Gift: Too Much Batman Stuff (1989)

When I say I was obsessed with Batman after the Tim Burton movie came out, I’m not messing around. Look no further than Christmas of 1989 for evidence. In every picture, every crude VHS home movie, I’m smiling like a moron with some new plastic Batman accessory. I haven’t been able to find a single picture where I’m opening a present that isn’t Batman related. There were Batman posters, Batman cups, a Batman TV tray, Batman comic books, Batman clothes, a Batman calendar, Batman action figures, Batman band aids, and of course, piece de resistance, my very own copy of Batman on VHS. And that’s just what I can remember.

I can’t possibly write about all the Batman miscellanea that came my way that year. How much can you say about a Batman TV tray? However, a few highlights stand out. First and foremost, my grandparents gave me an entire box full of Batman stuff, complete with black and yellow tissue paper lining (This was duplicated many many years later when my sister gave me the Batman DVD). Inside, along with the Batman belt and Batman band aids and other assorted Batman merchandise was the Batman VHS tape. As far as I can remember this was the first VHS tape I owned myself (though I did own some He-Man cartoons and Return to Oz on Beta.) That was it for Christmas for me. I raced downstairs and did nothing but watch Batman over and over again the rest of the day. I was finally dragged out of the basement several hours later to eat dinner with the family, but I could have easily watched the movie for a few more weeks, at minimum.

Once I’d been pulled away from the movie, I was free to examine my other Batman stuff. Among the most interesting was a comic book on tape called The Untold Legend of the Batman. I don’t know if these still exist in any form, but when I was a kid I had many books that came with an accompanying cassette tape of actors reading the dialogue. By age seven I could read just fine, thank you, but I still enjoyed listening to the tape as I looked at the pictures in the comic books. The tapes had reasonable acting by my seven year old standards, and I think I’ll preserve that illusion by not listening to them again. It’s possible the dude doing the voice of the Joker for a kid’s book on tape brought just as much to the role as Heath Ledger, right? Sure it is.
The story was actually pretty good. It dealt with Batman’s origins, the origins of the villains, and had a kicker of a psychological plot twist. When a mysterious villain penetrates Batman’s inner sanctum and begins destroying mementos of Batman’s past, Batman goes on a mad quest through Gotham to try to figure out who has it in for him. His quest takes him back to the Batcave, where (spoiler alert) he discovers that he has suffered a complete mental breakdown, and it turns out that the person trying to get rid of him was (whoa!) Bruce Wayne, who had splintered off into an alternate personality. When you’re seven years old, that’s some pretty deep stuff, and I use to relish bringing it up to my friends who thought Batman "boring." Losers. A lot of the origin stories and plot elements have been retconned in the Crisis on Infinite Earths series and Year One, but The Untold Legend of the Batman will always stand as my real introduction to the world of comic book Batman, and the story that made me realize Batman went much deeper than the movie.

Less impressive was my Toy Biz Batman action figure. Batman action figures are notorious for their lackluster quality, but this guy actually had some impressive features. Or at least one impressive feature: He had a spring loaded pulley inside him, so you could hook his belt onto various household objects. Let him go, and he would slide up the rope, just like when he used the grappling hook in the movie! Great! So sure, it was a fun action figure, and a Batman Christmas wouldn’t be complete without a Batman figure.
One problem. Every time you used Batman’s “Bat-Rope” the pulley wound itself up just a little bit tighter. This wasn’t a problem at first, but after a few months of play the rope started to get a little tight. Then, finally, I pulled the belt one too many times. The internal gears snapped, and Batman exploded. When you’re a child, the total explosion of Batman is a pretty traumatic experience. Arms and legs and pieces of torso were all over my bedroom floor—it took days for me to find the head so it could be given a proper burial in the trashcan with the rest of Batman’s remains. A few months later I upgraded to a non-exploding Kenner Batman figure, which I believe exists somewhere to this day. But you never really get over the shock of Batman exploding in your hands. It’s hard to respect him after that.

So that was the Batman Christmas. And while it's never a bad thing to get Batman toys for Christmas, a little variety never hurt anyone.

(Unrelated: Today is the wedding day of a good friend, so I wanted to take this widely read and popular blog as a spot to say "Congratulations!")

Twenty Years Later and I Still Have Most of The Toys

In keeping up with my tradition of writing about the anniversary of things when I happen to notice it’s the anniversary, I wanted to point out that Tim Burton’s Batman movie officially turns 20 today. Sure, the movie’s been overshadowed by the Chris Nolan movies in the last few years (and deservedly so, I might add) but I will always have a special nostalgic fondness for the Tim Burton movie. It was my first introduction to Batman, my first introduction to the idea of the summer movie season, and, really, my first introduction to the process of filmmaking.

I remember the summer of 1989 so well that it’s absolutely baffling to me that it’s been twenty years already. Somehow, I managed to avoid the Batman phenomenon for much of the summer, off doing whatever it was seven year old kids do. I think I saw some of the commercials, but it never really registered for me for some reason.

That changed late in the summer, when I went to Ocean City, NJ for a routine vacation with my family. I don’t know if the movie’s marketing department had spent extra money on targeting the Ocean City boardwalk or what, but Batman was everywhere. That place gets crowded in the summer, and probably one out of every ten people on the boardwalk had on some bit of Batman clothing, be it a hat or a watch, or, of course, the ubiquitous black and gold bat-logo t-shirt. Stores had Batman junk in all their windows, and you could even get your photo taken with a guy in a lame Batman suit for five bucks. (I know I did!)

Best of all were the movie theaters. There were a few theaters on the boardwalk back then (I think there’s only one left now) and they all actually had the good old fashioned low-tech marquees out front, with the hand placed letters that spelled out the name of each movie. There were only two or three movies per theater, but each and every one featured Batman as the main attraction. And this was after the movie had been out for a month and a half. Movies just don’t have staying power like that anymore. (Except, maybe, The Dark Knight.)

Sadly I don’t remember the exact nanosecond when I was bit by the Batman bug. I do remember buying a pack of Batman movie trading cards (I would go on to collect the complete set, obviously), complete with brittle, tongue-slicing baseball card gum. I think that gum was on its way out back then, it appeared less and less as I got older, which is a shame. It’s the only real kind of gum. Anyway, thanks to the gum each Batman card had the extra bonus of smelling like sugar. By the time I’d looked at every card in the pack, I was hooked. There was no going back.

The only outlet for my newfound Bat-mania was in the form of reruns of the 1960s TV series. This was obviously stuck back on the air to cash in on the popularity of the new movie, and I enjoyed it well enough. Unfortunately, the TV series was nothing like the images on my cards of a dark, moody Gotham City and a high-tech hero. I was too young to get the satire in the series, and so it came off, as I’m sure it did to millions of young moviegoers in 1989, as passé kid’s stuff.

So I had my Batman trading cards. I had a rudimentary understanding on the Batman mythos thanks to the TV series. Hell, I even had my picture taken with Batman himself. There was just one thing missing: I hadn’t seen the movie. Every day I would look up from the beach at the marquee on the boardwalk, and every night I would beg my parents to stop as we walked past the theater. They refused: The movie was PG-13, it made Batman out to be “bad”, it was too dark, too violent.

None of my well reasoned pleas and arguments had the slightest effect. I had a lot of fun at the beach that summer. I went to Atlantic City and rode a roller-coaster (they were undergoing a short-lived, Vegas-like attempt to turn the city into a family destination), built castles on the beach, rode rides on the boardwalk, went to a water park, and laid out in the sun listening to boom boxes blaring late 80s classics. But I didn’t get to see the movie. So despite all the fun I had, I came home from the beach without success: A huge Batman fan who had yet to see Batman.

It took about another two weeks of constant nagging before my parents finally relented. In the meantime, the fact that I hadn’t seen the movie did nothing to prevent me from buying more Batman cards, Batman comic books, and all kinds of other Batman junk that was being shoveled my way. When my parents at last allowed me to see the movie, it had already stopped playing in my home town, and my mom had to drive me almost an hour to find a theater that was still playing it.

We got there a little late, about halfway through the opening titles, and I remember immediately trying to guess what I was looking at as the camera swooped through some bizarre series of caves, only to be finally blasted with the climax of Danny Elfman’s theme and my first full view of the wonderful Bat-logo. Needless to say, I loved every second of it. (Except for the part where the Joker joy buzzers the guy to death. That scared me, playing on my phobia of skeletons.)

Looking back, the movie does seem a little dated. Obviously it can’t hold a candle to The Dark Knight. (It’s a tremendous credit to The Dark Knight as a movie that even with the years of aforementioned built-up nostalgia, it still managed to blow me away.) There’s too much Joker and not enough Batman, the Vicky Vale subplot is soap opera quality, and the entire storyline is a little half-baked.

But where it was great then, it’s still great now. The crazy gothic Gotham City beats the Chris Nolan version any day. Michael Keaton is still the best Batman—I’d pay any amount of money to see young Michael Keaton Batman face off against Heath Ledger’s Joker. He was insane and dark and intense without resorting to the famous Christian Bale voice. You really believed that he was crazy enough to put on a bat suit and run out fighting crime. I still love the look of the movie, all black and yellow and purple—it just looks great, and it puts you in a fully realized fantasy world from start to finish.

Naturally, my love for Batman only increased after seeing the movie. I had all Batman school supplies when school started. (It’s a great comfort to have Batman staring at you from the cover of your spelling notebook). I was Batman for Halloween. Christmas was all Batman stuff, including, of course, a cherished VHS copy of the film.

That same fall, my dad bought a video camera for the first time. Since I had a book called Batman: The Official Guide to the Movie or some such thing, I decided that with the book and the video camera together I had everything I needed to make a movie of the same quality as Batman. And trust me, I knew everything about the production of that movie: Who the costume designer was, who the producers were, who did the music, who did the production design. I even knew the name of Michael Keaton’s stunt man. If that’s not devotion, I don’t know what is.

Thanks to Batman, then, I learned a whole hell of a lot about how movies were made for the very first time. As it turned out, taping me running around the yard in a Batman costume or my Joker action figure falling out of my tree house as an approximation of the film’s climactic scene didn’t exactly live up to the high standards set by the movie. My plans to film an elaborate Batman movie never materialized, but I never put down the video camera either. Years later, after the Batman junk hand long been relegated to the closet, I was still running around with the old camera, trying to make movies. Let’s hope none of those tapes ever see the light of day.

So that’s what I think about, twenty years later, when I see that iconic black and gold poster. I don’t think I’ve ever, before or since, gone quite so crazy over a movie. When I watch it now, all those memories come flooding back—I’m at the beach again, cracking open a pack of Batman cards while some 80s dude walks down the boardwalk wearing a dirty Batman T-shirt. It makes me just the tiniest bit less cynical about Hollywood when I stop and remember that movies can do that. Just the tiniest bit.

C'mon Wendy's! Advance the Plot!

Like many fans of the blockbuster film The Dark Knight, I was thrilled when I saw that Wendy's would be continuing the story of the popular Dark Knight character Thomas Schiff (David Dastmalchian) in their 3conomics commercials.
However, it's now been several months, and I've yet to see any noticeable advancement in Schiff's character from lovable, George Washington impersonating fast food bargain hunter to psychotic Joker-henchman. The scene has been well-set for sure, the characters are all established, and the spectre of economic downturn festers on the periphery of the spots like a cancer, threatening to spread at any moment, to turn the once joyful office breakroom into a place of fear and sorrow. However, there has not been one indicator, one single connecting thread to link the Schiff we see in the commercials to the desperate schizophrenic we meet in The Dark Knight.

I'm not sure how long Wendy's plans on running the spots, and while the whole Dark Knight prequel thing is a fantastic idea, fans need some character development in every commercial to keep them interested. By now we should at least have gotten some hints at Schiff's backstory, or the conditions in his life that would make him susceptible to recruitment by the Joker. But Wendy's hasn't even introduced the Joker yet!
You've done a great job so far Wendy's. You've taken a character that was portrayed only as a villian in the original movie and fleshed him out. I cannot watch that scene in the Dark Knight now without thinking, "Wow, Thomas Schiff used to be a regular guy just like me. He liked getting a good deal on fast food and joking around with his friends about said deal. I guess anyone could turn to evil if pushed far enough." And it makes a good scene even better. But, please, Wendy's, show us the next step. You've given us the dots. Now connect them.

It's not a big leap. $.99 for a Junion Bacon Cheeseburger? At that price, the question isn't "How does Thomas Schiff go crazy." It's "How has he managed to stay sane for so long?"

Alternative Valentine's Day Dates

It’s time for another Valentine’s Day. Since I no longer have to write valentines for every kid in the class (Note: If you underline your name when you sign one for a girl, it means you like her!), I thought I would mark the occasion by paying tribute to some women I would love to take out for Valentine’s Day. I’ve spent a lot of time with each of these ladies, and they’re all dear to me in their own way.

5. Harley Quinn

When Harley Quinn first appeared on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, I was confused. I’d read plenty of Batman comics, and I couldn’t think of any instance where the Joker had a giggling female sidekick. There was Jerry Hall in the Tim Burton movie, of course, but this couldn’t be the same character. So I had no idea where Harley came from. By February of 1993, it didn’t matter. Harley had become as much a part of the Joker’s character for millions of kids as the maniacal laughter and green hair.

Poor Harley, forever trapped in a sole-dependent relationship she’s convinced is tragically co-dependent. To watch the Joker twist this naïve psychologist around his fingers in the 1999 episode "Mad Love" is one of the defining moments of the series. Harley is loyal to the end--if only she’d been corrupted, by say, an environmentalist, she might be out saving the whales with the same gusto she devotes to pillage and murder. She may be a high maintenance date, but if you win her over she’s yours forever. And ever.

4. Carmilla

Before Dracula, there was Carmilla, the original creepy Goth vampire hottie. She was the central villain in the 1872 short story of the same name, and she makes a great companion for Valentine’s Day. Okay, so she’s into girls. And she can apparently take the form of a cat, an old woman, a young woman, a middle aged woman, and some kind of blood sucking bird thing. But she doesn’t do that all of the time. In fact much of the time she can be downright polite. She’s lived a long time, so you know she’s well read and brings a lot of life experience to the table. You could do a lot worse.

Besides, since she only feeds on women, doesn’t that mean she’s safer to date than some kind of indiscriminate vampire like Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn? Case closed.

3. Samus Aran
In February 2003 I finally got the chance to play the original Metroid Prime, and I’m happy to say that on that Valentine’s Day Ms. Aran (she is a Ms., right?) was my date for nine consecutive hours of outer space adventure. She’s seen half the galaxy, fought thousands of monsters, saved countless star systems, and flies an awesome spaceship that hooks right into her impressive power suit. Plus she’s even got a maternal side, as evidenced when she protects a young Metroid hatchling from destruction and it adopts her as its mommy. Not even Leia Organa Solo boasts a resume like that.

All of Samus’ adventures are great, but the best of the bunch has got to be Super Metroid for the SNES. It’s one of the longest, most in depth, and impressive games made during that era, and a great way to spend some alone time with the lovely Samus. When a woman is flexible enough to roll into a sphere the size of a beach ball, you know there’s no position that’s off limits (not even that one you’ve always wanted to try but have been afraid to ask about.) She can twist herself into a ball, for God’s sake. There is nothing she can’t do.

2. That Elf on the Cover of the Original Everquest
It was tough to decide between this lovely lady and the night elf on the original World of Warcraft cover (look at those eyes!). If not for Everquest, though, Warcraft would still be a real-time strategy series, and millions of nerds would have been forced to turn elsewhere for entertainment. This magical elf was a trailblazer in the world of MMORPGs. Sex had been used to sell games before, sure, but never was there a product more deliciously tailored towards teenage boys. Earlier games in the genre had been hazier. The cover of Ultima Online, for example, had a wonderful painting of a massive medieval battle with dragons, wizards, knights, and princesses. And that’s enticing, sure.

But Everquest was different. Right there on the box was a promise: Spend hours upon hours leveling up in this game, and maybe, somehow, you might encounter a woman who looked like the elf in some capacity, either in real life or in the game. You weren’t a loser, because there was a beautiful woman right there on the box!

Though she would appear on the cover of almost every EQ expansion, we know so little about this woman. Beyond A) She’s a high-elf, and B)She’s hot, this woman’s life is a blank canvass, waiting for you to pay Sony $19.95 a month of your parent’s money to apply the paint.

1. Emily Bronte
Now here is a woman who could use a Valentine’s Day date. If Carmilla is the original Goth, then Emily gave birth to Emo. It doesn’t take many pages of Wuthering Heights to get the impression that its author had been burned in the past. For Emily there was no “happily ever after,” no all conquering love. Romance was a painful pulling apart of yourself that left you broken, scared, and alone in the desolate British countryside. She’s not quite as famous as big sister Charlotte or as beloved as fellow Brit Jane Austen, and that's just the way she likes it. I imagine she prefers to spend her time home alone writing poetry while blasting Nine Inch Nails on her headphones to the stuffy London scene.

Sure, she would reject the idea of a date at first. She’d be one of those people who would go on and on about how Valentine’s Day is an evil creation of the greeting card companies and that men shouldn’t wait for a special day to show women they love them. But once she was out of the house, she would have fun. There is a fine distinction between passion and pain, and no one could walk that line like Ms. Bronte.

Just be sure to call her the day after. Otherwise she’ll probably start to cut herself.

Oscars Get It Wrong Yet Again

The Oscar nominations were announced today, and as a raving Dark Knight fanboy I feel it my duty to complain about the conspicuous absence of that film from the Best Picture nominees. I'm sure this same sentiment will be echoed in literally millions of places on the internet today. However, as misguided as the decision may be I can't say it comes as a surprise.

Sometimes the Academy nominate the best movies, but more often they nominate what I like to call "play-movies"--films that have important content and subject matter, sure, but whose stories lack the visual punch and over-the-top emotional involement that belongs to movies, making them more appropriate for the world of theater than film. (Indeed, Frost/Nixon originated as a play). Unfortunately, theater has almost vanished as a popular art form, and the only way these stories will ever get the attention they deserve is by being made into motion pictures. That's fine.

What worries me is that in honoring these stories as "the best" year in and year out, people begin to think that these movies are, in fact, "the best." Nothing is more ridiculous than giving awards for the arts, but we've been doing it since at least the Pythian Games so I can't really fault anyone for it. But these awards do affect the public conception--people begin to think that a DVD with "Best Picture" on the cover, whether they like it or not, is inherently better, or more important, than one without it. We all fall prey to this kind of thinking at one point or another.

Most people, however, didn't get involved with movies because of movies like The Reader. Personally, I like movies because movies are awesome. Not awesome like YHWH is awesome, but awesome in the silliest, most ridiculous, most explosion-filled sense of the word. Do I love sitting through 4 hours of beautiful cinematography, classical music, and upper-class 18th century decadence in Barry Lyndon? Hell yes. Do I love watching Perseus take on stop-motion Medusa in Clash of the Titans? Absolutely. Why do we then assign value judgments to movies based on the content?

Movies are about starships and lightsabers, time travel and monsters and superheroes and a ridiculous vision of love and romance, muppets, gladiators and robots, witches and vampires, kings and queens, zombies, and vampire puppet shows. Now I'm not saying we should worship every Michael Bay piece of manufactured excitement that comes our way. Not all movies are good. But there are excellent movies, year after year, in every single genre. Nothing makes one genre better than another, and the modern Academy really needs to get that through their skulls. People who really love movies love a ridiculous assortment of nonsense, and there's nothing in the world wrong with that.

The Dark Knight was the best movie this past year, and for me maybe the best movie of the last ten years. (Then again, I love a lot of movies from the last ten years). Heath Ledger should rightfully get his award for supporting actor, and I'm also very happy about Robert Downey Jr.'s nomination for such a wacky part. (Also, I think it'd be great if Frank Langella won for Frost/Nixon. Anyone who's played Skeletor deserves a bloody Oscar!) If I have to pick out of what's left, I'm going to go with Benjamin Button for Best Picture. It's a great movie, big, wondrous, and emotional, and I'd be happy to see it win.

But fifty years from now, 2008 will be remembered for The Dark Knight the way 1977 is remembered for Star Wars.

(And now the punchline: I actually think Annie Hall was just as deserving a Best Picture winner in '77 as Star Wars. Now Annie Hall vs. Empire Strikes Back? No contest.)