Two Minor Bat-Rants (Brants?)

1.) You've got Leno and Conan going "hey, did you hear about this new Batman movie?" and Letterman doing "Top Ten things overheard in line for the new Batman movie."

Look, I said this was a minor deal.

It IS a Batman movie the same was "Quantum of Solace" is a James Bond movie. And it sold some tickets, so it doesn't really need any free publicity anyway, I suppose.

Still, when these talk show hosts and comics and other people keep saying "I went to see Batman" my steamed reaction is "you just went to see a movie and you already can't remember the ****ing title?"

It's Dark Knight. Like in Frank Miller's well known graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns". Or, more to the point, like in the fairly well known phrase "it was a dark and stormy night."

Dark Knight. Unless you really hate words with silent letters or something... Look, it's TWO syllables. You're not saving a split second by saying Batman instead of Dark Knight, it's two ****ing syllables.

Are TV writers that peeved over the screwing they got on the strike settlement that they'll use a six letter word instead of two words adding up to eleven letters? Are they that lazy?

By the way, you know that there were already two movies called "Batman", right?

2. Oh, you've seen these articles popping up on the internet in the last day or two. Oh, it's violent, oh it's scary, did it have to be so graphic, I thought it was a comic book, I took my children blah blah blah.

I'm sorry, is this one of the country's best known fictional characters or not?

It's Batman. You know, little boy saw his PARENTS MURDERED right in front of him in a hold up attempt gone bad. Fighting a homicidal maniac whose skin was bleached when he fell into a vat of chemicals? And a former district attorney who went insane when half his face was disfigured with acid? You know, THAT Batman, Joker and Two-Face?

You know, the guy that, although he works with the police commissioner, is technically a criminal himself - an unlicensed vigilante crime-fighter. Allegedly the world's greatest detective, though his interrogation techniques largely involve beating up informants? Y'know, the crazy orphan who dresses up like a giant bat to scare people?

Violent, scary, grim, gritty, serious, downbeat? Holy illiteracy, what part about having the word DARK in the title didn't you get?

With all due respect to Adam West who did a fine job of portraying the goofy grinning friendly Batman from the comics of the '50s and '60s, but that is NOT Batman. Not the Batman of Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart, Frank Miller and Alan Moore in the '70s and '80s. And NOT the Batman of Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson in the '30s and '40s.

The Joker is not some giggling "clown prince of crime" who pulls pranks go get Batman's attention. He beat Jason "Robin" Todd unconscious with a crowbar and left him in a locked room with a ticking bomb. He shot Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon in the spine and put her in a wheelchair just to annoy her father. Yes, IN the comic books. Heck, even Nicholson's Joker used toxic Smilex gas and an acid filled squirt flower.

The Dark Knight is a dark grim movie and this surprises people? Who? The same people who get shocked every time some big budget Jesus movie comes out and they find out the hero dies in the end?

The Titanic sinks and King Kong dies, okay? And more to the point, those cartoons on [adult swim]? There's a reason the network has the ****ing word "adult" in the name.

Dark Knight has the word "Dark" in the title for a reason. It's called truth in advertising.

Cheese, some people's parents...

Oh, to continue on just a bit more on point #2...

Yes, Mom and Dad, I get that your child had the action figures and wants to see the movie. I get that the Adam West series was campy fun and Super-Friends was kids friendly and even the two Schumacher movies "Batman Forever" and "Batman and Robin" were pretty goofy.

I get that it's Batman, it's "a superhero movie" and that it's "based on a funnybook character."

Now do you get that it's rated PG-13 for a reason? That means it's questionably unsuitable for your children if they are younger than 14 years of age. If you want to take them to the movie, well, that's what "parental guidance" is all about. You go with them, sit by them, hold their hands, comfort them if they get scared, explain he parts they
don't understand to them (after the movie please, not during) and taklk to them about it afterwards - or pay for their therapy when the nightmares about boogiemen with acid scarred faces start.

"Oh, but it's a funnybook movie, it should be for kiddies."

Bull shit.

Batman first appeared in Detective comics #27 in 1939. That's 69 years ago. So if you were six years old when it came out, you're seventy-five now. I think that's old enough to see a PG-13 rated movie, okay?

Gen X and the Boomers and even part of the WWII "greatest generation" grew up with comics, so why act surprised that some of the comics grew up with us?

"Comic books aren't just for kids any more." That alarmist headline had been appearing in newspapers and magazines on a fairly regular basis since the underground comix of the late '60s and early '70s. In the late '80s there were so many explicitly sexual comics out they called it the "smut glut". Thee is even a comic book legal defense fund that raised money to pay for lawyers to defend comic book shops that get prosecuted for selling comics to adults and writers and artists who exercise their constitutional rights to free expression. Heck, in the late '80s Batman's publishers even printed "DC Comics aren't just for kids any more" on pins and gave them away free by the thousands. How'd you miss that memo?

So, parents, I'm sorry if you'll have a tough time explaining to your whining six year old why they can't have the Dark Knight DVD when it comes out. You think maybe there's a reason they didn't put "Batman" in the title?

Batman is a psychologically disturbed individual who dresses up in a frightening costume and violently attacks criminals in the dark. He belongs to the generations that grew up with him in the last seventy years. Your baby can't have him.

Go see Kung Fu Panda or Wall-E or something.