It’s a good line delivered with the maximum charm and winking self-effacement that Clooney mastered long before donning the cowl in the Joel Schumacher Bat-monstrosity. It also is very much of our current moment since the man creatively in charge of the new cinematic DC Universe, James Gunn, has similarly announced a distaste for “campy Batman.” While chatting with Rolling Stone on a wide range of DC topics, Gunn offered an intriguing morsel about how much the studio is grappling with differentiating their version of Batman from what’s come before, including Matt Reeves’ take on the Dark Knight in The Batman and the forthcoming The Batman 2 (two movies that exist outside the DCU’s purview).
“Batman has to have a reason for existing, right?” Gunn said. “Batman can’t just be ‘Oh, we’re making a Batman movie because Batman’s the biggest character in all of Warner Bros.,’ which he is. But because there’s a need for him in the DCU and a need that he’s not exactly the same as Matt’s Batman. But yet he’s not a campy Batman. I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in a funny, campy Batman, really. So we’re dealing with that.”
Without knowing exactly what Gunn has planned, it’s intriguing to notice how vocal the producer is about his resistance toward a campy Batman. After all, this is the man who made audiences fall in love with a talking raccoon and tree. Sure, Rocket and Groot had their sentimental earnestness, too, but there will never not be something slightly campy about a baby tree with the face of an angel grooving to the Jackson 5.
All of which makes me wonder if the Batman also couldn’t use a little Motown funk these days if we must return to the strange phenomenon of there being two guys playing Batman in different franchises at the same time.
To be clear, I appreciate the “dark” Batman still. Which is a good thing since we’ve had nothing but that since 2005, whether it be of the Bale/Nolan variety, Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s even more brooding and despairing take on Bruce Wayne (this one wears enough guyliner to join the Black Parade!), or that strange detour into Frank Miller’s fascism-adjacent vision of the Dark Knight in the Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck years.
Through it all, Gunn is also right that we’ve explored just about every era of the character’s history—his origins and “first year” on the job (twice); his middle age and retirement era (also twice); and ironically only one movie where he’s in his prime fighting the Joker. The Bat/Cat dynamic has been embraced repeatedly, as has his complex relationships with Jim Gordon and Alfred Pennyworth. We even got a to see him both pummel and pal around with Superman.
