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GUEST EDITORIAL
(by Lisa Blanc)

 

Lisa Blanc first contributed a guest editorial for our newsletter wayyyy back in . Let's all welcome her back for another installment of her thoughts about various aspects of the Bat-universe. *FANFARE*

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"BRUCE WAYNE: The Television Show? Sources have told the Comics Continuum that WB is interesting in doing a pilot about Bruce when he is 18 and training around the world. It seems that the proposed live-action BRUCE WAYNE show has a writer. The writer slated for the series is THE IRON GIANT screenwriter Tim McCanlies. This show looks ever more possible that it could actually happen, and sooner then expected as well!" 
—BTAN editor Tim "Two-Face" Leighton, .

 

I’m sorry, call me a cynic if you will, but when I read this, I was anything but joyful.  In fact, I let out a dismayed whine as I suspect many others have or will if this comes to be.  I love Bruce, please don’t think otherwise, but this is a BAD IDEA…. Let me expand upon why.

 

First and foremost: Live action?  No more horrid words have ever echoed into the rocky precipices that form the Batcave. Batman was created with pen and paper, and that is where he should stay.  With a live action series it is inevitable that the shows will steadily lose their focus – only one in fifty episodes will deal with young Bruce’s devotion to vengeance and justice, and the other 49 will be filth and nausea.  Taking advantage of his youth and lack of supervision, writers will waste no time in turning Bruce Wayne’s crusade to another 7:00 drama for horny teenagers.  It’ll be Dawson’s Creek, except Bruce’s world travels will of course prompt the writer to supply him with a girl in every international port-of-call.  Live action shows are based on sex appeal, and cartoon images avoid that to a much greater extent.  Do I have to remind you of the appalling *ahem* anatomy shots in the last Batman movie. A show based on sex and selling advertisement space with Bruce Wayne as a pretense would nauseate me and label Batman nothing more than a sex fiend with some hobby along the lines of stopping crime when he’s not flirting.

 

Secondly: No actor, no matter how good, can ever accurately portray someone who has lived so long in two dimensions.  As a phantom created to thrive in our imaginations, Batman is intangible, tortured, and yet somehow wonderfully supernatural.  There is some essence in Bob Kane’s creation that makes him more than a man, less than a god, subject to fault yet painfully close to infallibility, and actors cannot grasp that, it seems, without having lived it themselves or being EXTREMELY gifted.  This is not the kind of talent you’re going to find in someone who must be passed off as 18 years old.  The supernatural mystique of Batman in drawn form - the way his cape sits perfectly on his shoulders, or the shadows of a bat which he sometimes casts, the perfect arch his Bat-a-rang makes, or his perfectly noiseless tread- can’t be represented by the ordinary people that actors are.  This is why the movies are written to be pathetically corny instead of true to the character.  This is why no actor can portray Bruce Wayne.

 

Finally: I imagine it will actually do me physical harm to see the Bruce Wayne I’ve grown to love transmuted into a Terry McGinnis wanna-be.  I’m sorry, but McGinnis’ character, attitude, lack of devotion - he is a poorly developed character unfit to stand next to Wayne under the title Batman.  NO TRAINING (actually that’s a separate issue I have with BB), no loyalty, and I fear (reasonably) that these traits would become mixed in with the devotion and nobility of Batman to try and somehow "average them together" and get a reasonable estimate of what Brucie would be like at a younger age.  *shudder*  To sum this up, I think that I would see bits of McGinnis in Bruce and that would make me dislike him severely, something I don’t want to do.  I look at the lack of development in McGinnis, and I sense that the same failure to present a reasonable facsimile of a Bat-in-training would exist in Young Bruce. 

 

So, sorry if I rambled, but I hope you see my point.  I think I would feel differently if this was a movie idea, and I must admit that Michael Keaton was close in character to the Bat. Still, I DO NOT like this series idea, and would be glad if I made you question it at all.

 

Good day. 
+)[it’s a smiling cyclops]