Company. Any similarities to a giant carrot are completely coincidental.

This Edison Film Company production, the first known screen version of Frankenstein, represents more of an interesting curio than a compelling work of cinema (at least by modern standards). Running approximately 10 minutes in length, the movie featured Charles Ogle as the Creature and Augustus Philips as Victor Frankenstein and, like most films of its time, was shot very much in static tableaux, without close-ups and with nearly every scene described beforehand by title cards (for example: “TWO YEARS LATER FRANKENSTEIN HAS DISCOVERED THE MYSTERY OF LIFE”).  Still, it isn’t without its points of interest; Ogle cuts a particularly grotesque figure as the Creature and the creation sequence is an intriguing example of early cinema “trick film” special effects.  Also, rather tellingly given the censorship issues that later versions would run into, there’s virtually no direct indication here that Frankenstein made his monster out of dead bodies; here the Creature is created through entirely chemical means.

Frankenstein Factoid: The Edison Frankenstein was, for many years, thought to be a lost film, meaning that there were no copies believed left in existence; a viable, viewable version wasn’t discovered until the 1970s, and it wasn’t until just a few years ago that the movie became widely available via online viewing (which can be done here).  The only other two known silent film versions of the story, 1915’s Life Without Soul and 1922’s Italian produced Il Mostro di Frankenstein are, tragically, still classified as lost.

Frankenstein (1931)

It’s honestly hard to think of too much to say about James Whale’s iconic film version of Frankenstein, or the legendary performance by Boris Karloff that anchors it, that hasn’t already been said elsewhere and often. Needless to say, Karloff’s embodiment of the Frankenstein Monster, as well as Jack Pierce’s pioneering make-up design, has become the prevailing image of the Creature in the popular imagination, and the one by which all later versions are inevitably compared.

The film’s story only bears a passing resemblance to Shelley’s original novel, and actually owes far more to over a century’s worth of theatrical adaptations: Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), a brilliant young medical student, assembles a man from the bodies of the dead, but after accidentally implanting a criminal brain into his misshapen and deformed new creation, discovers that his best laid plans have yielded an inhuman monster.  Instead of the eloquent, philosophical figure of the original novel, the film’s Monster is a mute creature with an undeveloped intellect, yet one no less tragic than his literary forbear. While Karloff was genuinely terrifying to audiences at the time, a large part of why his Monster still works so well today lies in the fact that he’s more pitiable and sympathetic than genuinely monstrous.  Though Jack Pierce deserves worlds of credit for devising and executing the Monster’s unforgettable look, it was what Karloff did with movements, gestures, grunts, growls, wails, and whines that made his Monster the one for the ages.

In the role that made him both a star and a legend, Boris Karloff gave the world a Frankenstein Monster against which all Monsters would be compared.

Universal’s Frankenstein was defined by more than just Karloff’s monster, however; Colin Clive’s performance as the occasionally manic Dr. Frankenstein also set the gold standard for mad scientists, and his iconic “It’s alive! It’s alive!” may be some of the most famous lines in Hollywood history.   In addition, James Whale, though only beginning his career as a film director, also displayed outstanding visual flair, expertly using close-ups and depth of staging as well as an aesthetic buoyed by a heavy influence of German expressionism.  Overall, the film, like Tod Browning’s Dracula before it, not only helped establish the beginnings of the Universal Horror legacy but of horror movies in general.

“It’s alive! It’s alive!” Both manic and eloquent, Colin Clive set the standard for mad scientists in the movies.

While I love the movie, it certainly isn’t perfect. Its threadbare story doesn’t maintain over the course of the film and is fraught with contrivances; for some it’s also a little stilted by modern standards and many have criticized its lack of a musical score, though I personally think it uses ambient sound and minimalism brilliantly at times.  In addition, the comic relief, especially from Dr. Frankenstein’s father – the curmudgeonly Baron – feels awkward, dated, and out-of-place.  These are all negligible flaws, however, and one certainly can’t argue with either success or legacy.  No Frankenstein film, and few films in general, has ever had the cultural footprint of this one, and more likely than not, no other one ever will.

A scene that from “Frankenstein” that was later edited for content; personally, I always felt that the edited version, which left more to the imagination, was significantly more effective.

Frankenstein Factoid:  Though again, not terrifying or eyebrow-raising by today’s standards, Frankenstein ran into serious problems with censors all over the country, and in many areas its main release cut was significantly edited by local censorship groups.  When it was rereleased in 1938, after the implementation of the Production Code and the Hayes office, Universal made some notable cuts to the film, including the famous sequence of the Monster throwing a little girl into a river and Frankenstein’s notoriously blasphemous line “In the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God!”  Most of the cuts were restored to the film in the 1980s, though the “God” line wasn’t actually restored until Frankenstein was first released on DVD in 1999.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

The Monster and his Bride – Boris Karloff and Elsa Lancaster made for a brief but unforgettable couple.

Again, one of the most oft-analyzed films of Classical Hollywood – especially by queer theorists, due to it being openly gay director James Whale’s magnum opus – it’s hard to even find platitudes and insights for this movie that wouldn’t feel recycled.  Simply put, The Bride of Frankenstein stands as one of the greatest sequels in Hollywood history and one of the greatest horror movies of all time; it’s undeniably the best Frankenstein movie. Again, despite a prologue featuring Mary Shelley (Elsa Lancaster, who also doubles as the Bride), the film has only a passing resemblance to the book: picking up on where the first film left off, Dr. Frankenstein (Clive), after barely surviving his showdown with the Monster, is lured back into the practice of playing God (“…if you prefer your Bible stories…”) by the nefarious Dr. Pretorius (an unforgettable Ernest Thesiger), this time with the idea of creating a woman.  Unfortunately for Frankenstein (and well, pretty much everybody), his original creation, angrier and even more disfigured than before, also survives, and is now demanding a mate.  Literally, in fact, for the Monster has learned to speak…

The Monster speaks! “The Bride of Frankenstein” gave Karloff greater leeway in developing the Monster’s character – in my opinion, it stands as his best individual performance.

The Bride of Frankenstein is everything that we’ve forgotten a sequel is actually supposed to be: an improvement over the original in every conceivable way.  As a filmmaker Whale had grown leaps and bounds since the first film, and here was operating in the prime of his creative powers. The script, credited to William Hurlbut, was significantly more brilliant and layered, and the performances across the board were a class above just about anything in the original – even Karloff’s, as the Monster’s new verbal capabilities gave his performance as the Monster an extra dimension, as did Jack Pierce’s more refined and detailed make-up.  As good as Karloff is, it’s Thesiger who steals the movie as the flamboyantly Mephistophelean Pretorius. The film also more expertly combined a dark, sardonic sense of black humor far more organically than the first film did, making Bride a sometimes hilarious parody of itself. Finally, filling a void that many felt hurt the first film is Franz Waxman’s musical store, an expert blend of harmonic character motifs – kind of like if Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was reinterpreted by Wagner.  All told, the film is so brilliantly done that you won’t even mind that when the actual Bride shows up – SPOILER WARNING – she really doesn’t do much of note.

Ernest Thesiger as the unforgettably evil – and hilarious – Dr. Septimus Pretorius, surrounded by a number of his own “creations.”

Queer theorists have gone back and forth about how much overtly gay subtext is actually apparent in the film, but there’s no doubt that The Bride of Frankenstein was an early example of camp humor in mainstream Hollywood film – mostly through Thesiger’s wonderfully outrageous performance and dialogue.  The movie is also amazingly rife with subversive imagery and dialogue, especially in regards to popular Christianity, and much like the first film, ran into major trouble with the censors because of it.

This scene, where the Monster is posed in similar fashion to Christ at the crucifixion, was one of the more subversive images that were snuck past the censors in “The Bride of Frankenstein.”

Frankenstein Factoid: Whale, though best known for the Frankenstein films, was also significant for being the first openly gay director in Hollywood history.  Though his career was comparatively short, he was also responsible for the Invisible Man (1933) and what many consider the definitive film version of the musical Showboat (1936).  Though popular legend states that his openness about his sexuality led to the end of his career, the truth is that he simply grew disillusioned with Hollywood after Universal significantly edited one of his films and had invested wisely enough by that point that he never needed to actually work again.

The Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Pictured left to right: Bela Lugosi as Ygor, Boris Karloff as the Monster, and Basil Rathbone as the Son of Frankenstein.

The third of Universal’s Frankenstein movies and the last to star Karloff as the Monster, this marked the beginning of a resurgence in the studio’s horror output after the company changed ownership in the late 1930s (and after a very successful re-release of both Dracula and Frankenstein). Unfortunately, The Son of Frankenstein had almost no continuity with the earlier films and the Monster regressed from a being a tragic, sympathetic creature into a hulking, homicidal brute (though he has a few nice human moments). After being raised abroad, the adult son of the original Dr. Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) returns to his ancestral home with his wife and young son, only to receive a chilly reception from the locals, led by Krogh (Lionel Atwill), the local constable who lost his arm during one of the Monster’s original rampages.  Despite this, it’s not long before Frankenstein Jr. is again bitten by the Monster bug and tries to bring his father’s creation back to full power.  The Monster, though, will only do the bidding of the homicidal Ygor (Bela Lugosi), a convicted killer with a permanently broken neck looking for revenge on the villagers who tried to hang him…

The Son of Frankenstein is well liked by many, and was certainly the best of the Universal Frankenstein films that followed (which isn’t saying that much), but I’ve honestly never been a huge fan of it.  Rathbone gives one of his most bland and forced performances as the eponymous lead, and the Monster playing second fiddle to Ygor (who, it should be noted, wasn’t the hunchbacked lab assistant commonly portrayed throughout pop culture) was just a little too steep a fall from The Bride of Frankenstein for my tastes. The film does have some nice, creepy, and even poignant moments, and features good performances from Karloff, Lugosi, and Atwill.  Karloff left the series at this point of his own accord, feeling that the Monster he made famous had descended into caricature; Universal’s subsequent films would prove him to be correct.

Frankenstein Factoid:  Though it’s hard to completely know where truth ends and apocrypha begins, it’s been well established by film historians and the Universal archives that the part of the Monster in the original Frankenstein was earmarked for Lugosi, under director Robert Florey. Supposedly, there was even a screen test done of Lugosi in some protean Monster make-up; though there have been reasons floated around over the years, mainly stating that Lugosi turned it down, the exact reason both he and Florey were removed from the project still remains a point of conjecture.  Also, in contrast to popular belief, and perpetuated by Tim Burton’s heavily fictionalized Ed Wood, Karloff and Lugosi, while not close friends, weren’t staunch rivals and always got along professionally; including the Son of Frankenstein, the two starred in eight films together.

The Later Universal Films – The B Movies

From “The House of Frankenstein” – Glenn Strange as the Monster and Boris Karloff as the film’s mad scientist, Dr. Niemann.

Besides being Karloff’s farewell to the Monster, The Son of Frankenstein was also the last of the original Universal Frankenstein movies to be considered an “A” movie.  All subsequent movies, with the exception of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein were “B” movies with generally very little continuity, if any, from picture to picture. The first of the sequels was The Ghost of Frankenstein, which featured Ygor and the Monster (now played by Lon Chaney, Jr.) seeking out another of Frankenstein’s sons (Cedric Hardwicke) to restore the Monster to health.  Spurred on by a visitation from his father’s ghost (also Hardwicke), the good Doctor decides to help the Monster through brain surgery, which goes pretty much as well as it did the first time around.  It wasn’t a horrible movie, and indeed had some fun ideas, but Chaney never really worked as the Monster. This was followed by Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which featured Larry “The Wolf Man” Talbot (Chaney) inadvertently freeing the Monster (now played by Lugosi) while searching for a cure for his lycanthropy.  The first part of the movie with the Wolf Man dealing with his resurrection from the dead is pretty good stuff, but the second half with Lugosi and the final clash between the two monsters is a major letdown.  The last two of the proper Universal Monster movies, The House of Frankenstein and The House of Dracula, derisively referred to by Boris Karloff as “monster clambakes,” were pretty much badly written, uninspired, cobbled-together cash-ins by Universal with Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Monster, now played by Western actor Glenn Strange; Karloff himself  played the Mad Scientist, named Niemann, in The House of Frankenstein, but refused to come back for its follow-up.  The original Universal Monster era wrapped up on something of a strong note with the Abbott and Costello movie, which again featured Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Strange again playing the Frankenstein Monster in comedic hijinx with the titular comedy duo.  Though widely considered the best of the Abbott and Costello movies, it also perfectly symbolized how Frankenstein had descended so completely into being hackneyed, jokey cliché.

Lugosi in close-up during his only appearance as the Frankenstein Monster in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.”

Frankenstein Factoid: SPOILER WARNING –In the original cut of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man the Monster was originally supposed to be able to speak, carrying through on the fact that Ygor’s brain was transplanted into the Monster’s body at the end of The Ghost of Frankenstein; this led to the Monster speaking with Ygor’s voice, but being rendered blind in the process. This was the main reason why Lugosi, despite being 60 at the time of the film’s production, was cast as the Monster in Meets the Wolf Man. When the Lugosi-accented Monster provoked laughter from test audiences, the film was reedited to remove any references to the Monster’s blindness or speech.  As a result, most of Lugosi’s performance was actually relegated to the cutting room floor and many of the Monster’s surviving scenes are represented by stand-ins since Lugosi, due to age, was unable to perform in many of the film’s more physically taxing scenes.  Because of this, the cliché of the Monster being a clumsy brute that walks about with arms outstretched stems from the film’s surviving footage of Lugosi playing a blinded Monster.

The Hammer Frankenstein Series (1957-1974)

The Hammer “Frankenstein” films were focused on the mad experiments of Dr. Frankenstein instead of a reccuring Monster.

In the 1950s, horror movies took a marked turn away from the Gothic and supernatural towards hokey science fiction, most notably in the form of oversized monsters created predominantly by nuclear energy and directly fueled by popular paranoia over the emergence of atomic weaponry (and/or Communism).  In the United States this came in the form of “giant bug” movies like Them! and nuclear accident films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and in Japan through the emergence of the kaiju genre (most notably Godzilla).  Over in Europe, however, midlevel studio Hammer Film Productions, looking to fill a void in the marketplace conceived the idea of recreating Frankenstein for a new generation.  As a way of separating their film from the earlier versions, and to avoid a lawsuit from Universal, Hammer presented a radically different take on the Frankenstein mythos.  Instead of black and white movies dependent on the implication of horror and gore, the Hammer films were shot in vibrant color with depictions of violence, gore, and sexuality far more explicit than just about anything seen in movies before (though still tame by modern standards). The Hammer Frankensteins had an even more primary difference from Universal’s: while the latter told of the story of the man but focused on the Monster, in the Hammer films, the Man was the Monster.

“The Man as the Monster.” Peter Cushing, who played Dr. Frankenstein in all but one of the Hammer series, played the mad scientist as ruthless sociopath with a severe God complex.

As played by the dynamic Hammer stalwart Peter Cushing, Baron Victor Frankenstein wasn’t the misguided but ultimately noble leading man that Colin Clive and Basil Rathbone played two decades earlier, but an often evil, ruthless, murderous, yet occasionally charming sociopath with a God complex who never let issues of ethics, morals, conscience, or the sanctity of human life get in the way of his scientific ambitions.  Cushing played the scurrilous Baron in six out of the seven Hammer Frankenstein films, beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Hammer’s extremely loose adaptation of Shelley’s novel. Curse pretty much was a basic retelling of the archetypal Frankenstein story and honestly wasn’t a terrific movie now or then, though it’s undeniably compelling with a level of craftsmanship that completely belied what was actually a very small budget.  Christopher Lee played a creepy, albeit one-dimensional, Monster, the only time he did so, and the film packs a few nice jolts.  Its importance to the history of horror film can’t be understated, however; under director Terrence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, the film defined what is, to this day, regarded as the “Hammer style,” and its tremendous success in both the U.S. and Europe led to a resurgence of the subgenre of Gothic horror, and a return to prominence of Frankenstein and other classically influenced movie monsters.

From “The Curse of Frankenstein,” Christopher Lee in his only appearance as the Creature; though Lee was a very solid and scary monster, he detested the make-up and found the scope of the performance to be too limiting for his tastes.

While I’m certainly someone who enjoys the films for what they are, it needs to be said that none of the Hammer Frankenstein films were especially great, or even very good.  In all, the series was frustratingly defined by very intriguing ideas executed with often little ambition (and being fair, low budgets) and displaying very little continuity from film to film.  Even the Baron, though more or less a consistently right bastard, could vary in the degrees of his evil, appearing as well-meaning but aloof in one film (Frankenstein Created Woman) and then being a blackmailing rapist and murderer in the next (Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed).  To the series’ credit, though, not every film involved the mad scientist trying to create some kind of cadaverous ogre; very typically the films centered on Frankenstein involving normal, well-meaning people in his potentially ground breaking but morally dubious experiments, which could center on things like brain transplantation or capturing the human soul, only to have something horrible go wrong.  In fact, the best films in the series, in my opinion, were the ones that didn’t involve a stereotypical monster.

In the Hammer films, Baron Frankenstein wasn’t always trying to create a cadaverous ogre, as this image from “Frankenstein Created Woman” clearly demonstrates.

It’s been a pretty general consensus that the best of the Hammer Frankensteins was the second film, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), which, par the course for the series, centered on a compelling and thought-provoking science fiction concept: the Baron transferring the brain of his deformed lab assistant, willingly, into a newly created “perfect” body.  What set it above the others was that it carried through on the idea rather effectively, and without blissfully ignoring the philosophical implications of its story.  My choice for worst of the series would be The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), the only film to not star Cushing, which was a lousy parody-remake of Curse.  The series also featured The Evil of Frankenstein, and the final film in the series, 1974’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, essentially helped marked the end of the Hammer Horror cycle.

Though Hammer’s Frankenstein films are notable for reigniting interest in Gothic horror after years of atomic-fueled ants, lizards, spiders, and the like, Baron Frankenstein, a brilliant scientist willing to push the boundaries of scientific discovery no matter how devastating the cost, may very well have been as potent an allegory for nuclear terror as any atomic monster…

Hammer’s Baron Frankenstein may not have been fifty feet tall or radioactive, but his personficiation of unchecked scientific ambition reflected the nuclear paranoia of the time.

Frankenstein Factoid:  The Monsters in the final two series entries, Horror and Monster from Hell, were both played by the then six-and-a-half foot tall David Prowse, who would later go on to play the physical role of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars  trilogy (opposite Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin).

Frankenstein 1970 (1958)

Directed by independent producer Howard Koch, this attempt at a futuristic Frankenstein movie represented Boris Karloff’s return to the subject after almost fifteen years; this time, though, it was as the original Dr. Frankenstein’s grandson now trying to use atomic energy to create his own Monster.  To finance this, he rents out his ancestral castle to a visiting film production, which only leads me to rationalize that someone somewhere thought fissionable material would have been shockingly cheap by the time 1970 came around.  A spectacularly bad movie, and enjoyed by some for that very reason, this was one of the worst films of Karloff’s career; there is an intriguing idea mixed in here and there, and one of them – Dr. Frankenstein being tortured by the Nazis for refusing to help them – actually informed one of my own unsold movie pitches many years ago.

Frankenstein Factoid: The real man behind the cinema legend of Boris Karloff, or Karloff the Uncanny as he was known during the heights of his popularity, wasn’t actually named “Boris Karloff.”  Karloff’s real name was William Henry Pratt, and he was, from all accounts, a very proper Englishman who would sometimes hold up filming so he could enjoy his afternoon tea.  Though there have been numerous theories posited over the years, some by Karloff himself, there has never been a definite account of the origin of the distinctive stage name; Karloff himself had neither Russian nor other Slavic ancestry, being of Anglo-Indian heritage.

Frankenstein (1973)

This was a made-for-television adaptation of the Frankenstein story that was produced and co-written by Dan Curtis, creator of the Dark Shadows TV series and the original Night Stalker films, that first aired in two parts on ABC television back in January 1973.  Though produced on video instead of film, thus making it look very inauthentic, unrealistic, and dated, this is actually a pretty good adaptation, with the meat of the story dynamics derived faithfully from Shelley’s novel.  Robert Farnsworth played Victor Frankenstein as a very conflicted soul, with Swedish-American actor Bo Svenson giving a sensitive performance as the Creature.  This was actually one of the first Frankenstein adaptations in the United States to hew closely to the original source material, presenting the Creature as an entirely sympathetic figure and the Doctor as the one who, despite his best intentions, was largely in the wrong.

Frankenstein Factoid:  While the common image, informed heavily by Karloff, is that Frankenstein’s creation was a lumbering patchwork ogre of limited intelligence and, at best, childlike speech patterns, Shelley’s original conception was of an unnaturally athletic giant with a brilliant, philosophical mind who could and would quote from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton.  In some respects, Svenson was a strong choice to play the part; according to his IMDB bio, during the early 1970s he was a PhD. candidate in Metaphysics at UCLA after spending six years serving in the United States Marine Corps.

Andy Warhol’s (Flesh for) Frankenstein (1973)

Pictured: Serbians.

In some respects the culmination of years of Z-grade, low budget, sleazy Frankenstein films made both in the United States and Europe, this gory, oversexed, and terminallly weird version of the story centers on the mad scientist (Udo Kier) trying to propagate a Serbian master race (Serbian?) by creating the perfect Serbian male and female from a plethora of body parts (assumedly Serbian body parts).  Irritated that his male isn’t interested in getting his freak on, Frankenstein murders a local man for his brain, mistaking him for the local stud (Joe Dallesandro), who then comes looking for payback.  Plotted almost entirely like a bad, bad porno (and that’s by pornography’s standards), this film understandably received an X rating when it was first released back in the 1970s; many shorter, edited versions also exist, hence the movie’s imprecise name. Even by today’s standards, this remains a colossally disgusting waste of time; case in point, there’s a scene where Dr. Frankenstein has sexual intercourse with his female creature’s open wounds (I don’t think Serbians do that).  The movie does have a cult following, but trust me…that’s not a cult you want to join.  Andy Warhol, by the way, was one of the film’s producers; it was actually directed by associate Paul Morrissey.  It was also originally shown in 3D, demonstrating that gross misuse of the format is hardly a new phenomenon.

Dr. Frankenstein really, really likes his Serbians.

Frankenstein Factoid:  Andy Warhol, besides having been the iconic head of the Pop Art Movement, was also known for his role in how we define modern celebrity, running in circles with many actual and aspiring celebrities between the 1960s and the 1980s.   Mary Shelley herself ran in similar circles in her day, associating briefly with the notorious George Gordon Byron, known better as Lord Byron, who many regard as history’s first international celebrity.

Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)

Capping off a busy year for Frankenstein adaptations was this prestige-style British-made version that aired on NBC in the fall of 1973.  Title notwithstanding, and in contrast to a prologue by star James Mason, this was not a faithful adaptation of the novel but more an extremely revisionist variation on its core ideas and its set pieces, as well as the Hammer films.  In this version, the young Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting), traumatized from his brother’s drowning and seeking to discover the mysteries of life and death, falls under the spell of two scientists, the iconoclastic Dr. Clerval (David McCallum) and the villainous Dr. Polidori (Mason).  With Clerval’s help and, after his sudden death, his brain, Frankenstein brings his creation to life; in this version, though, Frankenstein actually does create the perfect man, played by the “beautiful” Michael Sarrazin, and tries to help him adjust to civilian life. Of course, their “happy home” doesn’t last once the process begins reversing itself, gradually turning Frankenstein’s living Adonis into a deformed, walking corpse…

“Beautiful.” Michael Sarrazin during his first appearance as Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature in “Frankenstein: The True Story,” which presented an entirely different take on the Creator-Creature dynamic.

Though due in no small part to its unique creator-creation dynamics, this ranks as one of the most fascinating Frankenstein films yet made, incorporating many of the ideas that were explicitly introduced in the Hammer films but carrying them through into a compelling narrative that explores their implications. It’s also features a very pronounced queer subtext – not surprising as it was co-written by Christopher Isherwood.  In this case, the relationship between Frankenstein and his creation isn’t one of parent-and-child but a domestic partnership; Frankenstein is also turned away from the heteronormativity of his fiancé and family life at the behest of Clerval and then Polidori, and after initially embracing his Creature he ultimately rejects it after its looks begin to rapidly fade.  Indeed, one of the unintentionally eerier elements of the film comes in the fact that the Creature’s early disintegration very closely resembles that of the late stage AIDS victims who began emerging in the gay community about ten years later.

Beauty fades, as Sarrazin’s Creature steadily decomposes over the course of the film.

Frankenstein: The True Story does have some marked flaws: at nearly three hours in length, it’s very overlong and the actual character of Frankenstein is far, far too passive in the overall story.  It also runs far afield from what many would expect from a Frankenstein movie, and at times seems much more like a costumed melodrama than horror movie.  Still, besides its intriguing take on the tale, it boasts a fantastic cast, supported by John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Agnes Moorehead, and Tom Baker in minor roles, and Jane Seymour as a very evil incarnation of the Bride.  Somewhat forgotten and overlooked by many Frankenstein and horror aficionados, this version represented an important step in the popular perception of Frankenstein as something more high brow than the B-movie clichés that had been perpetrated in the previous decades.

Frankenstein Factoid: The character played by James Mason, Dr. Polidori, was not in Shelley’s novel, but his name was taken from one of her known associates, Dr. John Polidori.  Polidori was the friend and personal physician of Lord Byron, but is better known today as the writer of The Vampyre, a short story widely regarded as the progenitor of all vampire fiction. 

Young Frankenstein (1975)

Frankenstein and his Monster (Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle), performing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in “Young Frankenstein.”

For me, Young Frankenstein was the film that actually spawned my love of Frankenstein movies; it was the first one I ever saw, and my enjoyment of it prompted my father to rent Frankenstein for me, which itself was the first “classic” movie I ever saw.  In the broader scheme of things, however, Young Frankenstein represents one of the best spoofs ever made and director and comedy legend Mel Brooks’s best film.  Heavily inspired by the plot and iconography of The Son of Frankenstein, right down to being shot in black and white, it tells of Friedrich Frankenstein (pronounced Frahnc-en-steen), played by Gene Wilder (who co-wrote the script with Brooks), who returns home after spending his professional career running from his family’s infamy.  It’s not long, of course, before young Frankenstein, along with his curvaceous lab assistant Inga (Teri Garr) and (supposedly) hunchbacked henchman Igor (Marty Feldman), gets around to making a monster of his own (Peter Boyle), though with results more hilarious than horrific.

A big reason why Young Frankenstein works so well and is so well regarded is because it’s obviously made with great love and admiration for its source material, with its humor drawn much more from its story, characters, and dialogue than out of any misplaced animosity towards old Frankenstein movies.  In fact, take out its gags and humor and this could have very well been a classic straight Frankenstein movie, making it not only one of the best comedies of all time, but one of the best versions of Frankenstein ever made.

One of the reasons “Young Frankenstein” works so well is that it is, first and foremost, a “Frankenstein” movie.

Frankenstein Factoid:  While looking to replicate the electrical equipment used in the laboratory in the original Universal Frankenstein, the producers got in touch with Kenneth Strickfaden, the electrical engineer and set designer who crafted the various devices in the original film.  By an amazing stroke of luck, Strickfaden still owned many of the quirky devices used for the original film, and they thus were used again in the laboratory in Young Frankenstein.

The Terror of Frankenstein (AKA Victor Frankenstein) (1976)

Because nothing truly puts terror in one’s heart like BLACK LIPSTICK…Per Oscarsson’s forgettable take on the Creature.

An Irish-Swedish co-production, this obscure film is an extremely faithful interpretation of the original novel (even though they misspell Mary Shelley’s name in the credits), but suffers from very low production values, a bland visual style, and some brutally insipid performances.  This version of the Creature (played by Per Oscarsson) is also particularly lame, being neither terrifying nor even remotely convincing; he isn’t even ugly enough to be believably scary.  Nothing really to see here, but it might be interesting for die-hard fans or admirers of the novel, and it’s readily available on both Youtube and Hulu.

Frankenstein Factoid: There’s a very good reason why many Frankenstein features, despite being adaptations of the original novel, have to be titled something other than simply Frankenstein: while the novel is in the public domain, Universal owns the rights to Frankenstein as a feature film title. Ergo, Hammer, for instance, had to title its version The Curse of Frankenstein and this version was entitled The Terror of Frankenstein.

The Bride (1985)

“The Bride” was a failed attempt to do a revisionist remake of  ”The Bride of Frankenstein” for the post-feminist era.

This unofficial remake/sequel to The Bride of Frankenstein isn’t as bad a film as its reputation would suggest, but what’s bad about it…is still plenty bad.  Essentially beginning where the earlier film ended, Baron Frankenstein (Sting) brings his latest creation, a female companion (Jennifer Beals) for his Creature (Clancy Brown) to life.  Struck by the Bride’s beauty, the Baron reneges on his deal, leaving the heartbroken Creature for dead in the ruins of his laboratory.  He then takes the Bride under his wing, intending to make her the epitome of a new, liberated woman, only to eventually try to possess her as his own.  Meanwhile, the Creature, surviving his ordeal, meets a precocious circus dwarf (David Rappaport), who befriends the lost soul and teaches him self-respect. In the end, The Bride proves to be a shining example of a great idea, badly botched.  The main concept behind the Bride’s part of the story, where a man’s desire for a free-thinking woman gets ultimately undone by his own hypocrisy, is a very compelling dynamic, but it’s ultimately ruined by portraying the Bride as a sniveling damsel whose idea of liberation involves little more than wanting to have sex with other chauvinist pigs.  It doesn’t help any that both Sting and Beals are pretty lousy in their roles.  The portion of the film with Brown and Rappaport, on the other hand, is terrific, and deserved to be part of a better film. The movie also pretty much killed Sting’s acting career, so it does have that going for it, too.  In addition, the supporting cast featured a young Timothy Spall as the Baron’s hunchback assistant and, in a cute touch, gay icon Quentin Crisp briefly paying homage to earlier gay icon Ernest Thesiger’s role from the original Bride.

The main subplot of “The Bride,” centered on the Creature (Clancy Brown) befriending a precocious circus dwarf (David Rappaport), gives an otherwise lousy movie real heart.

Frankenstein Factoid: In another very nice tribute, the name of Rappaport’s dwarf character was named “Rinaldo” after Frederic I. Rinaldo, the screenwriter of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, who was retired in the early 1950s as a result of the Hollywood Blacklist.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

From “Frankenstein Unbound,” Raul Julia as Victor Frankenstein and Nick Brimble as a particularly deformed Monster.

This bizarre but very watchable mash up of science fiction, horror, and art film represented legendary director/producer Roger Corman’s return to the director’s chair after almost twenty years, and has, to date, been his final feature film.   The movie stars John Hurt as a scientist from the future who finds his attempt to cause world peace by creating the ultimate weapon undermined when it causes strange “time slips” across the globe.  After being sucked into one of these time slips, the scientist finds himself taken back to 1817 Switzerland, where he runs into  a coldblooded scientist named Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia), a young, aspiring author soon to be known as Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda), and a very dangerous Monster (Nick Brimble).  Neat concept, but the movie is pretty much a shaggy dog story, with a lot of interesting elements that fail to lead to anything especially coherent.  Still, there are some very strong performances and its core theme, that we’ve become so irresponsible in regards to our own scientific progress that our own creations threaten to destroy our very world, ultimately carries it through.

Frankenstein Factoid: The title of Frankenstein Unbound is taken from the famous closet play Prometheus Unbound by the poet Percy Shelley (husband of Mary), and incorporated a similar theme of mankind, for better or worse, overthrowing its creator.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

If you head into seeing “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” with high expectations, then as the tagline states: Be Warned.

I remember vividly when, back in 1994, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein arrived in theaters buoyed by a great deal of advanced hype from Frankenstein fans.  There had never been a faithful, big budget theatrical version of the Shelley novel up to that point, and this was coming off the heels of the very successful and admired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which provided a very invigorated and fresh adaptation of a stale character. Adding to the hype was that the legendary Robert De Niro was going to be playing the Creature and Kenneth Branagh, who as an actor/director was hyped at the time as being either the next Laurence Olivier or Orson Welles, would be serving as both the film’s director as well as its Victor Frankenstein.  Unfortunately, the end result was a massive letdown both critically and commercially, and one that pretty much derailed Branagh’s career.

Robert De Niro’s Creature gets an “A” for effort, but he just wasn’t suited to the character; the fact that he’s not especially large or terrifying didn’t help matters.

I’ve always been of mixed feelings on the movie itself. I still do enjoy it and find it to be a compelling telling of the story, but there can be no doubt that as a film it absolutely collapses under its numerous flaws.  While Branagh was, at the time, highly regarded for bringing vibrancy to his Shakespeare adaptations, he was also highly superficial in his treatment of their core themes.  In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein he took largely the same approach, but this time overcompensated ridiculously for what he clearly didn’t think was a dynamic enough story on its own.  The film’s constantly moving camera is thoroughly obnoxious, and its breakneck pacing pretty much has the opposite effect of what was intended, causing everything in the film to lack urgency or otherwise stand out.

Kenneth Branagh “played God” as both Frankenstein in front of the camera and the director behind it; the failure of the film was a major setback to what was, at the time, a very promising career.

From an acting perspective, Branagh was quite good as Frankenstein, and some of the supporting performances were solid (even if the casting, such as John Cleese as Frankenstein’s troubled mentor, was occasionally bizarre).  Unfortunately, as the Creature, De Niro was completely out of his comfort zone as a performer, as his realistic Method style was ill-suited to such a fantastical character; the fact that the rest of the cast, including Branagh, came from a Classical background only caused his work to feel all the more disjointed.  The script, co-written by Frank Darabont, is mostly solid, but ends up going very, very wrong at the climax, and makes the cardinal mistake of tragedy by having the tragic figure realize the error of his ways much too early in the story, thus pretty much killing all of its subsequent narrative momentum.

Frankenstein Factoid:  Though she’s best known for Frankenstein, published when she was only 20 years old, in her lifetime Mary Shelley was a very well known, popular, and prolific author of several novels, short stories, and autobiographical pieces and articles, as well as editor of the works of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Nevertheless, even up to a few years ago, many critics and theorists often portrayed Mary Shelley as secondary in stature to both her husband Shelley and her father, the novelist and philosopher William Godwin.  Thankfully, with the rise of feminist criticism, the chauvinistic treatment of her legacy and her talent has given way to greater recognition of her abilities as a writer and greater analysis of her overall body of work.

Frankenstein (2004)

From the Hallmark Channel’s version of “Frankenstein,” Alec Newman played Victor Frankenstein, and Luke Goss played a very Goth-inspired Creature.

This version, made as a two-part miniseries for the consistently unprofitable Hallmark Channel, represents a meticulous-to-a-fault adaptation of the novel.  Ex-rocker Luke Goss plays a very emo-inspired version of the Creature and Alec Freeman a youthful Victor Frankenstein; they’re both okay, which is probably the best summation I can think of for this version of the story.  While it has some nice, literate touches in its script, and a strong supporting cast featuring Donald Sutherland and William Hurt (who steals the movie as Frankenstein’s guilt-stricken mentor), at almost three and a half hours in length it’s oppressively long; also, while shot on beautiful locations in Slovakia and Norway, it has almost no atmosphere or compelling visuals to speak of, and never manages to be especially scary nor intellectually invigorating enough to justify the time watching it.

Frankenstein Factoid: Though certainly open to interpretation, many Frankenstein scholars have speculated that the flawed character of Victor Frankenstein was heavily influenced by none other than Mary Shelley’s own husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Besides the fact that they had a tempestuous marriage, Percy Shelley, like Victor, had abandoned his child, as well as his first wife, to take up with the then Mary Godwin – his wife Harriet eventually committed suicide while pregnant with child.  Shelley would also abandon Mary many times to take up with her stepsister, even while she was pregnant with their child, and also as a student had a noted interest in electricity. As for the inspiration for the orphaned Creature, Mary may well have looked to herself: her first child with Shelley died after being born two months premature, and her own mother, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, died giving her life in 1797.

Frankenstein (2011)

As this overview has probably well-demonstrated, the best Frankenstein films have not been incredibly faithful to Shelley’s original work; while the novel is a masterpiece of subtext and symbolism, its story is highly internalized and not inherently very dramatic.  This stage version, adapted by Nick Dear and directed by Academy Award-winner Danny Boyle, which was filmed for high definition screenings in the United States, is the best actual adaptation of the novel I’ve ever seen, largely because it directly addresses those problems.  Instead of telling the entire story from the perspective of the morally ambiguous and often unsympathetic Victor Frankenstein, the first half of the play is told almost entirely from the perspective of the Creature, while the second half is then given over to Frankenstein himself.

The presentation of the Creature in this version is among the most dynamic ever, and perhaps the most three-dimensional. Following him from “birth,” the play depicts the Creature’s development from being an overgrown infant to something akin to a recovering stroke victim; in essence, he has to teach himself everything, regarding speech, motor coordination, and human interaction; in the process, he learns, painfully, about the cruelty of the world, and replies almost equally in kind.  The Doctor, in contrast, is a self-centered misanthrope incapable of caring for another human being, let alone the Creature he left abandoned.  While the play mostly follows the events of the novel, it embellishes and fleshes out many of the original novel’s subtexts and, like The Bride of Frankenstein did in 1935, infuses it with a fine vein of black humor.

In the Danny Boyle/Nick Dear adaptation of “Frankenstein,” Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller would alternate in performing Frankenstein and the Creature each night, emphasizing the inherent similarities between the two characters.

The central gimmick of the theatrical presentation was that the parts of the Creature and Creator were played by Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch, who would alternate between characters with each performance; the idea, being more than just a gimmick, has the effect of demonstrating the thin line between both damaged souls.  Having now seen both versions, I personally liked Cumberbatch as the Creature and Miller as the Doctor, but it was really just as compelling the other way around.  At present time, there are no plans to release it to DVD, though it is being shown in encore screenings in theaters across the United States until August of this year, and given Boyle’s involvement, a proper film version seems inevitable.

Frankenstein Factoid:  The dynamic of Frankenstein and his creation being mirror opposites of each other is hardly a new idea, as many theatrical versions into the early 20^th century had both Doctor and Creature dressing and even acting alike.  Also, a BBC adaptation for the series Mystery and Imagination in the late 1960s featured saw Ian Holm play dual roles as both Frankenstein and the Creature (in homage to the episode, Holm played Frankenstein’s father in Branagh’s 1994 version).

Afterword

About ten years ago, while as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, an elderly gentlemen in horned rim glasses stopped me to ask me direction to one of the buildings on campus.  As irony would have it, I had just seen the man less than 24 hours earlier, in Kevin Brownlow’s documentary Universal Horror commenting on how the original Frankenstein movie scared him to death as a kid.  That man was the great Ray Bradbury; fortunately, instead of just giving him directions, I offered to walk him to his destination.  In the process I mentioned seeing him in the documentary, which he himself hadn’t seen yet, and he seemed to light up in talking about Frankenstein, and how angry his mother got as his brother for taking him to see it.  As bad luck would have it, as I was writing this piece this week, the news came out that Ray Bradbury, bar none one of the greatest, most important, and most influential science-fiction writers of all time, passed away at age 91.  I only spent five minutes with Mr. Bradbury, but I still find it an amazing and humbling notion that I once actually got to speak with him, not about his classic novels or stories, but about something that he and I had almost equal appreciation for: Frankenstein.

In the grander scheme of things, the influence that Mary Shelley’s creation undeniably had on Mr. Bradbury, is emblematic of the effect its had on our entire popular culture.  Any story, in any medium, that tells of some scientific experiment or piece of technology gone wrong owes its debt to Frankenstein, and though here I’ve examined some of the most explicit examples of movies that sought to retell the actual story, time and again, the fact is that the piece of Frankenstein is in almost everything we watch, read, and play, and, more likely than not, probably always will be.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012.

“”It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what. The weird thing about telling someone they’re dying is it tends to focus their priorities. You find out what matters to them. What they’re willing to die for. What they’re willing to lie for.” – Gregory House, “Three Stories.” House

“I may be on the side of the angels…but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.”
-Sherlock Holmes, “The Reichenbach Fall.”  Sherlock

By Jonathan Morris, Antiscribe.com

Widely regarded as the greatest, the most influential, and certainly the most popular detective in the history of world literature, Sherlock Holmes and his appeal may just transcend that of the mystery genre itself.

You see, while the best of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were excellent mysteries centered on intriguing and compelling deductions, so much of what makes Sherlock Holmes beloved to the point of devotion for so, so many really lies in the character of the man himself.  The world’s first, and only, consulting detective has been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again, with presentations both vast and varied, but what truly makes him so undeniably interesting is that he’s so unlike any other main character you’ll find in the literature of his time, or even of most times since.  Holmes typically doesn’t strive to win the love of a girl. He’s not interested in wealth or fame or power. And only on rare occasions does he take a true interest in upholding or protecting the greater good.  He eschews relationships, despises romance, and views the righting of wrongs as less a moral imperative than a source of distraction from, at best, boredom, and, at worst, habitual drug abuse.

Despite much of this being pretty common knowledge, it remains an undervalued and unrecognized pleasure in the Holmes experience that he so easily sets aside the things we care about most: the feelings and opinions of others, the need for upward mobility and financial security, and the innate desire we all have to love and be loved.  There’s something undeniably seductive about spending time in the life of Sherlock Holmes, a man who, despite always effortlessly absorbing and analyzing every little detail in the world around him, somehow manages to live almost entirely within the comfort his own head.

In recent years, and especially over the last decade, producers, writers, and actors attempting to update Holmes for our newer, more modern, and more easily distracted era have latched on to and amplified the idea of the great detective as a misanthrope: someone who actively detests, despises, or proves utterly indifferent to the human race or the human condition. While Conan Doyle’s works presented Holmes as someone largely asocial because of his unfailing commitment to rationalism, recent adaptations have transformed him further into someone not only asocial but antisocial, changing him from an analytical thinking machine into a complete misanthrope, whose astounding ability to detect and deduce mitigates the ethical qualms we might have about finding someone who’s so ostensibly hateful of others to be just so damn likeable.

A famed statue of Sherlock Holmes erected in Edinburgh, Scotland, the birthplace of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This month presents an important time for two of the most popular modernizations of Sherlock Holmes in recent years: the BBC series Sherlock and the American medical drama House.  As House ends its eight season run as one of the world’s most popular television shows this month, the second series of Sherlock has been airing here in the United States on PBS affiliates across the country (Sherlock’s second season finale debuts stateside on May 20, while the final episode of House airs 24 hours later on May 21).  Each series, in its own way, presented its Holmes characters as misanthropes whose despicability to all was only matched by their general ability to detest, or at least be ruthlessly indifferent, to others.

Of course, they hardly represent the first Sherlocks to be this way.  Jeremy Brett’s legendarily authentic interpretation, which hit television screens on in Britain and the United States back in 1984, was always, then and now, a revelation, in no small part because his Holmes wasn’t the dashing debonair detective of earlier incarnations, but a sometimes moody, introspective, irreverent eccentric that laid bare the antisocial nature of Conan Doyle’s creation. Robert Downey, Jr.’s recent take on the Great Detective in Guy Ritchie’s two recent blockbusters also downplayed Holmes as an analytical sleuth to present an unkempt, ill-mannered, hard-living basket case who is hated almost as much by his friends as he is by his enemies. What particularly sets House and Sherlock apart from other adaptations, though, comes in the way they explored the very misanthropy that defined their detectives’ personalities, and used it to reemphasize the humanity that defined their characters.

After an amazing eight year run, where it was consistently one of the highest rated shows on television worldwide, “House” ends on May 21, 2012.

House, created by David Shore and Paul Attanasio, took the most unpleasant aspects of the Holmes character’s misanthropy, such as his dependence on drugs and his almost complete lack of human sympathy, amplified them almost to their breaking point, and then combined them all with a very successful combination of biting sarcasm and absorbing pathos.  The series related the stories of its eponymous character, Dr. Gregory House, M.D. (in other words, House = Holmes…get it?), a curmudgeonly, quick-witted jerk with no appreciation for the notion of “bedside manner” and who wasn’t above breaking every rule of medical ethics to diagnose and save a patient.  While not specifically named as such, House was a very unique and original kind of detective, one not devoted to solving crimes but diagnosing obscure medical disorders in patients by examining symptoms and determining causes.  Though it might sound to some to be a boring and mundane premise, in execution it was sometimes brilliant, as the medical afflictions that struck the various patients of the week were typically caused as much by human actions and inactions as by anything pathogenic, just like the crimes that define traditional Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

As played by Hugh Laurie, the acerbic Dr. House was not highly regarded for his bedside manner…

As brilliantly played by British Actor and Comedian Hugh Laurie, the American House was very much a modern analogue of Sherlock Holmes in not only his amazing deductive brilliance but also in his unabashed misanthropy.  In place of Watson, House’s best friend was his fellow doctor James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), a good-natured oncologist (cancer doctor) whose compassionate nature was quite nearly the antithesis of House’s.  More than just a Watson, though, House, as head of diagnostic medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital in New Jersey (it’s clearly fictional because it’s WAY too nice to be a Jersey hospital), was aided by a team of usually younger doctors who performed House’s “heavy lifting” in regards to medical procedures and patient interaction; House’s rotating team of underlings not only proved to be a source of character drama for the series, but provided the show’s writers an ideal way to discuss the issues, ethics, and conundrums at the heart of every episode’s story removed from the scope of House’s often relentless cynicism.

House’s Dr. Watson, Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) standing conspicuously outside House’s apartment.

House himself generally disliked everyone, and his deep-seeded pessimism about the nature of people informed not only his outlook on life, but also his sense of humor.  Arguably the best part of the series through its formative years what that it could be downright hilarious, as House was a master of the kinds of quips, one-liners, and put-downs that generally exposed the idiocy and hypocrisy in others while hiding and deflecting much of the internalized pain that defined him as a character.  While a Holmes surrogate (right down to a 221B house number), House was still ultimately a separate character, allowing his creators to explore his personality and give him a rich backstory that the real Holmes generally lacked: crippled a few years before the start of the series due to a misdiagnosed infarction in his leg, House walks through life not only with a pronounced limp but in a great deal of pain.  Besides spurring a recurring vicodin addiction, the trauma of the experience deeply influenced the character’s world view and fueled his cynicism about people and their motives. Often repeated and reaffirmed on the show, time and again, was House’s deeply cynical mantra that “everybody lies,” and in doing so, willingly sacrifices or maintains their own health or status in the name of preserving a falsehood.  Beneath his acrimony, though, House housed a heart of (mostly) gold, and though his need to correctly diagnose a patient was almost as much about his own obsessions as anything, he wasn’t above breaking almost any ethical or moral rule or law short of outright murder to save his patients or to help the people closest to him.

House with the first, and best, of what would be a revolving cast of Doctors in his department: Foreman (Omar Epps), Chase (Jesse Spencer), and Cameron (Jennifer Morrison).

Though it has been a consistent ratings success from its outset, and at one point officially the most popular television show in the world, House has not qualitatively been a perfect show.  Though Laurie has always generally been excellent, and notoriously passed over for an Emmy on many occasions, the show has suffered over the years from questionable casting changes, a wavering commitment to its own sense of humor, and an ongoing tension between its general formulaic style and its sometimes hackneyed story arcs.  It also must be said that while a little of House the character is never enough, a lot of both show and character could ultimately carry you a long way, and I know a few people like me, who eventually gave up on the show because the cynicism of the character and his world became just a little too exhausting.  With that said, I will most definitely be watching House take “his last bow” this Monday, and if the finale of the show arguably came a little too late in the its run, I can’t help but feel that this Monday will somehow be coming a little too soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFG79agEkyw

If being too much of a good thing had been an issue with House, the BBC series Sherlock, created by Steven Moffatt, of Doctor Who and Coupling fame, and Mark Gatiss, has mainly been defined by the notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Since its debut in 2010, Sherlock has only had two series (seasons), consisting of only three ninety-minute episodes each, with a lag between the first and second series of almost a year and a half (!).  The wait, as it was, was made all the more agonizing by the fact that the first series ended on a cliffhanger, with the modern incarnation of the great detective (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his Watson (Martin Freeman) finally confronted by the former’s nemesis: the master criminal Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott), who, it seemed, had the opportunity in to murder the Great Detective and the Good Doctor once and for all…

Clearly though, Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John (Martin Freeman), lived to sleuth another day.

Sherlock may appear at first glance as simply the latest in a particular trend of antisocial Holmeses after House and the recent Sherlock Holmes films, and that’s partially true. In truth, though, the series serves almost as the culmination of the Holmes character’s modern turn towards misanthropy, and a great deal of the show’s triumph in its second season lies in the way it not only lets the audience share in the vicarious pleasures of Holmes’s often viciously antisocial attitude, but almost turns that appeal against itself by allowing Holmes to begin realizing that it may not be Moriarty who’s his worst enemy, but himself.

Sherlock, for the uninitiated, is a retelling of the Holmes mythology told within the present day era of smart phones, net books, social networks, Wi-Fi, GPS, forensic medicine, and other hot technologies; but while the modern world in which this Holmes lives may differ from the one that informed Conan Doyle’s stories, Sherlock emphasizes wonderfully how little of the character’s appeal has actually changed in more than a century. Dr. John Watson, when introduced in the first season, is a veteran of the War in Afghanistan whose addiction to the rush of action and excitement makes him fast friends with his new flatmate: the otherwise thoroughly aloof Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective occasionally brought in by Scotland Yard’s D.I. Lestrade (Rupert Graves) to help with cases that the police can’t solve.  Sherlock is, by his own admission, a thoroughly antisocial personality and even labels himself “a high functioning sociopath” and John, who becomes his official biographer blogger, is not just his only real friend in the world but sometimes something of his handler.  Of course, due to modern sensibilities, almost everyone who meets them assumes right off the bat that they’re a couple; and in many respects, they are.  As the second season begins, the misanthropic Sherlock, thanks to Watson’s online chronicles of his adventures, has emerged from obscurity to become a completely unwilling Internet celebrity.

“The Sherlock Hat” – A major storyline in the second series involves Sherlock becoming an Internet celebrity; which, much to his consternation, involves this picture of him wearing a deerstalker hat becoming a meme.

While House used the Sherlock ethos as an inspiration for its character, Sherlock is naturally more explicit in its fidelity to Conan Doyle.  The episodes, though, are not straight adaptations of the original stories; while each one centers predominantly on one of the more famous tales, the narratives themselves are constructed on a sampled bricolage of many different Conan Doyle stories as well as homages to other famous interpretations of the great detective.  In short, Sherlock is a postmodernist’s field day.  The second series, like the first, consists of three ninety-minute episodes, and like the first series followed a set trend: the first episode was great, the third was amazing, and the middle one proved to be somewhat underwhelming.

“A Scandal in Belgravia” involves Sherlock coming face to face with one his most famous foes – the seductive Irene Adler (Lara Pulver).

The first episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia” adapts the famous Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia,” which introduced the only woman to capture Holmes’s heart and one the only people to ever outsmart him: the blackmailer Irene Adler.  Of course, in Sherlock’s modern updating, Irene Adler (Lara Pulver) has gone from being the operatic contralto and part-time courtesan of Conan Doyle’s story to being a bisexual dominatrix for the wealthy and powerful.  While dealing with his earliest frustrations with celebrity status, Sherlock is recruited by his brother Mycroft, a powerful government official, to obtain compromising digital photographs Adler has of one of the royal family.  Adler, of course, proves to be more than a match for Holmes, and enter into a contest of wills, emotions, frustrations, and flirtations as Adler preyed on Holmes’s inherent loneliness (and his inferred virginity) while Holmes tries to ferret out the larger conspiracy behind Adler’s blackmail plot. In the end, the episode was proved to be something of a remake of Billy Wilder’s classic film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and provided an excellent payoff to fans who had waited an inordinately long time for the new episode.

Sherlock and John enjoying the atmospheric scenery on the moors of Dartmoor in “The Hounds of Baskerville.”

The second episode “The Hounds of Baskerville,” adapted from the most famous and most oft-read Holmes story, was largely unremarkable stuff, with a mystery whose final solution kind of strained credulity (that was actually an issue with all of the episodes this year, but this was where it was the most egregious).  Just as in the original, Holmes and Watson are called to Dartmoor to investigate sightings of a mysterious gigantic hell hound and just as with all of the episodes, things have been heavily modernized: “Baskerville” is now a military facility, the Grimpen Mire is now the Grimpen Minefield, and Sir Henry is now Henry Knight.  Of all episodes of the series to date, however, this was the one where the modernization not only didn’t improve on the original story but fell far short of it.  Still, the awesome and humorous interplay and character development between Sherlock and John elevated it a great deal.

In “The Reichenbach Fall,” Sherlock and nemesis Jim Moriarty engage in their “final problem,” which will see the villain attack the antisocial Sherlock on both a public and private level.

Finally, saving the best for last, “The Reichenbach Fall” updated “The Final Problem” and builds up to the final epic confrontation between Sherlock and the diabolical Jim Moriarty.  More than simply looking to defeat Holmes, Moriarty tries to destroy everything Holmes has come to represent as a public figure and private person, and in the process uses Sherlock’s own antisocial behavior and disreputable reputation as a weapon against him. In the end, though, the misanthropic Sherlock is forced by the criminal mastermind into making a choice between saving himself or saving the people most important to him.  More than that, I dare not give away…certainly, anyone who knows the outcome of “The Final Problem” may have a vague idea of what happens, but in “The Reichenbach Fall,” that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

In essence, that sums up a great deal of the appeal of Sherlock as a series: not only is it a fresh, (post)modern take on a timeless character for the uninitiated, but for fans of Conan Doyle the show provides a new and fascinating presentation of old material in an invigorating new light.  At the center of it is still Holmes, with his personality mostly faithful to his original counterpart, but presented as a character defined more by his flaws and quirks than the better angels of his nature. With Cumberbatch’s star on the rise due to the series and Freeman likely to blow up thanks to the release of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit later this year, it may be a long time before we’ll see another season of Sherlock (and most reports are that said season will be the last), but what we’ve received, nevertheless, has been pretty special.

Even though House is going away forever and Sherlock will only feel like it is, the misanthropic Holmes will certainly be with us for some time to come.  Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey, Jr. will be making another Sherlock Holmes film (unfortunately), and CBS, seeing the success of Sherlock has been developing its own modern day Sherlock Holmes series, called Elementary.  The new show will star Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as a female Watson and will apparently be more direct adaptations of the Conan Doyle stories than Sherlock.  Personally speaking, I’m not optimistic about its potential; if anything, I would most be intrigued if the next great Holmes was actually a woman.  It’s always easier to portray men as misanthropists; a woman portrayed as a Holmesian genius and maladroit would not only be much more daring, but much more fascinating.  Unfortunately, given the prevalence of double standards in popular entertainment, that scenario may be a long, long way off.

“Elementary” – You don’t have to be a brilliant detective to see that this show has “disaster” written all over it.

Still, why has the modern Holmes been the misanthropic Holmes? Is it just the mischievous appeal and antisocial humor that we secretly desire to vicariously live through? Perhaps so, or perhaps it’s just the latest way the purveyors of popular culture have found to be the easiest way to portray an old character in a new way.   I think, though, that as both House and Sherlock have demonstrated, it’s the misanthropy that defines Holmes that strangely also makes him seem the most human of all of popular fiction’s great detectives.  After all, to really, truly hate the human race, one first has to be a part of it.

For readers in the United States, the latest three episodes of Sherlock can be watched on PBS.org through June 19, 2012 here.

By Andrew Golledge, Antiscribe.com

After a nearly interminable amount of hype leading up to the premiere of HBO’s new sitcom, Girls, including various pieces in New Yorker, Time Out, Rolling Stone and endless blogs, we have finally seen its much heralded arrival come and go. Other episodes have followed and there is a rough consensus: it is a well-written, well-acted television show that dares to show young women as something less than glamorous fashion models who never use the bathroom.  What we’re left with now is not so much a TV show as a debate over its inherent cultural value, one predicated not on its content, but rather on its premise.

Set in New York City, the show follows four wealthy, white women in their early twenties as they navigate living, loving, etc. And based on just this short description, two camps of appreciation have emerged: First, the show is the next step forward in how the “fairer” sex is shown; it is a detailed portrayal of realistically characterized urbanite women behaving in realistic ways towards themselves, their friends, their families and their lovers. Second, the show is a regressive narrative, exclusively showcasing privileged whiteness in the world’s most diverse city, and is essentially another cog in a media-machine that continues to white-wash an increasingly multicultural society.

There is of course right and wrong on both sides, but as is so often the case with any discussion involving race, the volume of the voices on each side has become so loud that there seems to be little actual constructive dialogue. So I am stepping in to help build the bridge.

Let’s agree on the most obvious: this is an important discussion that needs to happen more often. We are not living in a post-racial America, and how the popular media conditions us to view our fellow humans in both positive and negative lights through stereotyping is a mechanism that deserves analysis, not at the academic margins, but within the mainstream.

Let’s also agree that Girls is a fair target for inclusion within this discussion. One response I’ve noted among its supporters is a mild to moderate disbelief and/or frustration that their newly favorite show has even become involved, claiming that it’s too specific of a program to be given prominence in any larger race debate. First of all, the show is called Girls, not White Girls or Rich Girls. To label your work with an entire gender makes its inclusion fair play. Second, early supporters/fans of the show were just as broad with their initial praise, labeling it as one beneficial to the same, whole gender. It was only when the backlash grew that these same fans walked back their comments to a safer, more specific appraisal. And when the main character, played by the writer/director, states that she may be “a voice of a generation,” I don’t think anyone is in a position to complain that people are trying to understand exactly what that means. So while it’s true that programs like Mad Men, Game of Thrones, GCB or How I Met Your Mother have not been met with the same brand of criticism, they, and their fans, also didn’t do as much to invite it (that is not to say that they should be exempt from that analysis either).

Now let’s try to find more to agree on. As I wrote at the top, Girls is also very, very good. In spite of this fairly uncontroversial opinion, an unfortunate double standard has emerged in the rhetoric from the show’s harshest critics, centering on how unlikable the characters are. I have to agree on that point: the characters are unlikable. They are spoiled heiresses and can be painfully unwise, but that doesn’t necessarily make for bad television. We have tolerated childish and irresponsible antics from TV’s male protagonists from The Honeymooners to The King of Queens only to label them as “endearing” and “entertaining.” It’s a veritable genre within primetime, but place a woman in a similar position (or a similar body type for that matter) and she, and the show, is labeled as far worse for no other reason than … well, I don’t know the reason actually. If someone can be more specific about why despicable characters in a brilliant show like Seinfeld can get a pass whereas immature ones in a good one like Girls are mercilessly cut down, then please let me know.

What exactly were the redeeming qualities for this lot?

With the illegitimate reasons for disliking Girls out of the way, we can focus on the more substantial ones, and I feel that this is also where the easy agreements are no longer possible. As I see it, here’s where the show’s fans have it right. It is a step forward, and a large one at that, in how women are portrayed within fictionalized media. It’s nothing new to say that they are too often characterized as objects of desire, whether it’s as a Manic Pixie Girl, Femme Fatale, or Familial Bedrock. And this stereotyping is far from subtle; ABC alone has two shows that feature the word “Bitch” in their titles. So to have a program where all of its female characters defy easy stereotyping is not just impressive, but unique. And they have believable issues too, ones related to body image, gynecological health, emotionally abusive men, and a society that tells them how they, as the “ladies,” are expected to behave. It’s great stuff, and you’d be very hard pressed to find any other show on TV past and present to so extensively, and realistically, showcase those issues.

Now for the really large pill for critics to swallow, and I must put this as plainly as possible: the show is not offensive, neither in its premise or its execution. Lena Dunham has gone on the record and very clearly stated that she is writing from her personal experiences, and those of her staff writers. If her universe is one of privileged whiteness, than we can only accuse her of being honest, critical too, and of rejecting useless racial tokenism.

Here’s the real issue. Here’s the real reason why so many critics are angry. The problem isn’t that Girls is an entirely White show. No, the problem is that it is another entirely White show, and that is where they’re absolutely right to be angry.

For anyone who cares about fair minority representation, flipping through the channels can be a depressing thing.  As a minority myself, it can feel like I don’t exist or, worse yet, like media doesn’t want me to exist, not unless everything I am is shoehorned into an awkward, offensive stereotype. So to endlessly hear about the revolutionary Girls and see what is racially speaking more of the same is heartbreaking, but that is not Dunham’s fault. It’s the fault of the production and marketing models that so rarely allow for minorities of genuine substance to be woven into network programming. If a black writer/director tried to push a show of similar ambition with a predominantly black cast, we all know that the road to broadcast would be far longer, and probably one that dead ends before it even reached that destination. So in this sense Girls is not a problem in and of itself, but it is emblematic of a much larger one.

So critics, if you want to start encouraging a more constructive debate, start focusing on the real enemy: the system that helped Girls get on the air. Then, start focusing on the solutions. With HDV camera equipment so readily available, the ability to produce and distribute video narratives through websites like Vimeo, YouTube or Hulu is easier than ever. A film production degree is not necessary. I don’t have one, but I’ve still started dabbling in making short films, and if a meshugganah like me can put a couple of shots together somewhat cohesively, than so can anybody.

And fans, try to embrace a critical approach towards Girls and its cultural significance (as we can make it so far). So the next time you are leaning towards a knee jerk defense of the show when someone criticizes it for its lack of diversity, remember and understand that he or she is not just criticizing Girls, but the decades of offensive television programming and production that have led to its broadcast. It’s a valid criticism, and one you can share while still loving the show.

Bridge built. You’re welcome.